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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s an appropriate time, I think, for a status report on the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s Witnesses movie project.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The first part of the project was production of the film Witnesses<\/em>, which was released in theaters in June of 2021.\u00a0 We are excited that it is now available everywhere on streaming platforms:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Deseret Video+: https:\/\/deseretbook.com\/video<\/a><\/p>\n Living Scriptures: https:\/\/stream.living scriptures.com\/movies\/witnesses<\/a><\/p>\n Apple:\u00a0https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/movie\/witnesses\/id1619571357?ls=1<\/a><\/p>\n Google:\u00a0https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/movies\/details?id=S_IussZpGG0.P<\/a><\/p>\n Amazon:\u00a0https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/video\/detail\/amzn1.dv.gti.d1dbb090-26e6-491d-bf67-f9acb10d95d2?autoplay=1&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The second portion of the project was the development of a two-part, 2.5-hour docudrama, titled Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon<\/em>.\u00a0 Our docudrama will be available for purchase by the general public on 24 May 2022, less than two weeks from today.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n When we embarked on the Witnesses project over four years ago, we initially intended to produce only<\/em> a docudrama. We began by interviewing several prominent scholars, but we soon realized that the compelling story of the Witnesses would make a tremendous movie. However, we always intended to produce a docudrama using footage from the theatrical film, supplemented by additional scholarly interviews and narration.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Undaunted\u2019s<\/em> release is intended to build on the interest generated by the earlier film\u2019s theatrical run. Unlike Witnesses<\/em>, though, which focused entirely on Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, David Whitmer \u2014 the official \u201cThree Witnesses\u201d of the Book of Mormon \u2014 and Joseph Smith (it was hard enough telling a story with four protagonists), Undaunted<\/em> brings in the official \u201cEight Witnesses\u201d along with several of those whom I like to call the informal or unofficial witnesses (e.g., Mary Musselman Whitmer and Josiah Stowell). Also unlike Witnesses<\/em>, Undaunted<\/em> features interviews with historians and others, both Latter-day Saints and non-Latter-day Saints, who provide depth and background for the Witness accounts.\u00a0 Furthermore, unlike Witnesses<\/em>, Undaunted<\/em> is not being distributed through theatrical screenings but in the form of DVDs and, fairly soon thereafter, on streaming platforms.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In addition, we are creating short features that we\u2019re calling \u201creels,\u201d which treat very specific topics related to the Witnesses and the Book of Mormon.\u00a0 Several are already available online, and new \u201creels\u201d will appear at 7 PM, Utah time, every Saturday evening for at least the next six months:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/TheInterpreterFoundation\/videos<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We encourage you to \u201clike\u201d these short features, to subscribe to our YouTube channel<\/a> (which will automatically bring them to you each week), and to share them with your families and friends.\u00a0 We have found that they are great for creating conversations, and we hope that families and seminary and institute instructors and others will find them helpful.\u00a0 We are also producing even shorter versions of the \u201creels\u201d for deployment on TikTok and Instagram, which (I\u2019m informed by folks who claim to actually know real young people) are favored by youthful audiences:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Instagram \u2014 @interpreterfoundation<\/strong>\u00a0at\u00a0https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/interpreterfoundation\/<\/a><\/p>\n TikTok \u2014 @interpreterfoundation<\/strong>\u00a0at\u00a0https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@interpreterfoundation<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Finally, as the fourth part of the overall Witnesses project, we have created and are continuing to develop a specially-focused website that we think will take on an importance all its own:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n https:\/\/witnessesofthebookofmormon.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If you\u2019re interested in the Hulu\/FX miniseries Under the Banner or Heaven<\/em>, this is worth a read: \u00a0\u201cExclusive: The real Brenda Lafferty is lost in \u2018Under the Banner of Heaven\u2019 series, her sister says: Series is \u2018absolute fiction,\u2019 Sharon Wright Weeks says, while the real story is less about religion and more about \u2018jealousy and revenge\u2019\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This is nice:\u00a0 \u201cWatch a virtual tour of the Washington D.C. Temple led by two Latter-day Saint apostles: More than 100,000 have already toured the historic temple outside the nation\u2019s capital\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t yet seen The Northman<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 One of my sons, who has devoted some real time to studying our Viking ancestors and their beliefs, has<\/em> seen it, though, and he liked it.\u00a0 And he liked this National Review<\/em> take on it, as I also did:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Northman<\/i>\u2019s Closed Viking Cosmos\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The reviewer, Ross Douthat, says that The Northman<\/em> does a good job of portraying a culture and a society that were morally very foreign to ours, without making any concessions to our sensibilities.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And that reminds me of a blog entry that I posted a few days ago in which I wondered on what basis atheistic naturalism can say \u2014 if it even chooses<\/em> to say \u2014 that Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s moral vision was \u201cwrong\u201d:\u00a0 \u201cAbout Those \u2018Dangerous\u2019 Mormons.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m Danish and Norwegian on my paternal side.\u00a0 And although I\u2019m nominally English and Scottish on my maternal side, the history of the specific areas of England and Scotland from which my mother\u2019s ancestors largely derive \u2014 respectively, Yorkshire and Ayrshire \u2014 makes me wonder if I may be at least partially of Scandinavian descent on that side, as well.\u00a0 (Through his mother, my son has also picked up some Swedish ancestry.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the Scandinavian heritage of which I was acutely aware, I grew up with a strong interest in the history and mythology of the Vikings.\u00a0 I was fascinated by them, even when I was quite small.\u00a0 I had a large and elegant wooden silhouette of a Viking longboat hanging on my bedroom wall, and the metallic Viking ship sitting on my dresser was a favorite Christmas present that I had begged and begged my parents to buy for me when, as a still very young boy, I saw it in a furniture store.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t made for a child, but I thought it almost infinitely cool.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n My brother \u2014 actually, my non-Scandinavian half-sibling \u2014 liked to tell in after years how my enthusiasm for the Vikings very visibly ebbed just a bit when I saw the 1958 film The Vikings<\/em>, with Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, and Ernest Borgnine.\u00a0 (I must have been extremely young, because I saw it in a theater.\u00a0 I wonder if my parents knew that he had taken me.\u00a0 He was ten years my senior.)\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember much about it; I don\u2019t know whether I was old enough to grasp the violence that it presumably depicted, even in those days of tamer filmmaking.\u00a0 And I haven\u2019t ever seen the movie again \u2014 I doubt that it ranks up there with Citizen Kane<\/em> \u2014 but I do recall being turned off by the Vikings\u2019 drunken dancing on tables.\u00a0 In fact, that\u2019s the only thing that I do remember from it.\u00a0 Somehow, my ancestors didn\u2019t seem as heroically dignified as I had imagined them.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n