When Roger was asked to start a film festival by Kim Rotzoll, the dean of the College of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, we had no idea it would exist 20 years later. The idea was to do a one-time festival as a follow up to the successful Cyberfest, the birthday party for Hal 9000, the computer in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” who says in the movie that he was born in Urbana, Illinois. Roger had something in common with Hal 9000, he too was born in Urbana. And so Roger agreed to undertake the task. Besides, Roger was a proponent of the civilizing effect that watching movies communally could have. He said that movies are a giant machine that generates empathy, letting us know about the different hopes, aspirations, dreams, and fears of others and helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.
- 4/18/2018
- by Chaz Ebert
- Variety Film + TV
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