University Park, IL,
05
June
2017
|
16:51 PM
America/Chicago

Faculty and Student-Produced Film Returns to Big Screen

Hogtown, a film by Professor Daniel Nearing, Program Coordinator for the MFA in Independent Film & Digital Imaging at Governors State University, will be showing at Facets Cinémathèque—a longstanding home for art and independent films in Chicago—on Thursday, June 15 at 8:30 p.m. The film will close this year's African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF). According to the ADIFF website, the festival celebrates "people from diverse races, nationalities and backgrounds (coming) together to enjoy important cinematic works of creativity, intellectual expansion, identity, and equality."

Nearing used student producers as well as a mostly-student crew during the filming of Hogtown. Like most of his feature work, the film was shot in predominantly black and white. Set against the backdrop of the Chicago race riots in 1919, it presents connected vignettes that tell a story of mystery and marginalized people during a tumultuous period in the city's history.

Marty Rubin, associate director of programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center, called Hogtown "a multilayered, multicultural tapestry of a city and a century...epic in its scope and ravishingly photographed, designed, and scored..." The New York Times said the film "plays like a find from a forgotten archive."

Tickets to the viewing as well as a 7:30 p.m. pre-show reception and Q&A with Prof. Nearing can be purchased online.