Interview with Chicago Film Office deputy commissioner, Jonah Zeiger: Sundance Institute X Chicago 2024

A couple of months ago, when it was announced that Sundance would be spending a long weekend in June in Chicago, there were many questions. The most common one was, “Will Sundance be leaving Park City, Utah, after all these years?” Well, we don’t know the answer to that, but the Sundance Institute X Chicago is not the Sundance Film Festival but rather an event coming to the Windy City for the first time this weekend, from Friday, June 28th through Sunday, June 30th.

It results from a partnership between Choose Chicago (the city’s tourism bureau), the Chicago Film Office, and the Sundance Institute. It will feature artist programs, film screenings, and events across the city. The official press release states, “It will be an opportunity to highlight Chicago’s vibrant cultural scene and bolster its status as a diverse and innovative filmmaking hub.”

The event will feature:

• Screenings of four films from the January 2024 Sundance Film Festival—premiering for the first time in Chicago—and Q&As with filmmakers
• A short film program and masterclass for emerging and underrepresented filmmakers
• Panel discussions at the Chicago Cultural Center and other venues
• A presentation about Sundance Institute, offering insights on the various artist programs/labs and how to apply

For more information, including which four films will be shown, ticket information, and other details on Sundance Institute X Chicago, click here and here. 

Recently, I had a chance to chat with Jonah Zeiger, the head of the Chicago Film Office, on the phone about the upcoming event. We discussed his involvement, what the event (it’s not a festival) is intended to be, what he will be doing over the long weekend, and most importantly, what the X is/means. Check it out below…

David J. Fowlie: When a film enthusiast sees “Sundance Institute X Chicago” advertised, what do you hope will be the draw there?

Jonah Zeiger: Well, Sundance is probably the most well-known organization and seems synonymous with independent film and kind of bold new voices in the independent film space, and I think Chicago has a lot of curious audiences that like to have new cinematic experiences. Matching that with Chicago: I think many people see the city as a talent incubator, a city that has a culture that supports creativity, collaboration, and community. So, I think putting those two together hopefully sparks some real excitement and curiosity.

The event has two different components to it that’s kind of a microcosm of the Sundance experience. There are people in Chicago and across the country that go to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City every year and find it to be a very stimulating experience. Of course, it’s not accessible to everyone, it can get kind of pricey to book a ticket and secure hotel rooms. So, part of it is bringing a taste of that excitement to Chicago and making it available at a great low cost. There will be four really diverse films that will be screened for the first time in Chicago or the Midwest and I think will resonate with the audiences here. But, there’s also a lot of programming that’s really for creatives and for filmmakers and for people coming to see if they are interested in the film industry. So, we are kind of trying to provide all those aspects.

There’s also community aspects that have been added to the partnership that are really great. We’re really pleased that over a dozen Chicago creatives and filmmakers are part of the official programs and there’s about a dozen more community events that have been organized to augment the official program to just add a sense of abundance and diversity, making it a pretty exciting weekend for independent film in Chicago.

DJF: Gotcha. So, are we calling it Sundance Institute AND Chicago?

JZ: Yeah, that’s the way we’re saying it. “X” is kind of a catchy, graphic way of saying it.

DJF: …like “Godzilla X Kong,” got it! (both laugh) Okay, so “Institute” is there, instead of “Film Festival,” so that means that for local film enthusiasts, this isn’t actually Sundance coming to Chicago. Instead, this is kind of like a special 3-day pop-up, if you will. So, is this accessible to anyone interested?

JZ: Right. It’s open to everyone as long as tickets are still available. It is selling out pretty quickly, but there are still tickets to some of the screenings and the community events. But yeah, it’s available and accessible to anyone. The screenings are tickets, but I think are at a very modest price at $20.00 and there’s an $18.00 student rate. And then all the other programs are essentially free.

DJF: So, the panel discussions are all free as long as there’s room?

JZ: Right.

DJF: So, let’s get into your involvement in all of this. How long have you been involved in planning something like this?

JH: I actually initiated the conversation with Sundance last summer and there was an instant recognition on both sides that there was a powerful alignment of values here and there was a mutual desire to explore that and come up with a way to deepen the relationship between Chicago and Sundance. That led to a process to where we invited some of our city partners to look at this opportunity. We brought Choose Chicago into the conversation, which is the official tourism agency for the city and promoter of Chicago around the world, and they’ve done a lot of campaigns to sign away on Chicago’s unique assets and draw visitors. But, they’ve never actually have done anything in the film space, so I think they found that particularly exciting.

Of course, Sundance is a globally recognized brand and the Chicago Film Office (of which I head), which is part of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events stayed on as a supportive partner. So, it’s kind of a three-way partnership between Choose, the Film Office, and Sundance.

Our role has been to make sure that the partnership was not simply about tourism and promotion of the films, but also had that community aspect to it and also the feeling and support of the Chicago film industry aspect, which is our mandate to support that. We wanted to make it seem like it wasn’t just a, you know, big brand coming into town and plopping down, but rather something that was done really intentionally in a way that would be meaningful and valuable to the film community.

So, we formed some advisory groups and made sure that the local festival community was involved in shaping the event and the local filmmaking community. That’s where the community partner event that came out of these conversations brought a desire to make sure the panel discussions involve Chicago voices and leaders alongside Sundance leaders and industry filmmakers. So, everyone is on equal footing and that’s very exciting.

DJF: Right. Now, as far as where this is all happening, there are three locations across the city – is that correct?

JZ: Yeah, there’s three primary locations used for the official program and we decided to spread them out across the city to increase access to people in different parts of the city. So, there’s the southside hub, and that’s the Logan Center for the Arts down at the University of Chicago campus and then there’s the northside hub, which is at the Davis Theatre, a wonderful arthouse theater in Lincoln Square, and then the Chicago Cultural Center is downtown at the center of the Loop. We’ll be hosting a lot of the industry and community events – the panels and the workshops – on Sunday.

DJF: Got it. So, if anyone wanted to go check out the screenings, the same movies will be playing at the Davis and Logan Center for the Arts. And for the Panel Discussions, they are either at Logan Center for the Arts or Chicago Cultural Center, right?

JZ: Right, that’s pretty much the structure. There’s a great opening night at the Logan on Friday night and then some cultural programming at the Logan on Saturday and the Cultural Center on Sunday.

DJF: So, let’s talk about you plans for the weekend. Since you can’t clone yourself and be everywhere, where are you going to be in order to gauge how the weekend is going?

JZ: Yeah, it’s tough. Although it’s not officially a festival, we’re not calling it a festival, it does create that sense of abundance similar to one. There’s no way that you can do all of it, but on the other hand, it is possible to see all four films. If you’re really focused on the screening, each film will be screened at least twice. So, it’s possible to do that.

But, the workshops and the panels, if you’re more focused on that, you might have to check your schedule a little bit. Everyone will be at opening night on Friday, that’s for sure. In terms of Saturday and Sunday, people will have to decide. I have a little bit more involvement with the panels, so I’m gonna be following that a little bit more.

But, I do hope to see, I’m trying to see all four films, but I might only be able to see three. I want to get up to the Davis, hopefully on Saturday night for a premiere there. And then most of the day on Sunday I’m going to be at the Cultural Center, which is where those panels and workshops are.

DJF: Will you be participating in any of the panels or taking part in them?

JZ: I am actually moderating one of the panels. I can tell you a little more about the panels. We identified three key areas that we felt were important for our film community to talk about on a platform with our Sundance contributors visiting. One is Creative Development and that’s really about how projects – including fiction films, documentary, episodic projects – how they get developed outside of the commercial mainstream industry.

Most people know Sundance primarily for the film festival, but the Institute has actually been around longer than the festival. When it started out, Robert Redford’s vision was for these development labs in which filmmakers would have stories or scripts and they would give mentorship through the process to really develop so their stories would be told as authentically as possible. So, one of the key leaders of the Sundance labs, Ilyse McKimmie, is going to be on the panel that will be moderated by Angie Gaffney, who is a film producer here in Chicago, and then people from OTV and Kartemquin who have lab aspects here in Chicago and talking about where is Chicago currently in development labs and how can we grow that model similar to the Sundance experience. So, that’s the first one.

I’m actually moderated the second one and it’s going to be kind of about the financing side of filmmaking and some new models that are being tried recently. The industry is going through a lot of challenges in terms of how independent films can get financed. And one of the exciting things that’s happening is there’s some new models that combine philanthropy and innovation support, along with investor models. So, we’re gonna talk to some people there that are on the cutting edge of that both locally and nationally.

And the final one is about festivals and arthouses, it’s part of the exhibition side. It so happens that there’s three film community meetings happening within the next week. One of them is Filmscape, which is more production and tech focused and then all next, primarily at the Cultural Center, is Independent Film Exhibitor Conference (IFEC), and this is a great bunch of people who run festivals and arthouse cinemas and they are going to talking shop about the future of that sector of the industry and our Chicago film festival community is very involved in that. So, we thought that this festival panel would be a great way to have a more public conversation about that sector and it’s going to include Eugene Hernandez, who is the program director for the Sundance Film Festival, alongside Mimi Plauché, who is the artistic director of the Chicago International Film Festival and Karen Cardarelli, who is with Facets and a leader at the Chicago Alliance of Film Festivals, and we just added Kate Markham, who is one of the heads of the Arthouse Convergence, which is one of the organizations that will be at that conference I just mentioned. So, some real heavyweights from the festival side and all these panels will have a filmmaker from the films that Sundance selected.

DJF: Well, that’s cool for the filmmaker promoting one of the films that will be shown during the weekend, as well. They can also be part of those discussions instead of just being there for their film.

JZ: Yeah, definitely. That’s part of it. Festivals wouldn’t be able to be festivals without filmmakers. But, filmmakers really need festivals to find their audiences. So, there’s really a dynamic there and audiences have to feel like film festivals are offering them something that’s special that’s going to get them out of their living room and off of their streaming service. There’s a lot of talk about how film festival’s need to stay relevant and arthouse cinema’s need to stay relevant…kind of the goal of the whole weekend is to championing creative independence and that’s kind of the purpose that this is all about. I think everyone involved in this is committed to it, because people love independent stories that are not purely commercial products.

Commercial Hollywood can produce some great work, but it doesn’t satisfy everyone and I think a lot of the innovations of the more commercial parts of the industry come from the independent side. So, this is really bringing together the community of filmmakers, exhibitors, and everyone in between that cares about this sector to come together and say, like if we want to have independent film, independent storytelling, to be part of our culture, we need to come together and kind of figure out to reinforce this sector, how to innovate, how to make it relevant, and how to make it stable.

DJF: As we already mentioned, we can’t be everywhere. Will these panels be recorded and posted anywhere for later viewing?

JZ: There are currently no plans to record them. Anyone is welcome to attend, but yeah, we’re not actually recording them.

DJF: So, it’s definitely a unique, one-time thing that people who are interested should attend. On that note, after this is all done and over, what will you be looking at? Is this something that can be repeated yearly in Chicago or is this in and of itself an incubator? What are your hopes for the future?

JZ: Yeah, I think that it’s open-ended to some degree. The contract for this year’s event is just a one-year contract. There’s nothing contractual that guarantees that it would continue, but I think all three partners expressed at the outset of this process that this was a test here to kind of test the synergy between Sundance and Chicago and to see where it might lead. I think everyone was hopeful and optimistic that this could grow into something that would really be added to Chicago’s film community and Chicago’s festival scene in a way that wouldn’t eclipse any of the incredible existing work that is already happening here. But, would just add something quite special, a connection and a relationship that takes place only within three days, but really adds something to our calendar. Chicago is obviously overflowing with incredible film festivals throughout the year, so there’s no shortage of great diverse festivals. That said, I think Sundance is something very special and unique.

DJF: Sounds good. I’ll be there and maybe we’ll see each other and continue this conversation.

JZ: Definitely say “hi” if you see me.

DJF: Will do. Thanks for your time today.