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| Photographs of the shocking mass suicide are made to be reflected in color in cult leader Jim Jones' shades on this chilling poster for Stanley Nelson's Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple |
The story of Jim Jones, a poor boy from Indianapolis, who founded Peoples Temple, which embraced everyone and uprooted lives, relocating to San Francisco, then fleeing to small South-American country Guyana, where more than 900 members, including Jones and over 300 minors, died in a mass suicide/mass murder which is among the biggest of all time.
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple is written by Marcia Smith (A Place of Our Own (2004)) and Noland Walker (Amen: The Life and Music of Jester Hairston (2013)) and directed by great American documentarian Stanley Nelson (Freedom Summer (2014)).
It is a very fine documentary, which after a short introduction gives a small look into Jones' odd behavior as a child, before we follow his Christianity and Marxism-based church, as it develops, with a surprising mass of footage of services, preachings and other events. This is intercut with interviews of survivors and family members of followers of the cult. The sometimes paradoxical explanations of events from the subjects are not questioned, and I could also have handled a longer, deeper dealing with the frightening Jonestown tragedy.
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple is fascinating and deeply disturbing.
Watch a very candid and interesting interview with Jim Jones' surviving son Stephen Jones decades after the tragedy here
Cost: 0.8 mil. $
Box office: 148k $
= Box office disaster (returned 0.18 times the cost)
[Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple premiered 26 April (Tribeca Film Festival, New York) and runs 86 minutes. Nelson reportedly edited down 400 hours of audio tape recordings from cult members as well as a big collection of 16 mm footage recorded by a cult member who happened to be a professional filmmaker. The film opened #82 in 1 theater in North America to a 7k $ first weekend and peaked at #65 and in 5 theaters, grossing 148k $. It won an award at Tribeca and was also screened at festivals in the UK, Greece and Poland. It was shown in April 2007 as part of co-financier PBS' American Experience documentary series. Nelson returned with Wounded Knee (2009, documentary). Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple is certified fresh at 94 % with a 7.5/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple?
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