Timeout chicago has an article up about this years festival.

Buried treasures
The Underground Film Fest brings its eclectic lineup to Wicker Park.

For Hollywood movies, August lives up to the nickname “dog days of summer.” Luckily, it’s also the month for the film festival that celebrates the charming stray mutts. The Chicago Underground Film Festival, in its 14th year, opened August 15 and continues through Sunday 19. This year, the fest is transplanting itself from the art-house confines of the Music Box to the Chopin Theater and the Elegant Mr. Gallery in Wicker Park, giving the quickly gentrifying neighborhood a shot of boho credibility.

Festival director and cofounder Bryan Wendorf says it’s a move that makes sense, especially since it’s already “a destination neighborhood for our core audience.” It also allows for some necessary downsizing: The 750-seat Music Box is hard for any festival to fill, let alone one that champions filmmaking at the margins. A shift to smaller venues, in closer proximity to the party locations, and a reduction in the number of programs also allow for a more manageable fest for Wendorf and the all-volunteer staff.

Read the rest of it at Timeout Chicago.

The Chicagoist blog has a nice little story about this years festival.

August 13, 2007
Chicago Underground Film Festival: 14 Years of Being Different

Would Hollywood make a movie about a swingin’ 70’s housewife, complete with musical numbers? Or a documentary about New York City’s Union Square in the days immediately following 9/11? Would Hollywood make a movie about Thax?

These are rhetorical questions; we’re not saying that Hollywood is all bad, we’re just saying that there are all kinds of movies out there. And dozens of the kind that you’d never see coming from Tinseltown will be on display at this year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival, which runs Wednesday through Sunday at the Chopin Theatre and Elegant Mr. Gallery in Wicker Park.

Read the rest at the Chicagoist.

Tim Kinsella director of our opening movie “Orchard Vale” was recently interviewed on the Movie City Indie website.

August 11, 2007
Engineering this fiasco: the making of Orchard Vale

TIM KINSELLA AND I MET IN 1997 AND HAVE BEEN EXCHANGING PREOCCUPATIONS EVER SINCE.

Ever prolific, Kinsella, who began his public life as a musician at the age of 16 in the band Cap’n Jazz, has recorded dozens of albums since, and with the meltdown of the music industry, has shifted to filmmaking as another artistic outlet, itself a troubled medium for anyone wanting to make a career today. [Kinsella’s diverse collaborations have appeared under such names as Joan of Arc and Make Believe.] His writing-directing debut, Orchard Vale, a claustrophobic experimental feature about a band of outsiders after an cyan couch 2.jpgoff-screen collapse of civilization, opens the 14th Chicago Underground Film Festival on August 15, just a few weeks after his decision to leave the band Make Believe.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Underground films get their due
LOCAL CINEMA | CUFF promises to startle, upset and mesmerize fans for five days

August 10, 2007
BY BILL STAMETS

The Chicago Underground Film Festival is the city’s most eclectic yet best curated fest. Director and co-founder Bryan Wendorff has a knack for uncovering work that startles, upsets and spellbinds.

For the 14th annual run, Wendorff offers 19 features and 91 shorts in the five-day fest that kicks off at 8 p.m. Wednesday with the post-apocalyptic drama “Orchard Vale” at the Chopin Theatre.

Read the rest of the story here.

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