411: Shut Your Mouth

Northwestern University’s venue Block Cinema will host the Talking Pictures Festival, Evanston’s first-ever film festival, during the first week of May, curated by Ines Sommer and Kathy Berger of Percolator Films’ Reel Time series. “Kathy Berger and I have been running this Reel Time series in Evanston for a long time,” Sommer says. “It’s a monthly film and discussion series, mostly about documentaries. For the festival it will be a whole range of films from animation to fiction and international films and locally produced stuff. It’s a wider range in terms of audiences and there will be programs that might even be OK for kids to check out.” In association with Percolator, Sommer and Berger have reached out to a number of Evanston organizations in order to get the festival up on its feet and have managed to get a good number of films showcased. “We have fifteen programmed slots because there are a number of short film programs; right now we have about three slots that are short film programs and a couple slots that are longer films combined with the shorter films.”