Utah’s Davey Fest marks 10 years, helping filmmakers get short works made

Laura Moss never knew David Ross Fetzer — but his legacy played a part in sparking their career.

The first grant Moss ever received as a student filmmaker at New York University, they said, was from the David Ross Fetzer Foundation — named for the Utah actor, director and musician who died in 2012 at age 30.

Support from the foundation, Moss said, “was responsible for a big jump in my career.” With the grant, they made their first short film, “Fry Day,” which played at Tribeca and SXSW film festivals. Moss’ first feature-length film, ”Birth/Rebirth,” premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Moss’ “Fry Day” will be one of the films screened at the 10th annual Davey Fest, the foundation’s four-day film festival, happening Thursday through Sunday, June 22-25, at the Brewvies Cinema Pub, 677 S. 200 West, Salt Lake City.

The foundation and festival were started, said foundation board member Andrew Shaw, because “his family and friends wanted to keep his memory alive. David was a really fantastic actor, director and musician [and] just a really good friend. He was a great person to be around and left a huge hole in our community.”

The foundation, Shaw said, gives grants to playwrights and writer-directors of short films, “to help them make their productions happen.” The goal is to give out four or five grants every year, ranging from $2,500 to $5,000, to help recipients produce their films, he said. The foundation also puts on the festival, as a showcase for those films.

This year’s line-up, Shaw said, is a little different than usual, and celebrates the 30 or so filmmakers and films the foundation has supported over the last decade.

“We thought this was a great time to do a retrospective festival, where we’re seeing all of the films that have been supported by Davey Foundation grants over that time,” he said.

The opening-night program on Thursday features two films that Fetzer was involved with directly, both directed by Utah filmmaker Kenny Riches — who is also the president of the Davey Foundation.

Fetzer wrote the short film, ”Isip the Warrior,” before he died, and his family and friends worked to produce it. The feature, ”Must Come Down,” starred Fetzer, and was Riches’ directing debut — filmed in Salt Lake City, with Shaw composing the score.

Another short film in the line-up — on the same Saturday program as “Fry Day” — is Luis Fernando Puente’s tense drama ”I Have No Tears, and I Must Cry.” Puente received a 2021 grant from the Davey Foundation to make the short, which was filmed in Orem and screened at Sundance this year. The 13-minute short depicts an immigrant’s interview to receive a green card.

Giving filmmakers a boost

“Fry Day ‘’ was Moss’ thesis film at NYU. They described the short as “a period piece set in Florida 1989. … It’s about a young girl kind of growing up in the shadow of Ted Bundy’s execution.”

Moss said they based the story around the real-life tailgate event that took place in January 1989, outside the prison where Bundy, a serial killer whose trail went from Washington through Utah to Florida, was scheduled to be executed.

In the film, the girl, Moss said, “is taking and selling Polaroids at this event, and just kind of trying to get a feel for what’s going on. [She] ended up encountering smaller monsters of her own in the wake of this event.”

Moss said Davey is one of the few organizations that offers money to filmmakers specifically for short films. “I really don’t feel like my career would be where it was, not just because of the funding that I received from Davey, but the encouragement,” they said.

Now that they have made her feature debut with “Birth/Rebirth” — a horror-thriller, backed by the streaming service Shudder, about a pathologist obsessed with raising the dead — Moss said they were excited to support the Davey Foundation by bringing “Fry Day” to Utah.

“In the U.S., we don’t have any real significant government financing for independent cinema,” Moss said. “It’s really a Hollywood model, and the more challenging films that indie folks want to make have very few avenues for support.” The Davey Foundation, they added, is one of those vital avenues.

The ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America against Hollywood studios and streaming services, is adding to the challenges for filmmakers, Moss said. Those companies are still promoting movies, like “Birth/Rebirth.” (WGA rules discourage writers from doing promotion work for their projects with companies the guild is striking against.)

With the writers’ strike in progress — and a potential strike by SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, looming when its contract with producers runs out June 30 — Moss said smaller festivals like Davey Fest, and even Sundance, are crucial.

“They’re like a ray of hope for us,” they said. “In strike and in non-strike times, funding [from other sources] is incredibly vital.”

A world premiere

Another film to be screened at Davey Fest 2023 is Joshua Nathan and Gia-Rayne Harris’ ”Cairn” which will have its world premiere.

Nathan called the film a “mystery thriller.” It’s a cabin-in-the-woods kind of story, following a groundskeeper, Ada, who becomes concerned for her safety when guests arrive on the property.

“Cairn” had some pandemic-related setbacks, Nathan said, such as losing a location. Eventually, the film shoot took place in a single location.

Nathan said the production learned of The Davey Foundation through producer Luze Huang. All through the long journey, he said, the foundation has supported them every step of the way.

“It’s tough to make the short film, it’s tough to get financing for a short film,” Nathan said. “To have a team behind you, from soup to nuts, and to have a group say, ‘at the end of this process, you’re going to have a screening outlet and a place to show it’ … is also a huge relief.”

Shaw said reactions like those from Moss and Nathan are exactly what The Davey Foundation wants to hear.

“We’re a little scrappy foundation,” Shaw said. “We’re run completely by volunteers. It’s great to see that we’re able to have that impact on filmmakers’ careers, that they can get that success to move forward into bigger festivals.”

Davey Fest, presented by The Davey Foundation, opens Thursday, June 22, at 7:30 p.m., with director Kenny Riches’ short “Isip the Warrior” (written by David Ross Fetzer) and the feature “Must Come Down,” starring Fetzer. A “New Shorts Showcase” screens Friday, June 23, at 7:30 p.m. On Saturday, June 24, the “Retrospective Shorts I” program screens at 3:30 p.m., and the “Sundance Film Festival Showcase” (including Laura Moss’ “Fry Day” and Luis Fernando Puente’s “I Have No Tears, and I Must Cry”) screens at 5:30 p.m. The “Retrospective Shorts II” program screens Sunday, June 25, at 2:30 p.m. All screenings are at Brewvies Cinema Pub, 667 S. 200 West, Salt Lake City. Only people 21 or older can attend. Tickets for individual screenings are $10, and $35 gets a full festival pass good for all five screenings. Tickets and information are available at daveyfilm.org.