Reeling Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival is back for its 44th edition this September, bringing 36 feature films and 59 short films from 22 countries to screens across the city. The festival will screen primarily at Landmark Century Centre Cinema at 2828 N. Clark St., with additional programming at the Music Box Theatre and Chicago Filmmakers' Edgewater headquarters.
According to Block Club Chicago, the festival bills itself as Chicago's preeminent LGBTQ+ film festival and the second-longest-running festival of its kind in the world. Only San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival, founded in 1977, has been running longer among LGBTQ+ film festivals worldwide, according to Time Out. Reeling was founded in 1981 by Brenda Webb, now executive director of Chicago Filmmakers, the nonprofit that presents the festival.
A Fest Born in a 90-Seat Screening Room
Reeling's first edition unfolded in a 90-seat, folding-chair screening room that Chicago Filmmakers operated on West Hubbard Street, where demand ran so high that nearly every screening sold out, per FilmFreeway. Chicago Filmmakers itself traces back even further, originating in 1973 as an artist-run weekly screening series called Filmgroup at N.A.M.E. Gallery before formally incorporating as an independent nonprofit media center in 1976.
The organization's current home sits inside a piece of Chicago history. Chicago Filmmakers purchased its headquarters at 1326 W. Hollywood Ave. — a city-owned firehouse built in 1928 — from the City of Chicago in February 2016 following a municipal competitive proposal process, according to the Windy City Times. The former Edgewater fire station now houses the nonprofit's Firehouse Cinema, one of several venues where this year's festival will play out.
Opening Night at the Music Box
Reeling opens on September 17 at 6:30 p.m. with La Bola Negra, a Spanish film directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi that follows the interconnected lives of three gay men across three time periods. The opening-night screening takes place at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., which opened on August 22, 1929, as an 800-seat atmospheric cinema designed by architect Louis A. Simon, per the theater's own account.
La Bola Negra stars Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Glenn Close and Penélope Cruz, per Block Club Chicago's reporting. The film has also been selected as the closing-night film for Atlanta's 39th Out on Film festival this fall, according to Arts ATL — a selection Hoodline previewed in its Out on Film coverage. A ticket to Reeling's opening night runs $20, or $55 including the after-film party.
Centerpiece and Featured Titles
The festival's narrative centerpiece is Mermaid, directed by Fia Perera and starring Devyn McDowell and Arturo Luiz Soria, which follows a young trans child who bonds with a grief-stricken drag queen. It screens September 19 at 5 p.m. Also playing that day is Test, directed with Brock Yurich and Tammy Blanchard starring, which follows an amateur bodybuilder struggling with his sexuality in rural Ohio, screening at 7 p.m.; Son of Sara, a queer horror comedy created by Houston Bone about a pregnant lesbian confronting her baby's father's family, rounds out the day at 9:30 p.m.
Later in the festival, Meeting Marsha — written and directed by McKenzie Goodwin and featuring Elaine Hendrix and Lisa Ann Walter — brings a lesbian farce about an aspiring actress whose proposal plan is disrupted by her biological mother, screening September 23 at 6:30 p.m. The next day features a pair of titles: Jaripeo, an observational documentary about gay Mexican rodeo riders directed by Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig, at 6:30 p.m., and I Am Going to Miss You, a T4T relationship drama about trans lovers Amanda and Caio directed by Daniel Ribiero and cast entirely with trans actors, at 6:45 p.m.
Closing With Queer Film History
Reeling closes on September 27 with a 30th-anniversary screening of The Celluloid Closet, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, at Chicago Filmmakers at 6 p.m. The documentary charts the trajectory of queer representation in films from the beginnings of cinema through the 1990s and is based on gay activist and film scholar Vito Russo's 1981 book of the same name. Russo spent a decade presenting illustrated lectures on queer film representation before collaborating on the documentary prior to his death in 1990, according to the Golden Globes. The closing-night screening is sponsored by Victor Salvo.
Local filmmaker and former Windy City Times film critic Richard Knight Jr., who co-programmed the narrative features program with Tatum Yancey, who leads the education department at Chicago Filmmakers, returned to Reeling programming duties for the first time in four years. Speaking about The Celluloid Closet, Knight told Block Club Chicago, “What I love about this film is that it's all of us,” calling it “a masterwork.” He added that “there is nothing like seeing a movie with your community.”
Tickets and the Wider Landscape
Regular screenings cost $15, or $13 for members. Festival passes range from $65 for five films to $125 for ten films or $150 for unlimited screenings. The full lineup includes films from South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Israel, Spain, Canada and Mexico, screening primarily at Landmark Century Centre Cinema — a seven-auditorium venue seating 1,116 people inside the historic 1925 Century Shopping Centre building, according to Cvent.
Reeling's 44th return comes as other regional LGBTQ+ film festivals face financial strain. In April, Seattle's Three Dollar Bill Cinema placed the Seattle Queer Film Festival on indefinite hold due to financial review and budget deficits, part of a broader pattern of funding contractions and venue cost inflation hitting queer media nonprofits nationwide, as Hoodline reported. Against that backdrop, Reeling's continued run — anchored in Chicago Filmmakers' own building and longtime neighborhood venues — stands as a rare case of stability among the country's queer film festivals.
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