Film and book lovers descended on downtown Iowa City this past weekend for the return of the Refocus Film Festival. Attendees were treated to dozens of film screenings, performances by local artists and dialogues with legendary figures like Werner Herzog and John Irving.
The festival, which took place Oct. 12 through 15, was presented by FilmScene, Iowa City’s local, nonprofit cinema.
Now in its second year, Refocus welcomed more than 3,700 people over the course of four days for a variety of events celebrating the art of adaptation. The lineup included 17 new feature films, four short films and four restorations. Curated conversations, art installations and evening celebrations were open to the public.
FilmScene’s executive director and co-founder, Andrew Sherburne, said the goal was to create a place for the community to gather and share a love of the arts.
“More than anything, we want everyone to just have a great time and feel enriched and inspired by the weekend,” Sherburne said. “Another big goal is to make sure that we're bringing cinema that really is worthy of a festival. We play 500 movies year round in total, so the 25 films that we played during this weekend, we want them to be in conversation with each other — to inspire us artistically, but also to speak about the world that we live in.”
From page to screen: the evolution of the Refocus Film Festival
This year marks the second annual Refocus Film Festival hosted by FilmScene, but the festival’s history dates back to the 1960s.
Students and staff at the University of Iowa founded the original Refocus festival, which ran from 1965 through 1979 and showcased film and still photography, according to the University of Iowa Archives. Notable speakers included Robert Altman, A.D. Coleman and Robert Redford.
Its short-lived presence on campus came to an abrupt end in 1979, when funding was cut two weeks before the spring festival. The festival took place, but suffered cancellations from guest speakers that included Kurt Vonnegut, George Roy Hill and Orson Welles.
Sherburne called the new iteration of the festival an incarnation of the original, pointing to their shared focus on two mediums.
“We loved the idea of it. We loved the name and wanted to just pay tribute to that history,” Sherburne explained. “Even then it was about two art forms and the interplay between them.”
Today’s Refocus Film Festival is dedicated to the art of adaptation, whether that be from books, short stories, songs, graphic novels or found footage. The festival’s focus on adaptations is especially fitting, given Iowa City’s reputation as a literary hub and its connections to the world-renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop
When launching the festival last year, Sherburne said it was important for FilmScene to define their purpose and ask themselves how they were going to stand out.
“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of film festivals in America,” he said. “How are we going to be unique? What was our reason for being? We didn't want to have a festival just to have a festival. A lot of festivals really serve their local community, so it's about providing access to art and cinema that might not otherwise come to that community.”
Liz Gilman is the Film Commissioner at Produce Iowa, a sponsor of FilmScene and the Refocus Film Festival. She said her office supports film projects across the state, with the goal of growing and sustaining a vibrant film community.
“I really encourage everyone to work together,” she said. “And the great thing is, the roughly 15 film festivals around the state, they don't look at each other as competition. They're supportive of each other."
This year’s lineup and special guests
The 2023 Refocus Film Festival featured an array of Iowa premieres and curated classics. The lineup included new films from legendary directors Errol Morris and the late Jean-Luc Godard, international award-winning films The Taste of Things and About Dry Grasses and Eileen, a new drama starring Anne Hathaway.
Opening night festivities kicked off at the Englert Theatre on Thursday with a film adaptation of Sara Varon’s graphic novel Robot Dreams. The film uses animation to tell the story of an inseparable friendship between a dog and a robot in 1980s New York City. Varon participated in a Q&A after the screening and a conversation about the creative process with other artists during one of the weekend’s coffee sessions.
Saturday’s showcase featured the Oscar-winning film The Cider House Rules, which screened at the Chauncey. The movie, first released in 1999, is based on the acclaimed yet controversial novel by Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumnus John Irving, who won an Academy Award for his adapted screenplay. The story centers on a doctor at an orphanage in Maine who performs illegal abortions during World War II.
Irving addressed the audience after the screening to share behind-the-scenes details about the film’s early troubled production, which went through four directors over 14 years. Irving shared that one of those directors tried to fire him, so he fired the director.
“I told him he was fired, but why should he believe me? He was the director. Writers don’t fire directors,” Irving comically recalled.
The film was ultimately directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallström and starred Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Delroy Lindo and Charlize Theron.
Irving explained that finding a leading man to play the doctor turned out to be harder than he imagined. Stars that turned down the role included Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman and Paul Newman.
“Paul was interested in the part of Dr. Larch. The reason he was interested in the first place is that Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were big pro-choice supporters. It was not easy to find pro-choice supporters in those days among well-known American movie stars,” Irving recounted. “But Joanne said, ‘I don't want Paul to do this. Someone will kill him.’ And it was the first time it occurred to me that the actor who played Dr. Larch might be vulnerable to the vehement, anti-abortion pro-life people.”
Werner Herzog: The man, the myth, the legend
On the festival’s closing night, more than 700 attendees gathered in the Englert Theatre for a live conversation with director and author Werner Herzog. The legendary German filmmaker was presented with the Cinema Savant Award, an honor given by FilmScene to film icons.
Herzog is considered a pioneer of the New German Cinema, a filmmaking movement between 1962 and 1982 that was influenced by the arthouse films of the French New Wave. His films often explore existential themes, many of which center on humankind’s relationship with nature. Although his films deal with bleak subject matter, Herzog occasionally provides moments of levity through dark and surreal humor.
Herzog is perhaps best known for his gravelly voice-over narration that often conveys nihilistic and existential musings in his documentary films — a signature trademark that has made him an unlikely icon in popular culture.
Despite his accomplished career as a filmmaker, Herzog was primarily interested in talking about his writing on Sunday night, including his new memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All.
Following the presentation of the Cinema Savant Award, Herzog was joined on stage by Romanian-American poet Andrei Codrescu for an in-depth interview, which included selected readings from several of Herzog’s books.
Codrescu began the interview by addressing the reputation of Iowa City as a city of literature, and Herzog’s dual careers as a filmmaker and writer.
“Because this stage is in Iowa City, a famous nursery for writers, and the film artist is Werner Herzog, a man known for keeping it fresh by going against convention, we are going to defy expectations and speak less of film and more about writing and literature,” Codrescu stated.
When asked about his legacy as a filmmaker, Herzog explained that his writing has always been more important to him.
“When you make a film, many things are in between: finances, organizations, technology, camera work, editing, writing, directing, crazy actors — you just name it,” Herzog said. “You have to domesticate it all with your writing, and that’s the beauty of what we are doing. You can be anywhere and just scribble something down on a piece of paper. I always had this feeling that I'm still convinced after the last books that they would live longer than my films. And it shouldn't puzzle you because I have a very simple way to explain it: my films are my voyage, and writing is home.”
His new memoir is a stream-of-consciousness collection of memories, ranging from his poverty-stricken childhood in Germany during World War II to his infamous relationship with the actor Klaus Kinski to unrealized projects.
Herzog told IPR’s Charity Nebbe on Talk of Iowa that the Midwest has special meaning to him.
“Iowa City is not Hollywood. It’s a place of writing, of people who read, people who are interested in literature, so it’s a good place for me,” Herzog said. “I love the Heartland of America. That’s why I really want to stop by.”
Iowa City was one of five stops on his otherwise coastal book tour.
Showcasing up-and-coming talent
In addition to featuring iconic film and literary figures, this year’s Refocus Film Festival also provided a platform for up-and-coming artists to showcase their new projects.
Brian Becker is an archival producer and director who visited the festival with his new film Time Bomb Y2K, an archival documentary chronicling the events leading up to the turn of the millennium.
Becker co-directed the film along with Marley McDonald, and it will be available on HBO later this year. Becker said he was fortunate to have HBO as a partner for this project.
“It's the best possible outcome, and we've loved working with them,” Becker said. “HBO has a long track record of making documentaries that experiment with form and that are a little weirder, and they gave us the space to make our weird Y2K disaster film that is also fun and funny and has an amazing electronic soundtrack and is all archival and has no interviews with people.”
Director Jason Pitts and actor James Stokes attended the festival with their new horror film Voorhees: Night of the Beast, which is an unauthorized fan film adapted from the original Friday the 13th.
Pitts said he has always wanted to direct a movie with Jason Voorhees, and Stokes has always wanted to play him. So, naturally, the two got together in 2021 and made it happen.
To prepare for the role as Voorhees, the masked killer, Stokes said he revisited all the movies from the Friday the 13th franchise.
“I grew up with Friday the 13th, watching all the horror films and all that,” Stokes said. “So when Jason [Pitts] came to me and asked me to play the role, I immediately went and watched every film from the very first one all the way to the last one.”
Pitts said the screening of their movie on Friday at FilmScene was both the Iowa premiere and likely their biggest audience yet. It was also a serendipitous date to screen the movie. Last Friday fell on... Oct. 13.
The future of the festival
According to Sherburne, the attendance at this year’s Refocus Film Festival doubled from last year, which he said is a promising sign that they will continue to grow.
“Not only do we feel like this is appropriate for this town and its artistic appreciation and connections, but the audiences here are curious. They're smart,” he said. “They are tastemakers. A lot of the people who come through this community and this campus are helping decide what American culture is talking about.”
He added that attendees can look forward to the Refocus Film Festival returning each fall for years to come.
Jerry Weiss, a long-time FilmScene patron, traveled with his wife from Albany, NY, to attend this year's festival.
“We made it a point that this year we were going to come,” Weiss said. “It's like you're at a major film festival. The people are really the energy and the driving force here at FilmScene – people with incredible backgrounds – and just the effort and the ingenuity it takes to create a festival and films of such diversity.”
Liz Gilman of Produce Iowa said festivals like this one help connect the film community in the state, while also promoting Iowa as a destination for out-of-state filmmakers.
“It's really a good gateway to get filmmakers to know about Iowa and to come here,” Gilman said. “And it showcases that Iowans love film.”
FilmScene and Refocus Film Festival are sponsors of Iowa Public Radio.
