I finally took part in the film fest

Virginia told me where to go and what to see

10/22/2009 11:46 PM

By Bonnie McGrath

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Every year I promise myself I am going to go to our very own local International Film Festival. But I never go. Mainly, because I don’t know what to go to. All the films sound good. What if I choose one that isn’t? But aren’t they all award winners from different fests? So isn’t it impossible to see a bad one?

On and on I ruminate. And it gets more complicated. The films play every day, usually more than once during the fest and I never know exactly how to get tickets, or if I’ll be able to get tickets or what time to get the tickets for? Or what theater to go to? Or how to buy tickets online? Or how to get them in person?

And on and on it goes. I just don’t know what to do. So I do nothing.

But this year South Looper Virginia Wexman--an author and a professor of film at UIC--told me what to do. In fact, she told South Loop Neighbors members who were interested what to do: see three films--“The Maid,” “Vincere,” and “Police, Adjective”--and then report for the quiz.

It wasn’t a quiz exactly. But she did give us marching orders and then a dozen of us met up at the Cliff Dwellers Club on South Michigan Avenue for follow up discussion.

And I learned that my fellow South Loopers are pretty smart. And film buffs to boot. They called “Vincere” operatic, and saw all kinds of dynamics in the life of “The Maid” and could pinpoint the common European film genre elements in “Police, Adjective.”

In “The Maid,” I thought the maid, who really was, but really wasn’t, part of an upper middle class Chilean family, needed a friend of her own--and she got one and her life looked up. “Vincere”--which chronicles the true story of Austrian Ida Dalser, who was married to Mussolini, who denied the relationship and his son--and started another family, leaving Ida and their son to die in mental institutions (the son was only 27)--was the most depressing movie I ever saw in my life. “Police, Adjective” I liked because it chronicled the life of a Romanian police officer, who was trying to disrupt a youthful drug ring, and I loved walking the streets with him, and visiting his house and seeing what he ate and what his wife was like in Romania because I never travel and always love a good foreign travelogue, which for me, this film was.

All in all, an opportunity like this comes along rarely--to have a taskmaster tell you what to see, where to go and ultimately what to think. I liked it.


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By Virginia Wexman from South Loop
Posted: 10/23/2009 11:57 AM

Thanks for your support, Bonnie. I very much enjoyed organizing this event and meeting some interesting film buff neighbors in the process.