Film

For Earth Day, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibitions about Great Salt Lake, public lands policy making, biocrust are outstanding examples of cross-disciplinary collaboration

by

With Earth Day approaching (April 22), an excellent representation of what is at stake in the Intermountain West’s natural surroundings is found in several exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA). The standout feature of these exhibitions is the extensive evidence of excellent cross-disciplinary approaches uniting science and the humanities. Among the areas … Read more

Utah-based In The Now Productions releases astute, sensitive, heartfelt film featuring The Gaza Monologues

by

Childhood is sacred, as one of the young Palestinian contributors to The Gaza Monologues stated. But, the evidence of how that humanitarian principle has been and continues to be denied to the children of Gaza is reiterated and reinforced continuously in the dozens of short monologues that were created by Ashtar Theatre in 2010, after … Read more

Sundance 2024: The Battle for Laikipia emerges as outstanding seminal work on intersectionalities of climate change, colonial history, land rights reform, wildlife conservation, local politics

by

Astute for how well it balances the voices of Indigenous herder communities, multigenerational white family ranchers and wildlife conservations, the documentary The Battle for Laikipia, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year, presents a definitive case of how the intersections of climate change, politics, unresolved historical issues and resource competition are putting such … Read more

Sundance 2024: University of Utah film among select short documentaries; Midnight Program a feast of horror, dark comedy, psychological thrillers

by

This year’s Sundance Film Festival slate of 53 short films included a solid selection of nonfiction and narrative stories, in the documentary and Midnight program categories. The bar for juried selection was pitched higher than ever before, given the record number of 12,098 submissions for consideration. One of the nonfiction shorts came from Utah: dêtetsi … Read more

Sundance 2024: Devo documentary gives proper due to one of pop music’s most astute groups of social, cultural intelligence

by

In the excellent documentary Devo, directed by Chris Smith and the first such project which band members authorized, the definitive roots of a band which commanded an intense amount of attention with albums that were produced and released between 1978 and 1984 are properly elucidated in the film. Audiences at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival … Read more

Sundance 2024: Ondi Timoner’s DIG! XX refreshes a cult classic that raises its historical value as a rock music documentary

by

Fifty, seventy and a hundred years from now, musicians and students of rock history will be studying and appreciating the catalogs of The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, thanks to the phenomenal documentary DIG! XX, directed by Ondi Timoner and co-produced with her brother David Timoner. Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl called it the … Read more

Sundance 2024: Gaucho Gaucho is majestic, magnificent documentary portrait of Argentinian cowboys, cowgirls as stewards of tradition that defies modern society

by

With the three documentaries that filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw have brought to Sundance in the last six years, the viewer has been encouraged to slow down and luxuriate in the whole cinematic experience of visuals, subjects, music and sound design. In 2018, the directors took audiences to the final stock car racetrack of … Read more

Sundance 2024: Frida is sumptuous tribute to Kahlo, highlighting her durable status as a major cultural icon

by

Seventy years after her death at the age of 47, Frida Kahlo remains as popular as ever in contemporary culture, with a durability that matches or even surpasses that of prominent artists of her time such as Georgia O’Keeffe.  The recipient of the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2024 … Read more

Sundance 2024: Superlative and gripping, Sugarcane takes viewers to elucidating plane of empathy, truth, reconciliation

by

In North America, the horrific legacy of federal Indian residential and boarding schools has never been new to Indigenous communities. In the superlative and gripping documentary, Sugarcane, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, we learn just how profoundly ingrained the trauma of that legacy continues to affect every Indigenous person in British Columbia. The … Read more

Sundance 2024: Union makes for well-paced documentary film, packing zip, punch and drama into story about independent labor organizing

by

In the 1930s, unions organized with tremendous success, eventually coming to represent more than one-third of the nation’s workforce by the mid-1950s. The same period saw unions able to shut down companies through strikes in order to force executives to the bargaining table. The General Motors strike in 1937, which autoworkers used to gain recognition … Read more