The Festival honors Robert Wise, Vincente Minnelli, Angela Lansbury, and Slovakian writer and director Ján Kadár. The Gold Hugo for Best Feature goes to Georgy Shengalaya’s Prosmani, from the USSR, and French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier’s The Clockmaker of St. Paul holds its World Premiere.

The Festival presents a complete retrospective of the work of Indian auteur Satyajit Ray, and honors David L. Wolper and the classic Warner Bros. musicals. Rainier Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant wins a Special Jury Prize, and Greek master Theo Angelopolous’s first feature, Reconstruction, is shown along with his DAYS OF ‘36.

For the second year in a row, José Luis López Vázquez wins the Silver Hugo for Best Actor, this time for his turn in Mi Querida Señorita, while British filmmaker Mike Leigh’s directorial debut Bleak Moments wins the Gold Hugo for Best Film. Honorees include documentarian Frederick Wiseman, Abel Gance, Paul Morrissey, and Linwood G. Dunn.

The 7th Chicago International Film Festival honors Sonja Henie, director Franklin Schaffner, and producer Donald Siegel. Polish director Krysztof Zanussi’s Family Life and Claude Jutra’s Mon Oncle Antoine are among the year’s premieres, with Zanussi’s film winning the Special Jury Prize and Jutra taking home the Gold Hugo for Best Film. José Luis López Vázquez wins Best Actor for The Ancines Woods.

Illinois Governor Richard B. Ogilvie lends his support to the Festival, writing “too often, the avant-garde image of the filmmaker has been interpreted as antithetical to the mid-American ethic. But that is a view which disregards an essential element of that ethic: its firm foundation in the concept of individual freedom. Film is free, as America is free.” 15 years of state grants would follow. The Festival features its first all-critics jury, with banter and barbs exchanged between the Chicago Sun-Times’s Roger Ebert, the Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel, Chicago Today’s Mary Knoblaugh, and the Chicago Daily News’s Sam Lesner. Howard Hawks and George Stevens are Festival guests, and documentarian Les Blank’s short The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins takes home a Gold Hugo.