The 1970s were years of intense social and cultural tumult. To the followers of the charismatic and forceful Jim Jones, the “Peoples Temple” offered the perfect balance of spiritual fulfillment and political commitment. Jones not only preached about integration and equality, but also built an organization that provided food, clothing, and shelter to his congregation and his community. On the surface, Jim Jones and his multiracial congregation espoused the values of a model society. But in the summer of 1977 an article in New West magazine exposed the truth. Defectors and family members gave accounts of physical, sexual, and drug abuse, financial corruption,and members being held against their will.

On November 18, 1978, over 900 members of Peoples Temple died in the largest mass suicide/murder in history. Using never-before-seen archival footage and survivor interviews, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple focuses on the issues that defined the Peoples Temple — faith and zealotry, revolution and utopia, race and class, loyalty and coercion, charismatic leadership and demagoguery — while presenting the human story of the people who followed Jim Jones from Indiana to California and finally to the remote jungles of Guyana, South America in a misbegotten quest to build an ideal society.