Through Eden

TYPE: Documentary Feature
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: Production

LOGLINE

A modern Mormon suffragette challenges church patriarchy by advocating for ordination of women to the all-male priesthood.

SYNOPSIS

Kate Kelly is a faithful Mormon woman. Raised in the religion since birth, she is a graduate of Brigham Young University, served an overseas mission, and married in the temple. She has never doubted her Church or experienced a crisis of faith. But her fearless, strategic and media savvy push for gender equality is rocking the Church she loves.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

Film has always been my passion, and a hobby. In 1985, when I was an undergrad at Brigham Young University, I read an announcement about the Sundance Film Festival in nearby Park City and decided to go. I have attended almost every year since. But it wasn’t until 3 years ago that I became a professional filmmaker. After 13 years as an English professor, I decided it was time to throw off my mother’s teaching that storytelling is an act of writing, and embrace my heartfelt belief that the best and most powerful stories are told visually.
Nobody was more surprised than I when my new career in film led me back to Mormonism—the religion I was raised in, married in, brought my own children up in, and ultimately stopped practicing about six years ago. My first film, a documentary titled “Through Eden,” focuses on Mormon women questioning their faith—especially as pertains to gender issues—and their struggle to find a comfortable place for themselves within the LDS church.
Kate Kelly’s story, a bold and hopeful one, also needs to be told. Kate is a cute and quirky, whip smart 33 year old feminist, who also happens to be a devout Mormon woman asking hard questions about power and equality in her male-dominated religion, and using social media and grassroots social activism to give voice to a whole generation of Mormon women like her. Kate is also an international human rights attorney with a broad vision for connecting her activism within the LDS Church to work she will undertake in Africa, where she and her husband are moving this summer.
And these are just two of the many films I look forward to making as my art and the women of my religion connect and translate into compelling film. 

 

 

KEY CREW

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