It Takes a Cult

(USA, 2008, 80 mins)

digital video

Special Presentation Premiere

producer: Eric Johannsen
editor: Kamila Kowalska Calabrese

• IMDB Film Info
• www.santiagofilms.com

Director Eric Johannsen was born in Wisconsin but grew up as part of the Love Family, a communal tribe of as many as 300 people based in Washington State. Combining wonderful home movie footage (much of it shot by his father, filmmaker Charles Johannsen, whose film Bill and Art is also playing at this year’s Festival) with modern conversations about what it was like to raise kids, and to be raised, in a family arrangement like no other. Members were given names that represented admirable qualities (Humility, Noble, Consolation, etc.) and shared the same surname: Israel. This film isn’t a repudiation of the Love Family, but an insider’s view of what drew the clan together. The charismatic leader, Love Israel, may have had some financial and relationship problems that in a more conventional documentary would have been the focus. Here, Johannsen helps the rest of us get a better sense of the powerful commitment to beauty and openness that defined the Family.

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