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Chicago Tribune
26 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: A Chicago film curator reflects on her new job in London, where national arts funding is still a thing
Across two decades, the film programmer Rebecca Fons, soon departing the Siskel Film Center in Chicago for a big new job at London's Barbican Centre, has worked at a novel variety of movie venues, including the single-screen Iowa Theater in her hometown of Winterset, Iowa, population a little more than 5,000. Most towns that size haven't had a movie theater for years. Fons and her mother, Marianne Fons, raised a million bucks and rehabbed and reopened the Iowa Theater on John Wayne Drive in Winterset as a nonprofit. Fons still programs the programming, which typically is 'F1' or 'Superman' but this week, at 7 p.m. July 31, it's 'Singin' in the Rain.' Fons, 43, has been the Siskel Film Center's director of programming since 2021. She will continue to program the Iowa when she becomes Head of Cinema at the sprawling Brutalist multidisciplinary Barbican arts complex this summer. The Barbican, by many measurements, remains London's leading cultural destination; it's home base for, among other organizations, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the London Symphony Orchestra. And it is generally tagged as the largest arts center in Europe. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Q: In your job interviews for the Barbican post, what seemed to be the X-factor in your hiring? A: I think it had a lot to do with a noticeably varied career. I worked at the Chicago International Film Festival for nearly a decade, I did educational screenings, worked with students, teachers, general audiences, I managed volunteers, handled the visiting talent, ran around red carpets. I rehabbed a cinema with my mom and popped popcorn and picked carpet patterns. For FilmScene in Iowa City (a three-screen operation that Fons ran from 2017 to 2020), I programmed for rural audiences, college audiences. Here at the Film Center, I program for urban audiences. I guess (the Barbican) saw all this, and saw in me a curiosity to learn more, and always collaborate. How can we do with film, to go beyond the frame? That kept coming up in our interviews, and that aligned with what the Barbican has been doing with all its cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary programming. They've always done it, but they're entering a new era with it. Q: It's interesting to read a culture job description issued by a major institution in 2025 that isn't afraid of words like 'diverse' or 'provoke debate.' We talked earlier this year about the zeroing out of the National Endowment for the Arts and how it could affect Film Center programming like the Black Harvest Film Festival. A few months later, everyone's hurting. A: Yeah. (pause) The core values of the Barbican, and the mission and the support of the nation the Barbican happens to be part of — they're very welcome right now. Just to know there will be no debates about the value of national arts funding, very welcome. The Barbican's strategic plan and its mission align with my own values as a curator and as a human being. The (head of cinema) job is why I'm going, and I'm honored to be in that role. The rest of it is icing on the cake, but it's not just icing, if you know what I mean. What's interesting is that the Film Center's programming and the Barbican's programming have a lot of similarities. They run new films, we run new films. They host the London Palestine Film Festival, we host the Chicago Palestine Film Festival. They host various partner festivals' screenings, we do the same. They showcase a lot of repertory titles, as do we. Also, this is sort of wild: The Barbican opened in 1982, three months before I was born (laughs). Q: Has anyone there asked you where Iowa is? Do they believe it exists? A: Um (laughs), you're right, I should probably cue up a screening of 'Field of Dreams' for the staff and just say 'I live near there.' Honestly, I'll just show them photos of the Iowa Theater in my hometown. We're all connected by this business we love. Q: Your successor at the Film Center, whoever that turns out to be — what advice would you give to this person about the challenges and the possibilities? A: Every film exhibitor or curator or programmer is just trying to read the tea leaves and adjust. As usual. After the pandemic lockdown, and then the fallout from the (writers and actors) strikes, the industry was adjusting and counter-adjusting, trying to figure things out. It's a dance marathon, and we're all a bit tired. But we're here. There's a lot of encouragement and support and courage. We're all in it. People have been predicting the death of cinema since not too long after the birth of cinema. We just keep doing what we do. It's a resilient art form.
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Siskel Center director Rebecca Fons is hired away by London's Barbican Centre
Rebecca Fons, the director of programming at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago since 2021, is the new head of cinema for London's multidisciplinary Barbican Centre, effective Sept. 1. The Barbican will announce the appointment early Tuesday, but word of Fons' new post made the conversational rounds late Monday at the national Art House Convergence gathering of art-house cinema exhibitors, held once again in Chicago. Fons, 43, will oversee a team of film programmers at the Barbican, which contains three cinema auditoriums. 'The opportunity at the Barbican is so incredible,' she told the Tribune late Monday. 'To be able to program for a new audience, to be part of a team with so much cross-disciplinary opportunity, it's very exciting.' Fons and her husband, Chicago-based filmmaker Jack Newell, are leasing a flat in London's Bloomsbury neighborhood and will maintain their Chicago residence as well. Fons said she has programmed the Siskel Film Center's calendar through October, with some of the late 2025 and early 2026 programming in place as well. The Barbican is best known as the Royal Shakespeare Company's London home base, with a wealth of theater, film, dance, music and other art forms sharing the building that opened in 1982. Fons' transition means the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which oversees the activities of the Siskel Film Center, is conducting a search for a film programming head. The Iowa native's canny array of cinematic offerings brought the Film Center out of the muck of the pandemic. She was hired first on a part-time basis, then went full-time later in 2021. She was the Tribune's Chicagoan of the Year in film for 2022.
