Sean P. Means » 08.06.10 »SLC’s film fest grows second year
It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal — just a few hours of locally made films. Instead, the first annual Salt Lake City Film Festival grew into a multi-day event — and this year, for the festival’s second year, it’s getting bigger, expanding from the Tower Theatre to screenings at Brewvies Cinema Pub and the Post Theatre at Fort Douglas. “It’s a lot harder than it looks” to organize a film festival, said co-director Matt Whittaker, “especially if you have a day job and a wife.”
The second annual Salt Lake City Film Festival runs Thursday through Sunday, Aug. 12-15, with an opening-night gala at the Broadway Theatre, 111 E. 300 South, and screenings over the weekend at three venues (see box). Although there are plenty of film festivals in Utah — notably the nation’s most prestigious, Sundance in Park City each January — “there were no festivals with Salt Lake City’s name,” Whittaker said. “Nearly every other major city has one,” agreed the festival’s other co-director, Chris Bradshaw.
Whittaker and Bradshaw organize the festival in their spare time. By day, Whittaker works in the state Justice Courts, while Bradshaw works for a pharmeceutical company. The goal for the festival is “to be a resource for do-it-yourself filmmakers,” both from Utah and outside the state, Whittaker said.
The slate includes 19 narrative films and documentaries, many of which have been working their way around the country’s film-festival circuit. For example, the documentary “Sons of Perdition,” about teens exiled from Warren Jeffs’ polygamous community, premiered at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival in April. Another, the alcoholism drama “One Too Many Mornings,” debuted at Sundance last January.
The opening-night film, the Utah premiere of the documentary “Cleanflix,” is a case study, both as a festival-circuit veteran and as a locally made film that Utah audiences haven’t seen yet. It examines the Utah business phenomenon of DVD stores selling “family-friendly” edits of Hollywood movies, and has played about 15 festivals since its premiere last September at the Toronto International Film Festival, said Andrew James, one of the film’s co-directors.The movie played at festivals in Nashville, San Jose, New York and most recently in Traverse City, Mich. — at a festival where the movies are picked by filmmaker Michael Moore. “We got to show our movie to a lot of audiences,” said the other co-director, Joshua Ligairi, who added that one jury member at Traverse City “said, ‘I enjoyed myself the full 90 minutes.’ That’s the best reaction we can hope to get.” Audiences reacted in different ways. In some cities, people laughed. In others, James said, “it was a quiet audience, not much laughter, but very thoughtful engaging questions. … In the South, people were excited about the film. They don’t know anything about Mormons, or about edited movies.”
As “Cleanflix” has worked its way around the festival circuit, James and Ligairi have fielded offers from distributors (nothing has been signed yet), and both are working on other documentary projects — James is shooting a film about residents on Detroit’s east side, while Ligairi is making a documentary about the FBI raids over native American artifacts in Blanding, Utah. Both are unsure how “Cleanflix” will be received by Utahns, who know the story firsthand. “Both Josh and I are really curious to see what the reaction is going to be,” James said.
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