See our Full Program (or check out our Quick Guide)

Tickets for Gene Siskel Film Center members go on sale Wednesday May 16 and to general public Friday May 18.

at the Gene Siskel Film Center Box Office- 164 N. State St.
AND
Online through Ticketmaster or find the link through the GSFC website.

ALSO….This year, FESTIVAL PASSES are available!
$75 gets you into an unlimited number of screenings!  This is over a $130 value!
Buy your festival pass at the box office as soon as tickets are available for the festival.
Plus, once CUFF is over, you can turn in your pass to the box office at the end of the fest to get a $5 discount on Siskel Membership

You’ll still need to pick up a ticket at the box office before each screening.  Please note that a festival pass needs to be presented at the box office for a ticket and does not guarantee a passholder entry if a screening sells out.

Tickets and Locations
All screenings for the 18^th annual Chicago Underground Film Festival take place at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, located at 164 N. State St.

Tickets to each screening are $11/general admission. Other ticket prices are $7/student and $6/Film Center and IFP/Chicago members. All tickets may be purchased at the Film Center Box Office. Both general admission and Film Center member tickets are available through Ticketmaster, 800-982-2787, www.ticketmaster.com, and all Ticketmaster outlets.

The Film Center and its box office are open 5 to 8:30 pm, Monday through Friday; 2 to 8:30 pm Saturday; or 2 to 5:30 pm Sunday.

Discounted parking is available for $14 for nine hours at the InterPark SELF-PARK at 20 E. Randolph St. A rebate ticket can be obtained from the Film Center Box Office.

A Film Center membership is a year-round ticket to great movies for only $6 per screening! Memberships are $50 (Individual) and $80 (Dual). For more information, call 312-846-2600 or visit www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

For more information about the Film Center, call 312-846-2800 (24-hour movie hotline) or 312-846-2600 (general information, 9:00 am-5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday), or visit www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

About the Gene Siskel Film Center, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

The Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago celebrates 39 years of presenting cutting edge programs, independent and international cinema, premieres, retrospectives, and classic films. Internationally recognized for its original film programming, the Film Center is a vibrant cultural destination in Chicago that attracts a diverse and creative annual audience of over 81,000.

A leader in educating artists and designers for 144 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago offers undergraduate and graduate programs to nearly 2,800 students from around the world. In addition to the time-honored study of painting, sculpture, printmaking, and design, SAIC’s studio programs embrace film and new media, electronic and sound arts, and creative writing. To complement its studio programs, SAIC offers academic degrees in disciplines from art history to arts administration, visual and critical studies to historic preservation. Located in the heart of Chicago, the School promotes contemporary discourse about art and design through venues such as the Gene Siskel Film Center, Video Data Bank, Betty Rymer Gallery, Gallery 2, the Division of Studies, and in conjunction with the Poetry Center.

Just start clicking.  Refer to our schedule for more information on each film.

Video Diary of a Lost Girl

Dicke Madchen

Headlock

The Fourth Dimenson

Two Years At Sea

I Have Always Been a Dreamer

Zero Killed

Girl Model

Palaces of Pity

Heaven + Earth + Joe Davis

Journey to Planet-X

Hollywood Burn

Master Plan

As Above, So Below

OK, Good

Andrew Bird: Fever Year

Jonathan Marlow

Fandor co-founder Jonathan Marlow is a relatively accomplished composer and curator as well as an occasional filmmaker with roughly two dozen short films and a handful video installations to his credit. In the decade-and-a-half prior to his role as Vice President of Acquisitions and Development at Fandor, Marlow was affiliated with a number of technology-centric film distribution companies (such as GreenCine, VUDU and Amazon) and film exhibition institutions (namely San Francisco Cinematheque and the Seattle International Film Festival, among others). Marlow regularly writes about cinema for an assortment of unremarkable publications on issues pertinent to the motion picture industry. Furthermore, he is known to infrequently host film screenings throughout the country showcasing remarkable works that are generally unavailable elsewhere.

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Dan Koretzky

Dan Koretzky (“pictured”) literally invented Drag City. He I was born grew up in Chicago and believes feels strongly that this city is was what you one make the best of it our limited time.

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Julia Gibbs

Julia Gibbs is the Asst. Director of the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago.

During the festival the poster will also be available in screen print form
– look out for it in the lobby!

Thanks Lyra Hill!

Join the 19th Annual Chicago Underground Film Festival for our Opening Night Screening
May 31st, 2012
….in THE FOURTH DIMENSION….

8:00 pm, May 31, 2012
The Gene Siskel Film Center
164 North State Street
Chicago, IL 60601

‘The Fourth Dimension’ is a film that gives us a glimpse of enlightenment through the eyes of three one-of-a-kind directors:  Harmony Korine, Alexey Fedorchenko and Jan Kwiekinski.

The three filmmakers have created three unique stories that offer up their vision of this higher plane of existence, the Fourth Dimension, each taking his character on a journey that changes the way they see the world and themselves.

In Korine’s film, Val Kilmer is an oddball motivational speaker, who tells us how to broaden our minds and change our perspectives to reach enlightenment (and, of course, the titular the fourth dimension). Fedorchenko introduces us to Grigory, who believes he’s found the fourth dimension, but learns that perhaps this isn’t what he’s truly seeking. In the film’s last chapter, Kwiekinski depicts a group of friends whose search for the fourth dimension takes them through their deserted village and ends with an encounter with someone who is truly the outcast that the friends fancy themselves to be.

Presented by Grolsch Film Works and VICE Films.  Watch the trailer:

Get Your Tickets online and early:  The Gene Siskel Film Center

Please check it out and donate if you can.

We’re offering lots of fun stuff to those who donate… AND…
our fabulous intern, Kimberly, made a trailer that will entertain the socks off of you:

FREE!
Monday April 9, 2012
screening starts at 9pm
Beauty Bar (1444 W Chicago Ave).
Hosted bar from 8pm to 9pm!!
(with RSVP to: chicagorsvp@thebeautybar.com)

Drink Specials:$3 Drafts, $4 Well Drinks, & per usual $10 Martini + Manicures!

Films include:

Playing Alive by Mike Olenick 16 min
“Playing Alive reassembles the entire career of John Travolta to create a new and unexpected portrait of the Hollywood actor. The video turns appropriated imagery from over forty of Travolta’s films into an existential meditation focusing on his numerous onscreen death scenes and the dichotomies of mind and body, real and fake, and alive and dead. It transforms dialogue from his films into an interior monologue about his dissatisfaction with Hollywood and his place in it while simultaneously positioning his acting career in the context of Scientology, the religion he follows off screen.” (M.O.)

Boxcartoon by Matt Marsden 10 min
Boxcartoon is an animated ‘exquisite corpse’ collaboration in which the filmmaker selected three animators with a similar interest in the fantastic and grotesque to create glimpses of the unearthly. (M.M.)

Video Terraform Dance Party by Jeremy Bailey 12 min
“In Video Terraform Dance Party director Jeremy Bailey plays an enthusiastic nerd channeling Bob Ross as he dons a forehead-mounted VR controller to demonstrate new modeling software that will allow him to bop his head around and ‘plan the ideal landscape’.” – Marisa Olson

Boxes, Jesus and Sandwiches by Jennifer Matotek 2 min
“I just found this really bitchin record with a doomsday cult recording from the 80s, and thought about the 80s, and the whole weird conservative thing that was happening, which is happening now, and I just thought, fuck it, let’s throw some stuff together.” (J.M.)

Voice On The Line by Kelly Sears 7 min
“Enchanting operators, covert government plots, Cold War paranoia and ordinary telephones forever changed how we got in touch with one another..” (K.S.)

Prison Beta by Lucas Dimick 22 min
“Catastrophic events are set in motion after millions of E.T. Atari Video Game Cartridges become radioactive as a result of being buried near the trinity nuclear test site in New Mexico.” (L.D.)

Filmmakers will be notified late April-early May.   Please wait to hear from us.

And Remember…

As soon as stuff starts coming in, our screening committee will be hard at work watching everything that comes in. We’re counting over 1,200 submissions this year so far, so please be patient!

Programming is an amorphous process that takes a lot of massaging, so just look out for an email from us in that time period.

If you submitted through Withoutabox, you can also check back there for a potentially quicker notification.

After May 5th, please let us know if you didn’t hear from us (info AT cuff DOT org).

We would like to streamline and perfect our system, and we don’t want to leave anyone out in the cold. Hopefully the email address you gave us is clear, valid and still functioning- sometimes emails bounce back, so make sure we have a reliable email address!

The full program should be announced by early-mid May and will be available on our website and in the Gene Siskel Film Center Gazette.

Thanks so much for letting CUFF watch and consider your work.

See you at the fest!

(image from Great Man and Cinema by Jim Finn)

One of these films isn’t really a documentary. Can you tell the difference?

FREE!

Monday March 12, 2012
screening starts at 9pm
Beauty Bar (1444 W Chicago Ave).
Hosted bar from 8pm to 9pm!!
(with RSVP to: chicagorsvp@thebeautybar.com)

Drink Specials:$3 Drafts, $4 Well Drinks, & per usual $10 Martini + Manicures!

Films include:

Pie Fight 69 by Christian Bruno and Sam Green 8 min.
The 1969 San Francisco International Film Festival opens on the steps of City Hall, but is unexpectedly attacked by independent filmmakers with pies. This footage was long-lost and then found and made into a movie in the late 1990s.

Great Man and Cinema by Jim Finn 4 min.
Kim Jong Il, the Stalinist David O. Selznick, runs the state film studio as a way of promoting his own and his father’s cult of personality. The film’s title “Great Man and Cinema” comes from a propaganda booklet filled with stories of how the Dear Leader has written, edited, produced and given acting advice in films for the last 40 years. This film succinctly synthesizes the Dear Leader’s directing philosophy with his feelings toward the imperialist beast at his heels.

Sneakin’ and Peakin’ by Tom Palazzolo 15 min. Made with Mark Rance.
We traveled to Indiana back roads to see and shoot the annual Miss Nude Universe Contest held at a “notorious” nudist camp. They wanted $15 a head at the gate so we parked down the road and crawled through the brush. Once in, we encountered truckers and hundreds of Sunday photographers straining for a shot at the contestants. Afterwards we joined the quest for stray women willing to pose. After a quick success we headed home with our catch in the can. (This film also contains shots of the Mr. Nude Trucker Contest.)

Something Else by Kevin Jerome Everson 2 min.
Something Else is a film about found footage as subject matter and Miss Black Roanoke, Virginia 1971 expressing her thoughts about the upcoming Miss Black Virginia 1971 Pageant.

Peaches by Anders Nelson 14 min
‘Peaches’ is about a brother and sister who form a pact that they will only eat peaches together after the somewhat traumatic loss of her virginity. The relationship turns serious and far more complicated.

I’m Keith Hernandez by Rob Perri 20 min.
Part baseball documentary, part anti drug film, part socio-political satire, I’M KEITH HERNANDEZ utilizes a version of Hernandez life as a vehicle to discuss how male identity is shaped by TV/film, sports, advertising, and pornography.
Winner: Best short film 2007 Chicago Underground Film Festival

The Chicago Underground Film Festival Presents:
Love and Sex (Mostly Sex)

Come celebrate “love” with CUFF a week before V-day at SALONATHON.  Why not start early?

FREE!

Monday February 6, 2012
screening starts at 9pm
Beauty Bar (1444 W Chicago Ave).
Hosted bar from 8pm to 9pm!!
(with RSVP to: chicagorsvp@thebeautybar.com)

Drink Specials:$3 Drafts, $4 Well Drinks, & per usual $10 Martini + Manicures!

Films include:

The Color of Love by Peggy Ahwesh 9 min.
Ahwesh subjects an apparently found pornographic film to coloring, optical printing and general fragmentation; the source material threatens to virtually collapse under the beautiful violence of her filmic treatment. What emerges is a portrait at once nostalgic and horrible: the degraded image, locked in symbiotic relation with an image of degradation. (from Electronic Arts Intermix)

Removed by Naomi Uman 7 min.
Using as her source material a segment of 1970s European softcore pornography, Naomi Uman created this derived piece by painstakingly removing the female from each frame using bleach and nail polish remover, thus presenting the viewer with a bizarre, ghostly effect of a figure; a blank void of a woman.

I’d Rather Be Dead Than Live In This World by Andrew Semans 17 min.
A young couple struggle to maintain a private utopia in a vicious, unforgiving world.

Blue Movie by Mark Street 6 min.
A smattering of repeated performances culled from old porno films and hand painted. A man bends over a body, but what we really notice is the texture of the wall behind him. A woman stares back at the viewer with annoyance. On the soundtrack Anais Nin declares: “but while I’m doing this I feel I’m not living.”

Pacifier by Oscar Perez 12 min.
Based on a letter written to PENTHOUSE FORUM by the writer/director, when he was 13 years old. Not finding an address to mail the letter to, he put it away only to discover it again 15 years later. This hilarious campy short captures the quintessential fantasizing mind of a boy entering puberty

The Operation by Marne Lucas and Jacob Pander 12 min.
In a cold tile operating room, a surgeon clad in a protective Ty-Vek suit, goggles and tight rubber gloves demonstrates her skill before a group of observers. They scrutinize the eerie coupling between the surgeon and patient, whose bodies merge like molten lava. Thermal coitus draws the viewer into an erotic experience that probes beneath the boundary of skin.