Friday films kick off the 2018 Block Festival
“When I was asked to do this documentary, I didn’t know anything about the events. I looked into it and found it very interesting and knew this was going to be important,” Phillip Schoen said Friday night at the Utah Theater while presenting his short documentary titled “Bear River” at the seventh annual Block Festival.
Schoen’s short film looks back at the forgotten events of the Bear River Massacre in 1863 in Southern Idaho and is just one of the many films that was presented in the historical Utah and Lyric Theaters for the two-day festival.
“There’s no way we’d be able to put this on, the film side and the art side, without our volunteers,” said Mary Urban Clark, one of the producers for the event
The volunteers and filmmakers are responsible for helping to create an expansive two-day event that showcases almost three-dozen original films by community members and people from all over the country.
Other films at the festival include Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider,” a true story starring Brady Jandreau as a rising star of the rodeo circuit. It is a coming of age story about a young man (Jandreau) who must give up his ability to ride and compete and search for a new identity in the heartland of America.
Other film premieres at the Utah Theater included Luke Slendebroek’s “Freedom Fry” the story of an up and coming indie rock band and their life on the road. There was also, “Forward,” a documentary about the Cache County School district’s change and growth in the last five years.
Between the longer feature films, there were also a handful of short documentaries and narrative shorts being shown to the public. The short films included topics such as a man escaping slavery by mailing himself to freedom in “Boxed” or the story of child sexual abuse in “Disclosure.”
The film festival continues Saturday with a variety of local talent including Breylen Stallings’ “Calculus Aliens,” Jessica Champneys’ “Star Wars: Dresca,” and Tanner Benson’s “The Scent of Her Perfume.”
“This is a really cool festival that provides some great films for the community,” Benson said.
Saturday at the Block Festival is jam packed with films starting at 4:00 p.m. on Center Street and continuing until approximately 10:30 p.m.
—Erick Graham Wood
@GrahamWoodMedia