I am excited to announce that, after the success of last year’s inaugural Oakton Pop-Up Film Festival, I have programmed and will be hosting P.U.F.F. again. The screenings of this year’s four award-winning independent American films, spanning various genres and styles, will all take place at Oakton Community College’s Footlik Theater (room 1344) in Des Plaines, Illinois, from Tuesday, December 1 through Friday, December 4. All four screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with the filmmakers, moderated by various Oakton Humanities professors, including yours truly. The screenings are all FREE and open to the public. Any of my students who attend a screening will receive extra credit points towards his or her final grade (see the extra credit page of your course website for more information). Don’t you dare miss it!

The full schedule:

Actress (Robert Greene, 2014, 86 minutes)
Tuesday, December 1 at 2:00pm

Winner of Best Documentary at the Nantucket Film Festival, this extraordinary movie hybridizes non-fiction and melodrama elements in its portrait of Brandy Burre, an actress best known for a recurring role on HBO’s acclaimed series The Wire. When the film begins, Burre has retired from acting in order to move to a small town with her restaurateur boyfriend and two young children. Burre is not satisfied, however, with playing the new roles of “mother” and “housewife” full time, and Actress, while never less than emotionally gripping, turns into a complex essay on the nature of what it means to perform.
Followed by a live Q&A with director Robert Greene and actress Brandy Burre conducted by Michael Smith

Black Box (Stephen Cone, 2013, 84 minutes)
Wednesday, December 2 at 12:30pm

Named one of the best films of 2014 by the Chicago Tribune‘s Michael Phillips, this haunting drama is set in the world of college theater and centers on students grappling with issues pertaining to sexual and religious identity. Grad student Holly (Josephine Decker) tackles the ambitious project of directing a theatrical version of a cult young-adult novel titled The Reaper’s Children. The novel, about the sinister goings-on at an orphanage, made a huge impression on Holly during her formative years and the gothic-horror tone of her production has an uncanny way of both bleeding into the lives of its performers as well as informing the overall tone of Cone’s (ostensibly non-horror) film.
Followed by a live Q&A with director Stephen Cone conducted by Lindsey Hewitt.

Transformers: The Premake (Kevin B. Lee, 2014, 26 minutes)
Thursday, December 3 at 2:00pm

An official selection of the 2015 Berlin International Film Festival, this dense video essay offers a playful inquiry into the role of social media in the production and dissemination of the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster. It utilizes footage that Lee himself shot behind the scenes of the Chicago-made segments of Transformers: Age of Extinction, as well as footage shot and uploaded to YouTube by literally hundreds of other amateur filmmakers. The globe-spanning myriad of data that results adds up to an intellectually vibrant and viscerally pounding half-hour of pure cinema.
Followed by a live Q&A with director Kevin B. Lee conducted by Therese Grisham.

Cool Apocalypse (Directed by Michael Smith, 2015, 73 minutes)
Friday, December 4 at 12:30pm

Winner of the Best Dramatic Feature award at the 2015 Illinois International Film Festival, this microbudget comedy/drama tells the story of two very different relationships, one of which is about to begin and the other of which has just ended.
Followed by a live Q&A with director Michael Smith conducted by Laurence Knapp.

This film festival is sponsored by a generous grant from the Oakton Community College Educational Foundation.