It’s Friday night, July 12, and more than 100 filmmakers are packed into Atomix, a coffee shop at Chicago and Damen, waiting for the phone to ring. It doesn’t. Someone shouts, “It’s 8:12 and since the call hasn’t come, can we turn in the films at 5:12?” Sean U’Ren puffs out his cheeks and sighs, biting his lip and staring at the answering machine that is serving as a speaker phone. “This is not an exact science,” he announces. Then, at 8:15, the phone rings and the room goes quiet. The phone rings and rings. Ten, fifteen times. The answering machine does not pick up. Finally, U’Ren grabs the receiver and hands it to Atom Paul, whose mother is on the other end.
After organizing the first five festivals, U’Ren and Paul wanted to step behind the camera, so Paul’s mother was charged with selecting a theme. Participants submitted suggestions via E-mail. After rejecting ideas such as “a chase ending in a confrontation,” “your first drug experience,” and “summer romance,” she picked the cryptic Group 18 theme. As the crowd disperses, U’Ren calls back those within earshot to explain that the group 18 in question had shown up on the Friday night of the fifth festival, paid the $15 entry fee, got the topic, and vanished–never to be heard from again. The participants aren’t exactly overjoyed, but they head into the night seemingly in good spirits.
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Tyler (“just Tyler”) is probably the only filmmaker in the room whose stated ambition is to become a farrier. This is her third 5 x 8 and she’s upset by the vibe inside Atomix. Tyler and her teammates–Clare Windhack-Nolan, Sarah Davis, and Harley Gambill–escape to Chicago Avenue to toss around ideas and get away from the video professionals, whom they feel are dominating the festival and destroying the spirit of the event. The team, which they’ve dubbed Rainbows 4 Jeebus, is at a disadvantage, as none of the members know how to edit. They have to edit in the camera as they shoot. The group’s first idea is something of a revenge fantasy. “I don’t want to get sucked into the vortex of Lincoln Park,” Tyler explains, referring to the pros inside. They discuss shooting stop-motion footage of the group changing out of their overalls and work boots and “becoming consumers,” but soon reject this idea as too hostile.
As Atomix clears out, the eight members of the Gushing Artery team take over a table near the front of the cafe. Charles Leslie, an orthotist at the Rehabilitation Institute, runs through a series of scenarios about loss–death scenes, missing persons, suicides. Schonbrun interrupts to suggest that group 18 may have talked themselves to death. Sid Froelich, an architect, proposes that group 18 disappeared because the filmmaking process is cathartic and by participating in the festival, group 18–once sickly–became healthy. Elizabeth McNaughton, an actor and improviser, picks up on Froelich’s idea and suggests the members of group 18 never made a film because they could not agree on a concept. After 45 minutes Gushing Artery comes up with something: a Behind the Music on group 18.
Ow MyEye doesn’t begin shooting until after midnight. T.W. Li, a Columbia instructor, is the director of photography. He feels there is perhaps an embarrassment of riches on his team. “We could shoot with any camera,” he says. “We are editing with an Avid. We could even finish in an on-line room.” Li thinks less technology might be the way to go.
At two in the afternoon Joe Winston sits behind his Avid at Superior Street, waiting for one scene shot earlier to be delivered. Finally, at 2:35, Ted Hardin, the other Columbia faculty member on the team, arrives with the missing footage. It’s of a young girl on a swing who says to the camera, “I know what happened to group 18. It’s a secret.” Winston promises that this scene “will tie the film all together.”
