The Midwest Film Festival is the USA's only film festival solely dedicated to Midwest films. Only films from the eight-state Midwest region of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin are considered for screening.
The festival was originally hosted every first Tuesday of the month at Chicago's Landmark Century Centre Cinema but is presently held on the final Monday of the month at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Originally named the Midwest Independent Film Festival in 2004, the festival formally changed its name to the Midwest Film Festival in 2020 in a rebranding strategy spearheaded by festival director Erica Duffy. [1]
The film festival was founded by Chicago actor Mike McNamara and filmmaker Michael Kwielford in 2004. [13] In November 2017 McNamara stepped down as director "due to personal reasons" and was replaced by Kwielford as interim director. [14] In July 2018, Amy Guth was named the new executive director of the festival. [15] In December 2019, Erica Duffy was named the festival's new executive director. [16]
Hoop Dreams is a 1994 American documentary film directed by Steve James, and produced by Frederick Marx, James, and Peter Gilbert, with Kartemquin Films. It follows the story of two African-American high school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, in Chicago and their dream of becoming professional basketball players.
Steve James is an American film producer and director of several documentaries, including Hoop Dreams (1994), Stevie (2002), The Interrupters (2011), Life Itself (2014), and Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016).
Ali Selim is an American film and television director. Over the past fifteen years he has directed over 850 television commercials, five half-hour documentaries and several music videos.
Myron G. Nussbaum is an American actor and director.
Sean Baker is an American film director, cinematographer, producer, screenwriter and editor. He is best known for the independent feature films Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), as well as the Fox/IFC puppet sitcom Greg the Bunny and its spin-offs.
Victory Gardens Theater is a theater company in Chicago, Illinois dedicated to the development and production of new plays and playwrights. The theater company was founded in 1974 when eight Chicago artists, Cecil O'Neal, Warren Casey, Stuart Gordon, Cordis Heard, Roberta Maguire, Mac McGuinnes, June Pyskaček, and David Rasche each fronted $1,000 to start a company outside the Chicago Loop and Gordon donated the light board of his Organic Theater Company. The theater's first production, The Velvet Rose, by Stacy Myatt premiered on October 9, 1974.
John Stewart Muller is an American motion picture and television commercial director, screenwriter, and producer.
Inquiring Nuns is a 1968 Kartemquin Films production directed by Gordon Quinn and Gerald Temaner. The documentary film features Sisters Marie Arne and Mary Campion, two young Catholic nuns who visit a variety of Chicago locales to ask people the question, "Are you happy?" They meet a variety of individuals ranging from hippie musicians to intellectuals, whose responses are everything from the mundane to the spiritual. The film was directly influenced by Jean Rouch's Chronique d'un été, which Quinn and Temaner had watched at Doc Films while they were undergraduates at the University of Chicago. The film was shot on Kartemquin's “Camera #1”, a custom-modified crystal sync Auricon with a used manual zoom lens Quinn purchased from Albert Maysles, and to which he added a World War II gunner handle bought from a pawn shop as an extra grip for steadiness.
Typeface is an independent documentary film, produced by Kartemquin Films and directed by Justine Nagan, about visual culture, technology and graphic design, centered on the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Typeface the film focuses on a rural Midwestern museum and print shop where international artists meet retired craftsmen and together navigate the convergence of modern design and traditional wood type printing technique. Directed by Justine Nagan, it was released in 2009 after two sold-out sneak previews at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.
The Interrupters is a 2011 documentary film, produced by Kartemquin Films, that tells the story of three violence interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. It examines a year in which Chicago drew national headlines for violence and murder that plagued the city.
Caitlin Parrish is an American playwright, television writer, and filmmaker and, along with Erica Weiss, the co-creator of The Red Line on CBS. Her work in television also includes Supergirl, Under The Dome, and Emily Owens MD. Plays include A Twist of Water, The Downpour, and The Burials, which were all created with her frequent collaborator, Erica Weiss. The View from Tall was her first feature film, which she also co-directed with Weiss.
Ky Dickens is a filmmaker, writer and director best known for her documentaries Zero Weeks, Sole Survivor, The City That Sold America and Fish out of Water.
On Beauty is a 2014 short documentary film, produced by Kartemquin Films. It follows the story of Rick Guidotti, a fashion photographer who in 1998 decided to quit the fashion industry to found a nonprofit based on promoting diversity and acceptance.
Almost There is a 2014 independent documentary film, produced by Kartemquin Films. It was directed by Aaron Wickenden and Dan Rybicky.
Seth Savoy is a Cajun film director and screenwriter.
Unbroken Glass is a 2016 independent documentary film, directed by Dinesh Das Sabu and produced by Kartemquin Films. Unbroken Glass weaves together Das Sabu’s journey of discovery with cinéma vérité scenes of his family dealing with still raw emotions and consequences of his immigrant parents’ lives and deaths. The film was shot over five years in Illinois, New Mexico, California, and India.
Raising Bertie is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Margaret Byrne and produced by Ian Robertson Kibbe, Margaret Byrne, and Jon Stuyvesant. It was distributed by Kartemquin Films and aired in shortened form on the 30th season of PBS's documentary series POV on August 28, 2017.
America to Me is a 2018 American documentary television series directed by Steve James, produced by Kartemquin Films and Participant Media. The 10-episode series was filmed during the 2015-2016 school year at Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF) located in Oak Park, Illinois. The series chronicles daily life of twelve students spanning "all the grades and all the tracks within the school."
Relative is a 2022 American drama/comedy feature film written and directed by Michael Glover Smith. The film is about a family reunion centered on a college graduation party in Chicago. It premiered at the 2022 Gasparilla International Film Festival in Tampa, Florida where actor Cameron Scott Roberts won the Grand Jury award for Best Performance.
Sideral is a 2021 Brazilian and French short film directed by Carlos Segundo. The fifteen-minute story shot in Black & White is a glimpse into the lives of a Brazilian family impacted by the extraordinary event of rocket launch from a nearby centre. The short has been presented in a number of festivals, including Cannes Film Festival and the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and won several awards, including the Oscar Qualifying award for Best International Short at the 2022 Palm Springs International Shorts Fest.