Cane Creek

Based on true events, Cane Creek follows Jack, a participant in the August 10th, 1884 massacre. Told with minimal dialogue and underscored by a haunting 19th-century Appalachian shape-note hymn, Cane Creek is portrays violence, faith, and contradiction.

Most films about history revisit stories we already know. I wanted to tell one that had not been told before.

Few people, including Latter-day Saints, have heard of the Cane Creek Massacre of 1884. It was a brutal attack in rural Tennessee that resulted in the death of five people. It’s a story without clear motives, preserved only in fragments and contradiction.

There are a number of theories about what motivated the massacre: fear of polygamy, an inflammatory news article or perhaps something more personal related to the mob leader, David Hinson.

Rather than explore the possible motivations behind the violence, I wanted to explore the events of the massacre through the eyes of one of the participants who was a husband, a father, and a Christian.

While finishing post-production on Cane Creek, the Grand Blanc Township shooting in Michigan occurred where, like Cane Creek, four Latter-day Saints were killed during Sunday worship. The echo between the two events make the film’s questions painfully current: What drives ordinary people to commit violence against a congregation in their house of worship?

I hope audiences come away not with easy answers, but with some level of unease and a recognition that what happened at Cane Creek is a chapter of the past, but also in some ways, a mirror of the present.

-josh