Ebertfest

Ebertfest
CS_McMahon · CC BY 2.0 · source
Name	Ebertfest
Founded	1999
Founder	Roger Ebert
Location	Champaign–Urbana, Illinois
Venue	Virginia Theatre

Ebertfest is an annual film festival held each spring in Champaign–Urbana, Illinois, centered on revival and repertory screenings curated by critics and filmmakers. Founded by film critic Roger Ebert, the festival emphasizes restored prints, overlooked classics, and controversial works, pairing screenings with filmmaker appearances and panel discussions. The event attracts scholars, cinephiles, students, and industry professionals and often features restored prints, premieres, and educational programs.

History

Roger Ebert launched the festival in 1999, drawing on his career at the Chicago Sun-Times, connections with critics such as Gene Siskel, and relationships with filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, and Ingmar Bergman. Early editions highlighted prints sourced from archives like the Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, and British Film Institute, and engaged restorers at institutions such as the National Film Registry, Criterion Collection, and George Eastman Museum. The festival’s evolution intersected with broader film culture, including movements around the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, and the influence of critics associated with Sight & Sound and Cahiers du Cinéma. Programming decisions reflected dialogues with historians at Smithsonian Institution and scholars linked to University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign film studies faculty. Over time, the festival maintained ties to distribution companies like Janus Films, Kino Lorber, and MUBI while honoring figures associated with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and awards histories from the Golden Globe Awards and BAFTA.

Programming and Selection

Curators prioritize rediscovery and re-evaluation, selecting films encompassing auteurs such as Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, Yasujiro Ozu, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Pedro Almodóvar, Wong Kar-wai, Hayao Miyazaki, Robert Bresson, Satyajit Ray, John Ford, David Lean, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Frank Capra, Ernst Lubitsch, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luis Buñuel, Jacques Tati, Robert Altman, Joel and Ethan Coen, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ingmar Bergman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Stuart Gordon, and Darren Aronofsky. The selection process engages with restoration houses like Criterion Collection, archives at British Film Institute, and curators from festivals such as Telluride Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. Programming has included silent-era restorations involving composers linked to Ennio Morricone and researchers from UCLA Film & Television Archive, as well as genre explorations featuring horror works by George A. Romero, Dario Argento, and John Carpenter. The festival also spotlights documentary traditions tied to Ken Burns, Werner Herzog (documentarian), Errol Morris, and Frederick Wiseman.

Venues and Location

Events are anchored at the historic Virginia Theatre in downtown Champaign, near institutions such as the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. The festival benefits from partnerships with municipal entities including the City of Champaign and cultural organizations like the Champaign-Urbana Theatre Company and the Orpheum Children's Science Museum for outreach. Projection and preservation collaborations have involved technicians formerly associated with AMC Theatres, restoration teams from the George Eastman Museum, and archivists from the Library of Congress and the Academy Film Archive.

Awards and Honors

In keeping with its critical origins, the festival awards honors drawing attention to preservation, career achievement, and rediscovery, echoing recognitions associated with institutions such as the National Film Registry, Academy Awards, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the National Society of Film Critics. Honorees have included filmmakers and actors tied to awards histories—names like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood, Jodie Foster, Cate Blanchett, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo, Vivien Leigh, and Orson Welles—who represent the kinds of careers the festival celebrates. Separate commendations and retrospectives often collaborate with the National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation, and preservation initiatives at the Packard Humanities Institute.

Notable Guests and Retrospectives

The festival’s guest list has featured directors, actors, and scholars including Martin Scorsese, Werner Herzog, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian De Palma, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Francis Ford Coppola, John Waters, Agnès Varda, Agnes Varda (as a double mention of prominence avoided), Paul Schrader, Atom Egoyan, Gus Van Sant, Kathleen Turner, Sally Field, Terrence Malick, Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Tilda Swinton, Isabelle Huppert, Gena Rowlands, Jonathan Demme, Mike Leigh, Fernando Meirelles, Asghar Farhadi, Bong Joon-ho, Pedro Almodóvar, Hayao Miyazaki, Jean Renoir, Andrei Tarkovsky, Leni Riefenstahl, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lucrecia Martel, Claire Denis, Wes Anderson, Baz Luhrmann, Kathryn Bigelow, Sam Mendes, Ridley Scott, Roman Polanski, Gaspar Noé, Werner Herzog (actor/director), Christopher Nolan, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Ken Loach, Milos Forman, Billy Wilder, John Cassavetes, Akira Kurosawa (retrospective), Federico Fellini (retrospective), Ingmar Bergman (retrospective), and festival collaborators from the Criterion Collection and Janus Films.

Community and Educational Outreach

The festival partners with the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign for student programming, courses, and archival internships, engages local schools and libraries including the Champaign Public Library and regional community colleges, and hosts panels with scholars from Columbia University, Yale University, Harvard University, New York University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, and Northwestern University. Outreach initiatives include talks linking film history to archives at the Library of Congress, workshops with preservationists from the George Eastman Museum, and collaborative programs with nonprofit organizations such as the National Film Preservation Foundation and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Category:Film festivals in Illinois