Oak Park’s connection to the Chicago Film Fest

Locals like Renee Domenz, Toni Nealie, Bruce Sheridan, Ron Lawless, Floyd Webb, Mike Fry and Joyce Porter played roles in the recent 50th Annual Chicago International Film Festival, which opened with Liv Ullmann’s Miss Julie and closed with Reese Witherspoon’s Wild.

Actress Renee Domenz created a certificate of merit for Austin-born Michael Kutza, the founder and artistic director of the 50-year-old festival, and even accepted it on his behalf at the 10th Annual Oak Park International Film Festival in September. I spoke to Kutza at a gala party for Gina Prince-Bythewood’s beautifully-crafted rock star romance Beyond the Lights, starring Shakespearean-trained actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw who beat out Rihanna and Beyonce for the leading role. Kutza said he was “pleasantly surprised” that “Oak Park even remembered where Austin was, given the tension between the two communities.” He added, “I’m proud to be from Austin.”

Filmmaker Floyd Webb, who last year helped program the 30-work African portion of the festival, this year promoted Timbuktu,the most beautiful and troubling film presented this year. With stunning Sahara landscapes and soothing Malian blues (where local blues expert George Bailey says the musical form first originated), viewers are invited into a tapestry of Islamic complexity. On one hand, you see lighter-skinned Muslim radicals, who two years ago invaded Northern Mali and its symbolic city Timbuktu, waving their black ISIS-like flags, brandishing automatic weapons as a way to force darker-skinned citizen-artists to capitulate to medieval interpretations of the Koran. On the other hand, you see joyful black blues singers, young soccer players and peaceful family members in traditional Tuareg attire enjoying themselves in spite of the oppression that seems to take its toll mostly on women. Mauritanian-born, Malian-raised, Russian-educated director Abderrahmane Sissako does an artful job of showing an imam rebuking the militants out of his mosque during prayer.

Actress Joyce Porter and her colleague John Boss seen in this year’s Oak Park International Film Festival’s “The Irony of Fear,” were photographed in the festival’s celebrity section when she went to see herself in The Alley Cat. The film is directed by Marie Ultreya.

On that same day, I chatted with Iranian director Sepideh (Dawn) Farsi about Red Rose, a new film that opens with erupting pro-democracy riots on Tehran’s 2009 election streets, continues with a hot romance, and returns to scenes with characters grappling with fundamentalist oppression. “I can’t go back home,” said the Iranian-born director in an interview at a Chicago Loop hotel, “because this film hits the regime on several levels— gender, politics, language, drugs, alcohol and explicit sex scenes. It has not been shown yet in Iran, but the trailer has been viewed. Eventually, it’ll get there because while art suffers under oppression, creativity triumphs.” 

In a related film on patriarchal and fundamentalist oppression, Israeli directors Shlomi and Ronit Elkabetz shared their delightfully funny film, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem where we learned the ambiguity of how the main character wants a divorce from her ultra-orthodox spouse (Israeli law says only the husband may end a marriage), and must go through the frustration of a customary law that favors men.

Charm, wit and intelligence filled the room as director Liv Ullmann was praised opening night by actor Colin Farrell, who co-stars with Jessica Chastain, in Miss Julie, the film she adapted and skillfully directed. He said that while she’s well-known within the industry for her award-winning work as an actress and director, “She’s better known in the world community for her human rights fight against dictatorial regimes.” 

The disturbing new film, based on August Strindberg’s 1888 naturalist drama, is a troubled romance between a servant and his mistress during one steamy midsummer night at an Irish estate. In the first part of the film, Farrell’s dialogue dominates. Later, though, Chastain’s subtlety and explosiveness takes over the screen in this seductive film about bullying, privilege and table-top lust. 

“I wanted to give the female character a voice in a way the playwright did not,” Ullmann told me in an interview in the Miracle Mile hotel.

I also spoke with acclaimed director of Ray,Taylor Hackford, who said: “I think race did play a role in why it took 13 years for me to get Ray completed. Studios were reluctant to bank on the story of Ray Charles because, yes, he was black, but also because he was old. They didn’t think the film would connect with young viewers. Of course, ultimately it did. And while Jamie Foxx did win a best acting Oscar for his incredible performance, the three black female actresses were equally, if not more, deserving of Academy Awards for their performances; but apparently the Academy was not going to give more than one black from a black film another Oscar nod.”

Toni Nealie, a television and English instructor and her husband Bruce Sheridan, chair of Columbia College’s Cinema Art and Science Department, hosted “Columbia Night” on Friday, Oct. 17, showcasing four student shorts. Columbia also was a major sponsor for the 80-work film fest. Nealie’s students attended the Dear White People opening. Oak Park’s Mike Fry, a former Hollywood sit-com writer and Columbia TV professor, presented his former student Lena Waithe’s Dear White People in several forums as his way to shed light on identity tensions. The filmmakers announced at their festival premiere that they “want to change the face of Hollywood.” 

Debunking America’s “post-racial” myth,” director Julian Simien said, “My film is a step toward merging black identity and gay identity into an alliance.” He identified himself as a “black, gay, California man.” Meanwhile, producer Lena Waithe who called herself a “black, gay woman from suburban Evanston,” concluded: “It’s not a movie, it’s a movement!”