Bleeders, a new short film by local filmmaker Carssan T. Morrissey, will premiere at FilmScene in Iowa City Wednesday, following a showing of Evil Dead (2013). The two films are paired together as part of FilmScene’s long-running love letter to niche horror flicks, Late Shift at the Grindhouse. Morrissey’s short film explores consumption, lust and […]
Iowa filmmakers
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‘I’m comfortable here’: Filmmaker Kristian Day makes documentaries in, and about, Iowa
Des Moines-based storyteller Kristian Day has made a name for himself in the world of media production. His bonafides include creating The Last American Gay Bar, a 2024 docuseries for OUTtv covering The Blazing Saddle in Des Moines, and hosting the show Iowa Basement Tapes on KFMG radio, which aims to preserve local DIY music […]
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As filmmakers compete this festival season, DSMUFF offers a DIY, low-pressure alternative
It is far too cliché to begin this story with the same overdone explanation that cool arts stuff does, in fact, occur in the Midwest. So I won’t start there. But I will rant about the thrill of discovering something underground, especially when it’s in a place you least expect it. It feels special, uncovering […]
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Beth M. Howard’s ‘Pieowa’ is the taste-good, feel-good film of the year
It is the first weekend of the Iowa State Fair, and Beth M. Howard is still thinking about pie. “I’ve tried to get away from pie a couple of times,” she said, “and I just keep getting pulled back. I’ve surrendered.” Howard has made a career off the pastry, first by writing a memoir about […]
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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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Lights, camera, inaction: Iowa needs to get back in the blockbuster business
Filmmaking and all of its related fields are perfect for boosting a creative economy. So much so that, 16 years ago, the state of Iowa attempted to brand itself the Hollywood of the Heartland, offering an enticing film tax program. It’s easy to see how this could have worked in the long run. The heralded […]
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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 were slightly concerned about how many people would want to go see the world end […]
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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 of the mountain,” Hunter, a 2007 graduate of the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop, told […]
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World premiere of Iowa-made paranormal thriller ‘Red Sunset Drive’ on Oct. 12
Red Sunset Drive Flix Brewhouse, Des Moines — Saturday, Oct. 12 at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. The film Red Sunset Drive, a paranormal thriller based on the novel by Jan Walters of Indianola, will make its debut just in time for the Halloween season at Flix Brewhouse in Des Moines on Oct. 12. Walters […]
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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 Quiet Place,’ written and produced by Iowans, was made for thriller fans
A Quiet Place, floating on a cloud of high praise and a big opening weekend, has perhaps been overinflated. Nevertheless, the suspense-thriller, penned by Iowan filmmakers, is deliciously unsettling.
