♪♪ On this visit to The Film Lounge -- An immigrant finds himself in a beautiful but isolating new place.

A mixed martial artist wrestles with his purpose.

An artist longs to continue her work.

Behind-the-scenes of a visual effects short shot in an Iowa basement.

A woman toils with her identity and her talents.

And a retiree finds a new hobby to fill the hours.

♪♪ No ticket necessary.

You're about to enter The Film Lounge.

♪♪ Funding for this program was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation, as well as generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.

The Film Lounge is produced in partnership with the Iowa Arts Council and Produce Iowa.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hello.

My name is Hao Zhou.

I am the director of my short film, Frozen Out.

I am from China.

My name is Tyler Hill and I am the producer and one of the cinematographers for Frozen Out.

Hao Zhou: I shot Frozen Out over the last winter here in Iowa and I also had a collaborator shot some footage from my hometown.

So I intertwined those two footages together.

It's like a film letter that I wrote to my sister from my hometown for my family.

Tyler Hill: It covers a lot of experiences.

Some of them are related to the kind of emotional journey of being an immigrant and separation from your family and some of the mixed emotions that you feel about that narrated through Hao's personal story.

And the intercutting of footage from China with the footage shot in Iowa kind of helps to link these two very distant locations as well as the experiences that were had both here and back home for the protagonist.

Here.

Here.

Hao Zhou: First of all, I really enjoy the winter landscape here in Iowa.

I came from a southwest part of China, it rarely snows there.

So this is like a really fresh experience for me and I want to capture it.

So the locations are all around the Iowa City area.

This is one of the locations, actually.

Tyler Hill: And the reason for shooting there was sort of ease of access for us, but also everything that we needed was mostly around this area, a lot of beautiful nature from prairies to agricultural areas to forests.

When we were searching for locations we wanted to have spaces with a really clear background and a clear foreground, almost like a stage.

So you have a backdrop and then a foreground and then the character moves across the frame.

And, as Hao said, it was all blanketed in snow during that time.

So some of the spaces that otherwise would seem more ordinary suddenly transformed in the winter.

Hao Zhou: So, Frozen Out has been accepted to more than 40 film festivals now and it won some awards, but then obviously the most important award that we have won so far is a Student Academy Award.

Well, it definitely helped a lot for me.

I am like, we are currently working on pre-production for a feature film, so with this award we can definitely reach out to more talents because we are certified by the academy, or when we are looking for future funding or doing other projects this award will always help me.

This award will always up my -- help me to reach different kinds of doors.

♪♪ ♪♪ You don't know where I am, what I'm doing.

-- what I'm looking for.

You don't even really know who I am.

Unfair, isn't it?

I know practically the entire story of you.

Yet all you know of my story is a faint outline.

-- a mess of my distortions.

-- half-truths.

-- pretenses.

-- and white lies.

So, where am I?

Who am I?

What am I looking for?

I'm looking for my story.

One that can happen here.

Here.

Here.

Or here.

I'm looking for it.

I'm looking.

They've told you many times.

Don't shame our family.

like Brother did.

Don't think a boy liking a boy, -- or girl liking a girl, -- is special.

Don't run away because of so-called sadness.

I've run away so many times.

Once for an entire year.

♪♪ -- when I wasn't much older than you are now.

Was that year the result of my -- problem?

Or the start of it?

Whatever "it" was -- -- or is.

♪♪ ♪♪ Of course, most importantly -- -- don't abandon your motherland.

♪♪ I left home just as home was being "improved" -- -- crushed -- razed -- replaced.

Even your favorite little green patch -- will be ripped up.

When I go back -- if I go back -- home won't be here anymore.

You won't be you.

I suppose Brother won't be Brother either.

Then again, I never was.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hello, my name is Fred Ebong.

I'm a filmmakers that resides in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and the name of my film is Doubt.

♪♪ Fred Ebong: The base of it is that it is pretty much overcoming fear and not just overcoming fear but the different methods or a method that we can use to overcome fear.

And it's funny because I have been sitting on that project for a long time just because of a little doubt in myself too.

It's like okay, if I put this out there it's going to be my first big project.

And then will people like it?

Stuff like that.

So I kind of sat on it for a long time, I want to say almost six, seven months I didn't do anything with it.

Fred Ebong: So last year a friend of mine that ran the CSPS Hall said that they wanted to showcase some work from immigrants and if I had any work available.

So in two weeks, something that I've been waiting for like six months to do, I got it done, I got with a few friends to help me and it has been going since then.

Fred Ebong: I would say I've always been a storyteller, even before I was a filmmaker, because I grew up in Nigeria and my dad used to sit us down and tell us all these war stories of stuff that happened to him and my dad is a pretty good storyteller.

Actually I could literally picture everything he was saying.

So I've always been into storytelling whether that is from books, videos, music, whatever.

Fred Ebong: I got into the filmmaking industry, you might say, because I had a business.

I used to sell African stuff online, kind of like this shirt.

I couldn't find anybody in my price range that would give me good quality photos or videos.

So I bought a simple Canon T3I and I would take that to take pictures and do some shorts, funny videos for products and stuff and I actually fell in love with that.

So this whole film started because while I was learning my friend told me that he had an enemy fight coming up.

And so I was like hey, why don't we create a little promotional video for you?

Yeah, so then forward along, I have been working on my craft and getting better and better over time.

And then in January of 2020 I was like okay, it's time to go full-time and see what the world has for me.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is a championship fight!

(crowd cheering) Your pinnacle combat professional lightweight champion!

(crowd cheering) I think that I got into fighting more or less just to do something.

I never had a goal I guess.

I had one buddy that I always had hung out with and I would take him to go train all the time and pick him up.

And finally he's like, why don't you just come in?

You're always in shape, you're ready to go.

Why don't you come in and train?

♪♪ I am Jared Downing and anybody will tell you in the fight game, 80% of the fight is in your mind.

♪♪ When I was about 15 or 16, I was getting into a whole lot of trouble.

My mom got all tired of it and she kind of had enough.

I was pretty much a punk kid and she told me it was time to go.

And so being on my own, it made me have to man up.

I hope that doesn't happen here to me.

Wisely fell down, he's on his back early here.

♪♪ The first time I got into the cage, I seen everybody around it, that wasn't really what made me excited or affected me at all.

It was the people that I had trained with that they were there ready.

They put their time in me and these are the first guy that were around that were doing something with their life.

And I was just super excited to prove to them I'm ready to fight.

♪♪ I think controversial decision might be an understatement, it was more of a robbery.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ On fight day, I looked at pictures of my twins, my newborns and a whole lot of doubt just went through my head.

♪♪ I went from a family of two, which was me and my dog, to a family of five.

♪♪ I just remember thinking, I'm going to fail my kids.

♪♪ The moment that you start to doubt yourself you're going to be battling uphill and that fight went bad.

♪♪ Every fight after that I just doubted myself.

So I went from 9-1 with a world title to 9-6.

♪♪ (screams) ♪♪ Your pinnacle combat professional lightweight champion, Eric Wisely!

When I lost to Eric Wisely is when I knew it's time I'm going to probably just have to be done.

There was a huge part of me that felt I wasn't good enough.

♪♪ I think everybody has that doubt.

But it's the people who can control it that ultimately succeed.

And it took me years to honestly know that.

♪♪ It was so uncomfortable in those fights when I was losing.

And I wasn't physically losing, I was mentally losing.

So now all my workouts I focus on being uncomfortable.

I want it to suck.

I want to be afraid to work out.

♪♪ There's points in there where I'm like, I don't need to do this, I don't have to do this.

And I think about it, what would I do in a fight?

♪♪ It sucks to push forward if I'm going to do it because I know I need to sharpen my mind.

♪♪ And once I knew that it was all in my mind, that's when I knew I was ready to come back and put my mind to the test.

♪♪ Once fight day happened, I was ready to go into the cage for the first time again, and I was, I was excited to go out there and prove to myself.

There was a moment in the fight early on where he threw a kick and it almost hit me right on my head.

And I thought, is this going ot happen again?

Am I going to doubt myself again?

♪♪ I put my mind through way worse situations than this.

Everything I put into this fight, the countless training, the workouts -- ♪♪ -- now that sucked.

♪♪ After that mind shift happened, I got back on it and I was able to take him down.

♪♪ From Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Jared Downing!

(crowd cheering) In my last fight, there was no moment where I questioned myself.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I knew I come in strong, it's over.

And that's what I did.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hello, my name is Tempest Montgomery.

I am a filmmaker from Iowa City and my film is Love.

♪♪ Tempest Montgomery: It's an experimental take on this feeling I was having after I got back from my first stint out in Los Angeles.

I was at this point where I felt very creatively fulfilled in what I was doing in my work and I was feeling this kind of push and pull between my professional life and my personal life.

And so this is kind of a process of that emotion, if you will.

♪♪ Tempest Montgomery: This expectation versus the reality of what you want in your life.

I wanted to make it because I felt like if I didn't make it I was going to explode.

I called my dearest, my best friend Kai, who is our lead actress in the film and I said, I need to make a film.

I need it to be very personal.

You're the only person I trust with this.

Can we do that?

And she's like, yeah absolutely, come over.

And so I did and we made it and we shot it in one night and she was the best collaborator I could have asked for.

Tempest Montgomery: The most rewarding part of the whole process I think, you know, I'm sure people will watch and be like, well that's not as technically good as it could have been.

But it spoke to me on every emotional level that I hoped to hit.

And to have that come through and for it to be so true to what I wanted it to be, which I'm sure a lot of people will tell you it's so hard to match the vision in your head to what actually happens, but it was the vision, it was my vision put to screen so purely.

It hit a note with so many people is very humbling and it makes me so proud as well.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Adam Orton: One of the bucket list things I've had as a filmmaker is to make a green screen movie for some reason.

I don't know what it is about that.

I remember seeing Robert Rodriguez's Sin City and just falling in love with that movie.

And so once I did I was like, I want to do something like this that can be told in a stylized way and can be made for very, very little resources.

And I looked at that medium of doing a green screen stylized comic book look and I didn't want to do it just for the sake of it, I wanted a story that kind of worked within the realms of the aesthetic.

And so knowing that we were going to do a noir film fit that sort of feeling I guess that I wanted to create.

Here's the chippy in the slinky black dress.

Not your wife, that's for sure.

Beau Batterson: It basically just started as a very long conversation between Adam and I about genre and style and things we wanted to accomplish.

I've always had a strong love for film noir, specifically kind of like the very hard boiled stylized dialogue.

And so it's kind of a sandbox I've wanted to play in.

Representative Tyler is no red, if that's what you're insinuating.

And I won't have one of my reporters wasting valuable time and valuable resources on wild goose chases and half-baked slander.

Stick to the stories you're assigned or I'll get a reporter who will!

Beau Batterson: So we started figuring out typical tropes of film noir and how we could kind of play with that and subvert expectations.

Adam Orton: The original story came from the idea of this woman who is a journalist who is looking for the truth who stumbles upon something crazy, supernatural.

At the time we didn't know what it was, we didn't know if it was codes for a nuclear bomb or if it was the oracle or some sort of God-like item.

And things just kind of took off from there.

That's where Beau brought in his extraordinary talents and knowledge and geekdom and went to town on filling in all the holes to the story.

♪♪ So something like this.

It's okay if we see lights in the shot because remember, she's going to cut out like that.

♪♪ Beau Batterson: I think the green screen, it hits a certain level of the uncanny valley when you're watching it because you automatically know something is not right and it puts the audience just a little uneasy and kind of helps get them in the mood for this story where things are going to get weird.

♪♪ You're -- -- a commie?

No, Meghan Elizabeth Mahoney, I am not a communist.

What are you?

Adam Orton: So what we're doing is we're taking characters in a real environment, then we're cutting out the background and replacing it with a virtual background that we can create in any environment that we want.

The lighting is sort of the key to making it all look convincing.

So you have to know what your background is going to be and you have to match the lighting to whatever that background is going to be.

If you light someone with a dark sort of moody look and then you put in an outside photo of San Francisco with sunlight beaming in from all over the place it's not going to match up story wise.

So it's about being very cognizant of the shot that you want to get before you actually go to create the scene.

Adam Orton: This film is literally made with one camera, a green screen in my basement, it was about 300 square feet of space, a couple of lights and sound equipment.

Very much a bare bones thing, but we had had practice doing this and sort of knew I guess what would work.

♪♪ Beau Batterson: The shoot ended up going longer than we had anticipated.

You're doing a short film where nobody is getting paid and everyone is being there when they can.

I know we lost, there were some times when talent couldn't be there and we had to shoot around their schedule.

And action.

Beau Batterson: And that is one of the benefits of having a green screen is there are times when we had to shoot people individually and then put them together on screen and you'd never know they weren't in the same scene together.

Adam Orton: Yeah, we missed one shot of the main character punching the other.

We called her the next day and we had her punch me and then I just covered myself up with a piece of green so I wouldn't overlap with her and she just pretended I was the bad guy.

And that's how we got around certain stuff like that.

So yeah, I think the genre and the aesthetic afforded us a bit of flexibility there.

♪♪ Adam Orton: To me at least what I've learned in film school and how we sort of approach a topic is that the movies are based on this very delineated idea of morality.

So you have good and evil, not much gray.

That is what inspired the look I think.

If there is a moment where you're dealing with something morally ambiguous then we see color, we see a whole range of different light values in the film.

We wanted the morality to be complicated.

Beau Batterson: I don't think we were ever worried about going too far.

Everybody will come into the film with their own personal kind of baggage and they'll see what they want in the movie and take away certain things.

As far as trying to push the envelope, I don't think that was ever an intention.

We always just want to try and put out what is the best film and best thing that suits the story.

Adam Orton: And that goes back to what I was saying, we're not doing it for the sake of doing it, we want to make sure the story that we're telling the themes go along with that.

In fact, I was like how do we push it even further?

♪♪ ♪♪ Hello, my name is Benjamin Handler, I live in Iowa City, Iowa.

I'm the director of Ghost Creek.

♪♪ Benjamin Handler: Ghost Creek is a film that is kind of about the really last year that we have all experienced through COVID and the derecho and all the things in Iowa that have been hard for us to kind of encapsulate.

And so for us in Iowa City we have the Englert Theatre, which we're here at right now, and every year there is a festival called Mission Creek and it had to get canceled the year we filmed Ghost Creek.

And this film is sort of an encapsulation of what Mission Creek brings to Iowa City and what Iowa City is and what the arts are here and hopefully this film sort of captures the spirit that we all feel.

The kind of template that I was given was written by Rachel Yoder, who is a local writer here in town.

And she wrote this really nice kind of beautiful poetic piece about someone in Iowa City that sort of the narrator is supposed to be, everyone is supposed to be this person, we're all kind of Awira, this ghost character in the film.

And in the film there's kind of two parts of Awira.

There is this ghost version of her and there is regular Awira who works at the Englert.

She is a cleaner, she cleans the museums here in town.

And it's this duality we all kind of face where we have who we really are and then also sort of the part of us that yearns for more and yearns to see our friends and yearns to be someone who doesn't have to experience the tough things that we all had to go through.

Benjamin Handler: I've been wanting to work with the Englert in some capacity on a narrative project for a while.

They approached me to do a narrative project and it was very like, Ben we trust you as an artist, do your thing.

But also, here's a couple of ideas, here's things you can run with.

And I was like great, here's a blank slate, here is this beautiful space, we have Iowa City to work with.

And so yeah, it was just kind of an honor to run with a film like this.

(footsteps) (car door opens) (car door shuts) -- that new wind speed estimate of 140 miles per hour in the southwest side of Cedar Rapids associated with the Westdale Court Apartment Complex, that's where we saw that massive devastation -- -- the increase in hospitalizations for COVID-19 shows the current public health measures are not successful.

As of today, 449 people -- -- is calling for a state of emergency in Iowa.

Groups like Des Moines Mutual Air, Iowa Freedom Riders and more are part of this effort.

During a news conference, the coalition said it is unsafe for black Iowans to be -- -- day five without power.

People have been taking care of the recovery effort into their own hand without the city to feed hundreds.

As of today, 449 people are receiving treatment in Iowa hospitals.

Thousands of people in Iowa are still without power.

This is a state of emergency.

♪♪ I never imagined this is what catastrophe would look like.

One same day after another.

The sameness punctuated only by other smaller catastrophes.

A sort of suspended animation waiting.

Waiting for what though?

I never knew silence could be an actual place, somewhere you could feel trapped.

I just need a glimmer of who we used to be.

Or even a glimpse of something better, something beautiful, something far away from here.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ (car engine starts) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ (teapot whistling) (teapot whistling) (water running) (speaking in Spanish) ♪♪ (speaking in Spanish) ♪♪ (speaking in Spanish) ♪♪ ♪♪ I wish I could be there with you.

(speaking in Spanish) Sometimes I think I am.

♪♪ Wandering in an open door just to say hi.

♪♪ Am I there?

Could you tell if I were?

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I had this dream I was searching for anyone.

♪♪ But all the buildings were empty.

What I found instead was this feeling that this was a place I belonged to, that one day the city itself would return to me.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Getting used to knowing how to say goodbye.

♪ ♪ It doesn't get easier, but it does get better, it ♪ ♪ will get better.

♪ ♪ Go home.

♪ ♪ Home.

♪ ♪ Baby go home.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ Because you're safe with me, you're safe ♪ ♪ here with me when you're home.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ Home.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ Time to go home.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ Because you're safe with me, you're safe ♪ ♪ here with me when you're home.

♪ (phone beeps) (water running) The sameness.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Janie won't you come downstairs.

♪ ♪ Show us your dress.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ Helps to be a pretty girl ♪ ♪ when life's a mess.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ You don't have to ♪ ♪ worry about nothing my dear.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ The only thing you have to worry about ♪ ♪ is what's in the mirror.

♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Janie won't you come downstairs.

♪ ♪ Show us your gun.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ You're not just a pretty girl ♪ ♪ but a loaded one.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ And they'll tell you nothing about -- ♪ ♪♪ ♪ It's easier to deal with little lies -- ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I'm Paul Huenemann.

I am from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I am an animator.

And the film we did was called Birdsong.

♪♪ Paul Huenemann: Well, it's about this Roger who retires and he doesn't know what to do with himself.

I suppose it's kind of a little explanation of how movies are so big and exciting and first it was save the city, save the country, save the universe, save the multiverse and stuff.

But a lot of times it's about just making your own little area of the world better or funnier in this case.

And so that's what it is, it's a nice quiet little film about how a man approaches his life and how he changes it.

Paul Huenemann: The genesis for the film itself was the Iowa Motion Picture Association had a one week film, can you make a film in one week kind of festival.

And I thought, can I do animation in one week?

And I thought yeah, okay, you know.

And so we put together, I had a lot of the assets, Roger was already built, he was from a video game that we made.

And the set you can knock together in less than a day and trees are generated.

So it goes pretty fast.

But the story was a question.

What are we going to do with this little guy that is going to be in this short film?

And on Iowa Public Television there was a show, NOVA I think, that said birds can learn different songs and they do all the time.

And just creativity kicked in and I thought, well here's the story of Roger and how he teaches the birds to sing.

Roger retired.

He had been working his whole life at the big machine works keeping the big machines working.

And now has his well-earned rest.

At first, he didn't know what to do, putted around the house doing a little of this and a little of that.

Lately Roger has taken to feeding the birds.

Every day first thing, Roger feeds the birds.

Day in, day out.

Hot or cold.

Rain or sun.

He feeds his birds.

One night as he watched TV, public television probably, he saw that birds can learn new songs and he wondered if he could teach the one.

So, every day, day in and day out, Roger would feed his birds and whistle his little food song.

Rain or shine or cloudy or snowy, Roger would feed his birds and whistle his song.

For the longest time, nothing happened.

Then one late spring day, one young fledgling sang a bit of the song to him.

(whistling) It sang just a phrase, but that day Roger fed the birds twice.

The next day, another bird sang a different phrase of his song, then another and then another.

Soon all the birds were singing the bird feeding song.

So now, every day, Roger goes out to feed the birds, the birds sing the bird feeding song to Roger.

(birds singing) (whistling) (whistling) That's all, birdies.

(birds singing) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Funding for this program was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation, as well as generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.

The Film Lounge is produced in partnership with the Iowa Arts Council and Produce Iowa.