We are thrilled to announce that the 28th annual Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival opens March 8th at the new Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse with the Chicago premiere of Basma Alsharif’s new feature film OUROBOROS!

Join us for an opening reception from 7:30-8:30, screening at 8:30.

OUROBOROS (Basma Alsharif, 2017, 77 min, France/Palestine/Belgium/Qatar, Digital Projection)

OUROBOROS, a new feature by Basma Alsharif, is a beautifully captured homage to the constantly changing Gaza strip. The film turns in on itself, it repeats, is goes backwards and forwards and backwards again following one character through various landscapes and cultural climates. A poetic manifesto of the ouroboros, the snake eating itself, the film is a rejuvenating cycle where beginning meets ending.

Basma Alsharif is an alumna of the festival and a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently based in Los Angeles, Alsharif’s film, OUROBOROS, continues her powerful, poetic, and political exploration of her Middle East origins and heritage (born in Kuwait of Palestinian origin) and her identity as a diasporic person, raised in France and the U.S.

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PROGRAMMING:

Shorts Program 1: Growing
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Shorts Program 2: Moving
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Shorts Program 3: Touching
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Shorts Program 4: Thinking
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Incense, Sweaters & Ice
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Shorts Program 5: Sensing
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Shorts Program 6: Listening
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Shorts Program 7: Looking
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A Production of Chicago Filmmakers:

Onion City is one of the premiere international festivals exclusively devoted to experimental film and video.

Onion City was founded in the 1980s by the Experimental Film Coalition and run by them for many years. Chicago Filmmakers assumed responsibility for the festival in 2001, and expanded the size and opened it up to video work as well as film. It is generally 8-10 programs over four days and features roughly 60-70 works from around the world. Aside from the competition programs, there are occasional special presentations of new or old films of note or guest presentations. Screenings take place at Chicago Filmmakers and other venues around mid-June.

The mission of Onion City is to provide local and regional audiences with an opportunity to view a wide variety of contemporary experimental works, focused on artistic excellence but also with an eye towards representing differing styles, forms, and nationalities.

Chicago Filmmakers is a not-for-profit media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation, and understanding of film and video as media for artistic and personal expression, as well as media of important social and community impact. Chicago Filmmakers’ twofold mission is to serve independent film and digital video artists by supporting the creation and dissemination of new media arts works and to serve Chicago audiences by screening artistically innovative, socially relevant, and diverse films and videos.

Chicago Filmmakers nurtures the development of aspiring filmmakers of all ages by offering classes, workshops, and summer camps; empowers artists to create new work through production grants, equipment access, fiscal sponsorship, and other services and resources; and encourages the professional advancement of media artists through seminars, panel discussions, lectures, rough-cut and open screenings, as well as networking events and other opportunities for artistic exchange. Chicago Filmmakers develops diverse audiences through its year-round weekly film and video exhibition programs and its two annual film festivals, Reeling the Chicago LGBTQ International Film Festival and The Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival.

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Tags: Chicago, Chicago Filmmakers, Edgewater, Illinois, Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival, Ouroboros