A Temple of Great Cinema: How Milos Stehlik and a group of volunteers made FACETS what it is today
This last year, our world has been facing incredibly difficult times, dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and important social and political issues. COVID-19 lockdowns have hindered our collective ability to experience film the way it was intended, in a cinema, shoulder to shoulder with other filmgoers and cinephiles. We have lost the ability to take our seats and let the experience that is cinema wash over us. There has been no more excitement when the lights dim, signaling the start of the show. There have been no more concessions enjoyed or horrible moments where you must shush the people sitting behind you for talking too loudly during the film.
This absence has taken its toll on us as a society, having to go without these incredible, often life-changing, moments for so long. And while the alternatives we’ve collectively thought up have temporarily filled the void–from digital watch parties to virtual film festivals and small home movie theaters countless people have set up in their living rooms–it is about time we get back to the cinema experience we know and love.
Thankfully, we need not be apart much longer as FACETS is reopening this summer.
We are reopening soon to be together again.
We are reopening soon to experience the power of cinema.
We are reopening soon to create a brighter future.
We believe that the FACETS building is an incredible space for filmgoers and the film community alike. We believe that coming together has always been important for cinema as an art. We are committed to creating cinematic experiences that illuminate, inspire, and encourage audiences to become actively engaged with the world around them. We want to encourage our community to take an active role in the media they watch through film and media education. Through film, we can create a better understanding of our fractured world and encourage social change.
These beliefs and ideas have guided FACETS for over 45 years now, and while the pandemic has in some ways hindered our mission, that stops now.
We have recently launched our ReOpening Soon Campaign–A 5-week initiative to raise $30,000 and help us ensure a safe and efficient reopening of our physical spaces as a place for communities to reconnect and reengage.
We are seeking this funding to cover reopening costs that include health, safety, and training expenses. Not only that, but we will also be transforming the first floor spaces to host community and conversations safely. We will also be adding technology for in-person and virtual events, exploring expanded service to youth through increased onsite summer camp programs. We will be creating private rental opportunities for family and friends “pods” to gather safely for our cinemas.
When the pandemic hit, we had to adapt and shift to our Virtual Cinema to continue our mission of sharing films with the world and allowing people to experience the edge of cinema. Now, in this new, reopened, vaccinated world, we will adapt yet again to allow ourselves to become better than we were before COVID.
After working through this challenging year, we hope to see a greater sense of community, a greater emphasis on safety, and a whole new outlook on the world. We are implementing these changes to improve upon what we already have, from our education programs to our summer film camps and our screening experiences. Most importantly, however, with this reopening, we will be improving upon what is arguably the most crucial aspect of FACETS–our building.
Since 1975, FACETS has screened hard-to-find international and independent films from our home at 1517 West Fullerton Avenue. FACETS started with nothing but “$40 and a typewriter,” as our founder Milos Stehlik put it, and has grown into something truly incredible today. Not only is FACETS a place to enjoy cinema screenings, but it is home to a rental catalog of over 65,000 titles, a host to the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival (CICFF), and a hub for film education and community engagement.
Our building’s history is an inspiring one that has been shared many times by our founder, Milos Stehlik. Sadly, however, Milos passed on in 2019, so that is a story that he can no longer share in his own words. With this reopening campaign underway and changes coming to the building that Milos and a group of volunteers turned into a “temple of great cinema” (Roger Ebert) we will take this opportunity to do our best to do the story justice.
Please give to our ReOpening Soon Campaign today.
The Story
The year is 1975, FACETS has just been created, originating at a live production theatre in Chicago, The Drama Shelter. Here Milos screens anything he could find for cheap or for free to borrow. Silent films, German Expressionism, Czech films, any odds and ends floating around at the time that were available in 16mm, the format FACETS formerly used to screen everything. As screenings continue, Milos’ events gained popularity, becoming even more popular than the theater’s live shows! Because of this jealousy from the actors and the live theater managers, FACETS got kicked out of the space, having grown too big for its first home.
Moving from there, Milos and a few friends he picked up at The Drama Shelter move to a rented hall at the Resurrection Lutheran church under the condition that the church gets 10% of the box office. With this setup, Milos rented a projector and sold ads in the screening programs to afford the films themselves.
This collaboration between FACETS and the church kicked off with a festival of Latin American and Spanish Cinema. However, everything wasn’t rainbows and sunshine right from the get-go; the Chicago PD had other plans. Many may be shocked to know, but in the ’70s, the Chicago Police Department actually had a censorship board. Every film screened in Chicago had to go through this board and get approved. No one really knew who was on the board, and it seems like quite an odd situation from Milos’ retelling. However, this roadblock was quickly surpassed, and the church allowed FACETS to stay alive screening in their church hall.
Some notable films screened at the time were Reed: Insurgent Mexico and the American debut of the film Ossessione by famous Italian director Luchino Visconti. Everything was going very well for FACETS at this church as their programs grew to span across almost an entire week, with around 3-4 shows on average. Around this time, Milos gained volunteers’ help to run the screenings and do other work while he focused on the more in-depth and creative parts of running a cinema. And here we see yet again how FACETS outgrows its building.
Another move followed, and this time, it is not just a church hall but an entire church, The Grace Lutheran Church, all to FACETS. Milos rented the place, and with the help of volunteers, set up a huge screen to project on out of drywall, covered the stained-glass windows, and began to screen. The audience sat on pews; the projector projected from the balcony where the choir used to sing.
While this place was technically not a church anymore, it seems that it was still a place of worship. Yet again, however, issues arose. Mostly small at first, like the issue of acoustics (a church is a lot more echo-y than a movie theater), but things like that can be fixed. What can’t be fixed, however, is politics. Issues began with the city, and soon Milos found himself in a lawsuit with them. The case arose over supposed zoning issues relating to FACETS changing the purpose of the building they were now inhabiting.
With the help of a free lawyer from Lawyers for Creative Arts they were able to build a case and prove that nothing has changed. A church is a place of public assembly, and so is a cinema, they are not so different after all. Sadly, however, due to other issues resulting from the Lutheran Church’s bureaucracy, the building was sold from underneath Milos and FACETS. At this point, FACETS as a cinema had already gained a lot of traction in the film community, hosting screenings seven days a week and retrospectives from directors such as Louis Malle, Alain Tanner, Claude Jutra, and Jan Kadar. Finally, it seemed like a perfect time to get FACETS cinema running in its own designated space.
Milos and his volunteers looked everywhere to find a new home for their cinema. Just six weeks before they had to move out from the church, they came across an ad in the paper with a building for sale on West Fullerton Avenue. It’s an old department store turned magazine printer, and the owners are looking to sell. Milos approaches them, looking to rent, and they refuse multiple times.
The issue stemmed from a convoluted chain of conversations where the owner exclusively spoke to Milos through the manager. After a while, Milos tried another strategy and wanted to talk straight to the property owner. She is a woman with a name that will be familiar to any cinephile, Mrs. Robinson. She only listens to her brother, a lawyer for a politically connected law firm in Chicago. He advises her not to rent, so Milos tries to talk him into a deal.
Milos presents the man, Mr. Zats, with clippings from press write-ups and reviews of films played at FACETS in the hope to sway him to show off their success in previous ventures. Mr. Zats flips through them uninterested, seeing them as only “weird” foreign films. However, he gets to one write-up and, in Milos’ words, “his expression changes. It’s a write-up about a FACETS retrospective of the work of Jan Kadar – the first Czech director to win an Academy Award for The Shop on Main Street. In that film, an itinerant carpenter, appointed Aryan overseer of a small-town button shop run by Mrs. Lautman (the great actress of the Yiddish theatre, Ida Kaminska), has a chance to save her when deportations of Jews begins. But Tono, the carpenter, panics, and fails. A few days later, Mr. Zatz and his sister decided to hold the mortgage, become FACETS‘ bankers, so to speak – and sold us the building.”
In this moment of Mr. Zatz knowing the film, perhaps having an experience with it, he looks at FACETS in a whole different way; suddenly, he understood what this was all about. Even before a projector ran for the first time at the new FACETS, it involved transformative cinematic experiences. Mr. Zats and Mrs. Robinson sold the building to FACETS on contract. From the makeshift theaters they created in church halls and live production theaters, to having a building of their own two years later, Milos and the volunteers built a temple of great cinema together.
The first films screened in this building are part of a festival for New French Cinema. The year is 1977, and FACETS has found a home it can grow into and grow with far beyond anything done in the previous buildings.
The number of transformative experiences that have taken place at FACETS are innumerable. The stories told here are countless. The relationships formed are lifelong. What lies behind us is the story of the founding of the FACETS building, our history. What lies ahead is our future, still in the same building, but forever improving. Forever following the art of cinema wherever it may take us. We are honored to have all of our audience members along with us for the ride.
Please consider donating to our ReOpening Soon Campaign to allow us to have a safe and speedy reopening.
Tyler Meder is an Editorial Assistant Intern at FACETS. He received his B.A. in Communication, Film, and New Media from Carthage College after completing his thesis on shot on video horror films. He has contributed work in video and writing to multiple industries including live theatre, which earned him an honors in Animation and Video Production from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
