“I BE A WITCH” Indie Film Premiere
REXBURG - Romance Theater is set to host the premiere of “I Be A Witch” on October 29th at
7:30 pm.
The film premiere will be two days before Halloween and is a free event for the community.
Donations are welcome and will be used to submit the movie to multiple film festivals.
After the film premiere, a project discussion with author/actress/storyteller Lori Hansen and her
cast and crew will open up to the audience. Those interested in filmmaking or the Salem Witch
Trials are invited to stay after and participate in the discussion.
The film is detailed to tell the story of Hansen’s 11th great-grandmother, Anne Foster, who was
accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Hansen told the Standard Journal,
“she was 72 years old and thrown in jail. She was there for almost 5 months.”
Hansen felt the need to be true to her ancestor’s story in creating the film. The film will portray
the arrest and imprisonment of Foster. “It’s a pretty honest retelling of it,” she said. The movie
opens with Foster experiencing flashbacks of her family while she is dunked into the water and
accused of being a witch. Hansen admits that the one scene required around 20 takes.
She plans for the audience to leave the film with a desire to make parallels with Anne
Foster’s story to the modern day. “It’s a unique story but we are not necessarily all that different
today.” She said. “We are able to label others and judge them according to how we label them, as opposed
to how things really are.”
Hansen(Left) first wrote “I Be A Witch” as a one-person play that she performed in Rexburg Idaho
and Ogden Utah in 2021. The play received an unexpected amount of positive feedback after its
few performances. A pair of her friends saw her performance and brought up the idea of a film.
Matthew and Cherie Julander from Grizzly Smith Media in Orem Utah were brought on as
writers for the screenplay. An Indiegogo fundraiser for $15,000 in support of the film was
launched and the project received $6000 in a matter of two weeks.
Professional actors were hired and the film was shot in a large garage converted into a sound
stage. A jail cell was built inside of it with removable walls to adapt the set to host other scenes.
Lori Hansen's husband Omar Hansen plays a "torturer" and helped with the movie's production
from beginning to end. Omar Hansen told Standard Journal, “she shot a few commercials and
was wonderful in them. To be the main actor in a feature film – it’s amazing she came to the
task. She’s amazing.”
Omar Hansen taught one of “I Be A Witch” 'film producers and screenwriters Cherie Julander
while she was a student at Brigham Young University of Idaho. While on set it was discovered
that Julanders' ancestors tied back to Anne Foster as well. “She's a different child than I am but
we are both descendants of the same woman,” Says Hansen.
In an interview with East Idaho News, Hansen reports that she will continue to perform “I Be A
Witch” as a one-woman play in the future.
Sources for the article
Source 1
https://www.byui.edu/radio/i-be-a-witch-to-become-a-short-film
Source 2
https://www.rexburgstandardjournal.com/townnews/cinema/i-be-a-witch-film-scheduled-at-roma
nce-theater/article_8ee22378-4db1-11ed-8f80-a31f13fc52e0.htm
Source 3
Interview with Lori Hansen
This is an unpublished News Article that was written for the “Writing For A Communication Career” Course at Brigham Young University in - Fall of 2022.
The objective of the assignment - Developing the skill of writing with the “Inverted Pyramid Scheme” with a focus on news articles.