Ebertfest

Did you know that Roger Ebert is from Urbana? Well, until about a week ago, I didn't know that either! For the last 13 years, there has been a festival in C-U called Eberfest, where Roger Ebert selects some of his favorite past or present films/documentaries and they are played at a local theater in Champaign. It is pretty cool because they bring in the directors and main actors/subjects of the films and do Q&A sessions after each showing.

The theater was so pretty!

Since the News-Gazette and our radio stations are a large sponsor of the Festival, we are allowed a certain number of passes to each film. This is really cool because the passes are pretty expensive and sell out right away, so they are really hard to get! Each employee is allowed to sign up for one film, but since there were a couple open spaces left, I got to sign up for 2 this year.

That's Roger Ebert on the right!

Last Wednesday evening, we went and saw "Natural Selection" which stars Rachael Harris! She was actually at the film and did a Q&A session after, but since it was 12:45am (on a work night!) before the film ended, we didn't stay. I wouldn't recommend the film for everyone, but Taylor and I both enjoyed it.


This afternoon we went to see "Louder Than A Bomb", which is a documentary about the high school poetry-slam competition in Chicago, and it was AWESOME! I highly recommend seeing this film if you get the opportunity. The creativity and abilities of each poet is really crazy and the documentary will make you laugh or cry and even leave you breathless at some points! After the film, they brought out the film directors and 5 of the main cast they follow. The Q&A session was interesting to hear about why the directors made the film and what the poets are doing now. The director of the actual "Loud Than a Bomb" competition spoke a little more about the event and said they had just recently explored having the slam in a new city. Can you guess where the most recent competition was? TULSA!! How cool!


After the Q&A, the 5 poets performed one of their "slams" called Counting Graves. It was a very emotional performance in content, but shows how talented they are! I filmed the performance but it won't seem to upload, so if you click here you can just check out the film's site! So, like I said before, if you get the chance to see this film, you should! We are already looking forward to next year's Ebertfest!