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Ebertfest
Ebertfest is an annual film festival held every April in Champaign, Illinois, United States, organized by the College of Media at the University of Illinois. Roger Ebert, the TV and ''Chicago Sun-Times'' film critic, was a native of the adjoining town of Urbana, Illinois and is an alumnus of the University. Founded in 1999 as "Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival", this event is the only long-running film festival created by a critic. Despite Ebert's death in 2013, the festival continues to operate based on Ebert's notes and vision for the kinds of films he championed. The 2020 festival was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The 22nd edition of the event was rescheduled three times, eventually opening on April 20, 2022. Origins The festival is a direct descendant of a program put on at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1997 called Cyberfest which used the supposed birthday of HAL (the computer in the film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'') to highlight t ...
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Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Neil Steinberg of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic," and Kenneth Turan of the ''Los Angeles Times'' called him "the best-known film critic in America." Ebert was known for his intimate, Midwestern writing voice and critical views informed by values of populism and humanism. Writing in a prose style intended to be entertaining and direct, he made sophisticated cinematic and analytical ideas more accessible to non-specialist audiences. While a populist, Ebert frequently endorsed foreign and independent films he believed would be appreciated by mainstream viewers, which often resulted in such film ...
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Virginia Theatre (Champaign)
The Virginia Theatre is a live performance and movie theatre in downtown Champaign, Illinois. It has been providing theatrical and cinematic entertainment to the Champaign-Urbana community since its doors opened in 1921. Each year, the Virginia Theatre is host to movies from film reels, plays from various acting troupes, concerts, and Ebertfest, presented by the UIUC College of Media. It is currently owned by the Champaign Park District. History The Virginia Theatre opened December 28, 1921 with a live stage performance of '' The Bat''. The following night, the silent films ''Tol'able David'' and '' The Boat'' were shown at the theatre. Since then, it has been presenting movies, live concerts, and plays to the Champaign-Urbana community and has only been closed for short periods of renovation by the Park District. Until recently, the Virginia Theatre was privately owned. From the 1930s to the 1960s, RKO Pictures held ownership. Subsequently, George Kerasotes Corporation (GKC The ...
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Champaign, Illinois
Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metropolitan area. It is included in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area. Champaign shares the main campus of the University of Illinois with its twin city of Urbana. Champaign is also home to Parkland College, which serves about 18,000 students during the academic year. Due to the university and a number of well-known technology startup companies, it is often referred to as the hub, or a significant landmark, of the Silicon Prairie. Champaign houses offices for the Fortune 500 companies Abbott, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Caterpillar, John Deere, Dow Chemical Company, IBM, and State Farm. Champaign also serves as the headquarters for several companies, the most notable being Jimmy John's. History Champaign was founded in 1855, ...
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Chaz Ebert
Chaz Ebert (born Charlie Hammel; October 15, 1952) is an American attorney and businesswoman. Early life and education Ebert was born in Chicago to Johnnie Hobbs Hammel and Wiley Hammel Sr. She attended Crane Technical High School in Chicago. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Dubuque, a Master of Arts from University of Wisconsin–Platteville, and a Juris Doctor from the DePaul University College of Law. Career Chaz was an executive producer and guest on '' Ebert Presents: At the Movies''. She is the CEO and publisher of Ebert Digital, which publishes '' RogerEbert.com'', which contains an archive of her dead husband Roger Ebert's film reviews and publishes contributors' film reviews. She was featured in the 2014 documentary '' Life Itself'' about Roger Ebert and was an executive producer of the 2019 film ''Selah and the Spades''. In 2005, Ebert was part of a group of high-profile minority and female shareholders who filed a federal lawsuit against other inv ...
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Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. He is known for his unique filmmaking process, such as disregarding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing the cast and crew into similar situations as characters in his films. Herzog started work on his first film ''Herakles'' in 1961, when he was nineteen. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature films and documentaries, such as ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' (1972), ''The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'' (1974), '' Heart of Glass'' (1976), '' Stroszek'' (1977), ''Nosferatu the Vampyre'' (1979), ''Fitzcarraldo'' (1982), ''Cobra Verde'' (1987), ''Lessons of Darkness'' (1992), ''Little Dieter Needs to Fly'' (1997), ''My Best Fiend ...
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Christy Lemire
Christy A. Lemire (née Nemetz; born August 30, 1972) is an American film critic and host of the movie review podcast ''Breakfast All Day''. She previously wrote for the Associated Press from 1999 to 2013, was a co-host of '' Ebert Presents at the Movies'' in 2011 and co-hosted the weekly online movie review show '' What The Flick?!'' until 2018. Early life and education Born at the old Cedars of Lebanon Hospital (now Church of Scientology West Coast headquarters), Lemire grew up in Woodland Hills. She is a 1993 graduate of Southern Methodist University with a degree in journalism and is a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. Career Lemire started writing film reviews for the Associated Press in 1999 and moved to New York in 2000 as a general entertainment reporter. In 2004, she became the Associated Press' first full-time film critic. In addition to her print work, Lemire has appeared on television shows including the ''Today Show'' and '' Good Morning America''. In 2003, s ...
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Spike Lee
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut with ''She's Gotta Have It'' (1986). He has since written and directed such films as '' School Daze'' (1988), ''Do the Right Thing'' (1989), '' Mo' Better Blues'' (1990), '' Jungle Fever'' (1991), ''Malcolm X'' (1992), '' Crooklyn'' (1994), '' Clockers'' (1995), '' 25th Hour'' (2002), ''Inside Man'' (2006), ''Chi-Raq'' (2015), ''BlacKkKlansman'' (2018) and ''Da 5 Bloods'' (2020). Lee also acted in eleven of his feature films. His films have featured breakthrough and acclaimed performances from actors such as Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Giancarlo Esposito, Rosie Perez, Delroy Lindo and John David Washington. Lee's work has continually explored race relations, issues within the black community, the role of m ...
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Tilda Swinton
Katherine Matilda Swinton (born 5 November 1960) is a British actress. Known for her roles in independent films and blockbusters, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for three Golden Globe Awards and five Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2020, ''The New York Times'' ranked her as one of the greatest actors of the 21st century. Swinton began her career by appearing in the experimental films ''Caravaggio'' (1986), '' The Last of England'' (1988), ''War Requiem'' (1989), and '' The Garden'' (1990). Swinton won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her portrayal of Isabella of France in ''Edward II'' (1991). She next starred in Sally Potter's ''Orlando'' (1992), for which she was nominated for the European Film Award for Best Actress. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her performance in '' The Deep End'' (2001). That followed with appearances in ''Vanilla Sk ...
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Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_type2 = Counties , subdivision_name1 = Illinois , subdivision_name2 = Cook and DuPage , established_title = Settled , established_date = , established_title2 = Incorporated (city) , established_date2 = , founder = Jean Baptiste Point du Sable , government_type = Mayor–council , governing_body = Chicago City Council , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Lori Lightfoot ( D) , leader_title1 = City Clerk , leader_name1 = Anna Valencia ( D) , unit_pref = Imperial , area_footnotes = , area_tot ...
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David Bordwell
David Jay Bordwell (; born July 23, 1947) is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including ''Narration in the Fiction Film'' (1985), ''Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema'' (1988), ''Making Meaning'' (1989), and ''On the History of Film Style'' (1997). With his wife Kristin Thompson, Bordwell wrote the textbooks ''Film Art'' (1979) and ''Film History'' (1994). ''Film Art'', currently being published in its 12th edition, is still used as a seminal text in introductory film courses. With aesthetic philosopher Noël Carroll, Bordwell edited the anthology ''Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies'' (1996), a polemic on the state of contemporary film theory. His largest work to date remains ''The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960'' (1985), written in collaboration with Thompson and Janet Staiger. Several of his mor ...
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Alloy Orchestra
The Alloy Orchestra was a musical ensemble based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, that performed its own accompaniments to silent films of the classic movie era. Performing on an unusual collection of found objects (horseshoes, plumbing pipes, and a bedpan comprising their so-called "rack of junk"), homemade instruments, accordion, clarinet, musical saw, and a sampling synthesizer, the group scored and performed with 40 feature length silent films or collections of shorts. The group is often credited with having helped revitalize the art of silent film accompaniment. Percussionist Ken Winokur and keyboardist Caleb Sampson founded the group on June 12, 1985 to accompany a theatrical production of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's ''Marilyn Monroe vs. the Vampires''. In 1991 Coolidge Corner Theatre director David Kleiler invited Sampson and Winokur to write a new score for Fritz Lang's science fiction film ''Metropolis''. The pair composed many of the themes for the film, inc ...
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Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra
The Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra (CUSO) is a professional orchestra located in the Champaign-Urbana metropolitan area in central Illinois, United States. The Orchestra is the Professional Orchestra in Residence at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The CUSO is led by Music Director and Conductor Stephen Alltop. Founding of the Orchestra In 1959, two school music teachers, Martha Wendt and Gilbert Papp, along with well-known local television weatherman Wyndham Roberts, started the process that eventually led to the formation of (as it was initially called) the Champaign-Urbana Civic Symphony Orchestra. On the academic side of his meteorology career, Roberts was a scientist at the Illinois State Water Survey, and both Wendt, a violinist, and Papp, a clarinetist, were teachers in the Unit 4 (Champaign) school district. These two teachers were American Federation of Musicians members and they, together wit ...
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