We try to avoid anniversary stories around here, because really, who the hell cares? Forty years since the Beatles did this, 50 years since Elvis did that—in popular culture, an anniversary is usually just a marketing hook, a new banner to slap across an old book, record, or movie. The Chicago International Film Festival has been celebrating its 50th anniversary since the beginning of the year, with retrospective screenings at the Cultural Center and on WTTW, and now the real thing has finally arrived, with even more blasts from the past: if you count the two director’s cuts being presented by Oliver Stone, a full sixth of the features screening this year are revivals.
Read our reviews of films screening during the first and second weeks of CIFF.
Read our reviews of 15 revival films screening at CIFF.
1967
Festival director Michael Kutza notes the social upheaval of the era in his statement for the festival program. “The whole medium has come alive,” Kutza writes, “reflecting a new awareness, honesty, simplicity, and integrity of a new generation.” Ironically this year brings greater involvement of establishment figures: Leo Burnett, a prominent sponsor since the festival’s inception, contributes a full-page essay about the state of the TV commercial, and Mayor Richard J. Daley endorses the event for the first time.
1972
In a coup the festival will be trumpeting for the next 40 years, it presents the world premiere of Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which will go on to win Academy Awards for best picture, director, screenplay, actor, and actress. But there are other notable world premieres as well, for Werner Herzog’s Every Man for Himself and God Against All, Maurice Pialat’s The Mouth Agape, Andrzej Wajda’s Land of Promise, and King Hu’s The Valiant Ones.
1980
