Chicago Film Festival to host free Zoom master class with ‘Dear White People’ composer Kathryn Bostic
The Chicago International Film Festival, scheduled this year for October 14-25 in a form to be determined, features a sidebar event known as “Industry Days.” It’s open to the public, and gathers creative talents from all strata of filmmaking: producing, writing, directing, financing, marketing and distribution.
Also, film scoring. This is the official “Year of Chicago Music” in our city. And film scoring gets my vote for the crucial, make-or-break element of what can transform a movie’s impact, or (in lesser hands) hold it back or give it the wrong kind of personality makeover.
No less than how light and cinematography affects emotional temperature, or how editing plays with our pulse rate, film music speaks for the characters in a language we’re taught anew, with each new story.
Kathryn Bostic is one of the best composers working right now, as conversant in the jazz idiom as she is attuned to other forms and idioms. The musician, composer and performer who scored the terrific 2014 film “Dear White People,” the Alfre Woodard drama “Clemency” and the eloquent documentary “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” joins the festival’s Industry Days slate for a conversation with Columbia College professor and composer Kubilay Üner.
The Zoom meetup is free and open to the public; register here.
Bostic’s career has flourished in several directions. She wrote music for various August Wilson stage projects, as well as for the PBS documentary “The Ground on Which I Stand.” She’s a supple keyboard artist and vocalist, and in the film festival Zoom seminar, co-presented by the Chicago Film Office, she’ll discuss writing for film, television. She’ll also address how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected her head-space, for composition and beyond. (That’s a very big topic.)
Last year, we featured Bostic’s deft, multi-colored “Dear White People” score on one of the hour-long Oscar week specials I hosted on Classical WFMT (98.7 FM). We barely scratched the surface, and the festival’s Aug. 12 Zoom webimar likewise can only go so deep. But if you’re new to this talent, and want to know more about how she creates, it’s a fine introduction.
For more information, go to chicagofilmfestival.org.
“Kathryn Bostic: the Master Class,” 4 p.m. Aug. 12, a Zoom webinar presented by the Chicago International Film Festival and the Chicago Film Office. For more information and to register, go to chicagofilmfestival.com.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
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