Film Programming in a Pandemic
04/17/20
by Raul Benitez
For the past eleven years, I have been programming films in Chicago. Starting out as a volunteer for the Chicago Underground Film Festival led me to organize my own screenings at several venues around the city. I joined the all-volunteer art organization Comfort Station Logan Square and began a series called Comfort Film. I also joined the programming team at the Nightingale Cinema. All of these eventually led me to a role as film programmer at Full Spectrum Features, where I organize their flagship Chicagoland Shorts Program, which has its 6th edition this year. In December, I organized a double feature of restored El Santo films at the Music Box Theatre, in partnership with the Mexican film organization Permanencia Voluntaria Archivo Cinematográfico. Through all of this work, I have gotten to see some amazing films, meet filmmakers, and to be a part of the extended film programming community here in Chicago and around the world.
Poster for the El Santo double feature screening at the Music Box Theatre, December 2019.
Then everything started to close. Starting with Comfort Station, my screenings and events started to get canceled or postponed. Our first film program, scheduled for April 1st was cancelled. It was the first time ever that we had to cancel an indoor film screening at Comfort Station. Full Spectrum Features had been awarded a Connections Grant from the MacArthur Foundation for a cross cultural exchange of filmmakers and films between Chicago and Mexico City. We had the whole program ready to go, with films and filmmakers secured. When the mayor of Mexico City started shutting things down and international travel became nearly impossible, we resigned ourselves that this program would be moved later into the year, or maybe to the next year.
Trailer for Las Desaparecidas/We Vanish (dir. Astrid Dominguez, 2018) one of the films in the Mexico-Chicago program.
The pandemic has put film programming around the whole world in limbo. Large film festivals have been cancelled, pushed back, or moved their programs online. Theaters from art houses to chain cineplexes have shut down in mass. Thousands of cinema workers who work in front of the house and behind the scenes lost their jobs or are on furlough. It's been a devastating loss to our community. Mirroring what was done in New York with their Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund, a group of us have started a similar mutual aid fund to help cinema workers here in Chicago.
It’s a way for us in the film community to help those workers who keep the theaters running and going. You can make a donation if you have some money to spare, and if you are a cinema worker in need, you can apply for some aid. We hope this will help some of those workers as we wait this pandemic out. Hopefully in the future we can return to what we love: watching films together.
Raul Benitez is the lead film programmer for Full Spectrum Features. He also currently programs the Comfort Film series at Comfort Station and The Nightingale Cinema, and has worked with the Chicago Underground Film Festival for over a decade. In 2015, 2017, and 2019 , Raul was featured in Film 50: Chicago’s Screen Gems by Newcity.
Raul Benitez worked on this piece with Quarantine Times’ Friday editor Christy LeMaster. Each week, Christy selects a Chicagoan to share a creative response to the pandemic.
