2024 FESTIVAL
Thursday, September 12th & Saturday, September 14th
"True to the well-worn adage of “it takes a village,” the bonds of community populated every component of the inaugural Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival."
- DON SHANAHAN, CONEMAOBSESSIVE.COM
ABOUT THE 2024 FESTIVAL
The inaugural Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival (OPILFF) kicked off with a thrilling gala featuring The Abyss: Special Edition, honoring leading cast member, and Oak Park, IL native, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
Over two days, the festival showcased 17 films—fiction, nonfiction, and animation—all tied to the community. Highlights included the award-winning romantic drama Breakup Season, which took home Best Feature and Best Actress honors, and the thought-provoking documentaries Hillbilly, which explored Appalachian stereotypes, and Fire Department, Inc., a riveting look at a local firefighters' union fight. With a mix of compelling storytelling and community pride, OPILFF brought together filmmakers and audiences for an unforgettable celebration of cinema.
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, a native of Oak Park, known for her roles in The Abyss, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Perfect Storm and others. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in The Color of Money.
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OPENING NIGHT SPEAKERS
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Gussie Mastrantonio is a lifelong resident of Oak Park, where she and her husband of 25 years, Paul, have raised three sons, all graduates of OPRF High School. Though Gussie didn’t pursue a career in the performing arts, it was performing that led her to a fulfilling career in meeting and convention planning. While performing at a large corporate event, Gussie noticed the woman who had hired them. This woman, wearing a large hat, was orchestrating all the activity in the room. At that moment, Gussie thought to herself, "I want to be the lady with the big hat!"
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Deborah H. Holdstein is Professor of English, Emerita, at Columbia College Chicago. She has taught courses in classic Hollywood film--and literary studies-- since her graduate work at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For seven years, Holdstein served as Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Columbia; before that, she was Chair of the Department of English at Northern Illinois University and previously taught at Governors State University. She has published widely in rhetoric, film, and literary studies.
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Franklin Stevenson studied Film and Animation at Columbia College Chicago. From the late 1980s through early 1990s, he worked as Motion-Control Camera Assistant and Operator for Colossal Pictures, and Motion-Control Camera Assistant on a few feature films for Lucasfilm's ILM - including The Abyss. He currently teaches film appreciation for Triton College.
FESTIVAL DAY PANELISTS
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Anne Northrup is producer with CBH Video Productions. She specializes in producing short documentary style videos that tell stories of people making a difference in their communities and around the world. She has written and produced historical documentaries and worked as an associate producer on long form documentaries for Chicago’s PBS affiliate WTTW.
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Tim Corpus is a Filipino-American composer and arts manager, with music featured at Carnegie Hall, Auditorium Theatre, CNN Money, and BBC Radio3 among others. Recent film scores include “Jordan Black: SKETCH Symbol”, “Coming Out for Christmas” by M.V.Parker, and “I Broke Them”, recently screened at the New Hampshire Film Festival. www.timcorpus.net
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Drew Weir has been working in audio post production for 25 years as a sound editor, designer, and re-recording mixer for commercials, feature films, and television content. His credits include Drinking Buddies, Princess Cyde, Fresh Kills, America to Me, With this Light, and Academy Award nominated Best Documentary Feature - Abacus. In 2013 he received a Motion Picture Sound Editors Guild nomination for - Best Sound Editing, Documentary Feature for The Interrupters.
FESTIVAL GUEST SPEAKER
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Warren Trezevant began his professional career at Pixar Animation Studios, as a character animator bringing characters to life for feature films, Warren also created original media installations, like the Toy Story Zoetrope, and was part of the team who developed Pixar’s proprietary digital animation production system, Presto. Warren continued his journey in building better digital tools for creatives at Autodesk, where he was a Product Manager for Autodesk’s flagship 3D animation software Maya, and later the review and production tracking software ShotGrid. Warren recently started as Principal Product Manager at Adobe, working on Firefly, their new GenAI tool for creatives.