Opening Night: Gene Siskel Film Center, June 23 at 8pm
All other shows: Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark St.
The 23rd Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival will showcase a strong and diverse selection of the best in experimental film and video from around the world.
This year Onion City will present 10 programs featuring 76 films by local artists and established masters such as Thom Andersen, the Quay Brothers, Deborah Stratman, Lewis Klahr, and James Fotopoulos.
Work this year comes from 14 countries, including Poland, France, Germany, Austria, Canada, UK, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Ireland, The Netherlands, Turkey, Belgium, and the US.
Opening Night, at the Gene Siskel Film Center on June 23, features an outstanding selection of recent works by key figures of World Cinema and of the avant-garde community.
The Quay Brothers’ new short MASKA, Thom Andersen’s GET OUT OF THE CAR, and ATLANTIQUE, by Mati Diop. The program is rounded out by several mesmerizing short works by T. Marie, Jürgen Reble, Milena Gierke, and former Chicagoans Christopher Becks and Peter Miller.
The festival closes on Sunday, June 26 with another former Chicagoan, James Fotopoulos, who will be in person to present his four-years in the making feature ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Fotopoulos incorporates hundreds of new drawings, an eclectic score and dense sound design, text fragments from Lewis Carroll’s writing on screen, and a hauntingly minimalist performance to move from “curiouser and curiouser” to very strange indeed.
In between, another eight programs include work by familiar names to the festival (Robert Todd, Janie Geiser, Lewis Klahr, Stephanie Barber, Luther Price, Ben Rivers, Vincent Grenier, and more) and a large number of artists showing for the first time in Onion City. Among the highlights are Madison Brookshire’s delicate and stunning 74-minute color field film COLOR SERIES, which was made entirely without a camera and transfixes the viewer with its slowly changing range of hues on-screen.
Onion City also presents another long work, acclaimed up-and-coming Mexican filmmaker Nicolás Pereda’s ALL THINGS WERE NOW OVERTAKEN BY SILENCE, a highly stylized film-about-filming which “documents” the shooting of a play based on a monologue from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s poem “First I Dream.”
Onion City features a healthy amount of work by current and former Chicagoans, including Jake Barningham, Kyle Canterbury, Deborah Stratman, Karen Johannesen, Mary Helena Clark, and JB Mabe (current local); and Yoel Meranda, Vincent Grenier, Christopher Becks, Peter Miller, Jodie Mack, Sabine Gruffat, and Michael A. Morris.
The festival takes place on Thursday, June 23 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, and Friday through Sunday (June 24 – 26) at Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark St. in Andersonville.
Find complete details at the festival website: www.chicagofilmmakers.org/onion_fest