Sundance reaches all the way out to Kamas
By Jody Genessy
Deseret News, 22 January 2004
Summary:
The 280-seat Kamas Theater is the only movie theater in the rural Summit County town of Kamas, which only recently got its first tricolored stoplight.
On 21 January 2004, the recently-reopened Kamas Theater hosted a free screening of "Seducing Doctor Lewis" as part of the Sundance Film Festival's community outreach program. Earlier in the day, the theater showed the Sundance hit "Napoleon Dynamite" to local schools.
The Sundance Film Festival has been coming to off-the-beaten-path places like Kamas for years. In 2003, the film "Whale Rider" showed at the Kamas Theater even though the theater wasn't in business at the time.
Sarah Komarek, in charge of Sundance's outreach program, said, "We love these theaters. We want to support them and help them stay in business." Before the 2004 Sundance screenings, workers for the festival gave the Kamas theater a deep cleaning.
Even though people attended the screening from as far as Utah and Salt Lake counties, the theater was far from packed. Although "Seducing Doctor Lewis" is a charming and innocent comedy about a small fishing village's efforts to attract a permanent physician, the word "seducing" in the title caused some residents of the religious and conservative town to think the film was R-rated.