Program 23: Talena Sanders

Liahona. Talena Sanders, USA, 2013, 68min.

In a word, if “Mormonism” is not my life, I do not know that I have any.
I do not understand anything else, for it embraces everything that comes within the range of understanding of man.
If it does not circumscribe everything that is in heaven and on earth, then it is not what it purports to be.

-Brigham Young, Prophet 1847 – 1877, First Governor of Utah
Liahona is an experimental documentary examining the culture, history, and lived experience of Mormonism. 
The film creates a portrait of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints through documentation of LDS cultural dominance
in Utah, the suppressed history of folk magic in the early church, accounts from the settlement of the west,
landmark Mormon life experiences, worship song, and my own history and connection to the church.

Liahona presents the complexities of the vast institution of Mormonism in relation to the tenuity of individual faith.

Liahona is an experimental documentary examining the culture, history, and lived experience of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, often referred to as the Mormon faith. The film creates a portrait of Mormonism through documentation of LDS cultural dominance in Utah, the suppressed history of folk magic in the early church, landmark Mormon life experiences, and my personal history and connection to the church.  Found media with the voices of outsiders and insiders illuminate a religion that intrigues many, but is seen as mysterious or inaccessible. Liahona shifts through perspectives on the faith – from reverence to questioning, presenting the complexities of the vast institution of Mormonism contrasted with the tenuity of individual faith.

Liahona is an examination of how mysticism becomes mundane, the balance and the tension in Mormon life experience between the illogical and the pedestrian, the public face of Mormonism and gaps in accessibility.  What is it about the Mormons that make them so distinctively different? Recorded on 16mm film, Liahona traverses Utah, Nauvoo and Carthage, Illinois and Independence, Missouri to piece together this portrait of a faith.