Michelle Kennedy recognized a need on the South Side of Chicago when it comes to showcasing films and providing exposure to Black filmmakers. As a result she founded the Side Film Festival. The South Side Film Festival has recently merged with the Creative Cypher to establish the XL Film Fest. Rolling out spoke with Kennedy about the merger, the history of the South Side Film Festival and the importance of representation.
How did the Chicago South Side Film Festival come about?
In 2017, I was at a local festival and I got into a conversation with some African-American filmmakers who were lamenting on how difficult it was to be a content creator [and] filmmaker, Black and live on the South Side of Chicago. They told me that they felt marginalized by a lot of the filmmaking industry in Chicago, especially the established festivals.
I decided that the South Side needed its own film festival. I did some research on film festivals and came to the conclusion that essentially, you only really need three things to start a festival, you need some films, a theater and an audience and everything else is sort of just like secondary. I decided to take a chance, start a not-for-profit and in 2018 we had our first festival.
What does the merger with Creative Cypher mean for the future of the festival?
It means that the festival will continue under the umbrella of Creative Cypher. Film festivals in and of themselves are expensive to produce. Unfortunately, during the pandemic, a lot of the financial support that we had been able to rely on previously was repurposed to help people survive the pandemic, which was the right thing to do.
Troy Pryor and I started talking about a way to bring the festival under the umbrella of Creative Cypher, which had so much outstanding programming and so many awesome things happening. Creative Cypher had literally had everything but a festival. We realized that our goals and objectives complimented each other.
Why is it important for Black films to have this representation and this festival?
Before I started the Chicago South Side Film Festival, there were roughly 100 periodic film centered events that would occur on a regular basis in Chicago. I’m not going to call them festivals because some of them were just screenings that might happen every quarter, every month. But there were a hundred of them, ranging in size and complexity from the month-long Chicago International Film Festival to a daylong or weekend series that might be at a college or university or synagogue or church.
None of them were on the South Side, not one. That was just wrong to me because there’s so many Black people on the South Side of Chicago making movies, making all types of content. Unfortunately, because there was no organizational collective on the South Side that really put the South Side filmmakers at the center, they got marginalized in all these other festivals.
It’s [XL Film Fest] really a place for filmmakers to get under the spotlight and let the world know what we are capable of.
Watch the full interview below.
