This is NOT about “A.I.” or the local film industry.

TL;DR: The Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (GOEO) quietly OK’d a $2 million grant for a nonprofit nobody’s heard of. The media made it sound like a done deal, but when I asked GOEO for more information, they told me no decision had been made. Yet, their own public records show that they approved it in January.

When I learned about the approval of a $2 million grant for “Nuovo Film Festival, Inc.,” two things stood out to me:

1. The lengths to which the GOEO went to hide what they were doing.

2. The completely redundant goals of the project

When articles started to appear in the local media toward the end of January, most of the attention was focused on “A.I.” hype, which members of the local film community latched onto with understandable frustration. Leaders of existing film-focused nonprofits—myself included—coordinated and reached out to the Nuovo “board” requesting a meeting. As of this post, to my knowledge, nothing has been scheduled.

The way it’s been framed in the press, this $2 million grant is a done deal. Some of my colleagues are already trying to make their peace with it. I commented on a post in the Utah Filmmakers™ Facebook group:

“I’m not that worried about it, to be honest. Spending $2 million—even more—on a half-baked concept run by a bunch of amateurs that flops spectacularly upon release happens ALL THE TIME in our industry.”

While most appear to have taken a “wait and see” position, I’ve been trying to find out what’s really going on. When headlines include phrases like “...Initiative gets $2 million from state,” “Utah invests $2 million in an AI-driven film ecosystem,” and “Utah invests $2M in AI cinema,” it creates the impression that this is something that has already happened. These are “news” articles, after all. Of course, headlines are often clickbait, hyperbole, and oversimplification to get more ad impressions, only to read in the articles themselves that it’s only been “approved” or “...in a standard detail-gathering phase before the grant award is finalized.”

Some articles refer to the GOEO specifically as the agency behind the grant, others treat it as something incidental, as if it may or may not have anything to do with the grant, or as one local writer phrased it, “Working within the context of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity…” (emphasis added, also, F#*%¡&’ really!?!) There are references to “planners,” but no one is identified by name, nor is anyone directly quoted.

As far as I could tell, only one journalist appears to have even made an effort to verify what is still, as far as the press is concerned, just an industry rumor, having reached out to the GOEO and reporting “... board members did not respond to a request for comment.”

I’m not a journalist, but I used to moonlight as a stringer for a rural weekly newspaper, and I’ve acquired a few skills in finding public information for routine due diligence.

While there is nothing on the GOEO’s official website discussing or even referring to a $2 million grant, a diligent search on the Public Notice Website for the state of Utah can yield the following results:

➝ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/

 ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/# (much scrolling & clicking of embedded menus)

  ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/publicbody/883.html

   ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/notice/1058653.html

    ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/1389373.docx

“1389373.docx” appears to be an automatically generated filename for the official minutes of the January 8 GOEO Board meeting—posted on February 10 and accompanying the agenda for the following meeting.

This document is the only written confirmation that the GOEO Board unanimously approved a $2 million grant for “Nuovo Film Festival, Inc.”

Prior to February 10, the only way anyone could have learned about it would have been with a similar search yielding similar results:

➝ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/

 ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/# (scrolling & clicking of embedded menus)

  ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/publicbody/883.html

   ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/notice/1049891.html

    ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/1373837.m4a

“1373837.m4a” is the 50+minute audio recording of the January 8 GOEO Board meeting. The proposal, followed by a unanimous vote of approval, takes up about 12 minutes of the recording, starting around 32 minutes in.

Unlike the other items that were discussed, this was the only item lacking any information of substance on the written agenda—available on the same web page in January 6:

   ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/notice/1049891.html

    ↳ https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/1372663.pdf ⬅︎

One might infer that none of the Board members felt the need to comment on the news, since their agenda stated they “will vote to approve” the grant. Each member in attendance at the meeting could be heard voting “Yes” on the motion, and this was confirmed in the official record. Short of a photo-op with a giant novelty check being handed to the grantee, it certainly seems like a done deal.

Still, I decided to ask for more details regarding the approval of this grant, since the only publicly available written information amounts to about a page and a half of plain text. I submitted a formal GRAMA Records Request, which GOEO’s Records Officer denied, claiming—among other excuses, “...no decision has been made regarding this funding…”

I appealed the denial to GOEO’s Executive Director, who also denied it, adding that the January 8 meeting “...concluded with the Board's recommendation that GOEO support the concept.”

The agenda said “The Board will vote to approve one IAA grant.”

The official minutes of the meeting confirmed what was clearly understood on the audio recording from January 8, that the Board “...recommends Nuovo Film Festival Incorporated (NFI) for an Industrial Assistance Account grant of $2,000,000…” and the motion “...passed with unanimous consent.”

I’ve been told that I have an overdeveloped sense of fairness, and I’ve been known to be trusting of others, to a fault. I will take someone at the word if I haven’t been given a reason not to. So, if I find out someone has lied to me, after the fact, I might be a little more bothered by it than most.

I also have a very low tolerance for people who think they can get away with feeding me an obvious line of bullshit, and God help them if they lie to me when I already know the truth.

For a more in-depth look at all the facts and fibs, check out https://goeo.joepuente.org