First Annual Chicago Food Film Festival - Sept 24-25

http://www.chicagofoodfilmfestival.com/
Museum of Contemporary Art Warehouse
Note: All food and beverages included in ticket price

(I can't figure out the prices. I think it's $30 per night or $75 for an all-access VIP pass if you buy now.)

I searched high and low for an address, then finally called the museum:

Museum of Contemporary Art Warehouse, 1747 West Hubbard, Chicago

Just wanted to clarify a few Festival details and say Hi to the great eaters of Chicago. My friends and I produce the Chicago Food Film Fest and we're really excited to bring it to town. We've presented the Festival in New York for the past 4 years and we couldn't imagine a better food town to bring it to next than Chicago.

To clarify, event ticket prices are currently in pre-sale, which are discounted for early buyers at $25, not $30. (VIP Passes are $75 and include VIP seating at the entire Festival, tshirt, poster and more). All food and drinks are included in all ticket prices. The pre-sale ends next week. Feel free to reply here or email us with any questions you have (info at nycfoodfilmfestival dot com).

Hope to see you at the Fest,
Seth
Ps...thanks to Cathy2 for figuring out the actual address of the MCA Warehouse...(Google Maps does not have a good listing).

To get a sense of the experience, check out this short video from the NYC Fest...


http://www.chicagofoodfilmfestival.com

Cathy2 wrote:I searched high and low for an address, then finally called the museum:

Museum of Contemporary Art Warehouse, 1747 West Hubbard, Chicago

Oops. Thanks for including the address. I ride by the warehouse often and just took for granted the location when I posted.

Hi,

What is surprising is a whole website devoted to this festival and no address was found. If it is there, not easy to locate.

I passed this info to my Culinary Historian friends.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

What is surprising is a whole website devoted to this festival and no address was found. If it is there, not easy to locate.

I passed this info to my Culinary Historian friends.

Regards,

It is hard to find. If you click on the "tickets" link, there is a "get directions" hyperlink under the Venue column. Clicking on that will bring up the address.

Cathy2 wrote:What is surprising is a whole website devoted to this festival and no address was found. If it is there, not easy to locate.

Not so surprising. I see this all the time on websites, including some for brick-and-mortar business establishments that you would think would be putting their address on every page.

I got an email from the MCA today. If you use promo code MCA2010, you save $5 per ticket.

You can also use promo code... BACON

Because an abridged version of Sky Full of Bacon #13: Pie As A Lifestyle will be screened on Friday night, along with (I am told) samples of the Hoosier sugar cream pie talked about in that episode.

Hi,

I plan to be there for Friday night's screening.

It should be an interesting evening.

Regards,

I plan to be there Friday, too, though I can't say I'm clear about how the food will be served (is it at the beginning, or between films, or what?). At any rate, I'm going to eat 13 or so hamburgers first (no kidding) just to make sure I don't go hungry.

So did anyone attend? Since I couldn't, I'm curious (particularly, of course, about Friday night) how it went.

“The Perfect Oyster” made The Wife & Daughter cringe. It was my favorite (I mean, after Michele Gaybear’s pie piece, of course). The guy loves oysters and isn’t shy about showing it. Ironically, I ate a lot of oysters on top of a lot of beef (from the largely spectacular Hamburger Hop), and so was less inclined to chow down at Chicago Gourmet on Saturday (still recovering).

“Mr. Okra” was an immediately likable character and video. There were no okra served, but rather beets and carrots in honor of the other products this NOLA vegetable truck operator offered people who live in tropical food desert.

Along with MikeG’s most excellent video, we were served a sugar cream pie, hand-swirled, I believe. Watching this scrumptious SFOB piece and eating the pie was a mighty fine experience.

Camera dead, so no pix, que lastima, and I didn’t see cameras on any other LTHer there. Sz, h_s, C2, Inge, any shots?

David "Too Lazy to Link" Hammond

Hi,

No pictures from me, it was too dark a setting.

Pre-film reception, they were serving raw oysters, assorted cheeses, fried cheese curds, carrots & beets, fried dill pickles & mushrooms, corn dogs and assorted beverages.

The films shown were best-of's or prize winners previously seen at the NY festival. They promise next year there will be a competition to get into the Chicago festival.

The first film was 'Eat Your Fill.' We followed a guy named Phil who ate select fried on a stick items at the Wisconsin State Fair. There were some technical glitches with the film freezing at various points. There was some laughter related to when these freezes occured. Someone eating a cream puff can be easily frozen to look rather peculiar. Phil pretty much ate, made comments and moved on. Deep fat fried Oreos were passed while this was showing.

Afterwards the director got up to talk. He seemed pretty happy with the reception. By the time the event broke up, he was on the microphone announcing Phil will eat his way through the King Richard's Faire. I wonder if they will intentionally introduce freeze frames this time.

I thought 'Eat Your Fill' was the least entertaining film of the evening.

Next up was 'Obsessives: Soda Pop,' where they passed around cucumber soda during the showing. This was a film from Gourmet's website. It was interesting to meet the personality behind the Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles, CA.

No food was passed during 'Mr. Okra,' because the beet & carrots at the reception represented it. This was a delightful short film of a roaming fruit and vegetable vendor in New Orleans. A modern variant of a pushcart seller singing his wares, except he has a public address system on his truck. It was something you needed to see and hear to capture the character.

No oysters were passed during Perfect Oyster, because they were at the reception. Nice demonstration of the eroticism of an oyster with the help of a knife blade.

Celeriac was a very short film that had the audience shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

'Pie as a Lifestyle' featured Hoosier Mama's Paul Haney making Indiana's state pie: Sugar Cream Pie. While it was showing, Sugar cream pie was passed out to the audience. Paula spoke afterwards she should show this as a training film to demonstrate how a pie crust should be made. As the only local film at this event, it was very well received by the audience.

The final film was 'Death and Life of Ice Cream.' Time lapse film of ice cream desserts melting away and some coming back to life. A very good pumpkin ice cream from Bobtail Ice Cream was served.

As I was leaving, I stopped by to talk to Paula. She had an old pie tin embossed with an 'H.' I have several at home, I was wondering why she brought it. She advised the location of the Museum of Contemporary Art's warehouse was once the Harris Pie Factory. There was a cutout in a wall showing the brick ovens where these pies were once baked.

A nice beginning to quite a food and food culture weekend.

Regards,

Mike G wrote:So did anyone attend? Since I couldn't, I'm curious (particularly, of course, about Friday night) how it went.

I was there on Friday thanks to G Wiv. I think it went well for the event's first year in Chicago. I've been to the MCA Warehouse for other events--the space seemed to work for the food stations, eating and mingling, but the screening area with folding chairs was not the most comfortable setting. And they had technical problems with the digital video--a lot of freezing up--and poor projection quality.

I came from dinner at the Salvation Army so was too full to sample much food before the movies started, though there seemed to be plenty of comestibles to go around. The food lines got long after the VIP half hour, when everyone was let in, but I didn't hear anyone complain about waits.

As for the films, they all, except for yours, came from the NYC festival, and they did feel somewhat recycled and dated. (It didn't help that I had seen your video and had just watched the soda film online a few days before.)



The short about the guy eating all of the deep-fried food at the Wisconsin State Fair got a lot of laughs from the audience, but given the company I keep (ahem, readers), the film's subject was hardly outrageous. Everyone can (and should) watch the horror film Celeriac online (not a format I can embed, I think). It was the shortest of the films screened on Friday; my extremely accident-prone self enjoyed it immensely. Mr. Okra was sweet. The oyster movie was forgettable, and films like Death and Life of Ice Cream pop up in my RSS daily, so I'm kind of over time-lapse food videos.



The treats passed out swiftly in conjunction with each film were swell, especially the pie. And it was nice to see Paula Haney out of the shop. I think the Chicago festival will get a lot better once it starts accepting submissions next year.

Thanks for the reports, all, and to Sharon for the links to the other films. If anyone got photos, I'd love to see them.

Interestingly, there was a guy at Taste of Melrose making a video about himself eating everything there, much like the Wisconsin guy. There was also somebody else shooting video at Taste of Melrose, which you'll see soon...