January 19th 2005:

Park City Record:
Politics and movies mix in festivals

Lost and Freedom festivals arrive with a view

By Jay Hamburger
OF THE RECORD STAFF

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - All the politicking in Utah over the next week will not be at the Capitol.

Two festivals coinciding with Sundance, and the start of the 2005 session of the State Legislature, will offer films with a political spin.

The Lost Film Fest and the Freedom Cinema Festival are preparing for their 2005 editions. The Freedom Cinema Festival runs Jan. 25-30 on the second floor of the Main Street Mall. The Lost Film Fest runs one day, Jan. 27, also in the Main Street Mall.

Some highlights of the Freedom Cinema Festival include an appearance by BBC journalist Greg Palast and Winona LaDuke, the vice presidential candidate on the 2000 Green Party ticket.

Andrew Jon Thomson, the founder and executive director of the Freedom Cinema Festival, said the festival travels around the country with different types of media, like music and the performing arts. In Park City, he said, the focus is on film.

"We provide an important forum and venue for the top thinkers, media makers and artists in the political field," Thomson said, adding, "This is a festival of peace, freedom and justice."

He acknowledges that the festival's political leanings are more to the left than the right.

Thomson said he expects between 8,000 and 10,000 people to attend the festival in 2005, about the same as the 10,000 who stopped in last year. Most screenings are $8 but Thomson said some will be free.

Thomson said it is important to have alternative media outlets like the ones featured in the Freedom Cinema Festival because, he alleges, corporate interests undermine the mainstream media.

"American democracy and peace and justice in the entire world is threatened now," he said.
The festival will show movies devoted to political topics or those that deal with activist themes.

That, he said, is different than other film festivals that show only a few movies with political themes.
"We have an exclusive focus on this stuff," Thomson said. "At Freedom Festival, they are front and center."

Some of the films scheduled during the festival include, "An Iraqi Lullaby for Children Who Are About to Die" and "Weapons of Mass Deception."

Meanwhile, the Lost Film Fest, founded in 1999, will have a presence in Park City. Lost Film Fest holds its annual festival in Philadelphia but travels to other top independent-film destinations like Park City during Sundance and Cannes, France, co-founder and festival director Scott Beibin said.

The Lost Film Fest is occurring in conjunction with the Freedom Cinema Festival and three feature films and an undetermined number of shorts will be shown. He said admission to the Lost Film Fest ranges from $5 to $20. This year will be the fifth in Park City for the Lost Film Fest.

The Lost Film Festival, organizers promise, will be different than the rest in Park City.

Featured will be "the explosive work of politically energized independent filmmakers and performers who bring a fresh critique to current issues of globalization, media ownership, and militarism. This is an event like none other in Park City evidenced by the hands on and playful approach used by the organizers," the festival said in a Jan. 10 release announcing the lineup.

The festival plans screenings of films like "Bush Family Fortunes" and "BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge," which documents the insurgency in Iraq, according to a synopsis from the Lost Film Festival.

For more information about the Lost Film Festival, visit its site on the World Wide Web, www.lostfilmfest.com.

The Freedom Cinema Festival advertises a similarly distinct event.

"One of the top alternative and truly independent festivals during this annual convergence of arts, media and commerce, Freedom Cinema Festival provides a unique forum for leading grassroots artists addressing socially and politically relevant issues of the day," according to a statement on the festival's Internet site.

More information about the festival is online, at www.freedomcinemafestival.org.

http://www.parkrecord.com/Stories/0,1413,122~8134~2661198,00.html

For press and media inquiries please call
1-800-503-5923 x 1
or email
press@freedomcinemafestival.org