Stephan Jones hasn’t seen – nor does he plan on seeing – Jonestown: Paradise Lost, a harrowing docudrama recounting the last days of the People’s Temple in the jungles of Guyana in November 1978. He lived through it. Jones is the son of infamous cult leader Jim Jones, the mastermind behind one of the grimmest chapters of the last century.

It has been 29 years, but the archival images of those hundreds of corpses, lying just as they fell, scattered across an eerily silent Jonestown compound, are no less shocking or horrific. The tragic saga of Rev. Jim Jones and his followers still has something relevant to say about abused power, unconditional influence and extremist faith.

“Nobody joins a cult,” insists the former Peoples Temple member Deborah Layton in Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. “You join a religious organization. You join a political movement. You join with people you really like.”

The People’s Temple, the cult that expired in the mass suicide and murder organized by Jim Jones, is often regarded as a cancer that 1960s utopianism wrought, a disease of idealism splintered and sent off course.

Mass suicide, or was it mass murder? More than 900 dead — new research and new details, a terrifying look at what turned Jonestown into a killing ground.

One of the most amazing elements of Stanley Nelson’s riveting new documentary about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple is just how much film footage and audio had been recorded of this cult.

Almost 20 years after he led more than 900 people to suicide, cult leader Jim Jones continues not just to fascinate, but to elude. In Berkeley filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s thoughtful documentary Jonestown, we see footage of Jones we haven’t seen before, but the man’s legendary magnetism remains mysterious.

Do their new friends encourage them to leave home and move in with them? Do they discourage them from continuing old relationships? Do they ask them to sign over assets, go without sleep, listen to constant lectures, stop following the news and always, always stay on the lookout for traitors? Then the friends they’ve found aren’t part of a normal religion, or genuine movement. They’re part of a cult. And Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple, a fine new documentary, explained how hard it was — and later, tragically impossible — for some people to see that.

In November 1978, 913 people died in a shocking mass murder-suicide, and 28 years later, the Jonestown Massacre still remains the most chilling example of faith turned against the faithful. The group was led by the charismatic Jim Jones, who started his church, the Peoples Temple, in Indiana. He then moved the group to the San Francisco area, and ultimately to a desolate area of Guyana, where the tragedy played out as a concerned group showed up to investigate. Leo Ryan, a California congressman, led the delegation, and was killed by Jones’s guards when he attempted to fly defectors out of the site. Hours later, Jones instructed the group to drink cups of grape Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide.

The buzz this past week among movie critics was about United 93, a gut-wrenching film about the courage and heroism of the passengers and crew of the one hijacked plane that didn't hit its intended target on Sept. 11, 2001.

SAN FRANCISCO --When Stanley Nelson set out to make a documentary on cult leader Jim Jones and the mass murder-suicide of his followers, his biggest challenge was unearthing enough new footage to make the 28-year-old story seem fresh again.

Matt Gonzalez and director Stanley Nelson ponder the fate and impact of Peoples Temple and the truth behind the powerful new doc Jonestown

A documentary uncovers Jim Jones's bad faith and the how behind the Guyana tragedy

No charges filed against son in 1980 murders

BERKELEY -- A surviving member of a Berkeley family some believed were murdered in 1980 because they defected from the People's Temple cult has been arrested on suspicion of killing his parents and sister.

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