Film 50 2017: Chicago’s Screen Gems
Beautiful evening last night celebrating New City’s Film 50 at the CIFF Reception. Big congrats to Quriosity EP @qdramatics QADREE HOLMES and the 49 other major players in film honored this year
“Hog Butcher for the World, Tool maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads… Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders.” Carl Sandburg’s words resounded mightily, rising from Chicago’s industrial fug of smoke and soot and steam of 1914. While large industries center and shelter here still, is it similarly impressive in this pre-post-capitalist moment to think of ourselves living and working within the “First-responder procedural producer for the world, experimental filmmaker, archivist of celluloid, player with pixels… Comic, caustic, self-effacing City of the Big Pictures”? Those who helped us arrive at these fifty entries on Chicago’s behind-the-scenes film community think so. There’s always press for visionary artists, but art gets into the world and onto screens large and small and into archives and onto screens again through intricate networks of economies and affinities. The work of visionary educators, visionary producers, visionary mentors, visionary exhibitors, visionary archivists are just as essential. While forces of consolidation and contraction are always at work, the Chicago film community is in a warm, fuzzy place for now. The loosely defined phrase “Peak TV” is due for a smackdown, even in relation to the flurry of series that continue to be shot locally, but in surveying the figures behind the camera and behind the scenes for this year’s edition of Film 50, we discovered an impressive portrait of Peak Chicago. (Ray Pride)
47
Qadree Holmes
Founder and Executive Producer, Quriosity Productions
“I always remind the team that the work we do today will be reviewed by people for generations,” Qadree Holmes says of four-year-old Quriosity Productions. “We’re fortunate to be part of the visual storytelling that will represent our current culture in years to come.” Quriosity is a minority-owned, Chicago-based production-, post-production and photography company that also has Los Angeles offices, representing directors, photographers and editors domestically as well as internationally. Advertising is a large focus, but Holmes is impressed with the booming economy for film in general. “I credit this largely to the Illinois Film tax incentive, parallel to our amazing production crews, which give us topnotch infrastructure. Quriosity has definitely done its fair share of convincing clients to work in Illinois!” Holmes began his career twelve years ago, interning for O’Connor Casting, then a production company where he eventually became their rep. And now, “Quriosity has had a great run in the market. We work on really cool projects that have impact and meaning. Collectively, we’ve been able to take part in storytelling all around the country. It is great when you can always be learning, while sharing stories and experiences of others through film and print photography.” Quriosity’s recent post-production credits include Netflix’s “The Jamz,” Amazon’s “Written Off” and the feature “Signature Move.”
see full article HERE
