Sun Valley Film Festival
Barbara Van Cleve at Sun Valley Film Festival 2025
Barbara Van Cleve, the renowned Western photographer, was featured in the documentary “Hard Twist: Through the Lens of Barbara Van Cleve” at the 2025 Sun Valley Film Festival. This documentary, directed by Cynthia Matty-Huber, provided a portrait of Van Cleve’s creative life, from her upbringing on a Montana ranch to her pioneering role as a chronicler of women in the modern American West. The film is one of the highlights of the festival, which was held from December 3-7, 2025, in Ketchum and Sun Valley.
“Barbara had so much history. I knew there’d be a story.”
Cynthia Matty-Huber
“Hard Twist” director, producer and cinematographer
Dennis Aig, who produced Hard Twist, is a much-honored filmmaker and a Professor Emeritus of film and Photography at Montana State University. He supervised Matty-Huber’s thesis film. Aig is known for producing and co-directing Shadow Casting: the Making of “A river Runs Through It,” producing and directing Visions of Grace: Robert Redford and “The Horse Whisperer,” and producing both Unbranded and Charged: The Eduardo Garcia Story.
“HARD TWIST: THROUGH THE LENS OF BARBARA VAN CLEVE”—This documentary by Cynthia Matty-Huber traces the Western photographer’s creative life from her upbringing as a Montana ranch girl to a pioneering chronicler of women in the modern American West.
The West is a way of life, not a place.