Tom Lynch

"`The Shawshank Redemption' is not nominated tonight, but these five incredibly depressing movies are," Jerry Seinfeld quipped at last month's Oscars telecast, as he presented the award for Best Documentary. Of course, it was a joke. Not a very good one, perhaps, but an indicator that even in the current surging state of popularity--at least compared to past years--of documentaries, the genre's still often pigeonholed as a tiny gateway of material we might not necessarily want to see, nor take the time to consider, because it makes us uncomfortable, makes us work, makes us learn. For many moviegoers, school is out, and reality TV is in.

Unless the film is about a guy stuffing his face with McDonald's cheeseburgers just to see if he gets fat and sick.

The Chicago International Documentary Festival raises the stakes. Launched in 2003, the fest brings in documentaries from around the world, inviting to our screens the other big foe of American mainstream audiences, the subtitle. It's a gargantuan feat that expands each year and shows that there is an audience willing to educate itself with a brand of pulsing cinema that transcends language and race and nationality.

"When we started the festival the perception was that there will be interest within the younger community," says Christopher Kamyszew, the director and founder of the CIDF. "Look at what happens in Europe--you have really poor festivals, and the young people flock to the theaters. Here students are overworked and they don't have time to attend. It's a paradox."

With little to no financial help from the city itself, the organizers depend on the public and "friends" to fund the fest each year, according to Kamyszew, which is flying in and housing nearly a hundred filmmakers from around the globe and awards select filmmakers $100,000 in cash and prizes from a panel of judges (on which Newcity's film editor Ray Pride is serving this year). "We are in the major league in terms of prize-giving," says Kamyszew, "so the perception is that we're very wealthy. No. That's our expression of commitment to the filmmakers. We realize that Chicago will never be the market spot that could compete with Sundance, Tribeca, Amsterdam. So we have to offer something different. We want to be the public-based festival."

Kamyszew says that a reason why the festival keeps churning--and a reason why it began in the first place--was because of the multi-ethnic nature of Chicago's population, a mix of different communities that would be more than just willing, maybe even dedicated, to seeing films produced and filmed in their home country. "You have all these melting-pot communities," Kamyszew says. "It's a great satisfaction to see the public--Arabs, Muslims, Jews, Poles, Cubans, various nationalities--discuss movies, argue, have different perspectives. It's fantastic--the key to solving any problems."

The first festival, in 2003, brought in about 6,000 attendees. That rose to 20,000 last year, and this year Kamyszew hopes the numbers will reach 25,000. Still, with the public's continual fascination with celebrity, not having Tom Cruise or Paris Hilton on a red carpet deters some. "We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture," Kamyszew says. "You go to the sponsors, [and they're like] `Who's coming?' They want the stars. Herzog? Who is he? That's the problem. We don't want to be a red-carpet event, we want to throw the red carpet before the filmmakers... the reputation of the festival in terms of programming, treating filmmakers, is certainly very strong, and we want the festival to be meeting spot for veterans and youngsters."

That, it seems, is the major objective for Kamyszew, to discover new filmmakers from around the world and, in essence, give them their chance to be seen and heard. "Instead of a first-class ticket for Magic Johnson, I prefer to bring ten young filmmakers, for who this could become--and I really hate this term--a life-changing experience, where they can learn from their elders. So the ambition of this festival is to be a discovery spot. That's why this was established."

Kamyszew estimates that the festival receives about 2,500 submissions every year, of which only two percent are selected--matched with the films that are to be screened from invitations, retrospectives (this time, Frederick Wiseman, who gets a lifetime achievement award) and a "country in the spotlight" program, this year featuring films made in or about China. There's even a program dedicated to Cuban student films, plus Chicago-minded projects like Bob Hercules' much anticipated "Senator Obama Goes to Africa" and Phil Ranstrom's "Cheat You Fair: The Story of Maxwell Street." Plus, a tribute to the late Krzysztof Kieslowski (a friend of Kamyszew), not through his films, but through two photo exhibitions, and also a variety of world premieres, another aspect the fest prides itself on--a few years ago the festival screened "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster" to a sold-out crowd.

"We have a very autonomous programming--the festival is not backed by any major TV stations. We have CNN as a sponsor, but they are not backing us financially, just advertising. So we don't have any--how can I say this diplomatically--influences, agendas, suggestions. Very often we dismiss films that could be profitable here. And that's the great part of the festival--the autonomy."

Not that he and his screening team automatically disregard established filmmakers. "We absolutely don't want to ignore subjects or big names, but our ambition is to discover, to show something different. This year we will have Fernando Birri, who is like the South American Martin Scorsese. He's a celebrity, and here nobody knows about him at all."

Unlike a Sundance or a Toronto Film Festival, Kamyszew does not necessarily want only members of the film industry to attend screenings and programs. He says that if a festival, like Amsterdam's, brings in 2,000 guests, that crowd fills the theaters by itself, leaving no room for the public to indulge. The public-based festival is a fine intent, but it all leads back to the one major problem, getting the public to show up.

"[Some] people don't know what a documentary is," he says. "In recent years, a zeitgeist for documentaries, they have flourished, got theatrical distribution, got deals from major players. But the general public, they disregard it because they don't know. We got a phone call last year from a lady who asked `What is a documentary? Is it a reality show?'"

He adds: "The perception is that documentaries require a higher education--but what they [really] require is an openness, an opening of the mind, and interest in the world."

Born in Warsaw, Kamyszew spent his early years traveling between Poland and the States, spending time with both his mother and his father. He started in theater and film directing (he had a stint assisting director Franco Zeffirelli in the late seventies)--studied at the University of Warsaw and Columbia College--and lived in Los Angeles for a while, working in the Hollywood system. "At some point I left Hollywood," he says. "I didn't like the vanity, the atmosphere of competition."

He keeps a double citizenship with the U.S. and Poland, but settled here for good in the mid-eighties, after he was imprisoned in Poland for anticommunist activities for overseeing a staging of Polish playwright Witkacy's "The Mother."

He founded the Polish Film Festival in America in 1989--which, still going strong here in Chicago, is now the world's largest festival of his native country's cinema. It was here that the idea of CIDF was born: one year, because of a lack of solid films slated for the program, he included a documentary section. The response was overwhelming and he knew then that there was an audience for nonfiction film.

"We sat down and said, `This city is a perfect spot for documentaries, you have so many ethnic groups, those people are more or less interested in what's going on with their native countries or the countries of their fathers or grandfathers. Is there something like this going on in the city? No. So let's do it.'"

Kamyszew took over The Society for Arts--a nonprofit that promotes artistic and cultural exchange between the U.S. and Europe, organizing exhibitions, concerts, cinema events and so forth, and also offering various scholarships and artists-in-residence programs--in 1993 after a stint as the director of the Polish Museum of America. He's since relinquished directing duties for the Polish Film Festival to his wife Ewa, and he has three sons, the oldest studying sound recording in Arizona and youngest not even 2. He says he spends a lot of time at the family's wildlife estate, located at the border of Michigan and Indiana, where he watches the majority of each year's submissions.

His personal love for documentaries came later, with maturity, when he craved that sort of cinematic education. "For me, I learned so much personally from documentaries. They stimulate my imagination, help me determine who I am, where I'm going, what I'm doing. We live in an age when people don't have time to read books. I talk to my son, he tells me `You should be proud, I read a book!' Well, I'm very proud, but, you know, that's the reality. The pace of life is very fast, so documentaries all of a sudden serve as a replacement form of education, contemplation, as the book used to be."

He says that being behind the scenes as an organizer, not in the frontlines as a film director or producer, is just as rewarding. "For me," he says, "being this supportive part is as creative and enjoyable as making a documentary."

The future holds a variety of new projects for Kamyszew and his CIDF crew, including a focus on children and children's cinema, a Docs for Kids project, plus new workshops for aspiring filmmakers on how they can build their careers from the ground up. "We want to make a difference in the lives of individuals," Kamyszew says.

He feels that the festival, and documentaries in general, has promising days ahead. "Here the sky is the limit," he says. "We believe we can get people to it, because we want to talk to people who don't care about the shiny stuff, they don't want to go to the red-carpet event. They don't always have the money for that, but secondly, it doesn't appeal to them, to have a photograph with Sharon Stone or shake hands with Tom Hanks, you know? And this is our ambition. To get such people from the whole world."

The Chicago International Documentary Festival runs March 30-April 8 at various venues across the city, including the Portage Theater, Pritzker Auditorium, DOC Films, the Society for Art's Gallery Theatre and Chopin Theatre. For more information and a complete schedule of events, visit www.chicagodocfestival.org.

(2007-03-20)

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