Ashley Cooper grew up in the 90s in Chatham and Grand Crossing but also in 40s, 50s, and 60s Hollywood. Her whole family loved movies. “My aunt’s middle name is actually Lauren Bacall,” she says. Her parents often dropped her off at her grandmother’s house, where Turner Classic Movies was the preferred TV channel. She started to read up on production details and made lists of movies mentioned in books about old Hollywood to see in the future. There were no film classes in the south-side public schools she attended, so she turned to theater. Then, when teenage self-consciousness forced her off the stage, she went back to studying film, enrolling at Columbia College. For the past five years, she’s been a location coordinator for Dick Wolf’s Chicago Fire.
They spread the word through a newsletter, social media, and word of mouth. The fact that Medina works at Cafe Jumping Bean, a Pilsen institution, doesn’t hurt. But audience members travel from as far away as Schaumburg. Cooper says the crowd for Shock Corridor filled the 35-to-50-seat space. I can testify that there wasn’t a spare seat to be had for Sweet Smell of Success. What such enthusiasm tells me is that there’s a hunger in the city for places that don’t just show movies but also try to engage their audience in substantive discussion about them. Haines-Stewart says that sometimes the talks about films the crowd disliked are even better than the ones they adored.
Haines-Stewart and Medina haven’t told Cooper yet, but they plan to ask her to present more movies at Filmfront in the near future. “In my eyes, she’s a film historian,” Haines-Stewart says. After talking to Cooper for an hour, I have to agree. “That’s the cool thing about film,” she says. “It has documented our history—the human experience.” v
Presented by Ashley Cooper, Sat 12/8, 6 PM, Filmfront, 1740 W. 18th, filmfront.org. F
