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
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
In the harsh cacophony of the debate about immigration and refugees, facts and statistics rarely move the needle in changing opinion. And, there’s plenty of research available, especially longitudinal data collected over many years. It’s easy to summarize. Sources such as the Migration Policy Institute provide data that show education and income level are among … Read more
Two feature-length animation films – both stunning in their visualizations of classic stories and thematic interpretation – and a documentary about the trials and successes of competing in an international science fair comprise this year’s Kids section of the Sundance Film Festival. The 2018 edition of the Kids program is a five-year milestone for its … Read more
Utah’s connections to the Sundance Film Festival (Jan. 18-28 in Park City and Salt Lake City) run deeper than what many people likely will see in the press coverage. Not only has the international festival been established as one of the most significant cultural events every year in the state, it has fostered film literacy … Read more
In 2013, four months before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Windsor case set the stage for courtroom challenges to bans against same-sex marriage in every state, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled in a case brought by three couples from the state of Oaxaca that denying the rights to marriage equality was unconstitutionally discriminatory. … Read more
Shortly before the 2008 presidential election that put the first American black president into office, Jeff Deutchman used social networks to ask amateur and professional independent filmmakers to document experiences of voters and campaign volunteers on the day of national voting. “It was an experiment in crowd-sourcing footage and material for a documentary film about … Read more
For the astute viewer, understanding what the Gaga dance movement language involves is clarified by the opening and closing scenes of Mr. Gaga, a fully absorbing documentary about Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin. The film opens with a dancer who is following Naharin’s instructions on how to execute a collapse backward onto the floor. She repeats … Read more