Review

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

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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

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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

SONDERimmersive’s Through Yonder Window transforms parking garage row at The Gateway into Fair Verona from Shakespearean classic

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From teachers to stage producers and to filmmakers and artists, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has been taken up as a fervent challenge to make one of the western canon’s most familiar stories relevant, meaningful and fresh to contemporary audiences. In SONDERimmersive’s new Through Yonder Window production, staged in a row on the upper deck of … 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

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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

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

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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

Utah Film Center sets livestream event of Motherload documentary celebrating mothers, cargo bikes, cycling culture; talkback featuring Bike Utah, Bicycle Collective

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If there is at least one good metric coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s the trend of bicycle trips. BikeUtah.org, citing data from the Utah Department of Transportation and Strava Metro, reported that the number of bicycle trips in April more than doubled those in March in the state. While the data represents a … Read more

Utah Film Center sets livestream screening of Mossville environmental justice documentary; Oscars Academy grant, new Cinema on Demand titles available

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“Environmental injustice is about [the state] creating sacrifice zones where we place everything which no one else wants,” Mustafa Ali, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) environmental justice program, says. “The justification is always an economic one, that it makes sense to build chemical plants on so-called cheap lands where poor people … 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

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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

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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

Utah Film Center sets Rat Film documentary for free, public live stream, featuring director Theo Anthony

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Even if the sight of a Norway rat trying to jump out of a garbage can might trigger musophobia in some individuals, Rat Film is a worthwhile documentary that cleverly uses the subject of rodent eradication as a springboard for becoming more aware of the problems of institutional racism. And, this award-winning 2016 documentary has … Read more