Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival

Roger Ebert, a 1964 UIUC Journalism graduate and a Pulitzer Prize-winning acclaimed film critic, comes to Urbana-Champaign each spring for a week and hosts the Festival. Mr. Ebert selects a total of 12-14 films that represent a cross-section of important cinematic works "overlooked" by audiences, critics and distributors for one reason or another. The films are screened in the 1,500-seat Virginia Theatre, a movie palace built in the 1920's.

Mr. Ebert brings the films, producers, writers, actors and directors to help showcase these films. Following each screening, Mr. Ebert leads discussions with the guests for general audiences, distributors and critics from around the world. There are also a number of campus wide panel discussion featuring Mr. Ebert, festival guests and academic scholars.

The mission of Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival is to praise overlooked films, genres and formats that have been overlooked. Chosen by Mr. Ebert, the entries include films without distributors, independent and studio films that did not win wide audiences, formats such as 70mm and silent films, and overlooked genres like the documentary. We work to keep the Festival small enough so that a sense of community can develop among the audience, the filmmakers, the guests, students and scholars. The Festival is a non-profit event of the University of Illinois College of Communications. For the year 2004, it will be held April 21-25

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• Eastern Illinois

• Program
• Event

University of Illinois

Chicago Campus - Springfield Campus - Urbana-Champaign Campus