Utah Film center: GODZILLA

Utah Film Center is excited to announce our upcoming screening of Godzilla on Wednesday, November 9th at 7pm at the City Library downtown location. The King of Monsters first appeared in this 1954 masterpiece of Japanese cinema that pioneered the “kaiju” genre and countless contemporary monster films. This stunning rumination on the horrors of nuclear weapons reflects the anxieties of post-war Japan and also points to victims of radiation related illness. Please join us for the screening and stick around afterward for a post-film conversation about the importance of Godzilla and its relevance to Utah’s own history with nuclear weapons tests and our population of “downwinders” in Southern Utah with a professor from University of Utah’s film department and KUER’s RadioWest host Doug Fabrizio.

Presented as part of our Through the Lens series, which for 2022 features a collaboration with the University of Utah’s Department of Film and Media Arts to present an extended exploration of what many Film Lovers regard as the “Classic Films” in cinematic history. The post-film discussion will ask the question “Why is this film a classic and who is it a classic for?”

SYNOPSIS
American nuclear-weapons testing results in the creation of a seemingly unstoppable, dinosaur-like beast. When seventeen vessels blow-up and sink nearby Odo Island, Professor Kyohei Yamane, his daughter Emiko Yamane and the marine Hideto Ogata head to the island to investigate. Godzilla (a.k.a. Gojira) is the roaring granddaddy of all monster movies. It’s also a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attack and H-bomb testing in the Pacific. Its rampaging radioactive beast, the poignant embodiment of an entire population’s fears, became a beloved international icon of destruction, spawning almost thirty sequels.