Accessibility Options Archives: Open Captions

From Future Idea to Feature

How does a creative idea turn into a completed project? Learn tactics that will help support your creative process as a young independent artist developing your next works. Award-winning writer, director, and actor McKenzie Chinn will share the concrete steps that took her from script to short to feature-length film.

About CineYouth

Now in its 20th edition, CineYouth is Cinema/Chicago’s annual film festival celebrating filmmakers 22 and younger from around the world. Since 2005, CineYouth has provided a platform for emerging talent to share their work, connect with fellow filmmakers, and learn from industry professionals. Learn more about CineYouth…

Continue Reading

Writing for Film and Television with Virgil Williams

Join award-winning screenwriter and playwright Virgil Williams (The Piano Lesson, Mudbound) in a Master Class on writing for film and television. Moderated by screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson (The Americans, Respect). Networking event to follow (with cash bar).

A veteran television writer and producer, Williams’ extensive credits include last year’s critically acclaimed adaptation of The Piano Lesson. Other credits include ground-breaking dramas ER and 24, as well as six seasons of CBS’s long-running procedural drama Criminal Minds. In November of 2017, Williams celebrated the release of his feature film debut, Mudbound. He also served as Executive Producer and originally adapted the script from the novel by Hilary Jordan. The critically acclaimed film was named the ‘Best Film of 2017’ by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post and has earned numerous awards and accolades, including an Academy Award Nomination for Williams and cowriter/director Dee Rees for Best Adapted Screenplay. He also adapted Pulitzer Prize-winner Dana Canedy’s bestselling memoir A Journal for Jordan for director Denzel Washington and starring Michael B. Jordan. Williams was born and raised in Chicago, and his scripts often draw from his experiences growing up as a bi-racial kid in a city with a long history of racial tension.

Moderator

headshot: Tracey Scott WilsonTracey Scott Wilson wrote the teleplay for MGM’s film Respect; served as a co-executive producer and writer on Fosse/Verdon; and was a co-executive producer on FX’s award-winning series The Americans, where she wrote for five seasons and received two WGAE awards, two Peabody awards, and a Golden Globe. Tracey is also a renowned playwright (Buzzer, The Good Negro, The Story), and has received several distinctions, including the 2003 AT&T Onstage Award, the 2007 Weissberger Playwriting Award as well as the 2007 Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship. Currently, she is the Barbara Berlanti Professor in LGBTQ Writing for the Stage and Screen in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University.

Continue Reading

And the Oscars Go To…

Once again, we will spend the Saturday morning before the Academy Awards “digging deeper” into some of this year’s most provocative nominees. This year, Oscar’s ballot aligns closely with ChicagoIFF’s programming, not just by sharing several titles in common but by showcasing a lively diversity of international cinema as well as English-language films that dwell in complex ways on ideas of nation and nationality. After an hour or so of clips and commentary, we will shift into 20 minutes of Q&A. Attendees will vote on their own favorites, with winners announced at the end of the session.

Recommended viewing: The Brutalist (in cinemas), Emilia Pérez (Netflix), Flow (multiple streaming services), or The Girl with the Needle (multiple streaming services)

Please note: The discussion does not include screenings of films.

Continue Reading

The Light of Truth: Richard Hunt’s Monument to Ida B. Wells

Directed by Rana Segal | United States
66 minutes

Winner of Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival!

Chicago icons past and present come together in this inspiring documentary about artistic practice and political activism. As celebrated sculptor Richard Hunt crafts his monument to civil rights icon Ida B. Wells, “The Light of Truth,” the film weaves together Hunt’s story with the captivating history of his subject, Ida B. Wells.

In connecting artist and activist through Hunt’s towering 35-foot-high Bronzeville-based sculpture, the film reveals their analogous missions to battle racism and forge new paths for Black Americans. A moving testament to Hunt, an influential artist, and Wells, notable for her anti-lynching organizing and role in the suffragist movement, The Light of Truth is a monument to public art, the spirit of protest, and two essential Black Chicago pioneers dedicated to freedom and perseverance.

Learn more about the film

Continue Reading