Film 50 2015: Chicago’s Screen Gems

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Gordon Quinn
Founder and Artistic Director, Kartemquin Films
With the departure of executive producer Justine Nagan, new ventures in theatrical self-distribution of some documentaries, and its fiftieth anniversary coming up in spring 2016, Kartemquin Films remains a central Chicago cine-mainstay. “Well, it is an exciting and challenging time,” the conversationally generous seventy-three-year-old Gordon Quinn says. “With Justine leaving to take over POV, we are looking for a new executive director. I have always thought that Kartemquin’s secret to long-term survival was that we evolve and change with the times, and we are about to start a new era with the anniversary. Our core values remain the same: make good films that inform and challenge our democracy, and to advocate, and when necessary fight for our field, documentary filmmaking. As always, there are new films just completed or about to be. There’s Maria Finitzo’s ‘In The Game.’ We’ve had some terrific local screenings, but my favorite was showing it to the entire Kelly High School, filling the auditorium and streaming in classrooms. Dinesh Sabu’s ‘Unbroken Glass,’ about mental illness in an immigrant family is in the final stages of post, and ‘Raising Bertie,’ directed by Margaret Byrne, about three young men coming of age in rural poverty in the South has just been submitted to Sundance. And Bill Siegel’s ‘Trials Of Muhammad Ali’ has been at festivals on Independent Lens and festivals but just won an Emmy. And Steve James has some very exciting projects that I’m not sure I can talk about yet.” A pause, and a modest digression: “I just got back from New York where I attended the memorial service for Al Maysles. A great loss and inspiration and mentor to many generations of documentary filmmakers. I bought my first lenses from Albert, but that’s another story.”

Ryan Oestreich and Brian Andreotti/ Photo: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

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Brian Andreotti and Ryan Oestreich
Music Box Films Director of Theatrical Distribution and Music Box Theatre, Director of Programming and Music Box Theatre General Manager
Brian Andreotti and Ryan Oestreich are the old blood and new blood of the twenty-six-employee Music Box Theatre, on a day-to-day basis the Chicago venue with the busiest range of attractions. Oestreich began in July of this year, moving over from the Denver cinematheque, the Sie Film Center, while Andreotti has worked for the Music Box for twenty years. “It’s hard to compare Denver to Chicago,” Oestreich says when asked to compare sites. “The Music Box has such a long and storied history, and in Denver I was working for a younger film society. This theater is a cinematic landmark, everyone knows the Music Box, even if they haven’t sat in one of its seats.” The range of programming “allows us to diversify our audiences, while still catering to a cinephile crowd who wants to see everything. What’s amazing is how many other programs in the city also want to work with the Music Box.” Of the teeming lineup of events and films, Andreotti is quick to say, “I’d like to emphasize that the diversity of offerings at the Music Box is very much the result of collaboration.  Programming ideas and events come from our patrons and staff; the distributors of films and alternative content; local cultural institutions and media partners; traveling festivals and national organizations; and of course the filmmakers themselves, some of whom travel to Chicago to engage with local audiences. They all play an integral role in what makes our programming so rich and the Music Box so special.” He continues, “Our programming has never been more eclectic. In an age when people have almost unlimited viewing choices at home given video-on-demand and digital streaming platforms, the Music Box needs to offer similar diversity, but within a social environment. The communal experience of viewing great alternative cinema will always be cherished and irreplaceable.” As for his role with Music Box Films, Andreotti naturally first cites the Oscar win for “Ida,” and the surprise grosses of “The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared” and “Meru,” one of 2015’s top-grossing docs. “Merely in terms of box office, 2015 will be one of our best years ever. Particular noteworthy is evidence that we’ve developed a slightly younger audience then the national art-house average. A big concern in our business is the aging demographic for alternative cinema. The fact that we have engaged a younger demographic (without losing the traditional audience for art-house films, which skews older and more affluent) bodes well for the long-term heath of the Music Box.”

Josh B. Mabe/ Photo: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

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Brenda Webb and Josh B. Mabe
Executive Director and Program Director, Chicago Filmmakers
Chicago Filmmakers, set to relocate to a firehouse in Edgewater, may solve the edifice complex that long burdened Chicago film nonprofits with a dream of a home of their own. The unique topographical shape of the terra cotta-trimmed 1928 building will suit Filmmakers, with classrooms, a production site and an improved screening venue. “Another aspect of owning our own permanent home in the Edgewater firehouse will be the opportunity to deepen our roots within a community as well,” Brenda Webb says. “Being located in a formerly public space carries with it expectations that the community will have about the role our organization will play in enriching the cultural life of the surrounding area. We look forward to making those connections with the local residents and taking on a greater role as a hub of cultural activities, not only the larger communities of filmmakers and film lovers. We expect that our mission will not change so much as expand in the new location.” That overall mission, she continues, “is to serve local artists by supporting the creation and dissemination of new media arts work through filmmaker services, educational programs, and production funding; and to serve the general public by presenting artistically innovative, socially relevant and diverse films and videos to Chicago audiences. Essentially, the communities that we have traditionally served are the city-wide filmmaking community, the filmgoing public, and the LGBTQ community through the Reeling Film Festival.” Webb also sees more collaboration on the horizon. “There is a lot happening in the Chicago film scene right now. It’s an exciting time! We’re always looking for ways that we might collaborate with both individuals and organizations in the film arts scene. And it seems that, right now, people in the community get the idea of collective power through collaboration more than ever before.”

Angie Gaffney/ Photo: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

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Angie Gaffney
Producer, Black Apple Media and Executive Director, Stage 18
Angie Gaffney’s ambitions for the Chicago film community started while she was still a student at DePaul, founding Black Apple Media in 2010. “We have an office at the current Stage 18 temp space, and we were the first creative development company on the Cinespace lot. Last year, we launched our boutique artist management division, after recognizing that there was no representation in Chicago for writers and directors,” she says. “Stage 18 was founded by myself and Alex Pissios, president of Cinespace, earlier this year. Our goal is to create a development incubator that elevates the quality of local, independent, narrative work, and connects those filmmakers to educated investors. We’re currently in construction on our 15,000-square-foot space, and hope to open our doors early next year.” Gaffney is also a member of the IFP Chicago board. “It’s really important to me to stay involved in the community, and be a part of as many active organizations as I can, as well as continue to develop and produce my own content. I am very fond of both the Midwest Fest and IFP, and am honored to be on their boards. I think they are both extremely important organizations that play a crucial role in the growth of our independent community.” As for Stage 18, she says, “It’s important for us to make sure that we’re not developing redundant programming or initiatives. Our goal is to be a non-competitive aggregator for all of the organizations and individuals in Chicago. Being involved in organizations like IFP and Midwest Fest help me to ensure that we’re developing unique and complementary programming at Stage 18, not repetitive initiatives.” She sees Stage 18 and Black Apple as complementary in other ways, too. “I’m passionate about creative business development, and love working to further both Black Apple and Stage 18. They serve very different roles: Black Apple Media is a for-profit, development studio that focuses on Midwest-based independent content and manages physical production for a variety of independent projects. We hope to continue to grow in tandem with Stage 18 to be able to produce high-quality creative content. Stage 18 is a non-profit incubator and, to me, serves a much larger role in the development of our local infrastructure. In order for Chicago to be seen as a player in the industry, not just a destination for filming, we need to be able to develop, produce and fund high-quality independent projects locally. Stage 18 will strive to elevate the level of creative work, but also educate filmmakers on the business of filmmaking, how to produce quality, independent content that has a chance to sell and be seen. Along that same vein, we are working with the Chicago Media Angels to gather together the local investment community and educate investors in the media and content industries. Too many filmmakers and actors alike leave Chicago to go to NY or LA to take that next step in their careers. In short, Chicago produces amazing talent, but cannot retain them. By gathering the best independent filmmakers under one roof, we hope to be able to leverage our great community of talent and, by doing so, re-engage some of the larger companies in New York and Los Angeles with our local industry. Only when Chicago becomes a place where independent content is produced, financed, shot and sold will we be able to retain our talent, and sustain the independent film scene. It’s going to be a slow development process, but if we can all come together, it can and will happen.”

Nicole Bernardi-Reis/ Photo: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

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Nicole Bernardi-Reis
President, Board of Directors, IFP/Chicago
Bryan Wendorf, who heads the Chicago Underground Film Festival under the sponsorship of the Independent Filmmaker Project, says of board president Nicole Bernardi-Reis, “It’s largely due to her efforts that the organization has gone from being nearly dead just a few years ago to again becoming a relevant and active support network for Chicago’s independent filmmakers.” The IFP has launched an ambitious slate of projects, including seminars and screenings, and most recently, Bernardi-Reis says, is a cross-discipline look at Chicago’s independent production community, undertaken with IIT’s Institute of Design graduate program, to determine “what we can do to create a sustainable local industry and grow the film culture of the city and state as a whole.” She continues, “We have such a diverse industry. It’s such a spread-out community that it can feel like maybe there isn’t anything that connects us as filmmakers besides geography. But I don’t think that’s true. This city has a way of getting under your skin and seeping into your work.” The long-time producer says, “There is hard-won enthusiasm grounded in this brutal, street-level realism that pops up in narrative features, docs and even comedy series here.” She’s also savoring this moment. “It’s a really exciting time for filmmaking in Chicago. As a community, we are working toward systemic growth, developing creative talent and their business skills, educating local investors and innovators about this industry and its opportunities and creating more interaction between our artists and industry decision-makers. ‘Make No Little Plans,’ I say. Make no little plans.”

16
George Lucas
Philanthropist and Financier, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
A long time ago on a lakefront far, far away… While the cultural mandate of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is still unclear, beyond housing George Lucas’ personal collection of art and artifacts, cinema programming at a museum level is always welcome in this increasingly movie-mad city, especially with the pop-culture inflection likely with any post-Lucasfilm production. Lucas’ interest in Chicago as the second potential location after San Francisco’s site rejection is also stirred by his wife, DreamWorks Animation chairman of the board of directors Mellody Hobson, also in charge of a reported $3 billion in assets as the president of local firm Ariel Investments. Much of the private financing of the museum would come from Lucas’ $4.05 billion sale of Lucasfilm to Disney. Lawsuits by nonprofit advocacy group Friends of the Parks challenging the grant of lakefront land by the city could delay the planned 2016 groundbreaking and 2018 opening. Changes to the eccentric original design by Chinese architect Ma Yansong are also in the offing. (On October 14, the Chicago Park District board approved a 99-year-lease for the $400 million project unanimously, but the federal lawsuit by Friends of the Park is still in play.)

Michelle Puetz/ Photo: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

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Michelle Puetz
Pick-Laudati Curator of Media Arts, Block Museum of Art
While incoming curator Michelle Puetz’s programming won’t hit the Block Cinema screen until winter 2015, she’s excited about mixing it up at the Block, where, for instance, screenings in the cinema can be used to “complement and complicate” exhibitions in the museum’s gallery spaces. Incorporating work by faculty and students on the Northwestern campus also can build community. Her first major curation will be a program drawn from her specialty, experimental and avant-garde sound and cinema, in “A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s,” which will incorporate gallery elements, as well as works that inspired the artist and others she championed. In other programming, Latin American filmmakers will be featured, including Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Puetz also has ideas about the kinds of innovation atop essential showmanship that can make an organization like the Block get attention in a transforming media landscape. “What I think is needed for the Block (and my position) is someone who knows the art and film communities, their ins and outs, and how the mediums of film and video are changing,” she says. “Someone who is creative, curious, and imaginative enough to think beyond the models that are out there for us now—someone to reimagine how the cinema and the museum can be one. I want to collaborate with the staff and university in really developing a unique model for the cinema and the role of time-based media in the museum.” She continues, “What attracts me to cinema, to film, to time-based media, visual and aural alike, is its sensuality, its immediate connection to the body and the senses, its ability to engulf and surround. It is its movement, its animation or life force, as well as its ability to move me that first drew me to the material. I grew up watching and loving movies, but it wasn’t until I was an art student working in all sorts of different media that I really became what I would consider a passionate advocate for the material of film. It was my medium of choice, a vehicle for expression, but it was also something that I knew I was connected to on a level that was so deep that I wanted to learn everything I could about it as a technology and as an art form. I approach curation in the same way that I approached teaching, and in the same way that I approach life—with a deep curiosity and passion to learn as much as I can, to challenge myself and broaden my interests, and to really be an advocate for films, for art works, and for artists, that might otherwise fall through the cracks. We are living in a world where, even in the museum, truly challenging new work often struggles to be seen.” And there are other things to consider about the future, she concludes. “An assertion: film has always been, and always will be, in a state of flux and transformation. A question: Does technological change, a change in the means by which we capture or view moving images, constitute an ontological shift in the medium itself?”

Brian Chankin/ Photo: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

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Brian Chankin
Owner, Odd Obsession and Deadly Prey Gallery
The 20,000-strong titles Odd Obsession video collection moved a few storefronts north on Milwaukee Avenue to a less rustic location, aided by an Indiegogo campaign, which didn’t reach its goal, but “served as an awesome PR tool,” proprietor Brian Chankin says. “A lot of Chicago people actually found us for the first time on Indiegogo, some of whom have become loyal regulars. Every month since has been better than the last.” Everyone who contributed got at least a “Precious” mug, memorializing the late store cat. “While the fundraising definitely helped us with expenses relative to the move, it also helps maintain the library by purchasing replacements of lost and stolen discs.” Chankin has also opened Deadly Prey Gallery on Chicago Avenue, specializing in hand-painted movie posters from Ghana. “But the first thing I mention to anyone who steps into the gallery is that I’ve owned a video store for the past eleven years!” Chankin pins his love of the Ghanaian movie poster to similarities he sees in movie choices that both Odd Obsession and mobile cinema operators in Ghana have championed over the years. “We have a rotating selection of ten hand-painted posters at the video store along with postcards and promo material for the gallery. Many Odd Obsession customers make appointments at the gallery to view posters there after seeing the ones at the video store. The joint promo stuff will keep getting better as time goes on, I’m obviously hoping.” And as for Odd Obsession proper, one of the last, vast storefront movie rental joints left in the nation? “Many good signs so far, but it all comes down to how successful the winter season is.”

Tom Leavens/ Photo: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

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Tom Leavens and Jerry Glover
Co-founders, Leavens, Strand & Glover, LLC
Tom Leavens and Jerry Glover’s firm, located in Chicago and Nashville, concentrates in entertainment law, related copyright/trademark/media issues, and promotion/marketing law. It’s an intricate enterprise. “We work with producers, directors, writers, and actors, principally with independent films and non-scripted television, on all aspects of production and distribution,” Tom Leavens says. “We also represent WTTW and have served as production counsel for television programs such as ‘The Steve Harvey Show’ and ‘The First 48: Missing Persons.’” Within the larger scene in Chicago, he says, “There seem to be so many kinds of opportunities, so much potential in the city today. Each of us has long been involved with Lawyers for the Creative Arts and provide free legal assistance to many people in the film and television community. We also participate in educational events for the film and television community through presentations and writings and teach entertainment and music law at law schools in Chicago. [From our firm], Jerry Glover is on the board of Kaufherr Members Resource Center (a not-for-profit organization that provides media services for SAG/AFTRA and Actors Equity members), Hillel Frankel is chairman of the board of CIMMfest, and Travis Life is on the board of Independent Filmmaker Project. We do think the film and television community in Chicago would benefit from the presence of a Chicago office of one of the major agencies, such as WME, CAA, UTA or ICM.”

Kyle Westphal and Becca Hall/ Photo: Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

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Julian Antos, Kyle Westphal and Becca Hall
Founders, Northwest Chicago Film Society
For the love of emulsion! Celluloid stalwarts Julian Antos, Becca Hall and Kyle Westphal hold the banner of 35mm and 16mm film high with the Northwest Chicago Film Society. “We are now back in action after the collapse of the Patio and Portage theaters, projecting 35mm prints once a week at Northeastern Illinois University,” Hall says. They built their own booth with help from James Bond and his Full Aperture Systems, as well as Justin Dennis, another Chicago cinema engineer behind the transformation of the Music Box’s smaller auditorium.  The group is also preserving films, including Chicago’s own Fred Camper’s “Welcome to Come,” with a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation. Preserving cinema equipment is also on the slate: NWCFS now owns the remaining parts inventory for two of the most widely used 35mm projector models, following the liquidation of the cinema parts inventory of Glendale Heights machinists LaVezzi Precision. There’s also the weekly Celluloid Chicago project (celluloidchicago.org), listing all 8mm-16mm-35mm-70mm screenings with frame enlargements from participating projectionists. NWCFS co-founder Julian Antos is now also the new Technical Director at the Music Box and a projectionist at the Film Center one night a week. “Me and other-NWCFS-co-founder Kyle Westphal also have secret behind-the-scenes-in-cinema day jobs,” Hall says. “I’m now the Operations & Digital Communications Manager at the Film Center (after being a projectionist there for years) and Kyle works at a nontheatrical cinema licensing company in the suburbs.” Waxing slightly philosophical, Westphal says, “There’s so much handwringing and negativity about film these days—film is dead, film is elitist, etc. We’re an all-celluloid film society, but in a positive way. Running film opens up the conversation rather than closing it: for every new restoration that’s only available digitally, there’s also an archival print that’s been sitting unseen on the shelf for twenty years, there’s a French-dubbed Elvis trailer, there’s an oddball cartoon you’ve never seen before. We show it all. A film print contains so many stories: the unique laboratory process that produced it, the non-theatrical distributor who found a new audience for it, the collector who keeps it in a closet and treasures it with all her heart. We see our screenings as an ongoing conversation with our audience about all this—culture, history, art. And we’re extraordinarily lucky to have a new home at NEIU.”