Earlier in October, FilmScene hosted its 3rd annual Refocus Film Festival in Iowa City. I was able to attend with a four-film pass through FilmScene’s partnership with the Stanley, and watched a different film each day of the festival. In this blog post, I’ll walk you through my weekend with Refocus, giving my thoughts on each film I saw and making recommendations based on other films I’ve seen.
Nightbitch (2024)
Thursday 10/17 7:00pm
After its trailer drew quite a bit of criticism online, I wasn’t sure what to expect as I arrived at the Englert for Nightbitch on opening night of the festival. The film contains a strange premise: the mother of a toddler (a nameless Mother, played wonderfully by Amy Adams) transforms into a dog in the night, hence, Nightbitch. The film deals with the unique yet widely-experienced struggles of motherhood: finding an equitable balance between parents, maintaining an identity outside of being a mother, and finding a community of people who can share in the experience of motherhood. In this film, Mother’s journey towards these experiences is helped along by her nighttime transformations, which emphasize the animalistic aspects of motherhood. The concept of the woman-to-dog transformation might seem absurd, but Adams is who really sells this for me– her performance is so nuanced, even the shortest reaction shots showing the slight widening of her eyes or shaping of her mouth convey so much. She commits fully to the transformations and no sense of hesitation is felt in her performance. I don’t know if another performer could have achieved what Adams does in this film.
As an adaptation of a novel (author Rachel Yoder, now a UI screenwriting professor, was present for a Q&A after the screening), Nightbitch relies heavily on voiceover to present carefully-chosen language. A few instances of imagined sequences of earnest, laid-bare dialogue are followed up by what ‘really happened’, and these scenes garnered some of the biggest laughs of the night. The film teeters on camp in some moments and almost dives into body horror in others, and I do wish it went further in either or both directions, because I thought those were the most defining and exciting moments of the screening.
You might like Nightbitch if you like: Barbie (it’s a little preachy in the same way, sorry, but if you like it in Barbie you might like it in this), Marriage Story, Arrival (or any other great Amy Adams performance, but that one’s my fav)
Pavements (2024)
Friday 10/18 9:30pm
Pavements was my personal favorite of the films I saw at this year’s festival. It’s super odd; a music documentary supplemented with scenes from a fake museum, fake biopic, and fake jukebox musical. I’m a pretty casual Pavement fan; I like their music but I haven’t heard it all. At times, I didn’t know what was real and what was fake in this film due to my lack of knowledge of true Pavement lore. That was a fun and thought-provoking experience for me, but I imagine it could be annoying to some viewers who also don’t know a ton about Pavement.
I thought the casting of the faux aspects of this film was stellar. The cast of the fake biopic is great, but it’s Joe Keery (as himself as Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, in the fake biopic) who really shines comedically here. I also loved seeing real bands (Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail) as featured performers covering Pavement songs in the museum segments.
I’m a big fan of documentaries that play with the line between fact and fiction, which is probably the main reason why I loved this film. The Watermelon Woman is a film I watched in class my freshman year that made me realize the possibilities of the fake-doc mode, and movies in this style always really surprise me with what they accomplish. In this movie in particular, I thought the simultaneous use of fact and fiction was a great way to avoid some of the typical pitfalls of music documentaries (and a fun way to make fun of music biopics, which usually deserve your hate). The movie is probably a little too long, but with so much going on, it stays fun and interesting throughout and I would certainly recommend giving it a watch.
You might like Pavements if you like: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Stop Making Sense, This Is Spinal Tap, Dick Johnson Is Dead
Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) with live score by Marc Ribot
Saturday 10/19 1:30pm
I saw Aelita in preparation for an upcoming episode of Sounding Cinema, the film music podcast I work on with Dr. Nathan Platte and other students for my OUR fellowship. Aelita is a silent film, and this screening was accompanied live by the noise guitarist Marc Ribot. The film I saw was an abridged version of the original that clocked in around an hour, and there was a brief Q&A with Ribot following the screening.
I wrote down notes on my phone following the screening, and one line just said, “Communism??” In the film, an engineer named Los daydreams about Mars. He dreams that its queen, Aelita, sees Earth through a telescope, sees him, and falls in love with him. He dreams that he travels to Mars, where they fall in love and lead a revolt against the ruler of Mars. However, after overthrowing the ruler, Aelita declares herself in power. This seizing of power disgusts Los so much that he kills Aelita. He stops daydreaming, reminded by his wife that there are more important things to do.
The propagandic message was clear, but to me the plot in this film was really just a vehicle for audio and visuals. The production design of Mars was gorgeous. The stone walls are reminiscent of brutalist architecture before it was popularized and the spiky, geometric costumes create a distinct, non-Earthly style for the people of Mars. But the sound was the real treat in this screening. Ribot used the electric guitar in interesting and percussive ways. Sliding pitches, plenty of reverb, a few recurring motifs and a lot of improvisation created this lively performance. Distortion and modification helped the sound to reflect the shininess and angularity of Mars.
It was hard to think of any films I’ve seen that remind me of Aelita! I haven’t seen a lot of films made before 1940, and I realized while looking for films to recommend that Aelita: Queen of Mars is actually the oldest feature-length film I’ve ever seen! You might like Aelita: Queen of Mars if you like: Fantastic Planet, Battleship Potemkin
Plastic (2023)
Sunday 10/20 4:00pm
As an adaptation, this is such an interesting film. The whole thing is a vehicle for Kensuke Ide’s concept album Strolling Planet ‘74, and that music becomes the music of fictional 1970s glam-rock band Exne Kedy. Teens Jun and Ibuki meet and bond over their shared love for the group and soon fall in love, but struggles of adulthood cause them to drift apart. A few years later, Exne Kedy has a reunion concert, and the film ends wondering whether this event will bring the pair back together.
The story is nothing too groundbreaking, but it’s warm and homey, and feels familiar in a good way. One unique aspect here is that part of the film takes place during the pandemic. I feel like a lot of people don’t like when media mentions Covid-19, but I really think that time is underutilized in film and TV. So many interesting things happened to how we communicate, relate to one another, and understand the purpose of our lives during that time, and I think this film did a good job at looking at how those breaks in connection and digitizing of all communication can change relationships. A thought I had walking home from this screening was that this movie gets what it feels like to meet someone who likes the same music as you, and it gets how one album can become a soundtrack to a period of life. The film didn’t leave me pondering too much, but I did really enjoy the experience of watching this.
You might like Plastic if you also like: Rye Lane, Juno, Lady Bird
It was a pleasure to attend the Refocus Film Festival and see a variety of unique films throughout the weekend. I hope my musings helped you find one you might like to see!
About Abbie McLaren
Abbie McLaren is a senior double majoring in Cinema and Journalism and Mass Communication on the production/design track. She is the Digital Media Director for SCOPE Productions and an active member of the Presidential Scholars Program as an outreach co-chair. She enjoys taking photos and making videos, going to movies and concerts, cooking, running, and watching too much TV.
As the museum programs intern, Abbie assists with all aspects of public programming: making scavenger hunts and self-guided tours, shooting and editing lecture videos, putting events on the calendar, and everything in between. Her favorite part of her job is attending events and learning new things from the wide variety of speakers the SMA hosts.