The Oak Park Illinois Film Festival Celebrates Community Connections

Over 35 years ago, a gentleman named Franklin Stevenson worked as a motion-control camera assistant for Industrial Light and Magic, the vaunted visual effects arm of Lucasfilm. One of the features he worked on was James Cameron’s The Abyss starring Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, where he helped create colossal “standing waves.” Stevenson’s climactic scenes were cut from the 1989 theatrical release but would go on to appear in the special edition version of the film on physical media formats. Stevenson, now a film appreciation professor at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois, had never seen his work on the true big screen. That changed this past Thursday night with the opening gala event of the Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival. 

Franklin Stevenson joined OPILFF founder Joyce Porter to introduce Thursday’s special presentation of The Abyss, in its full director’s cut glory. The film graced the historic main screen at the Classic Cinemas Lake Theatre with an eager film festival crowd, many of which had never seen Cameron’s fantastical and nail-biting underwater thriller. Alongside Porter and Stevenson for The Abyss was Gussie Mastrantonio Lenehan, one of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s sisters. In profiling her sister and fellow Oak Park-River Forest High School graduate, she emphasized the family’s strong roots that came from the artistically minded population of the progressive Chicago suburb. Three hours later after her fond words, as Alan Silvestri’s heroic score played off Cameron’s epic film, the Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival had people hooked. 

True to the well-worn adage of “it takes a village,” the bonds of community populated every component of the inaugural Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival. After Thursday’s gala, the full schedule of the festival unfurled on Saturday, September 14th from the Madison Street Theater. Spread across five programming blocks, OPILFF board members and organizers curated 17 films, three of which were feature-length. Each entry had to have an Oak Park connection to be eligible, whether in front of the camera or behind it. The result was a rich balance of fiction, nonfiction, and a splash of animation. 

All fit different thematic pillars and there wasn’t a bad apple in the bunch. The spotlighted feature film in the first programming block of “Falling Apart” was Breakup Season, a casual romantic drama from director H. Nelson Tracey starring Chandler Riggs and Samantha Isler. The holiday-centered charmer won festival awards for Best Feature and Best Actress for Isler, adding to the laurels and hardware the film has received from several other festivals, including the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival and events in Queens, Waco, and Madison. Following Breakup Season was Windy & Warm, the OPILFF winner for Best Music Video by filmmaker Eric Henry featuring his classical guitarist father and the wispy foliage of Cook County’s Miller Meadows Forest Preserve.

The documentary side of cinema housed the second two feature-length entries of the Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival. The first of those was 2018’s Hillbilly from adopted Los Angelino Ashley York and co-director Sally Rubin. The film chronicles York’s return home to the Appalachian country of eastern Kentucky during the time of the Presidential Election of 2016 between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Finding a clash of ideals and steep politics, York broadens from the observed present-day history to call out the rampant and ongoing “hillbilly” stereotyping done by entertainment and media perpetuated for decades. Hillbilly won Best Director and Best Documentary honors from the Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival.

That award didn’t come without hearty competition. The second feature-length documentary was the brand new Fire Department, Inc. from emerging director Colin C. Hughes. Masterfully assembled and damning in its findings, Hughes’ film outlines the seven-year legal struggle of the union members of the North Riverside Fire Department versus a mayor and village that wanted to sever contractual obligations and unpaid pensions to privatize fire and paramedic services in their near-west Chicago suburb. With no pun intended, Fire Department, Inc. played at the Madison Theater to a hot crowd of gathered family and friends of the actual NRFD firefighters ready to whistle and cheer for their boys. 

With that spirit present, those Oak Park connections continued to shine through the scheduled selections, including two special honor animated efforts– Get Away Driver’s Ed and Lunchbox Armageddon from emerging local talents– and a “Something’s Amiss” nightcap block of “midnight”-movies. Other OPILFF award winners included Best Narrative Short winner Inferno with Best Actor Josh Bywater starring as an honest new hire at a humorously crooked law firm. Director and Oak Park resident Wendy Roderweiss was present to enthusiastically accept both honors. 

Film Obsessive editor-in-chief Don Shanahan—himself a fifth-grade school teacher by day right there in the Oak Park Elementary School District—was credentialed to cover the Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival. Stay tuned next for when he puts his film critic hat on for a dispatch of capsule reviews of the festival offerings. Until then, bravo, Oak Park! May this be the first of many annual celebrations.