I’m extremely excited to be traveling to Sun Valley this coming weekend for the Idaho premiere of Sea of Shadows! Sun Valley Film Festival has been brining high caliber films and Hollywood celebrities to the mountains of Idaho since 2012. It’s mountain resort town location and celebrity guests have drawn numerous comparisons to Sundance Film Festival.
Still frame from Sea of Shadows showing a mountain of illegal gillnets removed from the Gulf of California.
But Sun Valley Film Festival has not become the industry conference and film buying frenzy that Sundance has long been known for. This will be my first year attending the festival, but I’m told by filmmaker colleagues that celebrities are approachable and festival parties aren’t defined by their exclusivity. Sun Valley Film Festival also has established a unique partnership with National Geographic, and serves as a platform to present the annual “Wild to Inspire” short film contest. In 2016 fellow Wild Lens Collective filmmakers Alex Goetz and Justin Grubb from Running Wild Media won this prestigious award for their short film, To the Explorers, and they’ve been coming back to Sun Valley Film Festival every year since.
This year, I’ll be heading to Sun Valley with our field producer for Sea of Shadows, Ru Mahoney, as well as Alex Goetz, who was an associate producer and camera operator on two of the short films screening at the festival.
Those two short films are: Sweetheart Dancers, directed by Ben-Alex Dupris (also a part of the Wild Lens Collective), tells the story of a gay Native American couple determined to rewrite cultural norms through their participation in the “Sweetheart Dance”, a contest typically reserved for men and woman couples.
Paulette, directed by Heather Rae and produced by Ben-Alex Dupris, follows Paulette Jordan’s inspirational gubernatorial run in Idaho in 2018.
Ru, Alex, Justin, Ben and many others from the Wild Lens Collective were able to join us at Sundance for the world premiere of Sea of Shadows, and I’m happy to have the opportunity to support some of the films that other members of the Wild Lens Collective have been working on at the year’s Sun Valley Film Festival.
Sea of Shadows screens on Friday, March 15th at 2:30pm at the Opera House.
Sweetheart Dancers screens on Friday, March 15th at 1pm at the Argyros.
Paulette screens on Sunday, March 17th at 5:45pm at the Argyros.
Check out the Sun Valley Film Festival website for more information on screenings and to purchase tickets.
-Matt Podolsky