Emerging, essential voices elevated in Iowa documentary
11/6/2024
Nik Heftman, an Iowa journalist and filmmaker, is the producer and director of a new documentary, “The Negro Artist,” that will be showing around the Des Moines metro area.
(Editor’s note: Doug Burns is a producer of this documentary.)
The a-ha moment struck like spring lightning on the groovy 1970s couch, just a hop, skip and a few blocks from the Simpson College campus. I could read! What a discovery for this little kid in Indianola, Iowa. I can read! The world opened up and swallowed me in all its wonder and pain. I was connected to millions, make that billions, through the written word.
It’s perhaps the most empowered I’ve felt — that realization of fledgling literacy, of the beginnings of a lifelong pursuit of the deployment and absorption of words and ideas. The written word on the page. What gloriousness.
A half century later, Caleb Rainey hit me with a lightning storm. The written word, film, speechwriting for politicians and wedding toasts, screenplays and online screeds. Yes, yes, I understand. I’ve swam in those waters. But here, near the shores of Lake Okoboji in northern Iowa at Julie Gammacks’ writers’ retreat was Caleb Rainey, a spoken-word-poetry artist who fully inhabited this pioneering medium of communication. The medium meets the man. The way he wielded words, with force and kindness, swinging from curiosity to certainty, from hope to pain, but always, always truth, truth.
I’ve not seen anyone use language like this, drop words, fast phrased, and then, dramatic pause, with a nuclear ferocity. When Caleb Rainey, who developed his craft in Iowa City, is on, he relegates other forms of communication to the stockpiles of convention. Just as the wildfires Rainey has stirred in the brain’s cerebrum subside, wham!, he sizzles in a mind-bending swirl of emotional electricity to the frontal lobe.
This medium. This man. He’s on the edge with this, man, and I want more.
Well, now we have more, in the form of a documentary on Caleb Rainey, his art, his purpose, from filmmaker Nik Heftman, an Emmy Award-winning journalist. I believe in the documentary — what Heftman has named “The Negro Artist” — so much that I am a producer. Heftman and Rainey show us the best of Iowa, its talent and promise.
The film spotlights resilience in the face of racism. It shows a life’s journey that is far, far from over and gives us a window into a new generation of Iowans.
Heftman, an Iowa State University alum, is on the board of that university’s journalism school. He’s an Emmy Award-winning producer with “CBS Mornings,” a program with which he was based in New York and Los Angeles, and a former reporter with the Carroll Times Herald.
Here is how Heftman describes his project:
“The Iowa-centric documentary follows the story of Caleb Rainey, a spoken word poet with artistic roots in eastern Iowa. His poetry and community service efforts are bolstering the arts across the state of Iowa.
“If you’ve met Caleb Rainey, you understand why his poetry is nothing less than essential. If you haven’t, catch his next show. You’ll never forget it.”
“The Negro Artist” will be shown at numerous theaters and locations around the Des Moines metro area in coming months. It’s also showing at 7 p.m., Dec. 11 at Film Scene in Iowa City. For showtimes in Iowa and across the nation, visit The Seven Times website at www.the7times.com. ♦
Douglas Burns of Carroll is fourth-generation journalist and founder of Mercury Boost, a marketing and public relations company.
