Documentaries on Fundies

[EllieCee]

Can anyone point me to any good documentaries about fundies? I've already seen "Virgin Daughters".

[fundies_like_zombies]

Return of the Daughters and Homemaking 101 but they are BY fundies so not critical ones.

[EllieCee]

Return of the Daughters and Homemaking 101 but they are BY fundies so not critical ones.

I'd prefer some critical ones. I've tried Googling some, but it's hard to find ones that are available online.

[ThisOlGirl]

I have "Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher", and it's pretty good, though I'm not sure if it would qualify as a movie specifically about fundies. It's about Lonnie Frisbee, who co-founded Calvary Chapel with Chuck Smith. Of course when they found out Lonnie was gay, he was kicked out of the church and all references to him were scrubbed from Calvary Chapel's records. A lot of my church-going relatives attend Calvary Chapels, and they've never heard of Lonnie Frisbee.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Last time this topic came up someone recommended the site http://www.documentaryheaven.com . If you look by topic and choose "religion" there are some in there.

I enjoyed a show "Deborah 13" from the BBC about a 13 year old girl from a very fundie QF family in rural England. The girl is obsessed with handing out tracts and trying to save people from going to hell, to the point it's creepy (she kinda reminds me of Steve Maxwell in that regard, which says it all! :D). The narrator asks the girl pointed questions, and her answers are left there, the point is made. Anyway, I found that on http://www.documentaryheaven.com .

If you search on "Trouble in Amish Paradise" and then "Leaving Amish Paradise" on YouTube, you can find the entirety of TWO documentaries, also from the BBC, following a guy who is Amish and decides to leave. He starts questioning in "Trouble..." and is fairly sympathetic through the whole thing. He's leaving to become an evangelistic Christian though, but still. Then in "Leaving Amish Paradise" though, his friend (who also leaves with him) is still fairly sympathetic but this guy goes OFF the deep end of crazy and goes full fundie, to the point where he makes a trip to the UK and is passing out tracts, and it's just NoooooOOOOO!

The Amish guy passing out tracts was the first I'd seen coverage of tract-passing over there, until I later saw "Deborah 13." Speaking of which, you know the discussions we've had about tracts made to look like $10 US? Well, for the UK market they make 'em to look like pound notes, I kid you not. Ol' Deborah 13 is quite the customer. :roll:

"Jesus Camp" is on YouTube, but wants US $2.99 to play it for the full version. But! Looks like people have uploaded the rest for free in pieces anyway! (I rented the DVD myself, so I can't vouch for the quality of the free YouTube bits, but it's worth checking out, or you can pay the $2.99). Bonus in that movie, there's sections where a pastor Ted Haggard goes on about the evils of teh ghey, and this is left unremarked (other than "wow, this is crazy"). But after the movie came out, of course, he was found to be quite gay himself, having undercover relationships and drugs and... so it's weird watching that clip now. Looks like the German translation of Jesus Camp is available too.

If you're on a US server or proxy (so you can see Hulu) you can watch the movie "Trembling Before G-d" on Hulu at http://www.hulu.com/watch/76545/trembling-before-g-d . It's a movie about some Orthodox Jewish people who are gay and/or lesbian, and their struggles, some go secular, some don't, some move within Judiasm, but there's lots of discussion and interesting background about their communities too, how hard it is.

[Happy_Anabaptist]

I watched the Trouble in Amish Paradise and Leaving Amish Paradise ones. It was Charity Christian Fellowship that he left to go to, and that documentary more than anything made me wary of Charity. Somehow he picked up the idea that God would provide for his family financially while he was evangelizing, and it was a sign of weakness if he had to get a job. :shock:

[QAF_Rocks]

Oooh, my favorite topic!

I've seen most of the ones mentioned on this thread. Trouble in Amish Paradise, Leaving Amish Paradise, Jesus Camp, and Trembling Before G-d are all well worth watching.

I would also recommend:

The End of the World Bus Tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdXCvKWSZyw

British Schools, Islamic Rules:

Faith School Menace:

In God's Name: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjp4A6jBWzo

[annalena]

The one about the Westboro church is good for entertainment.

[Lily]

Baby Bible Bashers is a good one. The look into Evangelical youth preachers and the methods and beliefs of those who raise them.

I second QAF_Rocks' rec of Jesus Camp.

Not really exclusively fundie (though it includes some), but TLC ran a surprisingly good special recently called "Living For the Apocalypse." It's about preppers and the end-times mindset.

[wtfrenchtoast]

Man. I'm watching that first one QAF_Rocks linked to, The End of the World Bus Tour, and this 17-year-old girl is talking about how man is evil. Every baby, every person is inherently evil. That's one thing that I will never understand or agree with in regard to Christianity. I see a newborn child as innocence personified, this girl sees it as evil personified. I don't get it, I really don't.

ETA: I posted too soon. She then goes on to very smugly and self-righteously tell the interviewer that if she's right about God's existence, she gets to spend eternity being "joint-heir" with him, while the interviewer will burn in Hell. Nice.

[llv]

Damned to Heaven is a good doc on a sect of the FLDS, Winston Blackmore's progeny in Canada.

[Clementine]

Louis Theroux on the Westboro Church:

http://documentaryheaven.com/louis-ther ... n-america/

http://documentaryheaven.com/america%E2 ... in-crisis/

Theroux on fundies:

http://documentaryheaven.com/louis-ther ... istianity/

The trials of Ted Haggard:

http://documentaryheaven.com/the-trials-of-ted-haggard/

http://documentaryheaven.com/friends-of-god/

The virgin daughters:

http://documentaryheaven.com/the-virgin-daughters/

And also Jesus Camp, but I don't know where you can find it.

[AmeliaM]

A couple of others not mentioned so far:

- In God's Name - NZ fundamentalist cult (60 minutes segment)

- God's Next Army - PHC (Patrick Henry College) doco

[chaotic life]

Jesus Camp was on Netflix. Don't know if it still is, but that's where I saw it.

[contrary]

it's available for free streaming if you have amazon prime, too.

[Terrie]

Hell House, about a sin-themed "haunted" house done by a church each Halloween.

[QAF_Rocks]

Man. I'm watching that first one QAF_Rocks linked to, The End of the World Bus Tour, and this 17-year-old girl is talking about how man is evil. Every baby, every person is inherently evil. That's one thing that I will never understand or agree with in regard to Christianity. I see a newborn child as innocence personified, this girl sees it as evil personified. I don't get it, I really don't.

I know! That girl gave me the chills. She seems so normal. All of them do. None of them are wearing strange clothing. None of them seem like atypical people. Yet they believe the most bizarre things. I truly don't understand their mindset. I know it's the result of indoctrination, but I was just so incredulous that she could actually believe that everyone is inherently evil. The interviewer was surprised, too, by the sound of it.

More interesting fundie documentaries:

Waiting for Armageddon: http://vimeo.com/12247170

Brother Born Again:

These don't seem to be available online, but they're on DVD and you can watch the trailers:

Join Us:

Audience of One:

[CynicMom]

For a documentary on homeschooling gone wrong, check out:

Surfwise (2007) - The true story of a family that was soooo into surfing that they lived out of their van and homeschooled the kids across the country learning surfing and reading from science texts as they went. It was wild and free living - and the kids were completely unprepared for real life.

http://www.youtube.com/user/surfwisefilm?blend=7&ob=5

[Daenerys]

The one about the crazy Muslims was filmed in a school 10 minutes from my house...

[DinnerPlateDahlia]

"Jesus Camp" is good.

"For the Bible Tells Me So" made me cry. It's about the plight of LGBT folks with conservative Christian families. It's free on Netflix right now.

[llv]

"For the Bible Tells Me So" made me cry. It's about the plight of LGBT folks with conservative Christian families. It's free on Netflix right now.

That's a really great doc. It made me cry too.

[QAF_Rocks]

Re: For the Bible Tells Me So and Trembling Before G-d, there's an interesting documentary that tackles the same subject from a Muslim perspective.

A Jihad for Love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRX2Q8GYvcw

[Cran]

As we have so many members who speak German, I feel justified to necro this thread:

Die letzte Schlacht - The last battle

(A German take on christian fundamentalism in the US)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIgeQld4 ... re=related

[luckystone]

I haven't seen "Jesus Camp" yet, I must remember. It might scare me though.

"Sons of Perdition" it's about teenage boys kicked out of the FLDS (?) or whichever is the Warren Jeffs thing - so that the teenage girls were free to marry old men. I only saw a few minutes so my description might be totally wrong. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1296893/

"Devil's Playground" is about rumspringa in the Amish. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293088/

[pixydust]

"For the Bible Tells Me So" made me cry. It's about the plight of LGBT folks with conservative Christian families. It's free on Netflix right now.

FTBTMS was soooo good! Made me cry!

I haven't seen "Jesus Camp", but the people looking for it should try their public library, mine has it.

There is a good one about Tammy Faye Bakker called "The Eyes Of Tammy Faye", it's narrated by RuPaul. It shows how screwed over she was by Jerry Fallwell when everything went down.