The Video Home System, or VHS, format was introduced in the late ’70s, revolutionizing the way people consumed movies. DVD would usurp it at the turn of the century, of course, but you’re hard-pressed to find a Gen Xer or millenial without at least a little video cassette nostalgia. Gen Z has shown an appetite […]
Iowa Film History
Posted inArts & Entertainment
A project led by two Iowa City filmmakers, 13 years in the making, is welcome in both art galleries and film fests
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.
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa’s last adult movie theater attracted loners and swingers alike in Waterloo
When my friends and I turned 18 in the early aughts, we decided we were tired of our parents’ basements. We found our new hang on the north side of Cedar Rapids. Sure, Adult Shop North was the place where people in town picked up their lubricants, toys and triple-X movies, but it also had […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Pulitzer-winning novelist Edna Ferber’s painful time in Ottumwa shaped her as an artist and ‘a human being’
“Life can’t ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer’s lover until death — fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant; the more varied the moods, the richer the experience. I’ve learned to value every stab of pain and disappointment.” —Edna Ferber Edna Ferber (1885-1968) was […]
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Peek inside the Ecdysiast Arts Museum, Danielle Colby’s dazzling Davenport destination
It was hard to find time to chat with television personality Danielle Colby, and that’s expected. While most of us know her as an American Pickers cast member, Colby’s added a new role that’s filling her schedule: burlesque archivist. Davenport residents can see the fruits of Colby’s labor at the Ecdysiast Arts Museum, located at […]
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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.
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The 25th Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival featured stories local, global and out of this world, all with an Iowa connection
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 […]
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David Lynch’s Iowa odyssey
David Lynch, who was called “America’s first surrealist filmmaker” by actor Dennis Hopper, died in Los Angeles at age 78 on Jan. 16, four days shy of his 79th birthday. Known for films such as Mulholland Drive (2001), he gained a new audience during the COVID pandemic as the internet’s favorite weatherman, streaming daily reports from “Here in sunny L.A.” on his YouTube channel.
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: A Hollywood legend lost in Davenport
On Nov. 29, 1986, Cary Grant died in the city of Davenport at the age of 82. Grant was a star of stage, screen and that one image of him running away from a crop duster that shows up in every #menswear blog at one point or another. He was preparing a one-man show at […]
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A-List: ‘Saving Brinton’ explores a forgotten chapter of the silent film era
Setting up in small towns from Minnesota to Texas, the Brintons’ traveling cinema show was for most Midwesterners of the era a first encounter with moving images. Unfortunately, in 1919, seemingly at the height of the traveling show’s popularity, Frank Brinton passed away. When his wife died in 1955, her estate’s executor moved the collection to his basement — where it remained until Mike Zahs learned of its existence in 1981.
