Butter

State of Bacon

May 2014 •English

State of Bacon tells the kinda real but mostly fake tale of an oddball group of characters leading up to the annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Bacon-enthusiasts, Governor Branstad, a bacon queen, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, members of PETA, and an envoy of Icelanders are not excluded from this bacon party and during the course of the film become intertwined with the organizers of the festival to show that bacon diplomacy is not dead.

Chemistry and Love

June 1948 •German

A chemist and his assistant make a groundbreaking discovery. They manage to make butter directly from pasture grass without having to deal with either the cow or the use of dairy products. An industrialist attempts to seize the invention.

Cold Turkey

February 1971 •English

Reverend Brooks leads his small Iowa town in a contest to stop smoking for a month. But some tobacco executives don't want them to win, and try everything they can to make them smoke. If townspeople don't go nuts from wanting a cigarette, or kill each other from irritation and frustration, they will win a huge prize.

Cedar Rapids

February 2011 •English

A naive Midwesterner insurance salesman travels to a big-city convention in an effort to save the jobs of his co-workers.

State Fair

February 1933 •English

The children of Iowa farmers find love, with mixed results, at the state fair.

The Pajama Game

August 1957 •English

An Iowa pajama factory worker falls in love with an affable superintendent who had been hired by the factory's boss to help oppose the workers' demand for a pay raise.

The Smart Set-Up

September 1931 •Dutch

A womanizing night club singer who has his pick of many beautiful showgirls tries to climb socially and break into society but soon discovers the social and class differences are insurmountable.

Dairy of Terror

November 2007 •English

Butter Lover

May 2016 •English

A convenience store clerk meets a man with a strange obsession with butter.

Butter

October 2025 •German

The Straight Story

October 1999 •English

A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.

The Bridges of Madison County

June 1995 •English

Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.

King Corn

October 2007 •English

King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.

Happy Land

November 1943 •English

An Iowa drugstore owner becomes embittered when his son is killed in World War II. The druggist believes that the boy's life was cut short before he had an opportunity to truly appreciate his existence.

Field of Dreams

April 1989 •English

Ray Kinsella is an Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice telling him to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond. He does, but the voice's directions don't stop -- even after the spirits of deceased ballplayers turn up to play.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

December 1993 •English

Gilbert Grape is a small-town young man with a lot of responsibility. Chief among his concerns are his mother, who is so overweight that she can't leave the house, and his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie, who has a knack for finding trouble. Settled into a job at a grocery store and an ongoing affair with local woman Betty Carver, Gilbert finally has his life shaken up by the free-spirited Becky.

Sleeping with the Enemy

January 1991 •English

A young woman fakes her own death in an attempt to escape her nightmarish marriage, but discovers it is impossible to elude her controlling husband.

American Dream

October 1990 •English

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened.

East of Middle West

April 2021 •English

A teenage runaway and a widowed father each fight to take matters into their own hands to redeem their dark past.

Out of Bounds

July 1986 •English

Farm boy Daryl Cage's parents ship him off to the big city to live with his brother, hoping he will have a better life there. After a baggage mixup at the airport, Daryl finds himself in possession of a drug cache, which a ruthless drug dealer wants back. The dealer murders Daryl's brother and the small town boy ends up all alone in the big city, being pursued by both the drug dealer and the police, who suspect him of the murder.