The Chicago International Film Festival is over for another year, but the question, a disturbingly open one, lingers on: Does Chicago`s film festival work?
Although exact attendance figures aren`t available, festival director Michael Kutza says, ”We`ve broken house records this year, and we`ve had more directors in town per square inch than for any festival in history.” But a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction remains among the filmmakers, program directors, exhibitors, distributors, teachers and critics who make up Chicago`s film community. As Tom Brueggemann, of the Skokie-based M & R theater chain, puts it, ”I can`t say that the festival, as it presently exists, is anywhere close to achieving what it could.”
To know whether or not the Chicago Film Festival works, it`s necessary to know first how festivals in general work. Producers and distributors don`t give films to festivals out of the sheer goodness of their hearts–they expect a return. Renee Furst, the country`s leading publicist for specialized films, explains: ”Art films, whether they`re foreign or independent American films, need a festival exposure because they`re not going to get television time, and most newspapers are not going to write about foreign stars or directors. Festivals are the only showcase for special films that aren`t going to have a $10 million advertising campaign. They are invaluable for a film such as
`Therese,` which was launched at Cannes and went on to the Toronto and New York festivals, and got reviewed everywhere. Nobody would have heard of it without those opportunities.”
Furst primarily represents films that already have American distribution and are on their way to local commercial theaters. A different kind of festival work is done by Catherine Verret, director of the French Film Office in New York. It is Verret`s job to gain exposure for French films that have not yet entered the commercial pipeline, in the hope that they will be talked about and written about, and thus prompt the interest of commercial distributors. (Many other countries have similar organizations–export unions or national film boards–that perform the same function.)
”In France,” Verret says, ”there is national coverage for every film festival, the small ones as well as Cannes. In the U.S., and this is very hard for the French to understand, there is no real national film festival, not even New York. We have to make our entrance at the local level, but the American market is so large that we can hope, through a local festival, to make an impact on a territory the size of France anyway. Chicago is for us a key city, because of its creative importance, the size of the market, and the presence of some important distributors and press. Every effort that gives us a presence locally around an event helps us somewhat. The film has a better chance than if it stays in Paris.”
Both Furst and Verret say they are satisfied with the Chicago Film Festival`s performance. The films are shown, people do come, and the price (no entry fees or shipping charges for invited features) is right. But other observers believe that the festival could do much more than passively present a ”grab bag” (as Milos Stehlik, director of Facets Multimedia, puts it) of undifferentiated features. This year`s event saw 102 films premiered, the great majority of them unknown.
”My problem,” says M & R`s Brueggemann, who books films for the specialized Fine Arts theater, ”is that even somebody like me, whose job it is to be aware of international films and films shown at festivals, has a difficult time knowing in advance which films are the ones to search out for my own interests. I`ve always felt it was a function of a film festival not just to present a large number of films, but also to divide the films up into groupings or to provide background information for the audience–to provide an atmosphere conducive to audiences searching out films they may want to take a chance on.
”One concrete thing I think the festival could do would be to establish specific time slots where films of a certain draw would be shown. For example, the films that are accessible to a wider audience could be shown at a prime time on a nightly basis, or the films entered in the competition could be shown at a specific spot as a way of building up some audience interest in the awards.”
For most festivals, the program book provides the chief means of communication with the audience, providing information that helps the public to choose which films they want to see and better understand the films they have seen. Chicago`s program book is chiefly a vehicle for institutional advertising. ”It`s the only unusable program book I`ve ever seen,” says Facets` Stehlik. ”Even if you`ve seen the film, two years later you can`t use (the book) for anything because the descriptions make no sense, or they`re about some film other than the one they`re showing. There`s a complete lack of the tiniest semblance of film scholarship.”
Brueggemann adds, ”Any good program book should indicate very clearly what it is about a film that justifies its inclusion in the festival, rather than merely serve as a brief plot synopsis or an advertisement. Most successful festivals I know spend a great deal of time and effort in these descriptions. Giving the supplementary background information, as other festivals do, gives a lot of credibility to the choices.”
Brueggemann cites the example of ”Comic Magazine,” a feature by a new Japanese director that M & R is distributing. ”When the film was shown at the Toronto Film Festival, none of the critics for the daily papers had seen the film. It was shown opposite eight or ten other films, several of them strongly reviewed. It was basically an unknown film, but just the description in the program drew two sold-out shows of more than 1,000 people total. In Chicago, it had a prime slot, received three good reviews, and yet drew only half a house at the Biograph–where, ironically, it got a more enthusiastic response than it did in Toronto. Yet, with much more going for it, it drew only one third as many people.”
Since its inception 22 years ago, the Chicago International Film Festival has put an emphasis on discovery: ”The purpose has always been the same,”
says Kutza, ”To showcase new directors and get them to Chicago.” And Chicago has not done badly on that score, giving the first American festival exposure to, among others, Martin Scorsese and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. But simple exposure, perhaps, is not enough. If a film is shown in Chicago and nobody sees it, it`s the same as the archetypal tree falling in the woods–it doesn`t make a sound.
One very common complaint among visiting filmmakers is that few distributors and few members of the national press attend the festival. The filmmakers have no one to talk to and, more important, no one to sell to. Kutza is aware of the problem. ”We don`t fly in distributors, as Toronto does,” he says, ”but if I had the bucks I would do it. Variety, the Hollywood Reporter and USA Today had people here, and I invited (two New York critics), but they both turned us down. I feel strongly about this, and I will do more.”
Still, one wonders whether distributors and critics wouldn`t come of their own volition if the festival had more to offer. One film, though, did find a buyer at this year`s festival: The Argentine gay feature ”Another Love Story,” winner of the festival`s ”audience prize” for best attendance, was acquired by New World Pictures.
This is the commercial side of the film festival, and without it, the festival–or any similar institution–would not exist. But a film festival also has a cultural and civic role to play, and it is here that the festival earns its sharpest criticism. ”I wish it were more of a Chicago film festival,” says Richard Pena, director of the Film Center of the Art Institute. ”Not enough is done in terms of outreach to the community of filmmakers, film programmers and film scholars. If the festival is going to take on some sort of official status as Chicago`s window on international film, then Chicago should somehow be involved.”
Facets` Stehlik concurs. ”I think it`s very important for Chicago to have a festival. However, the one thing that is continually disturbing is the total lack of involvement by the film community. When you go to any other festival, it`s very much a citywide event, where every film institution in the city is involved. You wouldn`t have a hardware convention here without inviting the hardware store owners in Chicago, but that`s what happens.”
Within the film community, the festival is perceived as a private party. Though a great many filmmakers from around the world do attend, there is little or no opportunity for them to meet their local counterparts–instead, they`re shunted through a round of society dinners and sent home. ”I met no one,” said Renee Furst of her recent visit, ”and no one met me.” Kutza says that this perception is simply not true, that anyone who wants to attend the Festival Cafes (locations near the theaters where filmmakers and audience members are encouraged to go for discussions) is free to do so.
But these informal gatherings, as useful as they are (according to Kutza, an after-screening discussion of ”Stammheim” with German critic Wolf Donner went on until 3 a.m.), are no substitute for the kind of organized seminars and retrospective programs that exist elsewhere. If Kutza isn`t interested in doing them, Chicago`s other film groups are eager to get involved.
”Just as an example,” says Stehlik, ”last year I happened to know two of the directors on the jury, Jan Nemec and Zsolt Kezdi-Kovacs, so I was able to have a retrospective of their films and have them come and talk. That`s not enough, and it was just accidental because of the personal connection, but that is one way of involving other people, getting additional exposure, and bringing audiences to the film festival.”
The festival`s only annual seminar is produced by an outside group. Each year, the Chicago branch of the international German cultural organization, the Goethe Institute, sponsors a panel discussion of recent developments in German film with the German filmmakers and critics in town for the festival. This year`s event was standing room only, and Goethe Institute program director Angela Greiner says that she found the festival`s cooperation ”very good this year, and I hope that cooperation continues and widens.”
Kutza says the Goethe Institute program works because ”it`s timed not to conflict with anything. Otherwise, running simultaneous programs doesn`t work.” Where the other film organizations see cooperation, Kutza sees competition: ”We held the documentary section at the Film Center a few years ago, and it became a direct competition to us during the film festival. It caused great confusion with our audience. It was a major mistake. If we programmed with others, we would have to do it at a different time of the year. It`s too confusing, and it spreads the audience too thin. Chicago is a small town.”
But, as Brenda Webb of Chicago Filmmakers points out, ”Kutza is competing with himself every time he shows two movies on the same night.”
Webb, whose group is dedicated to showcasing experimental, independent and documentary films, has worked with the festival in the past on the
presentation of films from the festival`s student and documentary competitions. ”Rarely did we know what titles would be in the programs, and never were the films available for press screenings. The festival doesn`t lend the same kind of support that they do to the regular festival films, and often this results in poor attendance, which becomes their way of justifying not putting any effort into it. The filmmakers (in these categories) pay the highest entry fees in the country (from $25 for a student film to $150 for a television production) and they get very little in return.” This year, these screenings were held at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus and the Chicago Historical Society; no titles in any program were announced.
But do documentary films or retrospective programs really compete with
”Betty Blue” or ”Another Love Story” for the same, limited number of festival-goers? ”Facets, the Film Center, and Chicago Filmmakers have learned to work together very well,” says Richard Pena. ”Sometimes there`s a sense of competition, but we know there`s more than enough of an audience to go around, and we`ve worked together to develop that audience. Such dialogue doesn`t seem to have happened with the festival. It seems to have become even more hermetic in recent years.”
”I have nothing but praise for the hard work involved and the general adequacy of the films,” says M & R`s Brueggemann. ”They show a reasonable number of movies ranging from great to very interesting, with no more than the usual share of duds that any film festival, if it`s going to take chances, has. But by its nature, a film festival is always going to be any city`s major event representing the city to the world film community. And I think the Chicago festival suffers from not having all the aspects–those that make Chicago active year round–be part of this one event.”
Does the Chicago International Film Festival work? It might be more appropriate to say that it functions, creeping along at a minimum speed, fulfilling the minimum requirements of a minimum number of people. It is, as Kutza says, a festival for a ”small town.” But perhaps Chicago is not as small as that. ”The one thing that is always true is that anyone who comes to it from the outside ends up loving Chicago as a city,” says Stehlik. ”The ramifications of an event like this are enormous.”
”Chicago is a wonderful place,” said Swiss actress Marthe Keller, here with the French film ”Rouge Baiser.” ”But I will never, never come back to the Chicago Film Festival. I got a better reception in Cambodia.”
