The Hutterites (film)
The Hutterites is a 1964 film directed by Colin Low for the National Film Board of Canada. It was produced to help calm anti-Hutterite tensions in Alberta and remains the only film that fully depicts and explains the sect's way of life. Background The Hutterites are an Anabaptist sect founded in Austria in 1528 during the Protestant Reformation. Their leader was Jakob Hutter, who was burned at the stake in 1536. The sect continued on, but was chased out of Moravia, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Russia and Ukraine before arriving in the U.S. in 1874, where they settled in the Dakotas. In 1918, anti-Hutterite sentiment in the U.S. had spread to the point where many were forced to leave. After obtaining assurances from the Canadian government that they would have permanent freedom of worship and a permanent exemption from military service, 12 Hutterite families moved from South Dakota to Canada, settling in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. At the time, the Canadian Pacific Railway owned a great deal of land and was trying to recruit immigrants to farm it; it gave modest acreages to the Hutterite families. This created an immediate backlash and, in 1919, the Canadian government closed the door to