I can’t speak for everyone, but if teenage me found out that there was a secret Playstation clubhouse in my local mall, with an access panel hidden over a toilet, I would have gone through the looking glass in a heartbeat. This is a proposition that 2024 documentary Secret Mall Apartment presents, with Providence, Rhode […]
Vino Vérité
Posted inEastern Iowa
Q&A: Ukrainian filmmaker Maksym Melnyk on his debut doc ‘Three Women’
As a self-described “movie guy,” I’ve often found documentaries a tough genre to break into. My biases often paint them as bleak or sterile looks at how the human race is failing one another. Movies are my means of escaping those harsh realities. Maksym Melnyk is not interested in painting that picture though. His portrait […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Five questions with film editor and UI alum Erin Casper
Film editor and Iowa alum Erin Casper returns to Iowa City on Sunday to participate in the Vino Vérité series at FilmScene. She will be sharing the film Fire of Love, which recently won her the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award at Sundance, and will be doing a Q&A with the audience. Woven together from dramatic […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Quirky, tender ‘The Mole Agent’ marks virtual return of Vino Vérité series
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 […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
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 […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Ethiopian life through the eyes of a precocious and imaginative boy in ‘Anbessa’
FilmScene’s Vino Vérité series presents Anbessa, directed by Mo Scarpelli on July 14. The hors d’oeuvres and wine tasting, part of the experience of the series, start at 6:30 p.m.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Sunshine and rainbow dogs: FilmScene hosts a new doc showcasing creative dog grooming
Canine cosmetology isn’t always shallow or abusive. A new documentary combats stereotypes associated with exhibitionist dog owners while focusing on, arguably, their epitome: competitive creative dog groomers. FilmScene will screen ‘Well Groomed’ on Sunday as part of their Vino Vérité series, co-presented by Bread Garden Market and Little Village.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
RaMell Ross and Bing Liu, two guests of FilmScene’s Vino Vérité series, will compete for an Oscar Sunday
Most of the 2019 Oscar-nominated films have screened at FilmScene in the past year, including four of the five nominees for Best Documentary Feature. The filmmakers behind two of these acclaimed and ambitious docs joined FilmScene audiences months before the Academy Awards lauded their achievements. Bing Liu, director of Minding the Gap, and RaMell Ross, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘Minding the Gap’ between friendship and fulfillment
Minding the Gap is touted as a coming-of-age film, an exploration of manhood in 21st century America. It is definitely those things. But it’s also something more. Or, rather, it takes something more and adds it to what we as viewers should expect from that genre of film.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Vino Vérité presents a grittier sort of foodie documentary
Fans of chef-focused, “food porn” documentaries like Chef’s Table or Anthony Bourdain’s The Mind of a Chef will enjoy 42 Grams, a somewhat gritty documentary following a Chicago chef’s journey from underground food to a critically acclaimed restaurant.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Award-winning documentary ‘For Ahkeem’ to be screened at FilmScene
In the course of two years, teenager Daje Shelton is placed in an alternative high school, attends the funerals of friends shot in the streets of North St. Louis, falls in love, becomes pregnant, struggles towards her uncertain graduation, watches the Ferguson protests — just four miles away — on television and gives birth to a boy, grappling with the reality that her son may fall into the cycle of violence and incarceration in which black men in Missouri have been trapped for decades.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Interview: Filmmaker David Byars discusses the Patriot movement ahead of Vino Vérité’s screening of ‘No Man’s Land’
This Sunday, July 9, documentarian David Byars is bringing his incendiary new film, No Man’s Land, to FilmScene as part of the Vino Vérité series, presented by FilmScene, ‘Little Village’ and Bread Garden Market. Tickets are $20 for FilmScene members, $25 for the general public. The film begins at 7:15 p.m., with hors d’oeuvres & wine tasting preceding at 6:30 p.m. A wine and dessert reception with the filmmaker begins at 8:45 p.m.
