Editor’s note • Kent Maxwell died Feb. 3 in Salt Lake City. Maxwell was an artist, photographer and supporter of independent film — most notably as director of the Utah Film & Video Center, which screened avant-garde movies and local filmmakers’ works from the 1980s until it was disbanded in 2005. (Details of Maxwell’s obituary were not available at press time.) Documentarian Mel Halbach said of Maxwell that “his passion was experiment, he was an experiment, he manifested it in all forms before us.” Utah filmmaker Trent Harris, a longtime friend of Maxwell, wrote this tribute, at the request of The Tribune.
Our city’s friend Kent Maxwell died last week, age around 70.
He ran the now-defunct Utah Film and Video Center, housed in what was known as the Salt Lake Art Center downtown. (It’s now the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, wedged between Abravanel Hall and the Salt Palace.) He did it for many years. He did it for no pay. He did it because he loved the idea of independent.
In his small screening room, he single-handedly did more for independent film in Utah than anyone.
He brought the best of underground cinema to Salt Lake City, showing the often-ignored and seldom-seen works of great experimental filmmakers from around the world. He brought in heavy-hitter guests like Kenneth Anger and Craig Baldwin. He championed the films of C. Larry Roberts and Russian filmmaker Yevgeny Yufit. It was important because no one else would do it.
Maxwell built a community, mostly comprised of film nuts and crazy artists. We would watch movies, drink beer, talk about art, film, ideas. It was fun. It was exciting. We thought about what we were doing and what we might do and we saw what others were doing. It was kind of an incubator. This does not happen so much anymore.
Kent would also screen any local filmmaker that walked in the door. He ran a festival of local work in which every piece entered in the festival got a screening, regardless of length, quality or subject. He believed in crashing forward. Put it out there and see if it sticks to the wall. His job was not to judge; it was to show.
Kent stood up for me and my films when others would not. He stood up for Bob Moss, Utah’s most unrecognized master artist, when no one else would. Bob would play his banjo and sell his art before screenings as kind of an icing on the cake to whatever movie Kent was showing. It was just great!
Sometimes weird things would happen. Actually, most of the time weird things would happen.
I remember one show in which a filmmaker showed slides and wiggled the screen to make it seem like a movie! Everybody went nuts. It was so much fun.
There was another time when I showed one of my movies and my mom gave away hot sauce as a door prize and everybody liked the hot sauce way more than my film. Boy, I miss that place.
Kent taught classes. He yelled at his students because they did not work. He yelled at people because they were so darn dumb. He was uncompromising, ill-tempered, generous, brilliant and fiercely loyal.
Kent never married, no kids, no pets. But he grew tomatoes like nobody’s business. Man, that guy was the tomato king. Some of his neighbors were afraid of him because he seemed cranky. But once he gave them his tomatoes they were bonded for life.
The world changed around Kent. Audiences shrank. Funding dried up. Everyone started looking at their phones. Kent plowed forward, but it was inevitable that he would join the ranks of the endangered species.
Things were hard for Kent near the end. Suffering health, lack of money, not able to work.
What happens to a town when it loses someone like Kent Maxwell? It is kind of like the grand old building that we all love, it burns down… and it is replaced with a parking lot.
Salt Lake City and the world is a lesser place without Kent Maxwell.
Trent Harris is a filmmaker based in Salt Lake City. He is best known for directing the movies “Rubin & Ed,” “Plan 10 From Outer Space” and “Beaver Trilogy.”
