What is the Chicago Comedy film festival’s mission?
Our main mission is to just promote comedy as a viable art form.
What role does your film festival play in supporting your film’s community?
We are an international film festival and we really focused on independent comedy filmmakers and we have a goal of trying to work with diverse filmmakers, especially female filmmakers. We were founded by a female filmmaker/comedian and our staff is about half female. We are just trying to foster a real open community of independent filmmakers, but on an international level.
What is something people look forward to every year at your film festival?
We do a really good job of making sure that the filmmakers are available for people to speak with. So from an audience members perspective I think getting to meet filmmakers is important. Also from an audience members perspective I think that we bring a real variety of films to Chicago that they normally wouldn’t get to see anywhere else in Chicago, both with the international aspect and the independent comedy aspect. It isn’t really popular in Chicago, as it should be, which is part of the reason we started the festival.
How long has your film festival been around?
This will be our 6th year.
How did your film festival come into being?
The founder was a filmmaker and she had a film that she had put through the film festival cycle in 2009. It was a comedy and the process of it all opened up her eyes to the lack of comedy film festivals out there. Being from Chicago, which is a comedy hub in America, she put two and two together and started the film festival just as a real small kind of thing to see how it would go and it just sort of took off, even in year one. It was a response to her own filmmaking endeavors.
What do you want audiences to take away from your film festival?
The viability of comedy is a filmmaking art form, and the wide variety of comedy that is out there. I feel like in mainstream comedy you definitely see pretty standard formulated sort of stuff and I hope, and know, that at our film festival’s people get to see a wide variety of the standard comedies, but also experimental comedies, and different forms, different styles, international comedies etc. That is all really important for the audience.
Anything else you’d like to tell the audience about your festival?
We work a lot with trying to foster the local filmmaking community. This year we are partnering with The Second City’s brand new film school to do a bunch of programing and workshops. We also do a lot of video, YouTube, kind of work, that I think is important for the future of filmmakers.
Chicago Comedy Film Festival runs November 11th & 12th, 2016 at The New 400 Theater in Chicago. Visit their website here.
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