Last year’s Chicago International Film Festival was the best in my eight years of living here. But now in its 31st year the festival seems to be sliding back toward some of its past problems. I don’t want to sound too alarmist about an event that’s showing several indispensable works, most of which would be impossible to see without the festival’s initiative. At least half are U.S. premieres, and we all should be properly grateful for this bounty.
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While the festival has plenty of fat and filler, it ignores films recognized on the international festival circuit. I’ve attended this year’s festivals in Berlin, Cannes, and Toronto, and spent the better part of two weeks sifting through almost 100 more movies as a member of the New York film festival’s selection committee, but I’ve only seen about a fifth of the more than 120 films showing at this year’s Chicago festival, revivals included. By contrast, last year I’d seen half of the festival’s 118 selections (even without attending Berlin). I suspect a major part of the difference can be attributed to the degree of informed input from Marc Evans last year and this year.
Of course, all this might have been interesting and perhaps even lively if Kutza had chosen to resurrect Wertmuller as a polemical-critical gesture and disclosed his reasons for doing so, accompanying the retrospective with a monograph explaining, say, why her characteristic attributes as a filmmaker are still worth defending or have some special relevance to the 90s. But the most the festival’s handout can come up with is to label her “a hot item on the cult market” 22 years ago and to note that her movies of the 80s and 90s “touch on such themes as terrorism and unrequited and forbidden love.” I don’t want to question the sincerity of Kutza’s selection, especially considering his previous spotlighting of Claude Lelouch and Alan Parker. But this 15-feature retrospective –the largest ever held in this country according to the handout–seems motivated more by a desire to fill up space than by any interest in making a coherent cultural statement.
The festival runs from Friday, October 13, through Sunday, October 29. Screenings are at the Fine Arts, 418 S. Michigan, and the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport. Tickets can be purchased by phone (644-3456), by fax (644-0784), by mail (Chicago Film Festival, 415 N. Dearborn, Chicago 60610-4697), or through the World Wide Web (http://www.ticketmaster.com), all of which entail service charges, or at theater box offices an hour before show time. General admission to most programs is $7.50; $6.50 for students and seniors; $5.50 for Cinema/Chicago members. Shows before 6 PM are $5. Discount passes to multiple screenings are also available. For more information, call 644-3456 (644-FILM).
