Professor Yeti

Iowa doesn’t tend to get a lot of film festivals. Nor does Iowa tend to get a high percentage of festival films that eventually get a theatrical run. In fact, you’re pretty lucky if your town has a movie theater, period. Having spent much of the past four years near the Twin Cities I’ve become accustomed to a much larger selection of independent and small-budget movies in the theater, so coming home to Iowa (for this and other reasons) is always a little bit of a culture shock for me.

You can then imagine my excitement when I first read about the Hardacre Film Festival, which occurs each August in Tipton, Iowa, just 75 miles from my house, a fairly short trip around here. However, since finding out about this unexpected event several seasons ago, I’ve had a near impossible time getting there. It seems every year I’m either out of town or working or just generally unavailable.

Of course, I knew it was coming around some time this year, but despite keeping an eye out for any mention of it in the newspaper I had no clue when the film festival would be taking place. I’d just returned from visiting relatives in Ohio when I heard an interview on the local NPR station with Troy Peters, the curator of the film festival, which mentioned that the first film would be starting in a few hours! Reviewing the information I could find on the internet, I decided it would be prudent to skip the Friday night session and head up on Saturday. The website suggested with a sinister lack of clarity that reserved tickets might be required. I tried calling the listed phone number many times but never got through, but I decided to go anyway.

By the time I got there I realized that of course tickets would be available. As mentioned above, this festival takes place in the middle of nowhere, so attendance per show never exceeded double digits. The festival takes its name from the old Hardacre Theater on the town square in Tipton (pop. 3200) which has a 25 foot-deep stage in front of the screen. There was a PA system set up in order to facilitate the many entries on DVD, which were projected from a makeshift set-up near the front of the balcony. An atmosphere of goodspirited underfundedness prevailed, which fit the setting perfectly.

Looking at the schedule, I realized that by arriving after the noon lunch break on Saturday, I’d missed most of the 16 and 35mm entries, which I somewhat regretted. I’d also missed a feature-length film noir starring only sock puppets and a documentary on Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s Iowa-born secretary of agriculture and later vice-president, but I still managed to catch the majority of the festival. The first film I saw, at 53 minutes long, was a documentary by Max Allan Collins, whom I knew was both an Iowan and author of the graphic novel Road to Perdition. Unfortunately his film, a biography of V.T. Hamlin who created the comic strip Alley Oop, bored me greatly, and his question and answer session afterwards did nothing to change my attitude.

Luckily for me, almost all of the other films were better or at least more exciting or interesting. Shell Ear, by Japanese filmmaker Satoru Sugita, consisted of a gorgeous half-hour of sometimes loosely associated images inspired by Mark Rothko. The film had a weak storyline, but I didn’t require one in order to enjoy the beautiful photography washing over me. The next couple of short films were also experimental, one a dance-based piece shot in black and white to look like it was from the 20s, reportedly inspired by choreographer Margaret Morris, but as I’d taken an avant-garde film class last spring, Maya Deren¹ was the name in the back of my mind.

Perhaps most appropriate to the festival was a 38-minute documentary about the Iowa State Fair. Made by an Iowa native who had moved to Boston before returning to shoot the film, it maintained just the right balance of sincere appreciation and lighthearted mockery: What could be more simultaneously terrific and ridiculous than Joe Lieberman being challenged to consume a fried Twinkie, or the sight of a life-sized cow sculpted from butter? Although several of the films were shot in Iowa, considering the actual state fair was to commence in only a few days, this film most effectively rooted the festival both in time and place.

The festival included a number of student films, most from the nearby University of Iowa which tended to be hit-or-miss, but there was also a terrific six-minute faux-German expressionist film, called The Headmaster’s Son, from a junior at USC. Although he emphasized that he’d received only 1200 feet of film to work with and had to do a lot of the shots in a single take, the filmmaker also mentioned that by necessity a lot of planning had gone into the film, which was evident. The requisite contrast between light and shadow was greatly emphasized and the headmaster was an appropriately unholy terror of a father, not to mention the odd Caligari-esque sets constructed by the filmmaker.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also bring up RUCKUS!, a highly polished mockumentary of a wannabe boy band, starring the writer-director. The same goes for two very short but effective films from New York City, one about the closing of an old lunch counter on 42nd Street and one a clever portrait of the rat race of living in the city, which was narrated by a panhandler who had opted out for a different sort of life. Riding Giants, a surfing documentary which I loved, was screened at the end of the day, though I’m not sure just how it made its way to the Hardacre Film Festival.

The film I’ll probably remember longest was a documentary called Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea. Though I’d heard the name before, I didn’t know what the Salton Sea was, exactly. Apparently it’s a 35-mile long body of water created by accident from a canal east of San Diego and is now sustained by agricultural run-off. It’s also an “ecological disaster” with water too salty for fish to thrive in, resulting in millions of dead tilapia appearing on shore from time to time, as well as severe consequences for the waterfowl in the area.

More interesting than the environmental consequences, though, were the population who lived on the shore of the Salton Sea. Before storms wreaked ecological havoc, it was one of the most popular resort areas in southern California. Now, though, the remaining communities are all hovering just above “ghost town” status, with literally tens of thousands of unsold allotments in abandoned subdivisions that were scrapped when the lake became unusable. The people that remain are all colorful, some deluded, some resigned to their fate, but almost all resentful that state and federal governments have ignored their plight. I might also have been swayed by the amazing indie rock soundtrack (Friends of Dean Martinez, Calexico, Yo La Tengo, etc.), but definitely make an attempt to see this film if you get a chance.

What’s more, if you’re anywhere in the vicinity, do what you can to get to the Hardacre Film Festival. It’s not flashy, it has no important premieres, and there’s frankly not a lot else going on in Tipton, but it’s a really good time. The state government in Des Moines is constantly looking for ways to fight the “brain drain” in Iowa, as I’m sure is the case in many other agriculturally based states, and a lot of times the ideas they come up are either impractical or ineffective. Supporting events like this, though, would certainly be a start.

Andy Slabaugh curated the world’s smallest film festival this past June.

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1. Deren was essentially the progenitor of the American avant-garde film movement in the 1940s, a trained dancer who emphasized choreographed movement in her silent, dream-like films.

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