The US film industry’s first major gathering since wildfires devastated Los Angeles began Thursday at Sundance, where Olivia Colman and John Lithgow are kicking off the indie movie festival under somber circumstances.Hollywood’s annual pilgrimage to the Rocky Mountains to debut the coming year’s top indie films started barely two weeks after blazes killed more than two dozen people and brought the US entertainment capital to a halt.Festival chiefs spoke at length with filmmakers “who lost homes or were displaced” by the fires before deciding to press ahead, Sundance director Eugene Hernandez told AFP.Among those were the team behind “Didn’t Die,” an indie zombie movie about survivors podcasting to an ever-dwindling human population, which was partly shot in the filmmakers’ now-destroyed Altadena homes.”We turned the film in, and a few days later… our homes were lost,” director Meera Menon told AFP.The film’s producer and editor, who lived near to Menon and her co-writer husband, also fled their house before it was razed by the fires.”The four of us really lost everything… Altadena was our dream, our home was our dream home,” added a tearful-sounding Menon, who was nonetheless driving up to Utah on Thursday to attend her film’s premiere next week.Also among the 88 features being screened in Utah’s Park City is “Rebuilding,” starring Josh O’Connor as a rancher who loses everything in a wildfire.”It takes on an added poignance,” said Hernandez.”It’s an incredible film, and one that we felt was important to show, based on that spirit of resilience,” said Sundance programming director Kim Yutani.- J-Lo, Cumberbatch -The big opening night film this year is “Jimpa,” in which Colman plays a mother taking her non-binary teen to visit their gay grandfather — played by Lithgow, in various states of undress.Among other festival highlights, Jennifer Lopez brings her first film to Sundance with the glitzy musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”From “Dreamgirls” director Bill Condon, the film is based on the Broadway adaptation of Argentine author Manuel Puig’s novel.Lopez plays a silver-screen diva whose life and roles are discussed by two mismatched prisoners as they form an unlikely bond in their grim cell. Benedict Cumberbatch stars in another literary adaptation, “The Thing With Feathers,” based on Max Porter’s experimental and poetic novel about a grieving husband and two young sons.Rapper A$AP Rocky and late-night host Conan O’Brien make up the eclectic cast of mystery “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”And “The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri teams up with John Malkovich for thriller “Opus,” about a young writer investigating the mysterious disappearance of a legendary pop star.- Politics -Among Sundance’s documentary selection, which has launched several of the most recent Oscar-winning nonfiction films, politics will feature heavily.Former New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern is expected in town to promote the behind-the-scenes documentary “Prime Minister.” And two films touching on the Gaza conflict will see their debut, days after the ceasefire agreement with Israel began.”Coexistence, My Ass!” follows Jewish peace activist-turned-comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi, as she constructs a one-woman show and grapples with the consequences of Israel’s military campaign.”As an activist, I reached 20 people, and in a viral video mocking dictators, I reached 20 million people,” she told AFP, admitting she is “anxious” about how the film will be received.Palestinian-American director Cherien Dabis will unveil “All That’s Left of You” in a prominent Saturday evening premiere at Sundance’s biggest venue.Sundance runs from Thursday through February 2.

Driving up to the Rocky Mountains for the Sundance premiere of her new movie would be a joyful experience for Meera Menon — if she weren’t leaving behind the scorched rubble of her Los Angeles home, where much of it was filmed.In a cruel example of life imitating art, Menon’s indie zombie apocalypse flick “Didn’t Die” is all about how survivors of loss and disaster find the strength to cope through community, good humor and sheer resilience.It has taken on brutal new context and meaning thanks to the Los Angeles wildfires, which have killed more than two dozen people and destroyed thousands of homes — including her own.The film’s producer and editor, who lived near to Menon and her co-writer husband, also lost their house, just days after sending the final cut to Sundance.”The four of us really lost everything. But we’re still here,” said Menon.”We loved it so much. I mean, it can’t be overstated — Altadena was our dream, our home was our dream home,” she added, in a tearful voice.The first part of the film — in which survivors podcast to an ever-dwindling human population — was shot in New York state.But Menon and husband Paul Gleason filmed several key scenes a year later in their Californian living room.These include a brutal zombie attack — and several sweet moments of a couple and their baby living there in earlier, happier times.”There’s snippets in the film that capture that home that is no longer. And the most poignant are these flashbacks with the family,” said Menon, whose own three-year-old daughter appears in “Didn’t Die” as an infant.It means the film itself has become a memento of sorts — evidence of the beloved place where their daughter grew up.”That community and the neighborhood… so beautiful right by the mountains,” said Menon.”Having the film capture this place for us, at that time, is grounding in some way. Because it just reminds us that it wasn’t a dream.”- ‘Daunting’ -Menon fell in love with the zombie genre after directing an episode of hit TV show “Fear The Walking Dead.”It felt like the perfect metaphor for a film about rebuilding a world hit by disaster after disaster.The real-life catastrophes Menon had in mind when writing “Didn’t Die” with Gleason were the pandemic and strikes that have recently upended their industry. Now, in the wake of the still-burning fires, some in the industry have called for Hollywood’s glitzy award season to be toned down or even scrapped.There was even speculation that Sundance might be cancelled, though festival bosses decided to press ahead after speaking with filmmakers like Menon.”I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” admitted Menon, whose premiere is set to go ahead on Tuesday night.”For me, it’s just very helpful to move forward and have work in the world, and still be enjoying some aspect of our filmmaking life, despite all of this.”Organizers of the Oscars, less than two months away, have promised to pay tribute to the bravery of firefighters and the resilience of Los Angeles at their ceremony in March.While appreciating the gesture, Menon said the “daunting” prospect of rebuilding their lives will take many years, wherever they end up relocating.”I don’t want people to move on from this too quickly either. We have such short attention spans in this world,” she said.”I hope people still do carry this in their hearts throughout this whole season.”

US President Donald Trump ordered the declassification Thursday of the last secret files on the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, a case that still fuels conspiracy theories more than 60 years after his death.Trump signed an executive order that will also release documents on the 1960s assassinations of JFK’s younger brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.”That’s big one, huh? A lot of people have been waiting for this for years, for decades,” Trump told reporters as he signed the order in the Oval Office of the White House. “Everything will be revealed.”After signing the order, Trump passed the pen he used to an aide, saying “Give that to RFK Jr.,” JFK’s nephew and the current president’s nominee to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.The order Trump signed requires the “full and complete release” of the JFK files, without redactions that he accepted back in 2017 when releasing most of the documents.”It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay,” the order said.Trump had previously promised to release the last of the files, most recently at his inauguration on Monday.- ‘Overwhelming evidence’ -The US National Archives has released tens of thousands of records in recent years related to the November 22, 1963 assassination of president Kennedy but held thousands back, citing national security concerns.It said at the time of the latest large-scale release, in December 2022, that 97 percent of the Kennedy records — which total five million pages — had now been made public.The Warren Commission that investigated the shooting of the charismatic 46-year-old president determined that it was carried out by a former Marine sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.But that formal conclusion has done little to quell speculation that a more sinister plot was behind Kennedy’s murder in Dallas, Texas, and the slow release of the government files has added fuel to various conspiracy theories.Trump’s move is partly a gesture to one of the most prominent backers of those conspiracies — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. himself.RFK Jr. said in 2023 there was “overwhelming evidence the CIA was involved” in his uncle JFK’s murder and “very convincing” evidence the agency was also behind the 1968 assassination of his own father, Robert F. Kennedy. The former attorney general was killed while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president. Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian-born Jordanian, was convicted of his murder.Anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr. was rewarded with the health nod in Trump’s cabinet for dropping his independent presidential bid and backing the Republican, but he faces a rocky nomination process.- Conspiracy theories -Thousands of Kennedy assassination-related documents from the National Archives were released during Trump’s first term in office, but he also held some back on national security grounds.Then-president Joe Biden said at the time of the December 2022 documents release that a “limited” number of files would continue to be held back at the request of unspecified “agencies.”Previous requests to withhold documents have come from the CIA and FBI.Kennedy scholars have said the documents still held by the archives are unlikely to contain any bombshell revelations or put to rest the rampant conspiracy theories about the assassination of the 35th US president.Oswald, who had at one point defected to the Soviet Union, was shot to death two days after killing Kennedy by a nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, as he was being transferred from the city jail.Hundreds of books and movies such as the 1991 Oliver Stone film “JFK” have fueled the conspiracy industry, pointing the finger at Cold War rivals Russia or Cuba, the Mafia and even Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon Johnson.Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.James Earl Ray was convicted of the murder and died in prison in 1998 but King’s children have expressed doubts in the past that Ray was the assassin.

Legislation to reduce the impact of increasingly devastating forest fires on US federal land passed the House of Representatives on Thursday as firefighters battled to tame the latest in a series of blazes threatening southern California.One of the first bills to pass the lower chamber of Congress in Donald Trump’s presidency, the Fix Our Forests Act would increase the pace and scale of forest management projects by speeding up environmental reviews, deterring frivolous lawsuits.It was reintroduced after passing the House of Representatives last September with overwhelming bipartisan support but did not make it through the Senate, and will need to compete for floor space in the upper chamber before it can be signed into law.It passed the House comfortably in a 279-141 vote but environmental groups said the bill had been “misleadingly” named and would open public lands to massive logging projects under the guise of preventing wildfires. “This is nothing more than a bill of goods that will do little of anything to combat fires and instead plays favorites with the timber industry which is hungry to consume more of our forests — removing large fire-resilient trees and devastating the lands and species which call them home,” said Robert Dewey, vice president of government relations at Defenders of Wildlife.The group said the bill would remove science from land management decisions and weaken protections for endangered species. The vote came with the greater Los Angeles area on edge after two enormous fires tore through America’s second largest metropolis, killing more than two dozen people and wreaking billions of dollars of devastation.Firefighters on Thursday were trying to tame a new blaze in Castaic, 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, that forced 31,000 people to flee their homes.Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson blasted Democratic leaders in Los Angeles and California for having “mismanaged virtually every aspect” of the wildfires, leaving a reservoir empty and allowing forest debris to pile up near homes.”They assumed the risk because they advanced their radical political agenda, and now people are paying a heavy price for that,” he told reporters.”We think that needs to be taken into account going forward, but the bipartisan Fix our Forest Act will do what the governor of California would not do, and that is restore the health of our forests and make communities more resilient to wildfires.”