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The Chicago International Film Festival, North America’s longest-running competitive film festival, was founded by filmmaker and graphic artist Michael Kutza in 1964 to provide an alternative to the commercial Hollywood movies that dominated the city’s theaters. The Festival opened in 1965 at the Carnegie Theater, where King Vidor, Bette Davis, and Stanley Kramer were honored for their contributions to American cinema. Since then, the Festival has grown to become a world-renowned annual event.

Seeking out the best in international cinema, the Festival has discovered new talents and opened windows to a world of film previously or otherwise unavailable in Chicago. The films, representing over 45 countries last year, are all Chicago premieres and many are world premieres. Over the years, the Festival has introduced creative new directors like Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Bertrand Tavernier, and Krzysztof Kieslowski to Chicago. The Festival is also dedicated to premiering and showcasing films made in Chicago or by local filmmakers.

Most of the films shown at the Festival will not gain a wide release, secure a U.S. distributor, or become available on video. In this way, the Festival provides local audiences with a unique opportunity to discover a range of films that would otherwise be unavailable to them. In addition, at more than half of the screenings each year, filmgoers have the rare and exciting chance to meet directors, actors, and actresses who introduce their films and hold discussion sessions after the screenings. The 45th Chicago International Film Festival will cover eight Chicago screens and attract over 55,000 local and international audience members to see approximately 100 feature narrative and documentary films and 35 short films from around the world.

At the 45th Chicago International Film Festival, October 8-21, 2009, we present films in our long-established competitions that are the defining core of the Festival (International Feature Film, New Directors, Docufest, and Short Subject) as well as in our time-honored programs that exhibit new trends in and the breadth of international and independent filmmaking including World Cinema, Black Perspectives, Cinema of the Americas, ReelWomen, OUTrageous and After Dark.

For 44 years, the Docufest Competition has been awarding the best in the field of documentary filmmaking, with such notables as Frederick Weisman, Albert and David Maysles, and Agnes Varda among the top prize recipients. Annually featuring 10 feature length documentaries, the Docufest Competition seeks to promote the importance of documentaries and also to give more exposure to those films that continue to surprise and challenge us.

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