Mountainfilm on Tour’s Big Green World short documentaries list

Submitted by Park City Film

Screenings will take place Sept. 30 during the Twilight Drive-in at Utah Olympic Park series. Note, the films are all not rated.

Park City Film has programmed a strong slate of movies to celebrate its autumn return starting Friday at the Park City Library’s Jim Santy Auditorium.

The weekend screenings, which start at 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 6 p.m. on Sundays, begin Friday with the charming “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris,” a Cinderella-esque story directed by Anthony Fabian and stars Leslie Manville in the title role, said Park City Film Executive Director Katharine Wang.

“It’s about a British cleaning woman in the 1950s who falls in love with vintage couture Dior dresses and makes it her life’s mission to go to Paris and buy one of her own,” Wang said. “We thought this would be a fun one to start off with.” 

Filmmakers created the film in collaboration with the House of Dior, which gives it more of a sense of authenticity, according to Wang.

“It’s about the history and art that is imbued with these dresses, and how they come together,” she said. “So you will see some recreations of his fabulous styles.”

Adding to the ambiance of the evening will be beer and wine that will be available for adults to purchase, Wang said. 

“So you can sip on your rosé and enjoy watching Mrs. Harris as she heads off to the Dior world, while experiencing being back in the theater together,” she said.

The screening for the following weekend, Sept. 16-18, is Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On,” rated PG.

“This came up at the Telluride Film Festival last year, and people loved it,” Wang said. “These are a curated, well-versed audience of film lovers, very much like Sundance, and they could not say enough about this film.”

“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” is a heartwarming story of a shell, his grandmother and their pet lint, according to Wang.

“They are discovered by a documentary filmmaker in his Airbnb, and he decides to make a film to help them connect with their lost family,” she said. 

Not only is the film — which is appropriate for all ages — clever, funny and heartwarming, it also has a sense of connection, Wang said.

“I think we’re all still feeling a little disconnected from what happened over the past couple of years, and I think people love that it is an unexpected story that is relatable,” she said. “The beauty and artistry come together in a unique fun story.” 

The third weekend screening on Sept. 23-25 gets a little more serious and spotlights the natural world with Sara Dosa’s documentary “Fire of Love,” rated PG.

The film won the U.S. Documentary Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Wang said. 

“It’s about French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, who rode all over the planet chasing volcanic eruptions,” she said. “They were unbelievable pioneers and basically defined the field of volcanology.”

The film uses archival footage to convey a celebration of fearless commitment and unwavering dedication these two scientists, who were killed in a volcanic eruption, had for their craft, Wang said.

“You see them putting on costumes, and I say costumes, because they look like they’re from ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space,’ that they say will protect them from these eruptions,” she said. “The spirit of adventure that our community finds compelling and relatable is so infectious as you watch them.”

The final weekend screening of the month is Jim Archer’s “Brian and Charles,” which will screen from Sept. 30 through Oct. 2.

The comedy, a 2022 Sundance Film Festival premiere, filmed in the pseudo-documentary style, is about the relationship of an eccentric inventor named Brian, played by David Earl, and his robot, Charles, portrayed by Chris Hayward, Wang said.

“It reminds me of (Craig Gillespie’s 2007 comedy) ‘Lars and the Real Girl,’ because it’s so lovely at how the community comes to embrace this kooky inventor guy, who reminds me of Caractacus Potts in ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,’” she said. 

Brian invents Charles, a robot with the body of a washing machine, and the story centers on their relationship with themselves and those who live in their small Welsh community. 

“It’s so intentionally lo-fi for a hi-fi concept – artificial intelligence — that amplifies what the story is really about,” Wang said. “It’s about friendship, community, finding love and letting go. And since comedians play the characters, the film allows us to suspend our belief.”

While the film is a comedy, it also addresses darker issues such as bullying and prejudice, according to Wang.

“The serious content brings this unusual and delightful gem together,” she said. “In the world of serious films, this is an outlier, and that’s what makes it more fantastic.”

In addition to the regular weekend screenings, Park City Film has scheduled a couple of one-date screenings this month.

The first is Kogonada’s “After Yang,” rated PG, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 22.

“This is another Sundance film, and it’s about an android named Yang who is given to a girl by her adoptive parents,” Wang said. 

The android is supposed to help the girl learn about her Chinese heritage, but when it malfunctions, the journey to repair uncovers a void in the family that the father, played by Colin Farrell, didn’t realize was there, she said.

“The film is about family, what defines a family, how we connect with each other and what is community,” Wang said.

“After Yang” is part of Park City Film’s STEM Education Film Series, a subset of the Reel Community Series, and funded by Verizon Foundation, according to Wang.

“The STEM Education Film Series is a program we designed five years ago to connect communities that are underrepresented in sciences — people of color, women and girls and younger people,” she said. “We show films with casts and characters that represent and inspire them to connect in the STEM sciences.”

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Eliane S. Wiese and Ana Marasović, assistant professors at the University of Utah’s School of Computing.

“They will talk about the future of artificial intelligence and some of the ethics behind it,” Wang said. “It seems like the gap between fantasy and reality is getting smaller, and they will discuss some of the issues that are being addressed in their field.”

The other one-off screening will be an evening of Mountainfilm on Tour short documentaries at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 30 during the Twilight Drive-in at Utah Olympic Park series, Wang said.

The films are part of Mountainfilm’s Big Green World playlist that celebrates the wild places, spaces, people and animals that inhabit this big green world, she said. (See accompanying box for the films):

“This collection of short films from the Mountainfilm Festival at Telluride is about celebrating the spirit of adventure,” she said. “These are environmentally themed films that present stories of the different actions people are taking from different parts of the globe in celebration of the beauty of the world around us. We thought they would resonate without community, because we do have a strong connection with the natural world and have an interest in protecting it.” 

Wang looks forward to starting up an autumn season that will be “a kind of return to normal,” after the past 2 ½ years of maneuvering through the pandemic.

“It’s been interesting to see how people have engaged with film during this time, and while we know it won’t be the same as it was in 2019, we are cautiously optimistic that we will be able to operate as we did pre-COVID,” she said. “We are ready to get back into the usual rhythm of how we operate and bring our community together in a very unique way around cinema.”

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