Every year, Bill Allan and his students from Lyons Township High School, as well as students from 11 other schools and film buffs, gather at the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove. While there are 12 student films competing for best in show, in the spirit of last century, none of them contain any audio.
“At the most basic level, this is something that is not familiar to these kids in their generation, so off the bat, [it’s a] cool challenge for kids who are already making videos,” Allan told the Landmark. “With the absence of sound, that presents a lot more challenge for them from a cinematography perspective and a performance perspective.”
While the films may be silent, the viewing area is not. Allan said Derek Berg, one of the event’s other founders, plays a live accompaniment customized for each submission. After the festival, the schools are sent copies of the scores so they can be digitally added to each film for future viewings.
The students get to see their films “in a real movie theater on a big screen, and [get] to have an original soundtrack composed by a professional musician then performed the night of,” Allan said. “They have no idea what’s coming until the night of the festival, and then they get to see their film and experience it with an original composition.”
This year’s competition, which will take place Wednesday, Jan. 28, at 6:45 p.m., is the ninth iteration of the festival. Allan said the first go-around grew out of LT’s own annual student film festival, held each spring.
“Maybe 10 years ago, I was looking for local area folks who are in the industry to be judges, and a gentleman named Ed Newman reached out, volunteered, and he came out, and it was great. Ed and I kept in touch, and maybe about six months later, he reached out to me to talk about an idea that he had,” Allan said.
Newman’s idea, he said, was based on silent film fundraisers he had attended at the Sanfilippo family’s estate in the Barrington area.
“He thought it would be really cool to do a student silent film festival, so he pulled me in to be the tech supervisor, tech director, and then he pulled in Derek Berg to be the music and creative director,” Allan said.
For several years, the trio partnered with the Sanfilippo Foundation to host the festival in Barrington, but when the COVID-19 pandemic caused lockdowns in 2020, the group had to pivot, Allan said, giving rise to their ongoing partnership with the Tivoli Theatre, the original movie house that grew into Classic Cinemas.
As a teacher at LT, Allan said he assists his students during the pre-production phase, as they’re brainstorming, scouting locations and thinking of wardrobes, but the students handle the rest all on their own.
“There’s always a staff person supervising, obviously, because I can’t have kids by themselves in school, but, really, it is all 100% student-written, directed, crewed and acted,” he said.
This year, LT’s film, “The Master Deck,” was written and directed by senior Emily Schuler and crewed by juniors Auggie Vymyslicky and Andrew Shepard. Junior Gemma Mear and sophomore Jay Jaffre star as the two characters at the center of the tarot card-themed narrative, inspired by this year’s theme, which was a deck of cards, Allan said.
While the festival is competitive, he said it’s less about winning than it is about platforming the students’ art and giving them a memorable experience.
“There have been some years where Lyons Township did not win, and that’s OK, because we still had an amazing time, we saw incredible films, and even the films that we made, they might not have won a trophy, but they still won … a professionally composed soundtrack,” Allan said. “In some ways, everybody does win.”
Advance tickets for this year’s festival are available online for $20. Tickets will also be available day-of at the door for $25.
