THE CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL PRESENTS
³RAGE AGAINST THE DYING LIGHT - 12 YEARS OF ROBERT BANKS"
EXPERIMENTAL FILMS LONG ON IMAGINATION AND SHORT ON BUDGET

Saturday December 22, 2001 8:00 pm
Cinema Borealis
1550 N. Milwaukee, Chicago IL (4th Floor)
($6 admission)

Program approximately 90 minutes
Screening with Q&A to follow. Filmmaker will be present.

For More Information Contact: Bryan Wendorf (773.278.0683)
or email info@...

The Chicago Underground Film Festival is proud to present the wildly
imaginative films of Cleveland Filmmaker, Robert Banks, who in his hometown
has been hailed as ³the best local filmmaker without a budget².

Banks formed his approach to film early in life when his father plied the
6-year old Robert with the most rudimentary of film equipment and set him
free to explore, hoping that an interest in filmmaking would keep him off
the inner-city streets of Cleveland. As the young Banks was cutting his
teeth on basic home-movie, animation and recording equipment, the ideas and
methods of manipulating sound and image became second nature to him.

Continuing with those childhood-ingrained aesthetics, Robert Banks currently
uses found footage, new footage, and hand-manipulated images as tools to
express his artistic vision. His work explores the experimental avenues of
film instead of the traditional, narrative forms to which audiences are
accustomed, drawing on influences from such diverse filmmakers as Stan
Brakhage, Bruce Connor and Richard Kern to Melvin Van Peebles and Oscar
Micheaux. His films have screened at such prestigous venues as the BBC
Short Film Festival, Rotterdam and Sundance as well asbeing a staple on the
underground film circuit.

³.... This is your whole environment. It's just like if you are doing a
painting. Every color, every stroke - the progression is everything.
Everything builds up! Everything matters! Everything is significant!"
- Robert Banks

³usually people get into filmmaking because it¹s the hip thing to doŠRobert
can¹t help himself‹he¹s a true artist who continues to grow in his
abilities.ŠThe irony is that he is the local filmmaker who is most widely
seen around the world.²
- John Ewing, Cleveland Cinemateque

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Robert Banks Program for December 22, 2001- 8PM

Untitled
(1989) 16mm B&W, 6 minutes.
A dream like mood piece re-edited from a gothic fashion music video Banks'
was hired to shoot.

Froggy Central
(1990) 16mm, color. 6 minutes.
Banks' first color 16mm film is an urban take off on Dante's inferno. The
first of the media assault pieces.

Eyes
(1992) 16mm, color. 3 minutes.
Banks uses magazine advertising to provide this films cast of
African-American women. The second in the media assault series.

X: THE BABY CINEMA
(16mm, 5 min.)
A fast-paced rant against the commercialization of images and ideas,
exemplified by the Malcolm X product line that emerged to sell Spike Lee's
movie.

My First Drug, The Idiot Box
(1994) 16mm, color. 5 minutes.
A semi-autobiographical film based on Banks' childhood experiences as a TV
viewer.

MPG: Motion Picture Genocide
(1997) 35mm, color. 4 minutes.
Sex! Violence! Racism! Death! Explosions! "The days of escapism and cheap
thrills!" ... Robert Banks uses found footage, new footage, and
hand-manipulated film to question the intentions of the motion picture
industry over that last several decades.

Jaded
(1998) 35mm, color. 2.5 minutes.
In some ways a precursor to Outlet, Jaded is a complex, harsh and visually
intense film. Present here are the beginnings of some of the
film-manipulation techniques that have become a characteristic of much of
Robert's recent work.

Outlet
(1999/00) 35mm, color. 4 minutes.
What do women subject themselves to in order to maintain the image that
society dictates they have? Outlet is an intense, skeptical look at cosmetic
beauty and the potential havoc it can wreak on one's persona.

Embryonic
(2000) 35mm, color. 7 minutes.
Focusing on fertility, this is the second film in Banks' series of frenetic
and expressionistic studies of women in contemporary America.

Goldfish & Sunflowers
(2001) 35mm, color. 9 minutes.
The tables are turned on the director in the concluding installment in
Banks' 35mm odyssey into the feminine psyche at the start of the 21st
century.

Love Rusty
(1990) 8mm/35mm, color. 6 minutes.
Another gothic industrial mood piece made in collaboration with several
Cleveland musicians.

+ Trailers produced for the 2000 Freaky Film Festival and the 2001 NY
Underground Film Festival and other surprises