The Oak Park International Film Festival will host “Fact & Faith,” Saturday, September 19 and Sunday September 20 at the Oak Park Public Library.  Co-sponsored by the Oak Park Area Visitors and Convention Bureau and coinciding with Oktoberfest, the multiplicity of this year’s local films and filmmakers is an exercise in diversity itself; from powerful portraits of railroad porters to the role memory plays in the minds of Palestinian Americans remembering forced removal. There’s a stunning short about a mom’s bout with cancer and her need for comfort from her son and grandson. There’s a historic look into Ernest Hemingway’s childhood homes. There’s a music video about temptation. And there’s a romantic story about longing and love featuring a brilliant Oak Park actress in her first major role with absolutely no dialogue.

We’re offering a moving documentary on Black males in Oak Park and a searing suburban chronicle of kids of color in Maryland. Related to that is a lovely look at the history of Oak Park through the story on one particular family also featured in a new book on the same topic. There’s an inside peep at Proviso East High School’s phenomenal basketball legacy. Called Pirates Pride, this one-hour documentary directed by Derek Grace, is a special film, which is why on Sunday, September 20, it kicks off our second day with a screening at 1:15 p.m. The winning tradition of Proviso East High School basketball is profiled in this work, which received rave reviews from the recent Black Harvest Film Festival. As a matter of fact, on Saturday, August 15, when it was screened at Black Harvest, the Proviso East High School Jazz Band played boss bebop to the cool crowd as their way of showing local support for this positive chronicle of people too often portrayed as pathological models. Hard work and discipline are themes that emerge from interviews with NBA stars and Proviso East alums Jim “Papa” Brewer, Michael Finley and Glenn “Doc” Rivers, Boston Celtics head coach. Thanks in part to him,  the Celtics won their 17th NBA championship by defeating the L.A. Lakers 4-2 in 2008. A street with his name now exists in Maywood.

As we celebrate our 5th annual Oak Park International Film Festival entitled “Fact & Faith,” we’re reminded that some call our theme the conflict between the need to know and the need to believe. The film festival theme of Fact & Faith explores how each informs our storytelling. The theme is designed to complicate our collective thinking about knowledge and spirituality in our various public arenas. Our festival considers how factors such as the culture, religion, wealth, geography, and history have influenced humanity’s stewardship, exploitation, understanding, and artistic representations of the data-driven and faith-based worlds. For a complete listing of screenings and discussions see: http://www.oakparkfilm.com/