Watching a contemporary documentary about events unfolding in real time is a surreal exercise that elicits both despair and incredulity. Directors Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger’s film Totally Under Control (2020), available on Hulu, explores the (mis)management of COVID-19 in the United States and deftly investigates the way American politicians and public health […]
Articles by Hannah Bonner
Big pictures, smaller screens: Gearing up for the 17th Annual ICDOCS online

From Thursday, April 30 to Saturday, May 2, the 17th Annual ICDOCS film festival will be presented as a free live-streamed event due to health concerns over the spread of COVID-19. Q&As with the filmmakers following the film screenings will still take place, albeit entirely online. Jurors will also still review programmed films in competition. […]
Tristen Ives’s new film is an exercise in vulnerability and the inexpressible

On Sunday, March 1, at 6 p.m., Public Space One will screen PS1 Free Studio Resident Tristen Ives’ diaristic film take a pic of me and leave me here, a screening and installation that is the culmination of their four-month residency. The screening is free, and patrons should note that 225 and 229 N. Gilbert […]
‘The Assistant’: A snapshot of our current conversation around sexual misconduct (the image isn’t pretty)

Kitty Green’s The Assistant is currently playing at FilmScene on the Ped Mall for the next two weeks. Papercuts are not the only wounds that sear in Green’s masterful and mesmerizing feature film The Assistant (2020). Some hurts are untraceable, undetectable on the surface of one’s skin. While the industrial revolution altered the domestic sphere’s […]
Only connect: FilmScene’s Filmmaker Spotlight showcases ‘Last Chance Tango’

On Monday, Feb. 17 at 6 p.m., FilmScene at the Ped Mall will screen Sonja Strathearn’s feature film Last Chance Tango (2019) as part of their Filmmaker Spotlight series. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Strathearn. More information about the film and her work can be found at her website. A photograph. […]
‘Color Out of Space’ is a psychedelic horror trip you won’t want to end
Acclaimed filmmaker Charles Burnett to receive Cinema Savant award
FilmScene organizers are ‘kids in the candy store’ ahead of The Chauncey’s debut

On Sept. 20-22, Iowa City residents will have the opportunity to attend the grand opening weekend of FilmScene’s new location in the recently raised Chauncey building. The Chauncey is FilmScene’s second space, located off of Gilbert Street in downtown Iowa City; FilmScene will keep their original Ped Mall cinema open as well. The Chauncey
[…]
The evils of white supremacy are on stark display in ‘The Nightingale,’ a grim rape-revenge drama set in colonial Tasmania

On Friday, Aug. 23, FilmScene opened Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale for a limited run. Art house audiences know Kent from her critically lauded horror film The Babadook (2014), which chronicles the mental deterioration of single mother, Amelia, reeling from her husband’s death and desperately struggling to parent her young son. The Nightingale also features a […]
It’s a great day to be a Hawkeye: ‘Ironmen’ local casting call at FilmScene
I learned it at the movies: Scenesters Selects Series kicks off at FilmScene
Eyes wide open: Eagerly awaiting ICDOCS

ICDOCS 2019 Various venues (schedule below) — Thursday, April 18-Saturday, April 20 Jonas Mekas, a quintessential and oft-cited experimental filmmaker, once wrote that American independent cinema exhibitions are “movies which you can’t see anywhere.” Mekas’s sentiment is equally true of the electrifying and eclectic documentary shorts being screened this week for the annual Iowa City […]