[Plus: Our guide to week one of the Chicago International Film Festival]
This year the festival presents a number of Chicago projects as part of its ongoing “Illinois[e]makers” series. There are the feature documentaries Louder Than a Bomb and Tony & Janina’s American Wedding (both of which are reviewed in our festival guide). There are Carmen Marron’s inspirational dance drama Go for It! and Julian Grant’s zombie thriller The Defiled, and the eclectic shorts program “Illinois[e]makers.”
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Coming back to Chicago for the February 2009 shoot—whose locations included the Capitol Club in Portage Park and Enclave in River North—was a heady experience for Berkowitz. “When you come from microbudget films, and you come on set and see three blocks’ worth of trucks and Teamsters, you feel like you’re making your first film,” he says. “It’s like getting on a plane to go skydiving for the first time and saying you’re not scared.”
At first Looby planned to create a side project about child soldiers, but ultimately he settled on seven-year-old Joshua, a student at the Mission Liberia school, as the subject for his own film. “He has some sort of magnetic presence,” Looby says. “You see him and you can’t look away. My first interaction with him, he didn’t say anything, he just came up and put his arms around me.” In Son of None, a 15-minute mix of dramatic scenes and documentary footage, the boy plays an orphan of the Liberian civil war, also named Joshua, who’s trying to make the transition from his impoverished rural village to a Catholic boarding school. The real Joshua probably has at least one living parent, says Looby, though it’s hard to be sure because families avoid revealing themselves to school officials so that their children can continue receiving aid.
Drunkboat
Son of None
Sat 10/16, 9:10 PM; Sun 10/17, 7 PM; Tue 10/19, 2:30 PM. Redgrave, Berkowitz, Belzer, Brooks, and Brown will attend the 10/16 screening.
Fri 10/8, 8:30 PM; Sat 10/9, 5:30 PM; Thu 10/14, 4:45 PM.
Screens as part of the shorts program “Illinois[e]makers,” Mon 10/11, 5:50 PM; Sun 10/17, 11:45 AM; Tue 10/19, 4 PM.
