Chicago Underground Film Festival Returns for Its 33rd Year, Featuring Documentaries "Nova '78" and "A Stranger Has No Eyes"
The film festival will take over both the Gene Siskel Film Center and Harper Theater, screening various independent films.
The Chicago Underground Film Festival, the longest-running underground film festival in the world, is returning for its 33rd year.
CUFF has become known for screening cutting edge films and late night afterparties, and this year will be no different. With film screenings at both the Gene Siskel Film Center and Harper Theater, afterparties will happen at various southside venues.
The festival will have both its opening and closing nights at the Gene Siskel Film Center, a staple in the downtown area. NOVA ‘78, a documentary about the 1978 Nova Convention, serves as the introduction for this year’s festival.
The documentary features archival footage from filmmaker Howard Brookner, which took more than a decade to restore. Archival footage takes audience around the 1978 Nova Convention – an event that CUFF describes as “one of the defining moments in underground cultural history.”
Figures such as Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa, Philip Glass, and many others, converged in one space for three days of the convention.
“For three extraordinary days in New York’s East Village, the Nova Convention became a temporary autonomous zone where ideas, images, and sound spilled across disciplines,” CUFF wrote for the film’s description. “[William S. Burroughs] stands at the center of the transmission as language folds in on itself and time slips.”
Burroughs was a writer and spoken word performer who was a primary figure of the Beat Generation, according to Good Reads. Not only is he known as a postmodernist author, he’s deemed as “one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 2oth century.”
He went on to write 18 books and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. There are five books of his interviews and correspondences, plus he collaborated with many performers and musicians.
“NOVA ‘78 captures underground culture inventing itself in real time,” CUFF wrote. “Performances dissolve into conversations, rehearsals into spontaneous encounters, while Howard Brookner’s camera drifts effortlessly between stage, backstage, audience, and the streets of Manhattan, preserving a creative ecosystem before it was institutionalized, commodified or mythologized.”
Directors Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias welcome Burroughs’ fragmented logic, allowing various elements to come together as something “stranger and more alive” than a conventional documentary.
Following the screening of NOVA ‘78, a question and answer will ensue. The night will proceed to the opening night afterparty at Broken Shaker, a downtown cocktail bar located inside the Freehand Chicago hotel.
As the festival will begin on Sept. 23, going onto Sept. 27, closing night will feature the world premiere of A Stranger Has No Eyes. The C. S. Nicholson documentary will follow a descendant of a notorious slave trader as well as the “unresolved wounds of colonial violence in contemporary Benin.”
Martine de Souza, becoming the second-in-command to the de Souza dynasty, will spend the documentary battling between protecting the dynasty’s legacy or challenging it from within.
The de Souza dynasty got its start in the late 1700s when Félix de Souza moved to modern-day Benin from Brazil, according to The Institute of the Black World 21st Century. He later became one of the biggest slave merchants of the transatlantic slave trade.
Following the screening, and a question and answer session, the closing night afterparty will take place at Brando’s Speakeasy. During this afterparty, the awards ceremony will award films and filmmakers alike in various categories.
Last year’s rendition of CUFF awarded $POSITIONS with the “Made in Chicago” award, while awarding “Best Narrative Feature” to TRIPOLAR THE MOVIE.
Following the awards ceremony, CUFF announced its exclusive community – The Underground. The tiered membership, powered through Patreon, allows members access to a quarterly program and perks related to the annual festival.
Not only does CUFF have a new membership community, it also expanded to Pie – a website for posting events and ideas. In addition to the CUFF website, every film screening and afterparty is listed.
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