Elizabeth Owen was frustrated. Even though she had worked in filmmaking for years, she still felt it was like pulling teeth to find the resources and people needed to produce a film. “Tracking down people was a lot harder than you would think,” says Owen, who owns a production company, Girlie Girl Productions. “I would call one number and it would say to call another number, which would be disconnected.” Then she read an “angry” letter to the editor by filmmaker Chris McKay in New City last August; McKay was urging Chicago’s independent film community to pool its resources, so Owen decided to call him.
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“He seemed to share a lot of the feelings I was having about wanting to connect with other people,” Owen says. The two ended up meeting that same night in a coffee shop, and they quickly realized that they both wanted to start an organization aimed at uniting the city’s filmmakers.
Still relatively young (all of them are in their early 30s, with the exception of Bernardi-Reis, who’s 24), the founding members come from all corners of the industry. McKay, a cameraman and editor, has worked on commercials, music videos, and industrial films; he’s also supervised postproduction on several feature films, including 35 Miles From Normal. Rownd, who recently opened his own design and production studio, has worked on some larger-budget studio productions, commercials, and the occasional television series since earning his MFA from Northwestern in 1993.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Rob Rownd, Elizabeth Owen, Nicole Bernardi-Reis.
