Arts, Theater & Film

Through the 1980s to the early 2000s, astrologer and TV personality Walter Mercado was a household name in Latinx homes – reaching, at his peak, an estimated 120 million people with his daily horoscopes. Then, in 2007, Mercado disappeared.

In December, Netflix released director Greg Whiteley’s docuseries “Cheer,” where it went on to become one of their most talked about and beloved shows of 2020.

What and who are America’s public lands for? We continue our monthly film series with a documentary that asks that question, and explores the precarious balance between enjoying and exploiting our shared spaces.

Deep in the Arizona desert, there’s an enormous glass terrarium that houses a replica, in miniature, of the earth’s ecosystems. It’s called Biosphere 2.

It's a show about the gift of poetry in difficult times.

  Back in the early ’60s, Fred Adams had a dream. His dream was rooted in Cedar City, which at that time was home to more livestock than people, so the idea of starting a festival there devoted to the plays of William Shakespeare probably shouldn’t have worked. But Adams was a visionary. Through his persistence, tenacity, and his ability to inspire others, he built an annual event that grew and grew until eventually his dream became reality. Sadly, Adams died last week. As friends and family gather at his memorial this Friday, we’re offering a tribute to the man whose dream gave us all the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

How does a composer manipulate our feelings during a film scene? Edmund Stone, host of the radio program The Score, explains the magic of film scoring through this year’s Oscar nominated Best Original Musical Scores. 

As part of our monthly film series Through the Lens, we’ll examine Academy Award-winning documentarian Errol Morris’ latest film, American Dharma with Dr. David Resha, associate professor of Film Studies at Oxford College of Emory University. 

Director Aaron Schimberg’s new film Chained for Life examines society’s perceptions of and obsessions with beauty in a sometimes artificial, often funny and always unsentimental way. Schimberg is coming to Salt Lake for a screening of Chained for Life and a Q&A with Doug as part of our Through the Lens series with the Utah Film Center on Wednesday, Nov. 13.