The southeast Iowa town of Fairfield is hosting a film festival tonight and tomorrow featuring a variety of movies, documentaries, shorts, animation and student films. JoBeth Lewer is organizing the fest which includes a movie about a high school baseball team from, Norway, Iowa.
"The Final Season" was produced by a Fairfield native, Steve Schott. Lewer says a documentary done by Leigh Badgley, another former Fairfield resident, is also on the list. She says "The Dolphin Dealer" examines issues and ethics surrounding the billion-dollar swim-with-dolphins industry.
Lewer says Badgley will be in Fairfield for the festival and is planning to host a workshop that will focus on how to get investors and producers interested in your project. Other speakers will include Kent Newman, president of the Iowa Motion Pictures Association, who will talk about the Iowa film, infomercial and commercial scene, Iowa film incentives, and recent Iowa film opportunities and successes. While much of the two-day film festival will be devoted to watching and learning about movies, Lewer says kids won’t be excluded.
There’s also a young people’s film project workshop at the Fairfield Public LIbrary for kids in grades five through eight. They’ll create a three-to-five minute film that’ll be posted on the popular website YouTube. The film festival begins tonight and will run Saturday morning through late Saturday night. It’s part of Fairfield’s First Fridays Art Walks, which take place the first Friday of every month year-round. For more information, visit: www.fairfieldtoday.com .