Unlike many film festivals, The 2010 Salt Lake Freedom Film and Storytelling Festival stands alone, combining movie cinema, live drama, and music into one performance called Cinema Dramatic. Artistic director Brian Jackson Fetzer is better known as “Professor of Pretend,” and he is out to entertain the entire family.
I stood with Fetzer as he stood in the isles of the historical Fort Douglas Post Theater fully clad in his Sherlock Holmes attire, including an overcoat, hat and magnifying glass in hand. He says the tie is fairly new, but works well with his 100 year old suit and shoes. Brian’s passion is youthful as he describes his childhood backyard where he found dinosaur footprints, jungles, and the Wild West. Keeping this imagination and wonder going over a half century has served him well as a substitute teacher in mathematics and later on at the U of U teaching children the Arts of Song and Story.
Staying in character of the witch, Madame Hexaba (Rachael Hedman) finally shows up late blaming her broom for wanting to use alternative directions. It was obvious that Fetzer only keeps like-minded company. Madame Hexaba claims she is not one of those witches that eat children. That can be construed that college students are welcome.
Armed with HD cameras and a nonlinear home digital editing system, Fetzer purposely weaves “Freedom Film” in the title symbolizing the changing film industry. At a fraction of the cost the imagination can be stored, edited, and distributed giving more freedom to creation. This could not be truer for Fetzer’s eighth semi-annual “Freedom Film and Storytelling Festival” which includes film, eclectic music and live dramatics.
Performing live in front of the silver screen playing a synchronized movie, Fetzer and his handful of nationally recognized storytellers, Carol Esterreicher as the lady in black, Rachel Hedman as Witch Madame Hexaba, Holly Robison, and Jannie Nishiguchi will perform stories including Sherlock Holmes and the Ghost of the Great Salt Lake, Jasper VonKarloff and the Don’t Get Funny with a Mummy Show. Additional performances will include musicals, films and story telling.
The 2010 Salt Lake Freedom Film and Storytelling Festival will be broken into three sessions, morning, afternoon and evening. The first performance starts at 7:30 a.m. and the last performance goes until 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for children (per session). The event will be located at the University of Utah’s historical Fort Douglas Post Theater on Oct. 23.
For more information call (801) 532-2766.