Better Propaganda
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“It’s a visual record of what it felt like to be there,” Orland says of the largely wordless collection of scenes, which begins with a juxtaposition of the center and the nation’s capitol and includes a massive procession and a string of dances; the music’s by Peter Buffett (who scored portions of Dances With Wolves) and the group AO. Orland’s award comes under the auspices of CIFF’s less-noticed twin, Intercom, which recognizes work made for educational and industrial purposes–in other words, films with a viewpoint bought and paid for, often by some of the richest corporations in the world. But in this case, with Orland crashing on a friend’s couch in D.C. and donating his time, it came pretty cheap. The budget was $8,000.
Orland, an Aurora native who’s also a singer-songwriter (yep, he has a CD and a Web site, tomorlandproductions.com), studied film production at Southern Illinois University, where his mentor was Hoop Dreams director Steve James–just a student teacher then, but already an inspiration for “trying to do stuff that means something,” Orland says. For most of the first 15 years after he graduated Orland did educational and corporate work, trying to infuse it with what he calls a “unique perspective.” (There was, for example, the Marshall Field’s video on how to fit a man’s shirt that he cast with a young actor he’d just seen at Second City–Steve Carell, now of Daily Show and 40-Year-Old Virgin fame.) But in 2000 he was hired by the Jesuits to make a film about their missionary work in Italy, India, Nepal, and Peru. He says that one, done with cameraman and editor John Hillman, changed his life. Filming at sunset in a Lima cemetery while a Peruvian family buried a child, panning across their faces as dust billowed from the freshly dug grave, Orland says, he felt the power the medium could offer. “I knew that by taking that story home and showing it we could help those people. I got it in my head that I could be the writer-producer for these stories and have some sort of effect.”
After complaints that they’d be crossing a picket line, the Chicago International Film Festival decided last week not to use rooms being offered its guests by the Congress Hotel. Managing director Sophia Wong Boccio says the decision was made for many reasons and that the labor dispute is “a private matter between the hotel and the union.” . . . In spite of Illinois’ hard-won tax incentive for the film industry, only a portion of one feature film is on the production calendar here currently–Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, shooting this month. Illinois Film Office head Brenda Sexton says that’s “not unusual for the fall.” Looking ahead, another nine episodes of the Fox series Prison Break will be shot here from January through March. Sexton estimates that the industry will have added $70 million to the local economy in 2005….The Chicago Dance and Music Alliance has hired Molly McLinden as executive director; she’ll be doing work previously handled by two staffers. . . . Irresistible headline from the September 30 issue of PerformInk: “Illinois & Chicago Give Over $10 in Arts Grants.”
