Roger Stewart barn in Jackson County, Iowa.
Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
Apr 1, 2018
Few buildings are as iconic or romanticized as the humble barn.
Designed and built by craftsmen, carpenters, farmers, even the occasional architect, many of these timber and stone country cathedrals have stood for generations as utilitarian symbols of agriculture and rural living.
Today thousands of old barns across the U.S. are collapsing from age or abandonment, or being torn down to make way for modern barns. With their loss goes a piece of America’s heritage as an agrarian society.
“The Barn Raisers,” a documentary by filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films, is an official selection of the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival. The film will be showcased on Saturday at Collins Road Theatres in Marion.
Producer Tammy Rundle in the Flynn Barn at Living History Farms in Urbandale, Iowa.
This is the eighth festival for the award-winning film, says Rundle, who grew up in Waterloo and graduated from West High School. “I’m a city girl, and I didn’t really know anything about barns until we started working on the film.”
The filmmakers paint a cinematic portrait of barns through the lens of architecture, revealing the people, work and skill it took to build the structures, including architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Benton Steele and African American round barn builder Alga Shivers.
The Rundles worked with barn foundations and groups and filmed hundreds of barns in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas and Ohio. “We talked to so many old barn owners, preservationists and scholars who shared some wonderful American stories about this important icon,” Rundle explains.
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The Barn Raisers" is an Official Selection at the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival and will screen at the Collins Road Theaters, 1462 Twixt Town Road, Marion, Iowa on Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 11:10 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Ticket information is available at www.crifm.org.
Want the award-winning film on DVD? Click HERE!
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