The story of grassroots political activism that electrified Rachel Lears’ Documentary Knock Down The House, which won the Festival Favorite Award at Sundance in 2019 continues with a new chapter in To The End, the director’s excellent chronicle of the efforts to put the Green New Deal at the center of climate policy in American … Read more
The Sundance Kids offering of Summering, directed by James Ponsoldt which he wrote with Benjamin Percy, is a smart mix of tropes from fantasy, horror and the fully liberated imaginations of smart children, as specifically embodied in a quartet of girls who worry that their tight circle of friendship is about to be broken as … Read more
In less than a handful of years, Doris Muñoz quickly established her credentials in the music industry, particularly in artist management. Her intergenerational connections to music bridged the classics of rachera and boleros to the legends of Juan Gabriel and Los Panchos, and recently to indie first-generation Mexican-American pop artists such as Cuco, Kali Uchis … Read more
Yes, spicy kimchi is a very good foil when youngsters are trying to fend off the goofy yet sinister bad guys. In Maika, the generously warm-hearted science fiction film premiering in this year’s Sundance Kids program, the characters shine with delight, as they easily transcend some of the film’s madcap chase scenes, making Vietnam’s first … Read more
There are more Mormons (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) living in tiny Nephi, Utah than there are in Finland. Kai, one of the missionaries profiled in Tania Anderson’s feature-length debut documentary The Mission (Danish Bear Productions) mentions that 1 in every 57 Finnish citizens is a Mormon. Ahead of his … Read more
Of numerous remarkable moments in the exceptional documentary film All That Breathes (Kiterabbit Films and Rise Films production), India’s sole entry in this year’s Sundance, among the most unforgettable are those portraying the psychological and philosophical attitudes of brothers Nadeem and Saud, who have put their heads down in total focus for nearly the last … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Part II summarizes the films and programs from Sundance 2022 that are part of The Utah Review coverage. For Part I which is an overview of the state of the film industry in Utah, see here. Among the films The Utah Review is covering this year are films about expectant Black mothers who deaths from … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I is an overview of the Utah film industry in the current moment. Part II (tomorrow) will offer a summary preview of the Sundance 2022 feature-length and short films, which The Utah Review will cover. It was so close. Three weeks before Sundance 2022 (Jan. 20–30) was slated to open, organizers had … Read more
When composer Wang Lu moved to New York City’s Upper West Side, she was impressed by the amount of nearby green space in one of the world’s largest metropolises.”It was so clean and quiet,” she says. In the 1990s, when she was a student at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music, Wang remembers how quickly … Read more
Some of the most familiar music of the 1930s and 1940s comprises a delightful panoply of styles and genres, with names such as Artie Shaw, Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Billie Holliday and composers including Carl Orff and Samuel Barber. To highlight such memorable Music, Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) will celebrate the start of … Read more