“I mean, we might as well address the dog in the room,” chuckled Andrew Sherburne, the co-founder of Iowa City’s nonprofit cinema FilmScene. Sherburne and programming director Ben Delgado eagerly await Oct. 17, the opening night of the Refocus Film Festival and the Iowa City premiere of Nightbitch, adapted from Iowa City author Rachel Yoder’s novel.
The canine-centric comedy-horror film directed by Marielle Heller, starring Amy Adams, is the headliner of the 2024 Refocus Fest. But with 30 other films screening across four days, viewers have plenty more to discover once the dog is out of the bag.
In collaboration with the Iowa City Book Festival, Refocus is devoted to the interplay of art forms — after all, Iowa City prides itself on its City of Literature status. It’s for this reason that Refocus specifically chooses films that experiment with the notion of adaptation.
There’s no question that the studio film market is oversaturated with sequels, remakes, reboots, biopics and franchises, all reliant on adaptation. However, Refocus challenges any simplistic approaches to revisiting already-told stories, offering a more thoughtful compromise.
“I think maybe audiences are disappointed when adaptation is not done with curiosity… I think there’s a way to make a derivative adaptation, and sometimes that happens because it’s a cash grab on existing IP,” Sherburne explained. “But there are beloved stories that I think we would all love to see get the big screen treatment. And sometimes, these films have surprising origins on what source material they may come from. I think that relationship between art forms is always gonna be something worth celebrating and investigating as audiences.”
Delgado agreed. “We don’t think of source materials as intellectual property when we’re looking at the films that we’re including, particularly because our definition is also relatively expansive when it comes to what adaptation is. So we’re really kind of highlighting the ways in which film can take other art forms and be molded and shaped into something different.”
Take, for example, the selected films spotlighting Palestinian stories and voices in subversive ways. Kamal Aljafari’s A Fidai Film reconstructs domains of power and visual history by using Lebanese footage the IDF looted from the Palestinian Research Center in 1982. Three Promises offers intimate documentation of the Second Intifada in the West Bank, composed of home videos taken by filmmaker Yousef Srouji’s mother in the 2000s. With major news outlets failing to accurately cover the devastation in Gaza, these films speak to the ways in which Palestinians labor to communicate their reality to the rest of the world.
“To be able to get a very human perspective that also connects us through time is something I’m looking forward to seeing,” Sherburne said.
Another film that should be on the community’s radar is Nickel Boys by RaMell Ross, whose previous film was nominated for an Oscar. Based on the novel by Colson Whitehead about an abusive reform school in Florida, its release was delayed due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes, so it’s definitely a notable inclusion.
Delgado, who could easily give impassioned testimony for each film (as every good programmer should), said one film everyone should see is The Count of Monte Cristo (2024), noting that it is “very much in the mold of Mission: Impossible.”
Refocus also delights in restorations of older films, choosing repertory work that meets their adaptation criteria while featuring a range of cultures. Delgado is looking forward to revisiting the late Shinji Sōmai’s Moving from 1993, about a young Japanese girl witnessing her parents’ divorce. On the other hand, horror fans can delight in the screening of Orson Welles’ The Trial, featuring Anthony Perkins and adapted from Franz Kafka’s novel.
A major element of the festival’s charm is its commitment to the community it serves, and several film selections honor artists who have come through or stayed in Iowa. Graham Swon is a Fairfield resident, and his film An Evening Song (for three voices) was mostly shot on location, capturing a 1939 Midwest landscape in a tale about ephemerality and domestic turmoil. Kerry Howley, who earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa and taught at the school, penned the screenplay for Winner based on her profile of whistleblower Reality Winner. Thanks to an award by the Iowa City Public Art Commission, the festival will also feature a video art installation by Iowa City based filmmaker Ian Bennett.
The Refocus team navigated the pandemic in its first year, 2022, and the strikes in its second. Sherburne and Delgado are still feeling the effects of these events, especially in regard to acquiring films.
“It’s taken a lot of conversations with some of the rights holders for these films to make a case for why this is a great place to showcase the work that they’re trying to bring out in the world and why this festival and our audience are who you want to see your film early,” Sherburne said. “We are still a young festival, and ultimately, not everybody knows what a great community that Iowa City is — that it is a place that can help draw some wanted attention to a film.”
In the spirit of proving Sherburne right about Iowa City cinephiles, you can purchase your pass for the fest online at refocusfilmfestival.org. The fest will run from Thursday, Oct. 17 until Sunday, Oct. 20, and there are three tiers of passes to choose from. There’s nothing like spending a weekend connecting with films you may not have otherwise encountered. A new blockbuster hits the megaplex every week, but Refocus comes just once a year.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s October 2024 issue.
