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As ‘Oppenheimer’ drops, local cinemas focus in on nuclear films, Iowa’s atomic history

With the highly anticipated premiere of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer on the summer calendar, FilmScene staffer Lee Sailor decided to curate a Nuclear Movies series over a few weeks in July. The Iowa City cinema’s series typically last longer, but “we […]

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Samuel D. Hunter, UI grad and playwright behind ‘The Whale,’ talks friendship with Brendan Fraser, writing ‘autofiction’ and falling in love in Iowa

Before The Whale became an Oscar-nominated film, playwright Samuel D. Hunter briefly believed the play had reached its pinnacle. “Having the show at one of my favorite theaters, Playwrights Horizons, here in the city, a 125-seat theater, was the top […]

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What the Living Do: Mike Gibisser’s ‘World of Facts’

Filmmaker Mike Gibisser’s ‘World of Facts’ (2018), filmed in Iowa City, is not a meditation on grief so much as a metabolizing of it. “I like that word,” Gibisser says. “Maybe because it suggests how the waiting becomes part of you, part of your routine.” […]

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Five questions with: Marta Renzi

The Iowa International ScreenDance Festival celebrates its third year this weekend, with 125 entries from 25 different countries screening at FilmScene on Saturday and Sunday, April 28 and 29. Part of the 12th annual Iowa Dance Festival (which runs May 11-12), ScreenDance films will also be shown in Mexico City this year, in August. […]

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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. […]

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