Chicago Filmmakers, the presenting organization of the Onion City Experimental Film Festival, announces an exciting line-up of six competition shows and six special programs for its 35th edition, running April 3 – 6, 2025, all in-person, taking place at five venues.
Opening the festival is the world premiere of MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (2025) screening at Facets (1517 W Fullerton Ave) on Thursday, April 3 at 7pm. A collaborative work involving 24 artists, the three-channel video reinterprets the 1929 film of the same name through the lens of internet-based aesthetics. Drawing a lineage from the experiments of Soviet montage to contemporary trends, such as sludge content, desktop documentary, corecore, and database cinema, MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (2025) attempts to reinvigorate the popular avant-garde project of a universal cinematic language which was originally developed almost a century ago by Dziga Vertov and The Kinoks.
For additional information and tickets visit here.
Six programs of films in competition, selected from nearly 600 international submissions, will be screened at Chicago Filmmakers’ Firehouse Cinema (1326 W Hollywood Ave) from April 4-6. On Friday, April 4 at 6pm, IS THIS THING ON? focuses on sonic experimentation and its relation to filmic motion. On Saturday, April 5 at 2pm the program TAILWIND is a collection of road trip memories, travelogues, family movies, and film diaries, followed by the 4pm program VIVID DETAIL, which explores the outer reaches of mind-body experience under conditions of heightened awareness and temporal contraction. And at 9pm, FUGUE STATES is a lineup of works that embrace spells of confusion, somnambulant visions, and twists of memory. On Sunday, April 6 at 3pm, (RE)VISITATIONS centers on visits, returns, ancestry, and lineage with works that take up a number of experimental documentary approaches, while the 5pm program NICHE APPEAL is a program of ecological works regarding our relationship to the natural world and meditations on non-human forces.
Other special events include:
Leisure (2444 W Division St) will host REGARDING: A LEISURE INSTALLATION, in which one video from a Chicago-based artist will be showcased each evening of the festival in their street-facing gallery. Leisure will hold open gallery hours from 4-6pm, Thursday to Sunday, April 3-6 in which attendees are welcome to visit inside. From 6-10pm, works will continue to be displayed through the gallery’s window for the perusal of passersby outside.
On Friday, April 4 at Public Works Gallery (2141 W North Ave), Onion City co-presents with Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines (CCAM) [We Don’t Know Yet] What a Cinema Can Do, a night of new media live performance centered on visual-sonic collaboration, including the arts of DJing and live film scoring to embrace transmedia collage. Sound and moving image artists are paired to convene and animate an exquisite corpse of expanded cinema. Doors open at 7pm for the 8pm event.
On Saturday, April 5that 6pm at Chicago Filmmakers (1326 W Hollywood Ave) the organization’s monthly series PICTURE RESTART: 16mm FILMS FROM THE PICTURE START COLLECTION becomes part of the line-up of Onion City, presenting RONALD NAMETH’S THE GUNA REELS: A Kaleidoscopic Journey Through Human Nature and the Cosmos. Known for The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a film capturing the multimedia performances of Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground and Nico during one week of their happenings in Chicago in 1968, Nameth draws upon Bhagavad Gita and other works of Hindu philosophy to craft a kaleidoscopic meditation on war and peace, sex and violence, and the essential forces of human nature in THE GUNA REELS.
On Sunday April 6th at 12pm at Northwestern University’s Block Cinema (40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston), DIRECT ACTION brings viewers into France’s rural Notre-Dame-des-Landes commune, whose activist inhabitants live and work to protect a “Zone to Defend” (ZAD) against development in the region. Filmmakers Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau observe the work and play of daily life in the commune as well as preparations for a major protest action against a proposed reservoir project. DIRECT ACTION inscribes the relaxed pace of commune life through long takes shot on vivid 16mm film, drawing parallels between the utopian aspirations of environmentalist action and of ecological filmmaking. As the state’s repression of the protest turns shockingly violent, the film’s careful framing becomes an ever-more powerful reminder that, for militants behind a barricade or for observers behind a camera, the most powerful act of resistance is simply standing one’s ground. This program is co-presented with the Climate Crisis + Media Arts Global Working Group of Northwestern’s Buffet Institute for Global Affairs
Closing the festival on Sunday, April 6 at 7pm at Chicago Filmmakers (1326 W Hollywood Ave), Onion City co-presents with the Chicago Film Society SELECTIONS FROM THE 16MM FILM STUDY COLLECTION. For over 50 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s John M. Flaxman Library’s 16mm Film Study Collection has been a renowned resource for 16mm film prints that span the history of film. Among its holdings are a significant number of films by SAIC faculty and alumni, thus preserving a part of Chicago experimental film history. In partnership with the Chicago Film Society, SAIC restored the films of alumnus Edward Owens, a Black queer filmmaker who was a student in the newly formed Film Department at SAIC in the mid-1960s. His films will be screened with a selection of rare prints by Chicago filmmakers from the Film Study Collection.
Onion City Experimental Film Festival is a production of Chicago Filmmakers, a 50 year-old not-for-profit media arts organization providing film exhibition, educational programs, and resources for filmmakers and film lovers alike.
Onion City 2025 co-presenters and partners include: FACETS, Chicago Film Society, SAIC’s John M. Flaxman Library’s 16mm Film Study Collection, Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines, Public Works, Leisure, Block Cinema at Northwestern University, Climate Crisis + Media Arts Global Working Group of Northwestern’s Buffet Institute for Global Affairs, and Video Data Bank.
Ticketing Information
To purchase tickets online in advance visit here or at the respective venues on the day of the show.
- Admission is $15 for Onion City Experimental Film Festival Opening Night at FACETS (1517 W Fullerton Ave).
- Screenings at Chicago Filmmakers (1326 W Hollywood Ave) are a voluntary requested donation of $12.
- Competition Passes good for all 6 competition shows are available for $50.
- Tickets for the live event [We Don’t Know Yet] What a Cinema Can Do: Expanded Cinema at Public Works Gallery (2141 W North Ave) are $20 in advance and $30 at the door on the day of the show, subject to ticket availability.
- There is no admission charge for DIRECT ACTION at Northwestern University’s Block Cinema (40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston), however an RSVP is required, linked through the Onion City website.
- There is no admission charge to attend the gallery installation at Leisure.
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