The Tanner Humanities Center is introducing a new movies series, “The Human Experience in Documentary Films,” this month.
Marketing manager John Boyack hopes the program will “connect whoever from wherever with the campus and community.” For each event, the U will show a film and bring in a related speaker for a Q&A after the movie.
For their first event, the Tanner Humanities Center will focus on LGBTQ+ rights by screening the Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary “The Case Against Eight” at the Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas on Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. The movie describes the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage, starting with the passage of Proposition 8, where California lawmakers controversially made such state-sanctioned unions illegal.
“’The Case Against Eight’ captures a pivotal moment in our recent past,” said Robert Goldberg, a history professor and director of the Tanner Humanities Center. “This lawsuit was a critical factor in building the momentum that pressed our society into insuring that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were guaranteed to all Americans.”
In addition to the screening, the humanities center will welcome the film’s director, Ryan White, to the Broadway Centre Cinemas to watch the film with students and community members. Afterwards, he will answer questions from the audience.
“We had to raise money for the director to come up,” Boyack said.
The program was able to raise $10,000 with help from sponsors, such as the Bruce W. Bastian Foundation, the David Eccles School of Business Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative and the LGBTQ-Affirmitive Psychotherapist Guild of Utah. These funds will also be used to host more films, such as “India’s Daughter,” a movie banned in India that tells the story of Jyoti Singh, a medical student from Dehli, India, who was gang-raped and murdered in 2012.
“Our goal is to keep it going,” Boyack said, “ but we just have to see how this [first film] goes.”
@sidneymarchant