Tickets now on sale for Members. Public sale: noon, Wednesday, October 4

Presented by Bread Garden Market, Little Village, Witching Hour and FilmScene

Witching Hour event:
Saturday, October 21, 9pm
Show your Witching Hour festival pass for admission. Public rush admission at the door 10 minutes before showtime.

Vino Vérité event:
DIALOGUE: Director Viktor Jakovleski in person
Sunday, October 22, 7pm

The first selection of our third season is a transcendent experience of light and sound. Viktor Jakovleski's debut doc comes to Iowa City the same week it premieres in New York and Los Angeles. Get ready for 67 minutes of cinematic pyrotechnics.

The Vino Vérité series features talented new voices and established filmmakers influenced by the vérité tradition in person to present their thought-provoking, chance-taking, and visually-arresting films. Each selection is paired with hand-selected wines from Bread Garden Market.

Tickets: $25 public / $20 for members. Includes wine tasting, film, hors d'oeuvres and filmmaker reception.

6:30 Hors d'oeuvres & wine tasting
7:00 Theater open for seating
7:15 Screening
8:30 Q&A + Reception with filmmaker, wine and dessert

BRIMSTONE & GLORY

"Mixing sheer spectacle with human-interest threads, Viktor Jakovleski’s first directorial feature is a poetical, entrancing documentary." —Variety

On-screen fireworks have never been so literal and so captivating as they are in this visually and aurally immersive portrait of a town with a divine legacy of pyrotechnics. Director Jakovleski wastes little time with set-up as he takes audiences on a pulse-pounding trip to the National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico.

In celebration of San Juan de Dios, patron saint of firework makers, conflagrant revelry engulfs the town every year. More than three quarters of Tultepec’s residents work in pyrotechnics, making the festival a celebration that anchors a way of life built around a generations-­old business of making fireworks by hand.

Following the flaming toros into the belly of the beast, the film builds to an early crescendo that sustains, like any good finalé, for an extended climax of light and sound that echoes the religious experience of the festival goers.

"Brimstone & Glory is community as catharsis, and you can’t stop staring in stupefied astonishment." —Paste Magazine

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Viktor Jakovleski, born in West Berlin in 1983, attended the German Film and Television Academy Berlin, spent time as a Hollywood personal assistant and driver, and worked with Benh Zeitlin as a co-producer and assistant director on the short film "Glory at Sea" (2008). He is a producer of German feature "LenaLove," which opened in theaters 2016. His documentary feature "Brimstone and Glory" was produced with the Court 13 collective. Viktor’s new project centers on artist Julius von Bismarck and his dangerous expedition to the most lightning prone area in the world in Venezuela.

True / False Film Festival (2017) — World Premiere
Hot Docs Film Festival (2017) — Official Selection
San Francisco Film Festival (2017) — Official Selection

"In Brimstone & Glory, Jakovleski has created a powerful, joyous first feature, full of the sorts of visuals that linger behind your eyelids long after the film is over. The fireworks themselves fade quickly, but the impression they make remains." —Vox