In April 2009, when I was just a freshman in college, I drove four hours across state lines to attend the Ebertfest Film Festival in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, then in its eleventh year. I didn’t go for a starry premiere of the latest awards contender or to gawk at celebrities on the red carpet, but because a fellow journalist — then Roger Ebert’s print editor at the Chicago Sun Times — was gracious enough to invite an aspiring film writer to meet other people and spend the weekend with a film-loving community.
Though I’ve never been able to return since, Ebertfest has always held a special place in my heart. The connections I made at Ebertfest indirectly contributed to me one day arriving in Los Angeles and getting accepted into grad school at USC. So it’s a shame to hear the news that the opportunities afforded by the festival could now be going away.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source m.imdb.com ’
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