This year’s record-setting slate of 88 short films for the Utah Arts Festival’s Fear No Film venue will be presented in 12 programs during the event’s four days. All screenings will be in the City Library auditorium and are free and open to the public. Each of the programs is summarized below. For the Women … Read more
This year at the Utah Arts Festival, June 21 (Friday) is dedicated to Women Who Rock!, with female musicians, poets, writers and spoken word performers set on various stages along with a Fear No Film program and a coding workshop for girls headed by two sisters who work locally as software developers and engineers. The … Read more
Rare is the sentiment that can be expressed simply and unequivocally as Peter Bromberg, the executive director of the Salt Lake City Public Library, describes the partnership which the downtown institution has enjoyed with the Utah Arts Festival. Bromberg has one word. “Fantastic.” Calling it one of the “best annual festivals in the Mountain West,” … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Utah Review begins its preview coverage today of the 43rd Utah Arts Festival, which will be held June 20-23, noon to 11 p.m. daily, 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 the Utah … Read more
Setting an appropriate tone in a community gearing up for the upcoming Utah Pride Parade and Festival in downtown Salt Lake City, the inaugural Queer Spectra Arts Festival took place last weekend in the Commonwealth Studios in South Salt Lake. Artists and speakers addressed the impetus and inspirations for the queer creative aesthetic – or, … Read more
Two award-winning films with LGBTQ themes — a 2018 Kenyan narrative feature and a 1984 documentary about five decades of gay activism leading up to the Stonewall riots of 1969 — will be screened in separate free, public programs, courtesy of the Utah Film Center and the Utah Pride Center. Both films, part of the … Read more
There are many reasons why the sleeper hit comedy Napoleon Dynamite (2004) deserves to be the pride of the Utah film industry. Directed by Jared Hess and written by Hess and his wife Jerusha, it has become a timeless pop culture staple featuring authentic characters and tropes who epitomized the high school scene that remains … Read more
Sixteen short documentary films produced by students in schools throughout the Salt Lake City valley in collaboration with their teachers and featuring a wide range of stories about immigration and migration will premiere May 1, as part of the Utah Film Center program Through My Lens, an educational collaboration unlike any other in the U.S. … Read more
Within the first three minutes of the exceptional documentary Intelligent Lives, the viewer is introduced to the film’s two most important themes. The first dismantles the narrow yet long accepted perceptions of measuring intelligence that have done more damage than good in gauging a person’s meaning or value to their community. The second strikes down … Read more
When Supa Modo, the award-winning feature-length narrative film from Kenyan director Likarion Wainaina, opens the Utah Film Center’s Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Children and Youth on Friday (March 1, 7:30 p.m., The City Library auditorium), Wainaina will be in attendance. As mentioned in the festival preview last week at The Utah Review, Supa Modo sets … Read more