Before gates open on June 21 for the 42nd Utah Arts Festival, Karen Major, who worked as a paralegal for many years, already will have created a calendar of activities, performances, films and literary events that she and her husband, Steve Sayer, who retired after working as an executive with the Electrolux group, will hang … Read more
The Utah Film Center will close its May schedule of free, public screenings with a trio of documentaries that explore variously the ideas of compassion in philanthropic communities, one of the world’s most controversial artists and an outstanding cinéma vérité piece about police violence and activism in Milwaukee. Summer in the Forest, May 22, 7 … Read more
Indispensability can be a challenging concept to articulate, especially for nonprofit arts institutions in communities where the arts are seen as an amenity rather than as an absolute necessity. But then there are those institutions which build upon their most successful and visible programs to cultivate deeper roots in their communities by offering activities and … Read more
Dina, a documentary film about a middle-aged woman with Asperger’s Syndrome who marries her boyfriend (Scott), is a perfectly timed selection for the 7th Peek Award for Disability in Film by the Utah Film Center. The film, which took the Grand Jury Prize in documentaries at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, continues an evolving narrative … Read more
There are three milestones this year for the Salt Lake City Public Library system. The City Library main branch marks its 15th year in its award-winning building, the system celebrates its 120th anniversary and the Chapman branch in the Poplar Grove neighborhood on the city’s west side, one of the last Carnegie libraries in Utah, … Read more
One of the least chronicled stories in the recent stream of documentaries about Detroit is how events and policies have invigorated community activists to claim the power of self-determination in the city’s neighborhoods through creative yet pragmatic strategies. In Community Patrol, which received Best Mini Doc honors at this year’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival … Read more
The seventh presentation of the Utah Film Center’s Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Children and Youth from March 2-4 promises to be the most ambitious for the Intermountain West region’s only children’s film festival. There are 15 feature-length films, 14 of which are receiving their Utah premieres. The slate represents 12 countries on four continents. There … Read more
In a scene from Morgan Neville’s documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival, Fred Rogers testified at a U.S. Congressional hearing in which support seemed unlikely to approve a budget appropriation for public television. The late U.S. Senator John Pastore, a Democrat from Rhode Island, had rebuffed … Read more
There is a beautiful curation of artistry in every element of 306 Hollywood, a gem of a documentary directed by Elan Bogarín and Jonathan Bogarín that premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival. While it is a genuine bountiful tribute to the directors’ beloved late grandmother, 306 Hollywood, which represented the street address of … Read more
Impossibility is a product of our prejudice. — Shimon Peres 1923-2016, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. In The Oslo Diaries, an outstanding film of documentary-style journalism which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Shimon Peres, former president and prime minister of Israel, said he was still optimistic that a peaceful resolution to … Read more