Oneota Film Festival expanding to Waukon this year, February 13-16

The Oneota Film Festival board announces the 10th Annual Oneota Film Festival, “Beyond the Crater,” scheduled for February 13-16 at Luther College, downtown Decorah, and for the first time in festival history, at the Town Theater in Waukon.

The weekend will provide many opportunities to watch films, make connections with filmmakers and friends, and meet other members of the broader northeast Iowa community and beyond at the many special events, filmmaker Q&A discussions, and film screenings. The first Oneota Film Festival (OFF) was held in 2010 on the Luther College campus. The theme was Sustainability. Four-hundred people from the Midwest and around the United States attended.

Three years later, newspapers and television news reported: “An asteroid as big as a city block smashed into what is now northern Iowa about 470 million years ago...

“The impact dug a crater nearly four miles wide that now lies beneath the town of Decorah,’ said Bevan French, one of the world’s foremost crater hunters and an adjunct scientist at the National Museum of Natural History.”

The OFF Board of Directors is looking at more than 300 films to select the best documentary and narrative independently-produced films that will compel the 2020 audience to laugh, cry, consider and discuss a variety of experiences and issues. Filmmakers and film lovers come to northeast Iowa to be a part of the Festival. Panel discussions, Q&A sessions following film screenings, and a Filmmakers’ Reception are held to allow everyone to share their insights.

The festival schedule and film descriptions will be available on the Oneota Film Festival website (www.oneotafilmfestival.org), and Festival Guides will be available soon at sponsor locations throughout Decorah and Waukon.

The festival is free for all to attend. It is supported by local businesses in the form of sponsorships, and by individuals in the form of memberships. Members are invited to additional members-only preview screenings throughout the year.

This year for the first time, preview screenings have been held at the Waukon Town Theater and the Cresco Theatre and Opera House. Memberships to the festival can be purchased before the festival at www.oneotafilmfestival.org, or at the door during the festival.

Festival screenings of films occur on the Luther Campus, in downtown Decorah, and at the Town Theater in Waukon. Film program books are available at advertising businesses and public spaces in Decorah and Waukon about two weeks before the Festival.

Those with further questions about the film festival may contact co-directors Christy Ebert Vrtis and Jack Meggers or OFF Board President Nancy Sojka.