Resident Artist – Dean Duncan
Local filmmaker Dean Duncan will be honored during the 2022 Art City Days celebration as Springville’s Resident Artist. He will be a featured part of the Art City Days Grand Parade on Saturday, June 11. The parade will begin at 10 a.m. and travel down 400 South and Main Street.
Duncan is an associate professor of film in the Department of Theatre and Media Arts at Brigham Young University. He has served as director of the BYU Children’s Media Initiative and director of his department’s London Study Abroad Program.
He received his bachelor’s of fine arts degree in film production from BYU in 1987. His master’s degree in film criticism came from the University of Southern California in 1992. He earned his Ph.D. in 1999 from Glasgow University. He is especially interested and involved in documentary and children’s media.
He has produced many film projects, including “Fit for the Kingdom: Lives of the Latter-day Saints,” a series of films telling the stories of ordinary people living their lives.
Duncan has made presentations about various aspects of film at conferences and workshops both nationally and internationally. In 2016, he curated and presented a film series at the Springville Museum of Art in conjunction with the museum’s exhibit of Soviet-era art. The series was titled “Kino: Russian Stories and Soviet Ideals in Film.”
He has written several books about filmmaking, including “Charms that Soothe: Classical Music and the Narrative Film,” a survey of the aesthetics of classical music in film; “Thinking About Film: A Critical Perspective,” a book for those who want to be more active, intelligent film viewers; and “Stories of Childhood: Evolving Portrayals in Books and Films,” which questions the widely held perception that books, as an artistic medium, are superior to and more respectable than film or television.
He has also authored many scholarly articles for various publications, including BYU Studies and The Children’s Media Review.
Duncan and his wife, Sharon Anderson Duncan moved to Springville in 1992. They have raised six children here.