Landlocked Film Festival

Editor’s Note: A summer full of festivals winds down this week with the second annual Landlocked Film Festival. This year, Iowa City’s umbrella organization Summer of the Arts wove Landlocked into the fold, giving the fledgling festival a bigger profile than last year’s inaugural event. In our August issue, we previewed two Iowa Film Festivals, Landlocked and Hardacre, here’s what we said:

If when you hear about a film festival in Iowa you think, “That’s all well and good; but I don’t really feel up for seeing some low-level movies that didn’t make the cut elsewhere,” then let me disabuse you. The Hardacre Film and Cinema Festival (August 1-2 in Tipton) and the Landlocked Film Festival (August 21-24 in Iowa City) are both places where you can get in touch with the real excitement of the movies. If you go to either, you’ll find yourself in an old, beautiful theater, watching movies truly in the dark, not knowing what’s going to happen, but surprised, delighted, and moved by what does. When I go to a summer blockbuster, I know exactly what I’m getting into; the only question is: will it be a disappointment? At Hardacre or Landlocked, the movies—narrative features, documentaries, shorts, animation, and experimental movies—aren’t made to order: they still have the sense of adventure that movie-lovers treasure. Hardacre is the more discriminating of the two festivals: you can’t go wrong. Landlocked, though, is the broader: you have the chance to dip in here and there and make your own discoveries. In both festivals your odds are good of running into a director or a star. You’ll leave proud to be an Iowan.