Even as concerns and uncertainty around the pandemic remain, film festivals have gradually been coming back. Reeling, the long-running local LGBTQ+ film festival, wrapped earlier this week. Up next: The Chicago International Film Festival begins Oct. 13 and the Siskel’s Black Harvest Film Festival returns Nov. 5. Jumping into the mix as well, somewhat unexpectedly, is filmmaker and Lincoln Square resident Joe Swanberg, who is launching a once-a-week film festival Monday nights at his neighborhood cinema, the Davis Theater.
“I will be showing brand new films before their commercial release, with directors present for Q&As as often as possible,” he said in an email blast. “I will also be showing some of my favorite films from 2020/21 — new films that faced an uphill battle being released during the pandemic and should have received more attention.”
Why once a week?
“Life right now is a little chaotic to ask people to drop everything and come to a traditional film festival,” he said when we talked. “Once a week, we can all handle once a week. And you don’t have to buy a pass or make any big decisions.”
Some weeks he will be presenting something called Mystery Mondays: “These will be films that haven’t come out yet,” he said. “So some of these films I’m getting way early.”
That includes the next screening (Oct. 4) and while he isn’t revealing the title, Swanberg is providing a few hints: The genre (Taiwanese horror) and a bare-bones synopsis (an “adaptation of a popular horror video game, set in Taiwan in 1962 during the White Terror period”). But that’s it. You won’t know what film he’s screening until you show up. He’s banking on the fact that he’s enough of a name — as the writer-director of films including “Drinking Buddies” and the Netflix series “Easy” — that moviegoers will be curious to see what kinds of films he’s booked.
“I’m hoping to develop that level of trust with the audience where they can look at my work, know my taste and get comfortable showing up not knowing what film they’ll see,” he said. “And I’m sure if you cared to do some intense internet sleuthing, you might be able to put some pieces together to figure out what the movie might be. But I’m really trying to have fun teasing it with just enough info for you to know whether you want to see it or not.”
Other weeks he’ll be showing films under a category he’s calling In Case You Missed It: “I’m announcing the title ahead of time and this is to spotlight movies that were released during the pandemic and that I think should have gotten new attention,” he said. “In a normal year, I think these films would have done a lot better. It’s not their fault. They just got the short end of the stick. So let me give them one more big screen presentation to try and generate some extra interest and get people talking. I’m thinking, how can I be the maximum amount of helpful to most facets of the industry? And what if this fall I did a film festival that wasn’t an organized two-week event but just happened every Monday at the Davis Theater?”
Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with Swanberg in the lobby happy to say hello. The film begins at 7.
The series is an expansion on a similar experiment from the spring. “We sold out nine weekends in a row and I did that mostly because I love the Davis, it’s my neighborhood movie theater,” he said. “When I moved here, I dreamed that my kids would scoop popcorn there when they turned 16. So I was worried about the theater’s future, as I am about every movie theater in Chicago. The theatrical model was already buckling under the weight of streaming, and then having the pandemic hit on top of that does make me nervous that a neighborhood theater like the Davis is going to be under siege from all angles. I have a ton of personal nervousness about the Davis not surviving.
“But I’m also worried about community,” he said. “The process of gathering in a room and watching movies with people, culturally it’s not as valued as it once was.” Even so, “I’m an optimist. To me the challenge is not that we’re facing tough times. The challenge is that the normal movies aren’t going to cut it.” And maybe boutique programming by a local filmmaker is special enough to draw a crowd on Monday nights. Swanberg has been mulling over this idea for years. “I took the pandemic to slow my life down to the point where I finally, for the first time, proposed something to the Davis.”
Swanberg is coordinating everything himself. I asked how he felt about that. “I like it quite a bit, actually. The business side of putting my exhibitor hat on has honestly been really exciting. I’ve spent my whole career not really worrying about that part; I’d sell my movie to a distributor and they do all the work and then tell me where to go and when. So it’s been a cool learning experience and fun to email all these exhibitors that I worked with as a filmmaker and be like, ‘OK, so, I am emailing to book a movie’ (laughs). I am paying the licensing fees myself upfront — I’m making the distributor whole right from the get-go — and then collecting a portion of the ticket sales, and then the rest goes to the Davis.”
As for his day job, he said has some TV projects in the works. But nothing on the horizon movie-wise just yet.
“As a filmmaker, I’m not going to feel all that excited or comfortable making my next feature until I have my head wrapped around what the landscape looks like. We’re undergoing such a dramatic cultural shift right now that it’s very hard for me to know what I want to do on the feature film side next.”
What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life … now. Sign up for our Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.
