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Landlocked Film Festival set for Aug. 21-24

By Loren Keller

Cops tend to stick together, in this case even the fictional ones.

Nearly half of the actors who portrayed Baltimore Police Department officers in the landmark HBO series “The Wire” will make an appearance in Iowa City next month—at least on film.

If you were a fan of the show, many of the faces in the 57-minute narrative film “Sympathetic Details” will be familiar: those of actors Clarke Peters, Domenick Lombardozzi, Seth Gilliam, Jim True-Frost, Ryan Sands and John Doman.

The film will be screened during the second annual Landlocked Film Festival set for Aug. 21-24 in downtown Iowa City. The film is written and directed by Benjamin Busch, who played the role of narcotics officer Anthony Colicchio (the one wiith the bad military buzzcut) in 19 episodes of the “The Wire.” Busch, who will be on hand to present the film next month, is also son of the late author Frederick Busch, who served as acting director of the creative writing program at the University of Iowa in 1978 and 1979.

“Sympathetic Details” is one of about 70 entries—ranging from three-minute animation productions to two-hour feature length films— that will be screened at places including the Englert Theatre, the Sheraton Hotel, hotelVetro and the Iowa City Public Library.

A complete schedule with locations and times for individual films, panels and workshops is posted on the Summer of the Arts web site.

“There’s so much more to film than what Hollywood has to offer, and I love Hollywood films,” says festival co-director Mary Blackwood. “But there’s so much more out there, and these people need a place to get their stuff out and audiences deserve to see them.”

Blackwood and festival co-founder Bruce Heppner-Elgin were among those who selected the festival offerings from nearly 200 entries.

“We got the same amount of entries as last year but the quality was way up,” Heppner-Elgin says. “We’ve got everything from serious documentaries to family films to horror films to raunchy comedies. You name it, we’ve really got it covered.”

An estimated 1,500 people attended festival screenings last year along with three dozen filmmakers. Backed by the umbrella organization Summer of the Arts this year, organizers are hoping to double the attendance next month.

“We just decided that Iowa City has the wonderful Arts Fest and Jazz Fest; it’s time for a film festival,” says Blackwood. “Iowa City is a community that loves all the arts and people from throughout the Corridor want to come to this stuff.”

Other films to be shown are “The Flyboys,” a feature-length film starring Tom Sizemore and Stephen Baldwin; “Cave Women on Mars” featuring Iowa City native Brooke Lemke; and “Alcatraz Reunion,” a documentary including interviews with former inmates and guards at the notorious San Francisco Bay prison.

The festival will also offer five free workshops open to the public; subjects will include directing, self-distribution, scriptwriting, producing an independent film and documentary structure. Panel discussions will include “How to Attend a Film Festival,” “Stories From the Trenches,” “Documentary Filmmaking,” and “Writing the Script For Your Independent Feature Film.”

“We have experts coming in from both coasts,” says Heppner-Elgin.

Admission to all festival screenings, workshops and panels is free.