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Why the Chicago International Film Festival is perfect for our ‘Netflix generation’

The Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) has been around for 52 years, and though 74-year-old founder Michael Kutza still serves as its artistic director, he said it hasn’t aged him.

“I was 22 years old,” Kutza said. “And I still am.”

Yes, it’s hard to believe that the longest running film festival in the U.S. was started by a 22-year-old native Chicagoan, no older than your typical college senior. Perhaps it’s that perspective that has inspired Kutza to maintain a “something for everybody” attitude for the festival.

In the weeks leading up to the festival, Kutza and programming director Mimi Plauche worked around the clock to make sure everything is in place. CIFF will show more than 125 feature films from over 50 countries. The majority of them have an interactive component, from a panel to a Q-and-A to the audience wearing troll wigs (for “Trolls,” obviously). It’s a lot to pull off, even if you have been doing it for 52 years.

“I just found out today’s Wednesday,” Kutza said at the beginning of our interview at the CIFF office. “Because when you’re here every day …”

“… you never know what day of the week it is,” Plauche finished for him.

Starting Thursday, they’ll be living the fruit of their efforts. CIFF runs from Oct. 13 to 27 at AMC River East, with the massive list of films broken up into classic themes like “thriller” and “romance,” but also categories like “out-look,” for LGBT-themed films, and “black perspectives.”

“The genres help anyone attend the festival that might be afraid,” Kutza said. “But when you see a heading like ‘Sex’ …”

You might be less afraid. It’s unsurprising that young people might shy away from an international film festival—both Kutza and Plauche admit that subtitles can turn people off. But that mindset overlooks the fact that people of this generation more than any before them have had the opportunity to immerse themselves in a wider variety of media through streaming services.

“The Netflix generation is perfect for us because it’s exposing you to documentaries and some foreign films here and there and older films, and I think that might tempt you into what we do here,” Kutza said.

But CIFF is more than just exposing Chicagoans to films they might not otherwise see at the movie theater—if that’s all it was, everyone could just sit at home and watch Netflix. But the festival takes things one step further by providing interactive components that shed new light on the films.

“The one thing that really sets the festival apart is that it’s going back to that communal experience of movie watching on the big screen, but also at over half the screenings, we have the filmmakers or sometimes an actor there, and it becomes an interactive experience,” Plauche said.

For example, following the screening of “Insatiable: The Homaro Cantu Story,” a documentary about the Chicago chef, the festival will host a reception where chefs create food based on Cantu’s own menus.

Then again, not everything at CIFF is subtitles and documentaries. The festival’s opener, “La La Land,” stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in an homage to Hollywood musicals. Between Damien Chazelle’s (“Whiplash”) direction and the trademark Gosling/Stone chemistry, it would be hard to find something more universally appealing.

“Yes, we have a lot of extreme, amazing foreign films with subtitles that might turn [young people] off, but there’s a lot of great, fun movies too,” Kutza said. “There’s a lot of Hollywood mixed in with more difficult stuff. And the plan was always to get you in with something like a big Hollywood movie and have you come the next couple days and see something from Italy or France. And if you meet a movie star along the way, that might be fun too.”

Plauche said one of the most rewarding parts of the festival for her is seeing people who didn’t expect to enjoy themselves want to investigate cinema further. The audience is constantly surprising her.

“We had a film seven or eight years ago called ‘I’m Through with White Girls’ by a young African-American director, and she was standing outside the door of her screening as the audience was going in and this older white couple started going into the theater and she stopped them and she said, ‘I think you’re here for the wrong film,'” Plauche said. “And they were like, ‘No, no, we’re here to see “I’m Through with White Girls.”‘ And she was so surprised to see the diversity of the audience that came to see her film in Chicago.

“I think that goes back to while maybe you could see certain niches that we’re filling, we just have such a diverse audience at all the films that’s it’s not just serving one kind of group, one community, one type of person.”

Kutza said the festival’s impact goes even further—in 52 years, he has enjoyed seeing where CIFF has taken other people, from directors (Martin Scorsese’s first film “I Call First” premiered at the festival in 1967) to employees who help bring the festival together.

“I watched the offshoots of these things happen because I think we changed tastes of Chicago. And that’s the whole idea: to change people’s tastes,” he said. “Things are changing. And look, people in this office—it’s sweet to see that, as people move on. The programming director from years ago is now the head of Paramount Pictures.”

But above all, Kutza and Plauche seek to “bring great film that’s otherwise inaccessible to Chicago and then bringing Chicago together through it.” As a Chicagoan, Kutza said he knows what their target audience likes. Exactly what is their target audience?

“Our target audience is actually between 18 and 65,” Kutza said with a smile.

@lchval | laurenchval@redeyechicago.com