This Historic Chicago Firehouse is home to the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. This is where my short film, COVID Dystopia has it’s Midwest Premiere. Our bed and breakfast was just a block away, so getting to the festival each evening was a breeze. When walking to the theater the first night we saw a sweet husky in the firehouse side yard wearing a glowing blue collar. The pup sat as far away from its owner as it could.
The building is also home to Chicago filmmakers, which is a not-for-profit media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation, and understanding of film and video as media for artistic and personal expression, as well as media of important social and community impact. One of the shorts in the Friday night screening titled 3:00AM by Ricardo Albarran, was filmed entirely inside this building. I recognized some of the locations as I searched for a men’s room between screenings.
I think my favorite film of the festival, other than COVID Dystopia of course, was Get Away, director by Michael Gabriele. This live action horror film features three young women get away to a secluded stone cabin in the desert. With no wifi, they find a single VHS tape and decide to watch it. The movie was filmed in the cabin they are. The action in the VHS tape intertwines in their reality in strange and unexpected ways.
Many of the shorts including Get Away had a 3 day shooting schedule. That makes it sound like a short film is a breeze to produce. Compare that to doing a painting a day for three years and then animating for another seven months and counting.
When I got back to Orlando, my online students started asking how people reacted to my film. Certainly no one laughed at my film and there was a long pause of silent horror followed by applause to break the spell. One of my students told me that both parents are infected with COVID right now. I decided to show her a silent version of the film since the soundtrack has several expletives. When the silent version was over she was silent and I decided not to press her for feedback. The film is intended to fight the pervasive amnesia and denial that surrounds the COVID mass infections that continue. The message probably bounces off of COVID deniers but lingers with the few who know the long term repercussions of repeat infections. COVID continues to be a train wreck happening in slow motion. However most prefer to go think life has returned to “normal.”