Megann Horstead
Content Producer
With the Chicago International Film Festival celebrating 50 years, North Central sent nine students on a unique experience to explore international film in Chicago.
This year’s film festival ran Oct. 9-23 at Chicago’s AMC River East, 322 E. Illinois St., Chicago, Ill. The event featured special guest appearances by Collin Farrell, Liv Ullman, Kathleen Turner and more.
A film festival verandah course led by speech communications professor Stephen Macek joined students coming from across all-academic lines —history, interactive media studies, art, journalism and more.
“Films are a great way to learn about other people’s culture, what they consider taboo or normative,” said fourth-year student Elaina Chastain. “What certainly made me uncomfortable might have made others think, cry, laugh.”
In offering reasons why the verandah works so well, Macek pointed out a few things.
“People love movies,” said Macek. “But, also, I do think that in this day and age– when there are so many films on cable TV and on streaming services like Hulu and Netflix and when many movies are available at the click of a mouse– going to a festival retains the allure of being an event.”
Macek’s expertise is film criticism and extends over 25 years. In proposing the verandah course to administration, he said they’ve been very supportive in general of the film festival verandah.
“I considered seeing [international]films an essential part of my education,” Macek said. “Students these days don’t seem to have as much exposure to international film as we did back then. Taking students to the festival is a way of giving them that exposure.”
In the end, Chastain learned a number of things from having visited the film festival.
“I took away that making films is so underappreciated, especially when it comes to low budget or smaller scale films,” said Chastain. “I found that I enjoyed these smaller films exponentially more than I enjoy more popular films played in the theater.”
Macek said administration’s only limitation caps the verandah’s enrollment at 10 students in order to get blocks of tickets for movie screenings.
But of course, the planning of the experience posed its own challenges in general.
“I have to set the ‘festival weekend’ before I know which films will be playing when,” said Macek. “As soon as the list for that weekend appears, I have to act quickly in order to get enough tickets for the films we want to see.”
Macek pinpointed reasons as to why film festivals are so popular.
“The festival is a great way to see the world and sample the world’s cinema culture without leaving Chicago,” Macek said. “Many films we see as part of the verandah will never make it to the big screen– or cable or Netflix– so the fest is often your one and only chance to see them. And being able to interact with the directors and so on is always interesting.”
