Course C
The World in Our Backyard:
Global Cinema and the Chicago International Film Festival
Nick Davis, Associate Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies
Thursdays, 9:30 – 11:00 a.m.
Every October, the Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) brings over 100 features and shorts to our city, hailing from dozens of nations, traversing all known genres of film and at times inventing new ones. First-time spectators find their way each fall to this jewel in Chicago’s cultural crown, yet even devout patrons aren’t always aware that CIFF is North America’s oldest competitive film festival. Even better, given its record of adventurous programming and globe-trotting tastes, the festival’s screenings since 1965 constitute an eclectic history in miniature of this expansive art form, from sober nonfiction to flamboyant surrealism, from mainstream legends to lesser-known innovators. This course, coinciding with CIFF’s 60th anniversary, honors the thematic, geographic, and stylistic breadth of world cinema while paying rare tribute to a local institution of global renown.
