Collins Road Theatres was positively buzzing the weekend of April 4-6, and not just because A Minecraft Movie had premiered. The Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival (CRIFF) returned to screen a new slate of original, Midwest-made films inside an unpresuming Marion shopping center. As the lights dimmed for my first film of the fest, I […]
Iowa Film events
Posted inArts & Entertainment
From Cannes to Des Moines, violinist Geneviève Gros-Louis is making sure ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ audiences hear the Osage story
The occasion, as stated on the Varsity Cinema marquee, was the Des Moines premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon, another hefty, late-period offering from Martin Scorsese. Yet the night, and each of the 235 seats in the sold-out theater, belonged to Geneviève Gros-Louis, a Huron-Wendat Nation composer who played violin in the Des Moines […]
Posted inCentral Iowa
Built in 1917, Varsity Cinema is getting a $5 million upgrade thanks to Des Moines film lovers
In the mid-1990s, Ben Godar started making the drive from Ames to Des Moines to go to the Varsity Cinema. “Back then, the Varsity was just one of those places that would get films that nobody else had,” he recalls. Now, as four years of renovations on the Varsity come to a close, Godar, who […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
UI film grad wins back-to-back Grand Jury prizes
The hard work and vision of a UI film grad seems to paying off, as Jesse Kreitzer and his now award-winning short film Black Canaries has been garnering awards from coast to coast. At the 12th annual Holly Shorts Film Festival in Los Angeles last week, Black Canaries took home the Grand Jury prizes for […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Vanguard of a Revolution’: Black Panther doc screens at the IMU
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of a Revolution Iowa Memorial Union — Thursday, Feb. 11 at 4 p.m. You couldn’t ask for better publicity: This past Sunday, Beyoncé took the field in a Superbowl halftime show that, among other things, paid visual homage to the Black Panther legacy. The backlash was swift and astounding. Even today […]
