62 feature and short independent films in the 14th annual festival. "The Chicago Underground Film Festival is the city’s most eclectic yet best curated fest. Director and co-founder Bryan Wendorff has a knack for uncovering work that startles, upsets and spellbinds. For the 14th annual run, Wendorff offers 19 features and 91 shorts in the five-day fest that kicks off at 8 p.m. Wednesday with the post-apocalyptic drama "Orchard Vale" at the Chopin Theatre. Unlike some Chicago festivals (and a bevy of events that call themselves "festivals"), the Chicago Underground Film Festival scores world premieres, international premieres (defined as first screenings outside their original country) and U.S. premieres. “There is a trend toward retro-homages this year," Wendorff said. "Narrative features like ’Viva,’ ’Go Go Motel’ and ’Celluloid No. 1’ are referencing underground movies in the past." The French-made documentary "Llik Your Idols" looks back at "the cinema of transgression" by the likes of Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Lydia Lunch and Bruce LaBruce. Shooting on Super-8 in the ’80s, they made hybrids of punk, porn, splatter and avant-garde. Wendorff likes to juxtapose films for effect. He booked "Description of Bankruptcy," Kang-hyun Lee’s documentary about credit card debt in South Korea, alongside Robert Hack’s "Table, Bed, Chair," a report about cash-free squatters in Amsterdam. CUFF filmmakers provoke with unusual mixes. Columbia College student Marie Ullrich excerpts a 1958 educational film and samples the cryptic shortwave broadcasts of numbers archived by the Conet Project. Another short, "Primate Cinema," uses side-by-side screens to show baboons courting in Kenya, next to male and female actors engaged in similar behavior in a bar. Most screenings this year are at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division. James Bond, Chicago’s ace of projection, will set up 16 mm and 35 mm film equipment. The digital cinema projector is the same one that he uses for Hollywood industry previews and premieres. Underground artists, light-years away from the movie mainstream, will get state-of-the-art projection. "This is an underserved group of filmmakers and their work deserves to be shown the best way we can," Bond said" - Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun Times 8/10/07

Films include Orchard Valle; The Good Times Kid; Celluoid#1; Each time I kill; Bliss; July Fix; Tower Crane; Lions and tigers and bears; Zwischen; This is my Land; This is not an anchor; This boat is not an Anchor; Nature Mature; Thax; Viva; Orbit; Fading Star; !Las Historias Mas Sexy Deli Mundo!; Blood of the Earthworm; Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa; Earth’s Shadow; When the Light’s Red; Welcome to Normal; Phantom Canyon; Sonic Youth; Survivor cook, Islands, Abridge; Startle pattern; Black & White Trypps; Cut; The Hester; Internet Alphabet; New York Story; Lighting Bolt-Vile House; the Wilson Street Connection; Hasha Royko; Alla te Alcanzo; The Drift; It Will Die Out in the mind; Energie!; Bye Bye One; Playing Alive; Hell on Wheels; Go Go Motel; Interplay; 930; Die Entnazifizierung Des MH; The Magician’s House; Elizabeth Short; Magnavoz; Random Lunancy: Videos from the Road less travelled; No Man’s Language; Galaxian; Rehearsals for Retirement; Untitled for David Gatten; And We All Shione On; She Puttpe; Untitled #2; Stranger Comes to Town; Hymn of Reckoning; Total Power - Dead, Dead, Dead; Disarm; The Earls and La Trinchera, Luminosa Del Presidente Gonzalo