This September, Oak Parkers will be able to enjoy a new cultural tradition: The Oak Park Illinois Film Festival.
Over the past couple of years, I have been fortunate enough to travel to numerous film festivals in several states, and even France, to represent a film I was in. As I went to these festivals, I found that some were much more enjoyable and well planned than others. I thought about how creative Oak Parkers are and that it would be the ideal place to have the ideal festival.
I knew this was not something I could do by myself. I put a couple notices on social media and called a meeting and waited to see if anyone would show up. Indeed they did. Nine people came. When we introduced ourselves, one person said, “I could create the website;” another said, “I can do editing,” etc. So I had a talented group of people to work with who had the technical skills I lack. Now I knew that the festival was a possibility
The event grew as we went along. One board member, Mike Awe, suggested that we open with a Hollywood film in order to generate publicity and excitement. I thought that was a good idea as long as the film had an Oak Park connection. I created a list of Hollywood movies with Oak Park connections and was amazed at how long it was.
We wound up selecting The Abyss: Special Edition, which stars Oak Parker Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
One of the many challenges we faced was finding and renting the right locations. We were able to rent the historic Lake Theatre. Classic Cinemas has been very helpful in many ways, including navigating the difficult challenge of getting the rights to show the film. That evening, Thursday, Sept. 12, will feature a red-carpet atmosphere, with photos in front of a backdrop and speakers before the film.
The following Saturday, at Madison Street Theater, we will present the independent film festival, showing some of the films that were submitted for judging. There will also be a panel, Q&As, breakfast for all, and a guest speaker who is flying in from California.
We did not know, of course, how many films would be submitted. When asked for a guesstimate, I gave the hopeful number of 25. After all, no one knew about us at that point, and we limited it to films with an Oak Park connection of some kind. It turned out we had 61 entries! Many more than we could show.
Planning the festival has been a much bigger challenge than I ever imagined. It has almost been a full-time job. When we started, we had no funding and board members just put expenses, such as printing, on their charge cards.
Fortunately, the village could see the value of the festival and gave us seed money. We also received sponsorship from Hoyne Bank and several smaller donors. Madison Street Theater agreed to be our fiscal sponsor so we could attain nonprofit status. Board members put in tremendous work. The Chamber of Commerce helped.
There is a cliché that “It takes a village,” which is appropriate in this case in more ways than one.
For information or tickets go to our website opilff.org. While there, you can sign up for the email newsletter.
It’s exciting, and I hope to see a lot of Oak Parkers there.
Joyce Porter is the founder and president of the board of the Oak Park Illinois Film Festival.