SAN FRANCISCO A new documentary financed by W-G-B-H-T-V in Boston is shedding new light on cult leader Jim Jones and the mass murder-suicide of his followers nearly three decades ago.
Stanley Nelson’s documentary uses rare home videos showing the construction of the Jonestown compound.Nelson interviewed 30 survivors and family members who shed light on why Jones’ followers believed in him until the very end. More than 900 people died in the Peoples Temple incident in the jungle of Guyana in 1978.
Nelson’s documentary, “Jonestown,” premieres Wednesday at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. It follows Jones from a disturbed childhood through the temple’s final days. A second new “docudrama” on the massacre by Canadian filmmaker Tim Wolochatiuk is scheduled to be released this fall.
