The AMC River East isn’t exactly Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the Chicago International Film Festival isn’t Cannes, but over a week and a half each October some of the better new films and many of the people who made them show up at this airport terminal-like multiplex a half mile short of Navy Pier on Illinois Street. When I pitched writing something about the festival this year, I envisioned wandering about and eavesdropping on the excited conversations of film lovers and putting together an impressionistic travelogue-type essay. But in the lobby of the theater on Friday, there were more young festival volunteers in blue t-shirts than anyone else. The line for Will Call was mostly empty and there was a lot more traffic flowing toward the bowling alley/sports bar and newfangled videogame arcade than the movie theater box office on the second floor. I wrote my editor to try to weasel out of my assignment. Then I saw the people in VR goggles.
During the Q and A afterwards, Haizlip talked a lot about the challenges of documentary filmmaking and, more specifically, the hurdles for a film like hers has to overcome in order to reach the mass audience that it richly deserves.
