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NORTH PARK — After a decade of showing films inside Northeastern Illinois University’s auditorium, the Chicago Film Society is on the hunt for a new home.
The university plans to upgrade the auditorium, 5500 N. St. Louis Ave., and after the renovation there won’t be enough room for the Film Society’s projectors, said Julian Antos, the nonprofit’s executive director. The society will host its final screening at Northeastern this spring.
While the society looks for a new home base, the group will continue to hold regular screenings at the Music Box Theatre in Lakeview and at other venues throughout the city, said Antos, who also works at the Music Box.
Over the past fourteen years, the Film Society has built up a base of loyal patrons who travel from all over the city for screenings, Antos said. While the Film Society got its start on the Northwest Side, the group is open to relocating anywhere, he said.
The Film Society is looking for venues located near public transit that have ample space for equipment and seating, Antos said. Leads on potential locations can be sent to info@chicagofilmsociety.org.
“The Film Society has at one time or another projected film at every venue in Chicago equipped to do so (and some that needed a little extra help), including the rooftop of a pizza restaurant, a parking lot next to the Metra tracks, and a mosquito-infested marsh. We’ve spent almost 14 years proving that with the right crew and a few well-oiled projectors, the audience will come,” the Film Society wrote in a recent blog post.
Keeping Film Alive
The Chicago Film Society began with a simple mission — help keep the film medium alive through regular screenings.
Today, the society hosts around 60 screenings-a-year, sees an average of 100 guests per screening, has amassed a collection of over 3,500 films, preserves two-to-three films annually and runs film projection workshops, including one held at the Smithsonian last year.
“It’s been pretty crazy, when we started the goal was just to do a weekly screening series. We were run by three people and sometimes a few volunteers,” Antos said. “We’ve expanded a lot.”
The Film Society’s founders — Antos, Rebecca Hall and Kyle Westphal — all met while working as projectionists at the Bank of America Cinema, a theater connected to a Portage Park Bank of America. Located at 4901 West Irving Park Rd., the 290-seat auditorium dated back to the 1970s and showed classic films every Saturday.
Antos grew up going to the theater and said it inspired him to pursue a career in film. In 2010, the theater was shut down.
“The audiences that came to the shows were so unique and enthusiastic and we didn’t want to lose that,” Antos said.
Antos, Hall and Westphal took the Bank of America Cinema’s old mailing list and started hosting weekly screenings, first at the Portage Theater and then at the Patio Theater.
In 2015, one of Antos’ coworkers at the Music Box, who was also a student at Northeastern, connected him with the school’s Communication, Media and Theatre Department. The Film Society started hosting Wednesday screenings at the university and used the auditorium as their “home base,” Antos said.
Antos said it’s been encouraging to see audiences are still interested in watching 35mm and 16mm film prints.The movie industry has been moving away from film projectors and towards digital projection for more than a decade now. Amidst the industry’s transition, film screenings play an important roll in preserving film technology, Antos said.
“This is the way a lot of these films were originally presented,” he said.
A big part of the Film Society’s mission “is making the stuff that’s in film archives available to the public,” Antos said.
The Film Society’s final Northeastern screening will be a showing of the 1953 movie “The Band Wagon” on May 14.
The Film Society is currently fundraising to cover moving-related costs. Donations can be made here. Information about the Film Society’s upcoming screenings can be found here.
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