Two FLDS girls watching the bulldozers take down buildings in Short Creek Photo by 44 Blue Productions, courtesy Discovery+ Some homes have been sold to “outsiders.” And some FLDS members, still faithful to Jeffs, have been evicted for refusing to cooperate with the board’s criteria to keep their homes as they do not recognize the board’s authority. Under the board, some former FLDS members -who were exiled, left or escaped Jeffs’ church -have returned to their homes. We’ll give you all of the cards and you decide where your heart is.”Ī point of contention that remains in Short Creek, the United Effort Plan (UEP), a land trust, which includes hundreds of homes formerly controlled by the FLDS, is now under the purview of a nonreligious board. And really that’s what the documentary is all about. “I’ve really grown to like these people so much. “I never thought we’d be allowed to say ‘hello’ to them, let alone have dinner in their houses and their families,” says Meehan, who first visited Short Creek about a decade ago. Specifically, the documentary portrays the divisiveness that emerges when facts are dismissed in favor of beliefs/bias and people stubbornly adhere to their own “truths.”īefore Jeffs went to jail, a documentary crew may have been run out of Short Creek by the so-called “god squad” (Jeffs’ pick-up-driving private security forces.) Now, many of the walls have come down (literal walls Jeffs had constructed around the community). Rather than retread the same ground, KEEP SWEET hopes to compare the current situation in Short Creek to the American political and cultural climate at large. And it’s a story that hadn’t really been told before.” There’s a pressure cooker there, as all these different people are existing side-by-side. “People have told the Warren Jeffs story before,” says Argott, “But there is something that’s happening in this town that is not being talked about. Short Creek house with Zion sign hanging on an archway Photo by 44 Blue Productions, courtesy Discovery+ But Don, as director, wanted to show both sides without giving our opinions.” We already had the side that was kicked out. He sees this new angle to this documentary. “We sat with the documentary for a while, trying to figure out what we were going to do with it,” says Meehan. (Just for starters, if you’re looking for deep analysis and painstaking research into the FLDS, polygamy, and the rise of Warren Jeffs or thoughtful explorations into how he further isolated and radicalized a community and destroyed lives, there’s the Unfinished Short Creek podcast, the book Prophet’s Prey by Sam Brower and subsequent documentary, the book Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, the documentary Sons Of Perdition, and so many more.) However, KEEP SWEET strives to be more than that, as that sort of documentary has been done many times. On its face, KEEP SWEET is a primer to the FLDS community-catching up the viewer on the 1953 raid by Arizona officials that still shapes the members’ views toward outsiders, the reign of Warren Jeffs, how he divided families and exiled anyone who could possibly challenge his influence and, primarily, how the community has changed since Jeffs’ arrest, child rape conviction and prison sentence. “Pray and obey” on the fireplace outside of a house in Short Creek Photo by 44 Blue Productions, courtesy Discovery+ That will certainly make for interesting and spirited conversations around the table this Thanksgiving. It presents community conflicts and religious and political divisions in a fashion that allows viewers to draw their own conclusions. KEEP SWEET takes a different approach with a wider scope than previous documentaries about the FLDS. He’s best known for directing the documentary Beli ever, which followed Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds as he learned about the LDS Church’s treatment of LGBTQ+ members. It still has resonance there, but now, as the title of the film, like the town itself, it can now mean something other than what it used to,” says director Don Argott about the choice of the film’s title. “‘Keep sweet’ is baked into the fabric of the town, in a way. Don and Glenn, keep sweet.’ That phrase kept coming up. “And almost every piece of art said ‘keep sweet. “As we met these FLDS families, we started getting a lot of incredible art pieces from these kids,” says the film’s executive producer Glenn Meehan. The Short Creek landscape Photo by 44 Blue Productions, courtesy Discovery+
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