Film

Backstage at the 2024 Utah Arts Festival: Awards announced for Fear No Film, Artist Marketplace, Wasatch IronPen, Poetry Slam Invitational, Mayor’s Artist Awards

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Awards in visual arts, film and literary programs have been announced for the 48th Utah Arts Festival.  FEAR NO FILM Twelve awards were announced today in the 21st annual Fear No Film portion of the Utah Arts Festival, including a Grand Jury Prize, Fearless Filmmaker Award, three honorable mentions and seven audience awards. This year’s … Read more

Backstage at the 2024 Utah Arts Festival: Emerging Artists will be at Wordfest, The Round,Festival Stages; Artist Marketplace; Fear No Film program

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For the third year in a row, the Utah Arts Festival is highlighting its Emerging Artists program, which has institutionalized broadly the experiences of newcomers to UAF and how their presence is adding to and reshaping the next chapters of Utah’s arts and cultural evolution. This year’s representative artists are in the Artist Marketplace, dance, … Read more

Backstage at the 2024 Utah Arts Festival: 21st edition of internationally known Fear No Film returns with 73 short films from around the world

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Next to the Sundance Film Festival’s tremendous short film program, the 21st edition of the internationally acclaimed Fear No Film program at the Utah Arts Festival is the second most distinguished short film slate in Utah. Coordinated by Derek Mellus, who also is the film production manager for the Utah Film Commission, Fear No Film … Read more

Backstage at the 2024 Utah Arts Festival: Numerous fresh highlights for the 48th edition, which runs June 28-30

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Utah Review begins its preview coverage today of the 48th Utah Arts Festival, which will be held June 28-30 (noon to 11 p.m. on June 28-30) on the Library Square in downtown Salt Lake City. As this is the state’s largest multidisciplinary arts and cultural gathering each year, The Utah Review considers … Read more

Finding Joy Together: Utah Film Center’s 13th Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids set for April 19-20 at Viridian Event Center

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With an excellent slate of family feature- and short-length films from around the world with hearty, intelligent and imaginative stories, the Utah Film Center is geared up for the 13th Annual Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids on April 19 and 20 at West Jordan’s Viridian Event Center.  With the Salt Lake County Library as partners, … Read more

For Earth Day, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibitions about Great Salt Lake, public lands policy making, biocrust are outstanding examples of cross-disciplinary collaboration

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With Earth Day approaching (April 22), an excellent representation of what is at stake in the Intermountain West’s natural surroundings is found in several exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA). The standout feature of these exhibitions is the extensive evidence of excellent cross-disciplinary approaches uniting science and the humanities. Among the areas … Read more

Utah-based In The Now Productions releases astute, sensitive, heartfelt film featuring The Gaza Monologues

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Childhood is sacred, as one of the young Palestinian contributors to The Gaza Monologues stated. But, the evidence of how that humanitarian principle has been and continues to be denied to the children of Gaza is reiterated and reinforced continuously in the dozens of short monologues that were created by Ashtar Theatre in 2010, after … Read more

Sundance 2024: The Battle for Laikipia emerges as outstanding seminal work on intersectionalities of climate change, colonial history, land rights reform, wildlife conservation, local politics

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Astute for how well it balances the voices of Indigenous herder communities, multigenerational white family ranchers and wildlife conservations, the documentary The Battle for Laikipia, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, presents a definitive case of how the intersections of climate change, politics, unresolved historical issues and resource competition are putting such … Read more

Sundance 2024: University of Utah film among select short documentaries; Midnight Program a feast of horror, dark comedy, psychological thrillers

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This year’s Sundance Film Festival slate of 53 short films included a solid selection of nonfiction and narrative stories, in the documentary and Midnight program categories. The bar for juried selection was pitched higher than ever before, given the record number of 12,098 submissions for consideration. One of the nonfiction shorts came from Utah: dêtetsi … Read more

Sundance 2024: Devo documentary gives proper due to one of pop music’s most astute groups of social, cultural intelligence

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In the excellent documentary Devo, directed by Chris Smith and the first such project which band members authorized, the definitive roots of a band which commanded an intense amount of attention with albums that were produced and released between 1978 and 1984 are properly elucidated in the film. Audiences at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival … Read more