15th Annual Festival of Illinois Film and Video

Prizewinning film and video shorts in four categories–experimental, animation, documentary, narrative. Because I was one of the five judges in this year’s competition, I’ve seen them all, and they’re certainly a far ranging bunch. The first-prize winners are Francois Miron’s visually intoxicating What Ignites Me, Extinguishes Me (experimental), Ian Fowler’s intriguing In Passing (animation, although the film features live action as well), Thomas Almada’s moving and powerful Chicago House: A Community Together (the first AIDS documentary I’ve seen that dares to be positive and upbeat), and Josef Steiff’s highly original and evocative narrative film Borders. The honorable mentions include two narrative films (James Chia-Min Liu’s A Scent of Incense and Steiff’s Catching Fire), two documentaries (Peter Kuttner and Kartemquin Films’ talking-head video Power to the People about the Black Panthers, and Wing Ko’s totally different Surfaces, a lyrical piece about skateboarding), and Susan Anderson’s witty and cerebral experimental film Lusitania, which recalls the work of Werner Schroeter. (Music Box, Friday and Saturday, May 18 and 19) Read more