Mormon Artist

Melted Hearts screened at the 2010 LDS Film Festival on Friday, January 22 to a packed theater and an enthusiastic audience. The film is about a pair of missionaries, Elder Pedro Rodriguez and Elder Brian Lauper, who have trouble getting along at first. Brian is upset at having been released from his calling as an Assistant to the President, and Pedro has a grudge against Brian because he's American. After they go through some trials together and Brian saves Pedro's life when he gets seriously ill, the two become friends and keep in touch after their missions have ended. In the second half of the film, Brian and his family take a vacation to Mexico, where they meet Pedro, who falls in love with Brian's sister, Wendy. Pedro doesn't have the courage to tell Wendy before she goes back home to Provo, but with the encouragement of his family, he takes heart and hitchhikes from Mexico City to Utah to find her and confess his love.

Melted Hearts is a heart-warming story about gaining courage to follow one's dreams--a story inspired by director Jorge Ramirez Rivera's own experience as a young man of setting off to the United States to pursue an education, against all odds. Even with an inspiring story, however, the film has some flaws. There were several times while watching Melted Hearts that I had to suspend my disbelief. Due to budget and casting concerns, the two missionaries had longish hair, and the actor who played the American Elder Brian Lauper was not a native speaker of English. I was also left wondering how Pedro made it across the border into the United States when he didn't have time to arrange a visa. Many of these concerns in addition to others I had (the plot could have been tighter, the production quality wasn't as high as I was hoping, and some of the errors in the subtitles were distracting) were diminished, though, by the sheer enjoyment of seeing an international, fully subtitled Mormon film--and being in an audience of mixed native English and native Spanish speakers who were all able to fully participate as audience members. The film is half in English and half in Spanish, with both parts subtitled. The cast and crew included English speakers, Spanish speakers, and quite a few bilinguals, which provided an interesting challenge for all involved. In the Q&A after the screening, Jorge Ramirez Rivera said that he believed Melted Hearts is the first international Mormon film. He is hoping to distribute the film on DVD and possibly on some Latin websites. There were other films screened at the LDS Film Festival this year that had foreign flair, in particular Dave Boyle's films Big Dreams Little Tokyo and White on Rice, which I hope mark a new trend in LDS cinema. Jorge Ramirez Rivera's offering is an important step forward in that trend.

The following is a review written by Davey Morrison of Mormons and Masons, one of the entries in this year's LDS Film Festival. It was originally posted here.

Mormons and Masons was the first film I saw at the LDS Film Festival, in a special screening Thursday afternoon. It's one of a series of book-DVD combos Covenant Communications has been putting out over the past few years (I worked on a couple earlier ones: Presidents and Prophets and Love Letters of Joseph and Emma)--an idea is pitched, a book is written, and then a documentary is put together in a few weeks (in the case of Mormons and Masons, three) from some interviews with scholars and archival material. Taken on its own terms, Mormons and Masons has a lot of very fascinating and definitely worthwhile information, even if it's not always riveting (it's essentially 60 minutes of five or so talking heads, with an occasional photograph or drawing), and sometimes feels like it's probably a slightly watered-down version of the book, a bid padded out with pop Mormon feelgoodery to appease the Deseret Book crowd (including a wall-to-wall needle-drop score). Still, Covenant is to be commended for taking what have mostly been scholarly issues of Mormon studies and making them more accessible to a fairly conservative Mormon lay-audience.

By its very nature, Mormons and Masons doesn't really get to look at many of the interesting specifics of the titular subject matter--the similarities between Mormonism and Masonry are essentially in their most sacred ceremonies, in temple work for Mormons, and, for Masons, the rituals in the Masonic Lodge, both of which are held sacred, and both of which are rarely discussed in other settings. As a result, much of the discussion here is reduced to vagaries, which is in some senses disappointing on a scholarly level, but also, of course, necessary out of respect for both Mormons and Masons. Still, there's lots that can be talked about on the subject. The film does a lot to put into context Joseph Smith's Masonry--he and a number of other church leaders joined the Masons in Nauvoo, after hundreds of Latter-day Saints had already joined and a Lodge had already been established; he was a Mason "at sight" (i.e., he was given the honor of Master Mason in an abbreviated amount of time). The film also talked about how Joseph Smith became a Mason in between his revelation concerning the temple endowment ceremony and the first actual endowment ceremonies that took place in Nauvoo, suggesting that Smith used his and many of the Saints' Masonic background as a way of organizing the material that would be a part of the endowment ceremony, including similarities in "symbols and tokens" and in ritual clothing. Mormons and Masonsalso points out that Masonry was hardly considered strange in the 19th century--many public figures, including almost all the presidents through the early 20th century--became Masons.

Bottom Line: If you're looking for an interesting Film-with-an-upper-case-F, look elsewhere, but if, like me, you're interested in the issue of Mormonism and Masonry and haven't done a whole lot more than spend a couple hours on the internet looking into it, this is more than worth your time.

You can buy the Mormons and Masons DVD, Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons, the book by Matthew B. Brown that was the basis for the film, or a movie-book combo at Covenant Communications' website.

The 9th Annual LDS Film Festival will be held January 20-23 at the Scera Center in Orem. 

The 24-Hour Filmmaking Marathon starts this Friday, January 15th!

On screen, Michael Flynn has played such roles as a sheriff, a stake president, a doctor, a lawyer, a pharisee, and Pontius Pilate. Now he makes room in his busy schedule to share the secrets of his craft. Read more about the amazing breadth and depth of his career in Issue 8 of Mormon Artist magazine!