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Imagine going to a crowded theater for a highly anticipated film (those were the days, right?) and it exceeds everyone’s high expectations. As people file out of the theater, they are likely raving about the actors’ performances or how well the film was directed. While these filmmaking roles might dominate the press cycle, they don’t even begin to scratch the surface of what makes a film great.  Simply put, some areas of filmmaking are underappreciated. When a film is announced, all the press cares about are the director and stars. It wasn’t a news story when Christopher Nolan picked Jennifer Lame

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Juneteenth is a holiday that commemorates news of the Emancipation Proclamation finally reaching Galveston, Texas in 1865, officially ending slavery in the United States. Facets’ program director, Charles Coleman, has put together a watchlist of essential Black Cinema to celebrate with this year.  The history of African American Cinema is a timeline of racism, repression and struggle contrasted with film scenes of joy, hope and artistic spirit. The prevailing idea is that the emergence of African American cinema was a strong response to the racial representation prevalent in mainstream films.  After years of struggling to fit into roles Hollywood deemed acceptable to

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The fourth and final installment in our 45th anniversary spotlight focuses on one of our great success stories: Kristóf Deák’s journey from a first prize win at Facets’ Chicago International Children’s Film Festival in 2016 to an Academy Award win for his short film Sing. As the oldest children’s film festival in the Western Hemisphere and one of two Oscar-qualifying kid’s fest in the world, Facets’ Chicago International Children’s Film Festival has been bringing exciting new cinema to Chicago and beyond since 1983. Emerging and established directors have had films screen at the festival and go on to receive all kinds

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In the third installment of our special 45th Anniversary series, Facets Film Program Director, Charles Coleman, tells the story of acquiring Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Decalogue (1988). Transcript In honor of Facets’ 45th anniversary, we thought it would be great to hear our program director Charles Coleman discuss one of the most formative moments in Facets’ history: the acquisition and screening of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Decalogue. Emma Greenleaf If you want to start with the process of acquiring the film for the screening. Charles Coleman  0:24  Yeah, well what happened was … I was a huge fan of Krzysztof Kieślowski  I admired many of the films he