Cleanflix

The ideological divide between Hollywood studios and Mormon temples is bridged by a once-burgeoning industry in Andrew James and Aukai Ligairi’s revelatory doc.

Say goodbye to sex, nudity, violence and coarse language.

After the Mormon church discouraged followers from watching R-rated films, a self-righteous cottage industry emerged in the Mormon heartland of Utah. Video cleaners began re-editing Hollywood films for conservative tastes, removing all mature content and sometimes only leaving the remnants of a film to sell to Mormon audiences.

With copyright breached and artistic integrity at stake, the purest of intentions becomes decidedly opaque.

Curator’s Note

The video store clerk can be many things: a reviewer, a curator and now… a censor.

Andrew James and Aukai Ligairi’s documentary is a thoroughly entertaining entry in the censorship debate. However, their film is a Pandora’s box that bursts open with conversation starters on artistic integrity, heavy-handed litigiousness and religious hypocrisy.

Cleanflix premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2009.