‘Pass the Popcorn’ Spotlights Benson Film Festival

April 17th, 2025

There’s something wonderfully satisfying about curling up on your couch and treating yourself to your favorite show or a new movie on streaming. But — there’s also something wonderfully satisfying about sharing a theater-going experience with other people.

Hello, this is Christine Burright, a graduate of the UNO MFA in Screenwriting program, filmmaker, and aspiring TV writer, featured on Pass the Popcorn for KVNO’s Arts Today.

If you’re a fan of seeing films in theaters, then the Benson Film Festival running April 25-27 is for you. This festival connects artists, filmmakers, and community members in Benson’s creative district at the one and only Benson Theater.

In addition to short film blocks, the festival will also screen five feature-length films that are not available anywhere else.

Midwinter by Ryan Balas from Hudson, New York

This film is about a burgeoning music writer, recovering from a recent break-up, who spends a romantic weekend on an assignment with a musician she admires. Meanwhile, her older sister deals with the complexities of motherhood, an expanding marriage, and a slow but ferocious illness.

The Meaning of a Ritual by Natalie MacMahon from Germany

In this film, an empathic, young plant doctor gifted with extrasensory powers and an emotionally fragile, isolated artist, must rescue each other to rediscover the essence of living.

Bring Them Home by Ivan MacDonald, Ivy MacDonald, and Daniel Glick from Missoula, Montana

Bring Them Home is a documentary telling the story of a small group of Blackfoot people and their mission to establish the first wild buffalo herd on their ancestral territory since the species’ near-extinction a century ago.

The Instrument in Six Movements by Joshua Allen LaBure from Omaha, Nebraska

This documentary is about musician William Raynovich and sculptor Rebecca Reneike, who invented a 10-foot-tall percussion instrument at Art Farm in Nebraska. This film is a portrait of that instrument and the experimental compositions they perform with it.

Willa Cather: Breaking the Mold by Ingrid Holmquist from Red Cloud, Nebraska

This documentary film chronicles Willa Cather’s pursuit of literary acclaim alongside the creation and unveiling of her statue in Washington, D.C. Using archival imagery, Cather’s own words, and observations from contemporary readers and scholars, this documentary invites viewers to revisit and reexamine Cather’s importance.

Information on ticketing options, festival passes, and screening times is available at bensonfilmfest.com.

The Benson Film Festival really is the ultimate theater-going experience: A historic room full of film fans, spending a couple of hours together to take in an independently-produced piece of cinema that literally can’t be seen anywhere else in the world.

What could be better than that? This has been Christine Burright for Pass the Popcorn for KVNO’s Arts Today.