“We were filling the gap in the 60s. We started changing people’s tastes in filmgoing to make them want to see more of this kind of product. And now the theaters that used to show it all have stopped showing it because the distributors do not buy foreign product anymore and foreign product is not being shown in the local theaters anymore. So, ironically, we’ve become the only source now, the festival, for this new kind of film.”
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These modest remarks by Michael J. Kutza, director of the Chicago International Film Festival, are quoted verbatim from John Callaway’s show Chicago Tonight on October 17. (In the interest of brevity, I’ve omitted Kutza’s groundless attacks on the aesthetic tastes of the programmers of the Toronto film festival and on the historical acumen of Dave Kehr.) Taken separately or together, I think these comments provide a helpful clue about what makes the Chicago festival, in spite of its undeniable virtues, something of an embarrassment.
In the course of these three statements, Kutza (1) blithely ignored the work of the Film Center and Facets Multimedia Center, both of which show foreign films year-round, and usually of a much higher overall quality than those that he shows; (2) discounted the considerable efforts of local critics to draw attention to the festival and particularly to the few essential works it does show; and (3) dismissed the international climate of opinion that has made Krzysztof Kieslowski’s name important quite independently of Kutza’s. (As Kieslowski himself tactfully pointed out shortly after the broadcast, while introducing his first feature, Camera Buff, at the Village, this film was shown at the Chicago festival 13 years ago only after it won first prize at the festival in Moscow.)
In the reviews that follow, films that are recommended by our critics are preceded by an asterisk (*).
