I kicked off a busy second day here at Ebertfest with the panel I was on here, “Film Criticism and the Internet,” moderated by film historian David Bordwell and packed with panelists, including Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune), Peter Sobczynski (efilmcritic.com), Richard Roeper (Chicago Sun-Times), Lisa Rosman (US Weekly/Flavorpill), Hank Sartin (Time Out Chicago), Erik Childress (efilmcritic.com), Steve Prokopy (AICN), Dean Richards (WGN) and Nell Minnow (The Movie Mom). Considering the scope of opinions and strong personalities on board, things went pretty smoothly, aside from a near-throwdown between Richards and Childress over whether there are, in fact, junket and quote “whores,” which Childress writes about on efilmcritic in a feature called “Critic Watch.”

For many of us in this economic climate, the most pertinent discussion centered around the transition of film criticism from print to internet, and when, if ever, web sites will find a way to make enough money off the internet to evolve a viable model for a substantial number of film critics sustain sufficient income on which to live.
An aside to that issue was raised in the previous panel on “Movies and Everyday Life” around what the impact of the loss of film critics might have on the ability of smaller independent films to reach an audience. what I found particularly interesting about this discussion is the way in which I’ve seen it evolve over the past several years from a focus on “print is still important, and here’s why” to “the print ship is sinking and taking film critics down with it, now what the hell are we going to do about it?” I don’t pretend to have anything close to an answer to that question, but I’m glad to see this issue move more to the forefront of these conversations.
After the panel I had three films to catch. First up was Karen Gehres’s Begging Naked, which I found to be both compelling and immensely difficult at times to watch — not because of the filmmaking, but because the subject was so wrenching. The documentary chronicles the story of artist Elise Hill over Gehres’s 20-year friendship with her. Gehres began videotaping Hill starting in 1996 because Elise wanted to tell the story of her life as a teenage runaway on the streets of NYC, where she worked as a prostitute, became a heroin addict, kicked heroin, put herself through art school … and, eventually, began a downward slide in her personal life, going back into stripping at the age of 32. Ultimately, after Rudy Guiliani shut down the sex business in Times Square, Elisa descended down a major mental spiral that culminated in her eviction and homelessness. And through it all she created her art.
Elise’s paintings are stunning. Her body of work that entails her years as a sex worker and stripper — her Show Club period — depicts a raw, honest and painful grasp of the sexual and power issues surrounding both men who frequent strip clubs and peep shows and the women who work there, captured when Elise, seeking to merge her art with her work, would bring her canvas up on stage and paint both the dancing women and the men watching them.
Her later work, exploring other aspects of her life, is equally powerful. Roger Ebert, in his introduction to the film, said that stylistically, Elise reminds him of Toulouse-Lautrec, and after seeing her work I have to agree with him. Elise is a fascinating portrait of mental illness, sexuality and life on the fringes of society, all tied inextricably to her art, and the questions it raises about whether her life circumstances inform her creativity and art or vice versa interested me immensely. Gehres, who was able to salvage most of Elise’s body of work from her apartment building after she was evicted, brought a selection of Elise’s work to the festival for a gallery display following the film, and all of it sold within a couple of hours (all money from the sales goes back to the artist, who invests her income from her art sales in more art supplies so she can keep creating. You can check out Elise’s artwork right here … it’s truly stunning.
Next up (after a quad shot espresso to keep running) was one of the events I most look forward to each year at Ebertfest — the silent film. This year’s selection was The Last Command (1928) by Josef von Sternberg, accompanied by The Alloy Orchestra. The film stars Emil Jannings, who was the first male leading actor to win an Oscar, and Evelyn Brant who, interestingly enough, was also featured in last year’s silent film pick, Underworld.
After another lovely dinner made even better by great conversation all around the table, we went back to the Virginia Theater for the last screening of the evening, Frozen River, which held the top slot on my top ten list last year for good reason. I’ve seen this film several times now, and still enjoy it immensely; from the marvelously crafted screenplay, to the top-notch acting by Melissa Leo, Misty Upham and Charlie McDermott, to the taut, assured direction of Courtney Hunt, I love this film with a passion marred only by disappointment that it didn’t make more at the box office (it’s only grossed around $2.5 million domestically), that it didn’t win the Oscars for which it was nominated, and that Misty Upham wasn’t Oscar-nommed at all.
Audience response to the film last night was enormously enthusiastic, and the Q&A after the film with Upham and Hunt, moderated by Dean Richards, with Sony Picture Classics co-president Michael Barker along as well, was quite engaging, particularly when Upham talked about the effective ghettoization of roles for Native Americans. More on that later.
Busy Saturday, with four films to see (hopefully I’ll make them all): The Fall, Sita Sings the Blues, Nothing But the Truth and Let the Right One In, followed by the insanely late post-fest party, which gets rolling around 12:30AM and doesn’t shut down until 3:30. I’m definitely going to need a caffeine infusion to make it through everything today.

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