Lifesong (stories & films)

By Dennis Packard

Reviewed by Randy Astle
On 7/25/2006

BYU writing and film project http://lifesong.byu.edu/

Lifesong and Fit for the Kingdom are, as far as I know, completely segregated groups not just in terms of personnel but even ideology (Eric Samuelsen or someone more acquainted with the BYU faculty can correct me if I'm wrong). None of the people listed on Lifesong's webpage are film faculty, but are in the departments of philosophy, family life, etc. Their courses are offered, I believe, through the English, philosophy, or other programs. However, Dennis Packard, though a philosophy professor, just received a second masters or PhD in film and even more recently--within the past month--took over BYU's International Cinema, so he has some film theory/history knowledge. Contrasting to Fit's documentary slant, Lifesong's emphasis is on storytelling and creating fictional films that are "generous," open to multiple belief systems, and yet are faith promoting. As far as I know, however, all of the books that have come out of it have explicit LDS content.

For me, having not read Packard's dissertation or any of their theoretical materials, it's a bit vague, though it reminds me of Eugene England's 1999 Dialogue article "Danger on the Right! Danger on the Left! The Ethics of Recent Mormon Fiction" on literature--they're trying to find a middle ground that is both morally and artistically tenable, rather than those that are technically well done but spiritually vacuous, or those which are "faith promoting" yet suffer from a paucity of artistic and craft skill. What has most struck me is how they're going about it--through literature, rather than jumping straight into filmmaking. They're writing "books for the next great films," teaching how to write short visual manuscripts, terse in dialogue, that can be adapted into screenplays with minimum change, a la The Maltese Falcon. And then they're going out, with professional and student labor, and turning these into pictures.

All that said, Packard appears to be an incredible producer. They've established a deal with a publisher and already have quite a few short paperback novels out (distributed, like many films, through Excel, even before their DB merger), the first being My People by Gordon Laws. Even more amazing, given the economics, is that they've evidently finished filming a "feature film" based on Fire Creek by Nate Chai, a student when he wrote the book but now English faculty (part time?), at BYU; it's a modern story about a soldier--I believe LDS--returning to America from Afghanistan and rediscovering his faith. I don't know where they're at in postproduction, whether they shot on film or video, or how they intend to distribute (Excel seems likely), but Packard is nothing if not tenacious. I haven't read Chai's book but I did read My People a few years ago: it's about a Hispanic teen in East L.A. who joins the Church and then has to deal with his former gang and the ways he keeps getting drawn back into street violence to protect his loved ones. The book copyright is 2001 and the cover looks like a movie poster (God's Army's, specifically, with a full cast). It's fairly good, though, and unfortunately for them Richard Dutcher covered this area with much more nuance and sophistication in States of Grace, so I don't know whether they will still attempt to film it or not; even though the book was written first, the public, even the appreciative public, will still see it as a knock-off.

Both movements have momentum behind them, but of a very different type. Fit is very grassroots, very visual, and very much about the unification of the global Church and the fostering of faith and discipleship in real life; the films are no good if they don't have a positive effect in their viewers' lives. Lifesong is very much about storytelling and it's very literary, though it too sees itself as faith-promoting. Its financial needs are much greater, so it's more top-down, and as far as I know it has none of the populist sentiments of Dean Duncan and the documentary people. Anyone with a little know-how and equipment can grab a Mini-DV camera, go tape their grandmother, edit it, and post it online, but it takes more resources to write and publish a novel and then turn it into a theatrically-released feature film on 35mm. So Lifesong's momentum comes because there's more faculty involved and they seem to have gotten more money behind them (Packard is also a member of the Film Funding Committee, the group to whom Duncan wrote his initial, rejected proposal), but Fit for the Kingdom's momentum comes from greater enthusiasm from a growing group of people ideologically committed to celebrate real life and real discipleship and to use film not for entertainment but for social and spiritual change. In mainstream terms, Lifesong is Warner Bros., Fit for the Kingdom is the National Film Board of Canada.

Lest we get too ideologically split, we should remember the lesson of New York Doll, that there's room for both. (That point is from Terryl Givens's fantastic NYD review in that ever-upcoming film issue of BYU Studies.)


Copyright 2006 Randy Astle