Ebertfest
Ebertfest is an annual film festival held every April in Champaign, Illinois, United States, organized by the College of Media[1] at the University of Illinois. Roger Ebert, the TV and Chicago Sun-Times film critic, was a native of the adjoining town of Urbana, Illinois and is an alumnus of the University.[2] Founded in 1999 as Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival, this event is the only long-running film festival created by a critic.[2][3] Despite Ebert's death in 2013,[2] the festival continues to operate based on Ebert's notes and vision for the kinds of films he championed.[4][5]
Ebertfest
Active
Annually
United States
1999–present
24th Ebertfest
April 17–20, 2024
TBD
1,463 (Virginia Theatre)
The 2020 festival was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.[6] The 22nd edition of the event was rescheduled three times, eventually opening on April 20, 2022.[7]
Origins[edit]
The festival is a direct descendant[8] of a program put on at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1997 called Cyberfest which used the supposed birthday of HAL (the computer in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey) to highlight the University's involvement in the history of computers and computing.[9] The film was to be shown as part of Cyberfest, Roger Ebert had agreed to host and actor Gary Lockwood was a special guest.[10]
It was suggested that the film should ideally be shown as it was originally, in 70 mm format. The original plan was to have the screening at the University's performing arts center but time constraints vs. the need to install projection equipment and elaborate six channel sound made this impossible. Someone suggested looking at the Virginia Theatre, as 70 mm films had been shown there in the past. At this point the theatre was in the hands of a local live theatre group and had not run films since sold by a theatre chain. All concerned were pleasantly surprised to learn the chain had left behind not only what is reputed to be the finest 35/70 mm projector made but also the screen and speakers. The rest of the equipment was brought in for the special showing which went perfectly.
Name change[edit]
In April 2007 it was announced that beginning in 2008 with the tenth festival "Overlooked" would be dropped from the name and subsequent events would be known as "Roger Ebert's Film Festival",[22] but commonly referred to as simply Ebertfest. This did not necessarily indicate any change in the philosophy or theme[23] but simply eliminated the need to explain when current or even unreleased films were included which had sometimes been the case. They had sometimes been jokingly referred to as "pre-overlooked."[24]