LAKEVIEW — There’s no paucity of film programming in Chicago; April alone sees the return of the Chicago Latino Film Festival and the Chicago Palestine Film Festival. This weekend the festival scene expands in a significant way — and in a manner that may put Chicago’s film-loving audience on a bigger stage with the inaugural Beyond Chicago Film Festival.
Beyond Fest is the biggest genre festival in the U.S., usually taking place in L.A. in the fall. Now the festival is bringing 31 features, which are “all-killer-no-filler cinematic chaos and carnage” to the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave. Thursday through Sunday for “Beyond Chicago.”
For Music Box Films president Ryan Oestreich, the presence of Beyond Fest enables the larger conversation around film festivals to finally catch up with the great work being done in Chicago.
“We have a very hungry, ambitious, excited movie scene,” Oestreich told Block Club Chicago. “We do great things year-round, but for some reason, the national industry doesn’t pay attention to us. A big festival like this introduces Chicago as a great market for a film festival.”
The partnership made sense on a philosophical level, with Oestreich sharing how Beyond Fest eschews the hierarchy and exclusivity that is often a staple of other film festivals.
“For Beyond Fest folks, they have this strategy of ‘These are movies and events for the people,’” Oestreich said. So unlike other film festivals where people can “pay to be treated differently,” everyone is on an equal playing field, and everyone has a chance to see the movies, he said. “It felt like Beyond Fest’s ethos and their strategy were aligned with how the Music Box works.”
All screenings in the Music Box’s smaller Theater 2 are free; passes are already available for Music Box members and will be available to the general public noon Thursday. Tickets for screenings in Theater 1 are available for purchase, although some screenings are already sold out.
The festival will host several guests, most notably Japanese actor Meiko Kaji making her first-ever Chicago appearance to discuss her four-decade career. She will attend special restoration screenings of her films “Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41,” “Lady Snowblood,” and “Wandering Ginza Butterfly 2: She-Cat Gambler.”
For Chicagoans, some guests of note have deep ties to the city. Bob Odenkirk— who grew up in the suburbs and started his career in Chicago — will be at the festival with the Midwest premiere of his action film “Normal.” Chicago native Lilly Wachowski brings the world premiere of the 4K restoration of her 2008 film “Speed Racer.”
Oestreich said that from the beginning of Beyond Chicago, there was always going to be a Chicago component, and these events are hopefully a preview of more Chicago-focused elements to come to fruition for a future edition.
Further highlighting the ambience of cinematic enthusiasm that characterizes the fest, some of the talent will be doing double duty: In addition to doing a Q&A for “Normal” with writer Derek Kolstad, Odenkirk will provide an introduction to Joseph Sargent’s 1974 film “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.” Rapper and filmmaker RZA will be at the festival with his film, “One Spoon of Chocolate,” and will give an introduction for a repertory screening of the Shaw Brothers’ “The Kid with the Golden Arm.”
For Oestreich, the fact that talent like Odenkirk and RZA will speak not only for their own film embodies the welcoming spirit of Chicago audiences. Both “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” and “The Kid with the Golden Arm” were selected by Odenkirk and RZA as films in conversation with the movies they’re bringing to the festival.
“People forget that moviemakers or actors also like movies,” Oestreich said. “One of the great things is when you can hear an actor talk passionately about a movie that they had nothing to do with. When you have an intro from somebody you respect, or maybe you admire, when they give you their take on their movie, you’re going to watch it differently.”
While the festival will be home to several exciting Midwest premieres of beloved films that have already made their festival debuts — from martial arts extravaganzas such as “The Furious” and “Ikatan Darah” to Sundance, SXSW and TIFF favorites like “Imposters” and “Obsession” — the festival is also going to house several world premieres.
One of the most notable is the long-awaited “Faces of Death,” a reimagining of the 1978 film, which acts as the closing night movie. It promises to be a grisly, thought-provoking conclusion to the festival, and its creative team is thrilled to bring the film to Chicago.
Director and co-writer Daniel Goldhaber and co-writer and producer Isa Mazzei will be present for a post-film Q&A for “Faces of Death,” and they’re grateful to share the world premiere with genre-loving Chicago audiences.
“Chicago is an amazing film city, and the Music Box is one of the premier screens in the world,” they wrote in a joint statement to Block Club Chicago. “We made this movie to be a big, loud, scary theatrical experience. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to premiere it in front of this audience and honored to be closing out this first edition of the fest.”
See the full festival lineup and buy tickets on the Music Box website.
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast: