Deseret

Deseret (1996)

This is multifaceted look at the landscape and history of Utah (or Deseret, as the Mormon Church prefers to call it). Benning condenses 93 news stories from the New York Times from 1852 to 1992 (read offscreen by Fred Gardner) and sets them against contemporary Utah landscapes, the shots changing with each sentence.

Date of release
1996-01-18
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (17)
Runtime
1h 22m
Genres
Documentary
Director
James Benning

Casting

Interesting facts

Deseret is a 1995 experimental documentary film written and directed by James Benning and narrated by Fred Gardner. It chronicles the history of Utah from 1852 to 1992 by having the narrator read 93 news stories from The New York Times in chronological order over static shots of Utah. The title refers to the original proposed name for the state of Utah, the Jaredite word for "honeybee" in the Book of Mormon.

Production

In preparation for the film, Benning spent six months reading every New York Times article about Utah he could find from the founding of the newspaper in 1852 to 1992. After choosing which ones to use in the film, he spent another three months condensing the news stories to a length of eight to ten sentences each, while retaining the original language.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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