Experimentation and chance are at the heart of Homegrown Stories, a 13-year online collaborative media project founded by local photographer and video artist Sandy Dyas and filmmaker LeAnn Erickson.
Film
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Worth a Rewatch: A Black American filmmaker shook up the French New Wave with 1967’s ‘The Story of a Three-Day Pass’
The Story of a Three-Day Pass was awarded the critics’ choice award at the 1967 San Francisco International Film Festival, and all of a sudden Melvin Van Peebles found himself in a position that was almost unbelievable. He was a Hollywood darling. A decade before, when Van Peebles went looking for a job in Hollywood, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Worth a Rewatch: ‘The Thing’ finds normal people resisting a violent invasion of their snowy home
There’s nothing like beginning the year at the end of the world. As Iowa City’s FilmScene prepares for its yearly showing with two screenings, how does John Carpenter’s cult classic, a film infamously received as off-putting during the Reagan era, land on our laps as we face our own rising tide of conservatism and real-world violence? […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Little Big Screen: ‘Winter Kills’ and other streaming films that are and aren’t about Jeffrey Epstein
There’s only one hit for “Iowa” in Epstein’s newly available inbox of any interest. I figured Jeffrey Epstein’s 1988 trip to Fairfield, Iowa, would have something to do with the subject line that read, in accordance with email marketing best practices for word count and intrigue, “I beat Bush.” That email from Feb. 3, 2016, […]
Posted inEastern Iowa
Worth a Rewatch: ‘The Idiot’ (1951) is a Kurosawa deep-cut from a Dostoevsky superfan — and an idiotic film studio
Akira Kurosawa seems keenly aware of the improbability of translating literature into film, especially in the case of Dostoevsky, who Kurosawa calls more psychological than visual. But Kurosawa wanted to make The Idiot.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Little Big Screen: Refocus fest highlight ‘Train Dreams’ arrives on Netflix, plus other Denis Johnson adaptations to stream this month
The jangle, hum and hiss of Denis Johnson’s writing, first published when he was a 19-year-old undergrad at the University of Iowa and later stamped with the National Book Award, found me by mistake. “Car-Crash While Hitchhiking,” the short story responsible for Bethany, Missouri’s place in the literary canon, wasn’t supposed to be there. But […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘There is no escapism here’: Cronenberg scholar Violet Lucca on the auteur’s enticing repulsiveness, and how his most ‘offensive’ films are being reevaluated
Cedar Rapidian and University of Iowa alum Violet Lucca’s new book David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials steps past the usual canned controversies, and uses Jungian theory to structure fresh analysis on identity, potentiality and art’s place in human experience. For films often marked as being cold, flagrant or unapproachable, Lucca’s book is like a good friend next to you in a theater…
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: ‘Videoheaven,’ a genre-defying film essay at Refocus, stirred and challenged Iowans’ rental store nostalgia
Do you remember your favorite video store growing up? Director Alex Ross Perry, who recently released his experimental documentary film Pavements, chronicles the now virtually extinct rental shop industry in Videoheaven, a three-hour film that screened at the Refocus Film Festival earlier this month. Fascinatingly, it’s not really a documentary. Videoheaven is uniquely devoted to studying […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: Queer desire ruled at Refocus 2025, from ‘She’s the He’ to ‘Hedda’
The Refocus Film Festival awarded its Audience Choice Award to She’s the He, the debut feature from director Siobhan McCarthy. In it, high school best friends Ethan and Alex find themselves tangled up in a queer coming-of-age. Alex (Nico Carney), desperate to impress his dream girl, insists that they pretend to be trans women in […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Film critic and frequent ‘Filmspotting’ podcast guest Michael Phillips talks adaptations, Trump fatigue and the Refocus film that feels most pertinent
Michael Phillips, former film critic at the Chicago Tribune, is coming back to Iowa City for the Refocus Film Festival. There, he will join UI Professor and Filmspotting co-host Adam Kempenaar for a live taping of the podcast Friday, October 10. Little Village met with Phillips to chat about the festival and reflect on his long career in a fickle field.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Des Moines welcomes back a now-classic, Kurosawa arrives in Iowa City (in 4K), PTA’s first action flick drops and more screenings this month
Hey folks, welcome back to Little Big Screen: On the Big, Big Screen, where film columnist Benjamin McElroy recommends five screenings happening at Iowa’s independent movie theaters. Keep scrolling for the full list of this month’s big screenings.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Little Big Screen: From ‘F1’ to an iconic video-game trailer, watch these Marshalltown native’s movies this month
Nobody makes a Maid-Rite, they’ll tell you, like Taylor’s in Marshalltown. That “they” includes the director of Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski, who hails from the home of the last best loose-meat sandwich.
