The 25th Chicago International Film Festival celebrates its longevity by offering more films this year than ever before. Not counting several special programs, about 130 films are being offered–and once again, quantity rather than quality is the festival’s principal calling card.
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Thanks to this year’s large amount of retrospective items, and (one suspects) the critical input of Kutza’s assistant John Porter, who made some of the selections, the number of good films at the festival does seem higher than usual. Even though the films in the Chaplin retrospective are all available on video, the opportunity to see most of his masterpieces on the big screen at the Music Box is especially welcome. (I’m less happy about the special presentation of City Lights accompanied by a symphony orchestra at the Chicago Theatre, because this entails suppressing Chaplin’s own original sound track–something I’ll discuss in greater detail toward the end of the month.) But the overall seriousness that informs the better festivals–the kind of seriousness that comes with taking a comprehensive, informed, and discernible position on what’s happening in world cinema is still lacking.
In a couple of brief conversations I’ve had with Kutza over the past year, I’ve learned (a) that he’s had no interest in seeing much less considering the most exciting and important new film that I’ve seen this year, Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan’s A Story of the Wind, and (b) that at least one film in last year’s festival, Flesheating Mothers, was included as camp, because Kutza thought it was so bad. Either of these positions viewed separately might be defensible, but taken together they give rise to some gloomy reflections. For some people, choosing a film simply because it’s bad makes perfect sense, although I might add that I can’t imagine the directors of the festivals in New York, Rotterdam, Toronto, or Venice ever doing such a thing. The problem is that the sheer range of awful films is huge, while one-of-a-kind masterpieces like A Story of the Wind, which have much less chance of becoming available other than at festivals (this film was screened at New York, Rotterdam, Toronto, and Venice), are few and far between. If a low-budget gorefest is more worthy of our attention than the visionary last testament of 90-year-old Joris Ivens, one of the century’s greatest filmmakers–and there are plenty of people besides Kutza who believe that it is–then the Chicago festival at least has to be credited with honoring that taste.
For further information, call 644-3456 or listen to radio stations WNUA (95.5 FM) or WBEZ (91.5 FM) for updates and coverage. Good luck, happy viewing, and try to be selective; you’re less likely to get burned.
