Jesus Camp

Magnolia Pictures have three films playing in Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Fest - Enron, Nine Lives and Jesus Camp.

This Thursday, Magnolia approached Moore and tried to remove Jesus Camp from the schedule. They made no mention of the other two films - of course, they aren't trying to market those films to Christians, so an association with Michael Moore isn't going to hurt them.

The film did play on Friday as originally planned, which might back up Moore's suspicion that Magnolia were trying to drum up some false controversy.

In the early years, the fest met a lot of local Conservative opposition due to Moore's involvement. Apparently, this has much subsided now that the programmes have proven somewhat less partisan than expected. Holding on to Jesus Camp no matter the distributor's requests was therefore probably quite a shrewd PR move on the festival's part.

A number of early reports have suggested that Jesus Camp is actually not a very good film at all. I've not yet definitively ascertained the politics of these early reporters.