Jonestown docu sheds light on "Life and Death" saga
The grisly end of Jim Jones' would-be utopia has held a morbid fascination since 1978: How did a decades-long, church-based experiment in communal living lead to the murder and "revolutionary suicide" of more than 900 people in a tiny South American country?
Most mainstream-media studies of the event get no further than the poisoned Kool-Aid. But in the extensively researched "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple," director Stanley Nelson and writer Marcia Smith dig a good deal deeper into the workings of Peoples Temple and the paradox at its core -- the visionary quest for social justice and the extreme personality disorder that together drove Jones and held his followers in sway. . . .
Hollywood Reporter, July 7

Saw the film this morning. Review to come in a couple of weeks -- but suffice to say that I have rarely been this affected by a documentary. I think the film is fine work, but there was something more at work for me than just the cinema. Will have to mull it over.

If any of you get a chance to see it, take it. But leave your younger children at home -- even with parental guidance, this could scar them badly. It's nightmarish.

Saw it at the festival last year. Gadzooks. Y'know, I had heard about the mass suicide, of course; but I had no idea about the events that led up to it. It's like something out of the original Wicker Man; it's that horrifying.

Yes -- "horrifying" is precisely the word for it. Probably like you, I was very aware of the event when it took place -- but the "insider" perspective that the film brings to the story is quite different that other media coverage that I've read. Puts a face -- several of them, actually -- to the horror.

Upon reflection, I was struck by the fact that there are absolutely NO talking heads in this doc. It's all documentary footage and testimony of eyewitnesses -- no bridging material or external commentary whatsoever. Kind of the anti-Moore documentary.

And, my review.

A very illuminating and chilling documentary. It's a huge tragedy, not just the number of people that died, but the misplaced hope these people put in Jim Jones, and that they found in People's Temple something that they could never find in the church or anywhere else: a sense of community, and people who shared a passion for social justice, racial integration, and making the world a better place.

Jim Jones was a most frightening kind of evil; a mix of good intentions, hurts from a bad upbringing, paranoia, and meglomanical ambition. And it shows how political leaders got duped by this guy along with his congregation. Just bizarre.

Not the same film, but related:

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MSNBC Films slates premieres
On Nov. 9, MSNBC will air the original doc "Witness to Jonestown," tying in with the 30th anniversary of the 1978 mass killing of more than 900 people in Guyana orchestrated by self-styled prophet Jim Jones. . . .
"Jonestown" is a co-production of MSNBC and NBC Universal’s Peacock Prods. Docu, written and produced by Stephen Stept, mines the NBC News archives to retell the saga of Jones and his People’s Temple, including footage shot at the compound the day Jones ordered his followers to commit suicide by drinking fruit punch laced with cyanide and a sedative.
Two NBC News staffers, cameraman Bob Brown and correspondent Don Harris, were killed and another was injured in an ambush of journalists and politicians who flew to Guyana to investigate reports of abuse in Jones’ complex.
Variety, October 20

Is there a DVD available for the Stanley Nelson doc?