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A series of faraway events is causing the sale of a cult compound in South Dakota.
The polygamous cult is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known as FLDS. It broke away long ago from the Mormon Church.
The FLDS is based in a community called Short Creek on the Arizona-Utah border. It has enclaves elsewhere, including a compound in South Dakota’s Black Hills.
The cult’s leader, Warren Jeffs, is serving life in prison for sexually abusing girls he took as wives. Since his conviction about 15 years ago, the FLDS has been unraveling.
Ken Driggs is an Atlanta-based legal scholar who studies the cult.
Sarah Ventre is fascinated by people’s religious beliefs and the profound impact they have on their lives and identity. Her recent podcast “Unfinished: Short Creek,” which tells the stories of
Cora Lee Witt, left, and her granddaughter Saige Alloway examine fabric in a scene from Park City-based filmmaker Jill Orschel s documentary Snowland. The film follows the life of Witt, who became a child bride at 14 in the Short Creek polygamous group. Witt created a fantasy world called Snowland to help cope with the the sect s lifestyle.
Courtesy of Jill Orschel
Things continue to roll along for the locally produced documentary “Snowland.”
Award-winning filmmaker, producer and Park City resident Jill Orschel has raised more than $30,000 in the past 45 days through a Seed and Spark crowdsourcing campaign that will help her take the next step in the filmmaking process.
Reporting from COLORADO CITY, Ariz.
Decades and decades ago, members of a breakaway fundamentalist faction of the Mormon Church fled their Utah home, most choosing the remote corners of North America to live in isolation. One group picked this mile-high cocoon, protected on three sides by the Vermilion Cliffs to make their last stand for a polygamous society.
They encircled themselves yet tighter, building high fences around compounds and houses, with no trespassing signs mounted on every outward-facing wall. For the better part of a century, they held fast nothing much more than a curiosity on a route to the Grand Canyon.
Cora Lee Witt, sitting, is surrounded by some of her grandchildren and their friends during a holiday fair in Short Creek. Witt created a fantasy world called Snowland as a coping mechanism while she lived in a strict, polygamous and Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint community.
Photo by Jill Orschel
Jill Orschel, an award-winning Park City-based filmmaker, wants to introduce the world to Cora Lee Witt, a visual artist who, after three decades, was able to break out of a Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint community on the Utah and Arizona border.
Orschel plans to reveal a film trailer and announce a crowdsourcing campaign for “Snowland,” which is taken from the name of a fantasy world Witt created inside her mind and thorugh art to cope while living under the strict religious and patriarchal rules of the polygamous sect, at 6 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 18, during an online presentation with Park City Film.