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Where Mormon Propaganda Movies Meet Battleship Potemkin and Wild in the Streets by Bob Satuloff |
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| Detrain the "F" at Delancey, walk a couple of blocks
east—you're headed in the right direction if you pass Ratner's—then hang
a left at Suffolk Street, make your way to number 116, and you'll come
upon the Lighthouse Cinema, Manhattan's newest and most uniquely programmed
movie theater. Through July 4, for example, the Lighthouse is playing The
Mormon Church Explains It All To You nightly at 8 and 10 p.m. Minimalist
in decor but very comfortable, the 75-seat, one-screen theater—once a children's
clothing store, the space has the indefinible but palpable feeling of sorely
missed, Manhattan movie houses like the Thalia—is the purview of Dennis
Nyback, whose Pike Street
Cinema was something of a legend to adventurous
moviegoers in his home town of Seattle, Washington. An archivist, many
of whose unique programs come from his vast, personal collection of rare
films, Nyback charges $7 a ticket and offers patrons the only money-back
guarantee in America, plus what he de-scribes as "weird discount plans
for regular customers."
As for The Mormon Church Explains It All To You, the program can be described as a cinematic ragu of hard-sell, propaganda featurettes aimed at dim-bulbed high school and college-age kids of three decades ago. These rarely seen shorts work overtime to trumpet the triple-tiered joys—pre-natal, earthly, and afterlife—in store for those who give themselves over to the Mormon Church, and the misery, failure, and humiliation awaiting those who don't. How Do I Love Thee?, Man's Search For Happiness, For Time and Eternity, and You Make the Difference were produced in the otherwise tumultuous '60s at Brigham Young University by the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, the Presidency, and the Council of Twelve—not on the back lots of L.A., but in what I now think of as Utahlywood. |
Keith Atkinson has Marilou Dyreng about to flip her Mormon wig in For Time and Eternity. |