Utah production team excels in new documentary Anchor Point, set to premiere at Cinequest Film Festival, about women wildland firefighters, rehabilitating work culture

In 2018, speaking at a Wharton leadership conference, Kelly Martin, who was the chief of fire and aviation management at Yosemite National Park, told participants, “It doesn’t hurt for the senior executive person to take individuals aside and ask them, for instance, ‘Hey, what has it been like for you as a woman firefighter? What … Read more

Sundance 2021: Four documentaries, one narrative highlight Utah connections to festival slate; Tumbleweeds for Kids selections

EDITOR’S NOTE: Part II summarizes the films and programs from Sundance 2021 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. Films premiering this week at Sundance include documentaries about one of the greatest American choreographers of the … Read more

Sundance 2021: Utah film industry weathers pandemic with resilience, resourceful risk taking

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 2021 feature-length and short films, which The Utah Review will cover. In several hopeful signs, given its size, Utah’s film industry has weathered the pandemic with enough resilience … Read more

How the Utah Film Center has elevated the drive-in movie experience above its nostalgic renaissance, with pop-up locations in Salt Lake City, Midvale, Alta

By the 1960s, drive-in theaters already were on the retreat, thanks to the growing number of multiplexes, the dominance of television and a broader trend of declining movie attendance. Depending on one’s perspective, drive-ins either were described as “passion pits” for young lovers or inexpensive nights out for families with children who often fell asleep … Read more

Utah Film Center Damn These Heels 2020: 17th annual queer film festival may be virtual but slate packed with 23 international films, 4 shorts programs, special events including drive-in experience

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Utah Review is providing daily coverage of the Utah Film Center’s 17th annual Damn These Heels Queer Film Festival. Follow daily for feature reviews of the 2020 slate during the festival. One of Utah Film Center’s signature centerpieces is moving to a virtual platform this year with its well-established brand of exceptional … Read more

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

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

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

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