Music Box: Chicago Underground Film Festival

Tagged along with Chelsea to the Chicago Underground Film Festival at the Music Box, where she was volunteering for WLUW. As they’re one of the sponsors for the festival, she was able to attend free (plus one guest – yours truly).

We were attending a late show (10PM), and showed up early to man a WLUW table in the main lobby. Basically, I got to lounge around and people watch for a good while.

Here’s a shot of the merch. Everything on the table was free to grab, and we basically encouraged people to take whatever they wanted. And to top it off, several folks even signed up for the email list! As you can probably guess, the water guns were the first to go.

We waited until the movie was about to start, and grabbed our seats in the main theater. The big attraction was Burn to Shine, but we also got to see a few shorts prior to.

I’m really glad I got to see Burn to Shine, and it looks llke this was the second of a series. Basically, in the one we saw – Shellac bassist Bob Weston gathers a ton of Chicago artists to play inside a house that’s slated to be demolished.

I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the bands, but it was neat to see a wide range of artists all performing in pretty much the same space. Some of the still photographs in this film were just really darn fantastic. In particular, I liked watching Wilco, and Freakwater. Listening to those two, I found myself brought back to the physical structure, the house they were playing in. For some of the other artists – I got swept into their songs, watching them perform. But with these two, I found myself thinking more about the context, the house, thinking about time and decay and endings.

When the film ended, Chelsea and I headed back out to the table. We hung out there until everyone meandered out of the theater/lobby, and then closed up shop.

All told, it was a bit of a late night. Granted, it was only midnight when I walked back in my door – but keep in mind that tonight was a school night. Still, I had an incredibly fun evening, good friends, good food, and a free movie to boot.

Summertime. Gotta love it.