The Chicago Underground Film Festival celebrates the holiday season with the wildly imaginative films of Cleveland Filmmaker, Robert Banks. Banks’ films have been staples on the underground film circuit and have recently been screened at such prestigious venues as the BBC Short Film Festival, Rotterdam and Sundance. Unlike many indie film stars he is respected in his hometown as well, where he has been hailed as “the best local filmmaker without a budget.”
Banks formed his approach to film early in life when his father plied the 6-year old Robert with the most rudimentary of film equipment and set him free to explore, hoping that an interest in filmmaking would keep him off the inner-city streets of Cleveland. As the young Banks was cutting his teeth on basic home-movie, animation and recording equipment, the ideas and methods of manipulating sound and image became second nature to him.
Continuing with those childhood-ingrained aesthetics, Robert Banks currently uses found footage, new footage, and hand-manipulated images as tools to express his artistic vision. His work explores the experimental avenues of film instead of the traditional, narrative forms to which audiences are accustomed, drawing on influences from such diverse filmmakers as Stan Brakhage, Bruce Connor and Richard Kern to Melvin Van Peebles and Oscar Micheaux.
The screening takes place Saturday December 22, 2001 8:00 pm at Cinema Borealis located at 1550 N. Milwaukee, Chicago IL (4th Floor). Get more info by e-mailing Bryan Wendorf or visit The Chicago Underground Film Festival web site.
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