Today, Oct. 23, marks the FilmScene debut of The Mole Agent, a film that serves as the first ever Virtual Vino Vérité (“online wine and cinematic realism,” essentially, for all those who just mind-mumbled right over that). Co-sponsored by Bread Garden Market and Little Village, Vino Vérité traditionally involves a catered reception with a filmmaker […]
FilmScene
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FilmScene launches new app-based program to watch curated films at home
To many Iowans, fall is movie season. From Halloween slashers to the Oscar contenders released just before the holidays, a dark movie theater offers respite from the oncoming cold and a momentary trip to another (perhaps warmer) world. Given 2020’s constant apocalyptic newsfeed and a life-or-death election on the near horizon, there has never been […]
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Downtown Iowa City Arts Showcase: The artists behind FilmScene’s promotional trailers
When you sit down for a show at FilmScene, you see more than local commercials and dancing concession stand treats before the movie. FilmScene Marketing Manager Stacia Rain and Projection and Programming Assistant Dominick Shults combine their artistic skills to create specialized trailers, programs, stickers and more for the nonprofit’s film series — including, and […]
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FilmScene builds community online amid COVID-19 closures
As local businesses, restaurants and schools have closed their physical doors for COVID-19, the question of how to continue operations has been a big one. FilmScene, whose doors have been closed for just over a month now, turned to a virtual setting as a solution. In the past weeks, FilmScene has transitioned to virtual movie […]
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Fact and fiction intersect to find truth in ‘Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets’
Vino Vérité returns for 2020 this weekend with Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets. Directors Bill and Turner Ross will be in attendance for a Q&A following the screening. The series, presented by FilmScene, Bread Garden Market and Little Village, presents films in the vérité tradition paired with hors d’oeuvres, wine and desserts. Tickets are $20 for […]
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‘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 […]
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‘Cats’ is back out of the bag as FilmScene hosts four special screenings
“You will believe,” promised the first trailer for Tom Hooper’s Cats, the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical, itself adapted from T.S. Eliot’s collection of poems Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. There was something ominous, perhaps even mildly threatening about this tagline. What will we believe? That the strangest Broadway hit of all time would make a good movie?
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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. […]
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The Oscars did something right! FilmScene audiences cheered for ‘Parasite,’ honored snubbed films Sunday
All of Hollywood is nursing a hangover, so you know what that means: It’s the Monday after the Academy Awards! After a disappointing 2019 Oscars (including a Best Picture winner that was more than a little controversial) and a slate of 2020 nominees rife with snubs, cinephiles’ were tempered last night
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The Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts challenge viewers to face the many forms of grief
Perhaps more than any of the other 23 categories, the Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts come with the promise of fresh, risk-taking perspectives. The medium of animation is truly limitless, and for being so constrained within the mainstream, there is something liberating to view the artistic shorts explore, push and reinvent themselves for the betterment of their own narratives.
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Oscar-nominated Live Action Shorts call us to tap into our ability to care
The Oscar-nominated Live Action Shorts program as a whole, though the most uneven of the three Shorts categories, is a winner. A meditation on danger, safety and choices, it presents itself to the viewer only occasionally with judgement. The strongest argument for the short film format is right here in front of us within this programming.
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Oscar Documentary Shorts urge audiences to embrace hope
This year’s slate for Best Documentary Shorts provides insight into the world’s desperate need for justice and the hope it drags behind it. Is that too bleak? Too cynical? Would you prefer hope to be leading rather than limp and full of grass stains? So do the five films nominated this year. They urge us to embrace hope of any kind, even if it’s reactionary.
