The BYU School of Communications premiered a student-made documentary titled “The Savior Stood Before Mine Eyes,” on Sept. 28, 2024. The documentary chronicled the history and significance of the famed Christus statue in Denmark.
Serving as a capstone project for three journalism students, this documentary focuses on the historical, cultural and spiritual impact of the statue.
The Christus statue, a replica of which has resided in Salt Lake City's Temple Square, was sculpted by Bertel Thorvaldsen in 1833. Today the original sits in the Lutheran Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, and believers come from across the globe to see Thorvaldsen’s inspired work.
Capstone student Emma Butler Price found great meaning in learning about the statue and hearing insights from people she interviewed.
“I didn’t expect to be so intrigued by the cultural and historical significance that the Christus has,” Price said. “(It) helped put everything into perspective.”
Capstone student Lynnette McConkie was a nontraditional student, being 53 years old.
“I raised my six kids and dreamed of going to college someday, and so going back to school was living my dream,” McConkie said.
For McConkie, the interviews were the most meaningful and insightful part of the experience.
“Everyone has something important to say. Everyone is important, and just being able to interview all these different people, I came back going ‘how lucky am I to get to talk to this person,’” McConkie said. “They may not think of themselves as amazing or grand people, but to me, how lucky I was. How blessed I was ... that they would talk to me.”
For McConkie, being in the field with a small group of students and faculty mentors was very helpful and taught her to be flexible and adapt to a different role with short notice.
“There were those of us who would do the interview while others filmed and caught B-roll, and we learned to switch places,” McConkie said.
For Annika Ohran, the trip was a distinctly unifying experience. Interviewing the cultural coordinator at the Church of Our Lady, Katherine Schmidt, was an especially memorable moment for Ohran.
“It was cool to hear her experiences with Christ and her testimony of the Savior ... even though we weren’t members of the same religion, I felt like we could connect a lot and shared similar feelings about Jesus,” Ohran said.
Price agreed, stating, “It was really cool to hear her talk about Jesus Christ in the place that she meets him at.”
“That’s where Katherine goes to be close to Him,” Price said.
For all three students, the experience put together by the BYU School of Communications was a unique one, and each took something different from it.
The 8-minute documentary can be viewed here.