Fight for public lands: Public Trust documentary to be screened by Utah Film Center, featuring director David Byars in talkback with KUER-FM RadioWest’s Doug Fabrizio

The absorbing, intricately structured documentary Public Trust opens with a majestic, joyous montage of America’s public lands, accompanied by stirring orchestral music and narrated by journalist Hal Herring. However, the film quickly segues into the public land debates, which are anything but majestic or joyous. These lands, Herring says, are as quintessential to the American … Read more

Utah Film Center sets livestream event featuring BOSS: The Black Experience in Business documentary; panel with Utah Juneteenth Freedom and Heritage

A significant epiphany in the exceptional documentary BOSS: The Black Experience in Business is how director Stanley Nelson chronicles everything that Black entrepreneurship has come up against through more than three centuries of history, yet still achieving many of American business’ greatest innovations. Absorbing, lucid and never overwhelming, this exquisitely synthesized case of history, which … Read more

Utah Film Center’s livestream of What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael will feature talkback with director Rob Garver, Time film critic Stephanie Zacharek

Film critic Pauline Kael emerged during one of Hollywood’s most significant transitional periods of The New Hollywood, followed almost immediately by the first wave of modern blockbusters. Of Jaws, she called it “the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made… [with] more zest than an early Woody Allen picture, a lot more electricity, [and] it’s … Read more

Utah Arts Festival launches virtual platform of Festival Vibes Fridays today for the month of June

Normally for four days in June, Library Square and the surrounding civic campus in downtown Salt Lake City are transformed into a village of arts and culture for the Utah Arts Festival (UAF), the state’s largest multi-disciplinary gathering of its kind, drawing between 70,000 and 80,000 visitors annually. Despite the inevitable decision in March to … Read more

Expanding the theatrical library during the pandemic: Plan-B Theatre adds 7 short plays from Utah theatrical artists of color to the national Play At Home initiative; its free, public app

One of the most formidable challenges in the COVID-19 pandemic, where live productions have ground to a near-complete standstill, is to keep the engine of creating new work going, especially when it still is unclear when the performing arts will return to an appreciable state of producing work. One national project has been the #PlayAtHome … Read more

Revisiting the Malheur occupation: Utah Film Center sets livestream event with No Man’s Land documentary

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was originally published June 1 but as the Utah Film Center has rescheduled the livestream event of this documentary to June 23 at 7 p.m., The Utah Review is republishing this feature review today. Viewers also should take note that another film by the same director (David Garrett Byars), the 2020 … Read more

Salt Lake City Public Library’s all-digital Super Summer Challenge reading program set to launch June 1

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mark Alvarez, an immigration attorney who also has written for various publications on many subjects along with radio and television appearances, provides the Spanish translation of this article, as presented below the English language version of this feature. Perhaps there are no better places than libraries to experience magic—for example, in fairy tales, mythology … Read more

Outstanding quartet of new short plays drive successful premiere of Plan-B Theatre’s Radio Slam; free app now available to listen to performances

Now that all four new short plays from Plan-B Theatre’s Radio Slam have premiered in KUAA (99.9 FM) broadcasts, the company is making available recordings of them free and open to the public via its new mobile app, which can be downloaded here. Each play runs approximately 10 minutes. The project was coordinated with KUAA (99.9 … Read more

Utah Film Center opens May with livestream screening events including The Dog Doc, Miss Hokusai, I’m Leaving Now

The Utah Film Center continues its series of live streaming events, which are free and open to the public, during May. The next three films are, respectively, about integrative care in veterinary medicine; a historical manga series adapted for an anime film about the life of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, as seen from the eyes … Read more

Plan-B Theatre’s Radio Slam to feature four world premiere short plays in daily KUAA-FM broadcasts, May 5-8

Radio always has been a resilient medium in extraordinary times. The COVID-19 pandemic is no different. Results from a recent Nielsen Audio survey show that 83% of consumers are listening to radio more frequently and extensively. Characterizing radio as a “local lifeblood,” Brad Kelly, managing director of Nielsen Audio, says, “In this environment, it’s no … Read more