Kyden Hotka always dreamt of directing a feature-length film. Now, with a few short films under his belt and with the support of the local video program Iowa City Video Zine, Hotka is turning that dream into a reality.

Hotka works as an independent artist based in Iowa City. He created his first short film entirely by himself as a solo project, making up the story as he went along.

“It was something super abstract, nightmarish, and crazy,” Hotka said.  “I was just kind of trying to get people’s attention.”

After finishing, Hotka decided to submit his project to ICVZ in one of their bimonthly collaborative episodes, which seek to promote experimental video artists. Operating out of Public Space One, the program collaborates with FilmScene to host screenings for each new episode.

It was at the screening for his solo film that Hotka met the team with whom he would tackle his next project.

“I was able to meet a whole bunch of people and was able to get together a cast and make a bigger short film, which had real dialogue and scripts and acting,” Hotka said.

ICVZ helped him set up a screening for this new second film, which premiered at Grizzly’s South Side Pub & Grill.

Hotka’s films are just one example of the various submissions and creative works that go into each episode of ICVZ’s programming.

Clare Kinkaid and Patrick O’Connor run the project together and come up with the episode themes. These often arise from program meetings and center around impactful or interesting topics.

After settling on a theme, ICVZ puts out an open call for submissions, sometimes reaching out to specific influential artists to connect with the community through flyers and social media posts.

“After getting submissions, we give ourselves a week, a week and a half – maybe two if we’re feeling generous — to edit it all together,” Kinkaid said.

The length of the editing process depends on the number of videos the team receives as well as the number of bumpers they choose to insert into the final product. Bumpers are smaller videos made in-house, spaced between larger video content segments to connect everything.

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For one episode, Kinkiad said the team staged a talk show, which took more editing due to the large presence of special effects.

According to Hotka, ICVZ’s support can become a huge help to artists like him, who, when starting, don’t have access to many resources. With the team he met through his first film’s screening, Hotka was able to sit down and revise his script with people who were digging deeply into his work.

“It’s my job as a director to see how everyone’s different opinions align. That was something I’d been practicing even before my solo short film,” Hotka said. “I’ve just fantasized for years now about directing people, so it wasn’t a huge jump for me to go from solo project to working with people, because I’ve always mentally been prepared for it.”

Hotka said that ICVZ has helped him over the years by providing not only ideas and support but also resources and equipment.

“They’ll give you lights, they’ll give you sound equipment, they’ll give you cameras, they’ll give you screenings,” he said. “They’ll give you resources to help you reach out to other people and actors. To have other people look at you and go “we’ll help you” is everything artists can dream of, just hearing people say that they’ll listen and help you is so incredible.”

Currently, Hotka is working on his next project, a feature film he is writing independently which he plans to shoot in Iowa City. He plans to get some of the people he’s met at ICVZ involved with the project.

So far, ICVZ has produced two full seasons of videos, each season spanning about a year’s worth of time. The first episode of season three, a youth-led episode, premiered earlier this year on Aug. 7.

“The youth-led episode was a Clare idea, and I was so down for it,” O’Connor said. “I think it’s really cool to involve kids and the kids we have here in Iowa City are so creative. It went really well with the small group we had.”

While putting together the episode, ICVZ hosted workshops that kids could attend in order to develop their video ideas. At the first one, around three people showed up, but by the second, there was a slight bump with five attending.

O’Connor said he was impressed with the amount of creative ideas the kids came up with and the development process as a whole was rewarding. However, it was also a challenge.

The kids themselves don’t always have full say about how they go about their days or how much they can work on their video projects while at home. Also, ICVZ relied solely on the dedicated work of volunteers to make workshops happen.

“It was hard because it’s an all-volunteer based event. So, we — luckily — had some friends and artists that helped Clare and I lead the workshops,” O’Connor said. “But aside from that, it’s mostly me and Clare trying our best with the time we have as volunteers.”

Kufre Ituk was one such volunteer who helped out at the workshops. Ituk often helps out ICVZ with organizing, promoting, and collaborating on various videos, studio work, and events.

“I think, honestly, that each episode just gets better and better,” Ituk said. “I loved the superstition episode, and I also really loved the kids episode, which was led by a bunch of middle schoolers and was very inspiring.”

Ituk believes engaging with different mediums of art and becoming involved within the community is a great way for ICVZ participants, especially youth participants, to gain real-world knowledge and experience.

“It takes a lot of time to finish a video,” O’Connor said. “Even all the time you put in doesn’t always translate into video progress. Art in general isn’t like other things, where the more time you put in, the better it gets. Sometimes the best stuff you can make really quickly, but sometimes it takes a lot more time.”

Kinkaid said it was cool to see how ideas from inside their youth team’s heads came to life. For the first time, she and the others at ICVZ had less creative control over what went on in the episode, because the show featured anything and everything that the kids wanted to do.

“It was really cool to hear their ideas,” Kinkaid said. “They were like, ‘we’re going to dance in front of a green screen and we want a nuke to explode all around us and then sprinklers are raining down.’ And we’re like, ‘okay, sounds good.’”

As of now, the team is still brainstorming what their next project will look like. The only thing certain about it is that it will connect in some way to the community, as all ICVZ projects strive to do. Both Kinkaid and O’Connor emphasize that the project is completely open to anybody who wants to get involved.

“I think it would be cool for people to know that even if you don’t create experimental videos, we are open and we love being a platform for the community,” Kinkaid said. “We do have a pretty stylized image sometimes, but even if you aren’t into that or even if you don’t make video art, if there’s any inkling that interests you at all, come and see what it’s about. We’re super open people.”

Kinkaid said ICVZ, above all else, is interested in encouraging creative expression and not in creating perfect videos. Sometimes, she said, filmmaking can become a gate-kept art form, but in reality, creators don’t need to have fully developed technical skills to get started creating.

“I think Iowa City Video Zine has had several people who have submitted who have never made a video before,” O’Connor said. “We ultimately just want video of people on the big screen. And I think it’s cool that people involved will get to be part of something bigger than themselves.”

The team believes making DIY, low-budget videos using only the people and places around you can be incredibly intimate and meaningful. Anyone can make a video zine submission, and anyone is encouraged to.

“Even though it’s one medium, you’ll be surprised by the interdisciplinary and the inter-medium relationship between video art and literally any other kind of art,” Ituk said. “It’s so expansive.”

Editor’s Note: Kufre Ituk is a former reporter with The Daily Iowan.