A northern Illinois city is bringing back its film festival. This year the event will span over two days.
The City of Lights film festival in Aurora debuted last year. Sam Loveland is the communications coordinator for the city.
She said Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin wanted to involve the youth, so a new category was added.
“Music videos increasingly are seen as a type of short film, a creative short film,” she said. “There's just as much artistry and storytelling and production value put into music videos that are put into short films. And so, we wanted to honor that.”
Loveland said this allows student filmmakers to show their works.
She said most people don’t think film festivals are for them.
“They think that they have to have some kind of advanced degree and criticism or art in order to take in and enjoy these movies,” she added. “But that's really not the case. Our aim here was to take these wonderful stories, human stories, meaningful stories that are shown at film festivals across the country and bring them to Aurora.”
Opening night takes place Friday, Nov. 8, at Two Brother’s Roundhouse.
“We'll have a panel of local film organizations up on stage talking about what it's like to create spaces for people to enjoy film, to criticize film, to be with likeminded people,” Loveland said. “Again, that emphasis on community, we're going to have people from Aurora Film Society, from the Elgin Short Film Festival.”
The feature film, “All Happy Families,” will also show that night.
“Which was shot and set in Chicago,” Loveland said, “which is a sort of comedy drama about family dynamics, really good on the palette for all audiences.”
Other screenings will start at 11:00 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 9. These will take place across three different locations. The night will end at The Venue with a talk from music director and founder of Lyrical Lemonade, Cole Bennett. Tickets can be found here.
