4 festival films have local ties

The Sundance Film Festival is looking a lot like Utah this year — and not just because of its Park City and Salt Lake City screening venues (as well as those in a handful of other communities).

Three films featured in the 2007 edition of Sundance — the features "Dark Matter" and "It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE.," and the short documentary "Mother Superior" — were shot in Utah and have strong local ties.

And so does a fourth film, "American Fork," which has been selected to play in the competing Slamdance Film Festival.

MERYL STREEP stars in "Dark Matter," a drama based on the real-life story of a Chinese astronomy scholar who encountered racial discrimination while pursuing his doctorate studies in America. (Streep plays a university patron who befriends the student, played by Liu Ye, who is also in the current "Curse of the Golden Flower.")

Aside from some second-unit photography and one sequence filmed in China, the movie was shot entirely in Utah during June and early July. Utah Valley State College in Orem housed much of the production, as did areas of Federal Heights and a neighborhood near Trolley Square mall.

The production also boasted nearly 60 Utah crew members, including Jeff Miller, who worked as the line producer, or unit-production manager, which is essentially the troubleshooter of movie productions.

Miller reported that the film was relatively trouble-free, however. "It went fairly smoothly, and the other producers were genuinely pleased by the professionalism of the local crews, as well as the variety of shooting locations."

In fact, Miller says the film's other producers lobbied to shoot in Utah after making another movie here, the yet-to-be-released drama "Bonneville."

He said he's "thrilled" that the film got into Sundance. It is being shown in the Spectrum section, one of the noncompetitive categories.

"I'm proud to have been associated with the film, and even prouder that it's being included at Sundance, where, hopefully, it will find a receptive audience," said Miller, who also works with film veteran Scott Swofford's Vineyard Productions locally.

"MOTHER SUPERIOR" being selected by the 2007 Sundance Film Festival is by far the biggest feather-in-the-cap so far for Spy Hop Productions, a local nonprofit media center for youth.

An examination of local methamphetamine use, "Mother Superior," went into production two years ago, when filmmakers Alex Mack and Diana Montero were high school students (at West High School and Hillcrest High School, respectively), and the two were paired up at Spy Hop.