Chicago’s Own Filmspotting Podcast Celebrates 20 Years With Inaugural Festival | Interviews

Continuing the tradition of Chicago-based critics and creatives curating film festivals, this weekend marks the very first Filmspotting Fest, a three-day in-person film festival celebrating twenty years of the iconic podcast of the same name. 

Set to run from February 28th-March 2nd, screenings are split across the Music Box Theatre and Gene Siskel Film Center where attendees will get the opportunity to see iconic films that have been integral to the show’s lore and history, such as “Before Sunrise,” “Brick,” and “Columbus”; the latter two are scheduled to have directors Rian Johnson and Kogonada in attendance for post-film Q&As. Other film screenings will feature conversations with various other film critics who have been friends, guests, and proponents of the show since its inception in 2005. 

For Filmspotting co-founders Sam van Hallgren (who also served as a co-host when the show launched) and Adam Kempenaar as well as current co-host Josh Larsen, the festival is a fitting culmination of not only their love for highlighting overlooked films from first-time or underseen directors, but a testament to the passionate community they’ve cultivated over a thousand episodes.

Speaking to the origins of this year’s festival, Kempenaar told RogerEbert.com, “As it was with so many things on the show, the genesis was an email from a listener.” Kempenaar, Larsen, and van Hallgren recount how from the Spring of 2024 heading into the Summer, they were thinking about doing something on a larger scale to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. A serendipitous email from a listener inquiring about whether they had done a film festival and if they would consider one helped get the ball rolling.

It was the perfect storm of inquiry and timeliness; “Sam and I had talked about a film festival, going back to the early days of dreaming about what the show might eventually become,” Kempenaar shared. Larsen shared that while listeners in the past had inquired to them about doing a similar event, the listener’s email was “a little bit of a lifeline. Now there wasn’t a ton of debate. If we’re going to do this, now is the time.” 

All of the films: the aforementioned three alongside “Take Shelter,” “Tangerine,” and “Pather Panchali” have been instrumental to the podcast’s history and speak to the ways its hosts have always been driven by a spirit of enthusiasm and earnest discovery. Speaking to “Brick,” van Hallgren cites that when he and Kempenaar first saw the film, they had zero expectations. “This was the pre-Letterboxd era … I remember going into it thinking ‘This seems like a terrible idea to set a noir film in a high school,” he jokes.

Not only were Kempenaar and van Hallgren blown away by the film, but they championed it throughout that year. Rian Johnson guested on the show in 2006 and famously called it “a force for good in the universe.” Their relationship with Johnson has developed through the years, with Johnson frequently offering a voicemail at the end of the year in which he shares his favorite films. Most notably, Filmspotting’s love for “Brick” has shaped one of the podcast’s most enduring traditions: the annual “Golden Brick” award where Filmspotting names the best breakthrough film of a given year.

This posture of curiosity about a given film year and embracing the inherent goodness of conversation that emerges when people discuss a piece of art is what has made the podcast remain endearing and enduring. While the the team is mindful to not position themselves as replacements for what Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert crafted with their Sneak Previews segment on Chicago’s PBS station WTTW, they acknowledge that their podcast’s format coupled with being based in Chicago, will draw comparisons. “We were certainly aware that [Siskel and Ebert] made Chicago synonymous with film criticism and that – if we were lucky! – we could draw comparisons. They were our gateway to film and film criticism, so it’s surreal to hear from so many listeners who tell us that Filmspotting served that role for them, “Kempenaar shares. 

Filmspotting episodes oscillate between discussions of a new release while also featuring a discussion on a classic film that is usually a part of a marathon mini-series. Kempenaar and Larsen use these marathons as a way to fill in blindspots from a particular film movement, director, or genre and Kempenaar cites how Roger Ebert’s championing of Errol Morris’ “Gates of Heaven” as an early example of what he hopes the show will be able to be. “Gates of Heaven” only got seen because Roger Ebert championed that film. … I like that idea that we can help to be, to some extent, curators of what we think are great works and share that with people,” he shared.

Kempenaarr continues, “Seeing Siskel and Ebert reviewing “Lone Star” … I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of John Sayles at the time. Matthew McConaughey was not a name at the time … Chris Cooper wasn’t a name at the time. Everything they were talking about and the way they were praising that film inspired me to want to watch it. I think we’re still sort of all chasing that rush of discovery.” Even for the origins of the Filmspotting Fest itself, van Hallgren cites EbertFest as a pivotal inspiration. “When we went to the fest back in ‘05, ‘06 we were like ‘this should be fun … we should do this at the Davis. We could do this ourselves someday.’”

A notable element of Filmspotting has been how it was at the forefront of the initial podcast movement. The first episode was published nearly four months before Apple launched and introduced podcasting. Filmspotting—at the time called Cinecast—was one of only sixteen podcasts featured by Apple on the Podcasting main page. Twenty years later, Filmspotting has been blessed with a longevity that few in the space can boast, and Larsen credits this to the passion and the discipline of all involved. “There is a routine and a discipline that you do have to adhere to if you want to stick around,” he shared. 

Larsen’s first guest hosted in late 2011 before joining full-time in 2012, and shared that what he was most nervous about at the time was the show’s Massacre Theater segment, where the hosts perform histrionic renditions of classic movie scenes (their take on a scene in Ratatouille in episode #658 is an all-timer). The segment originated from when Kempenaar was a graduate student at the University of Iowa where he was the film critic for the student newspaper, The Daily Iowan, and had a weekly movie talk show on the student station, KRUI. Larsen has come to love the segment as the “breeziest, lightest ‘lift’ when it comes to preparing for the show, a moment of silliness amidst all the “work.”

“I think it’s that element—the amount of preparation the show requires—that took some time to get used to,” he shared. “After that first guest hosting appearance, I emailed Adam to say that the experience challenged me to be a better critic. And that’s remained true to this day, just having to come prepared to meet his level of engagement and defend my particular perspective…being aware that we have such an engaged audience [also] still keeps me on my toes.” 

Speaking to how the podcast has endured amid a changing media landscape, van Hallgren highlighted how Filmspotting’s commitment to the “niche” has helped them stay afloat. “[The podcast] feels like a safe place for us and an engaging place where it feels like we’re rewarded for the work that Adam and Josh put into thoughtful reviews every week. We know we’re not just throwing out these reviews into the void but that we get thoughtful responses back from our listeners.” 

Kempenaar also cites that their posture of curiosity and invitation, not a commitment to chasing what’s “relevant” or “trendy” has also kept it going. Case in point, within the next few months, the team will embark on an Andrei Tarkovsky marathon. “The fact is there’s not going to be a huge audience of people out there thinking, ‘I can’t wait to hear two critics talk about an obscure and difficult Tarkovsky film for 45 minutes,” Kempenaar laughs. “We want downloads as much as anybody else. Yet we know that the reason to do the show is about us still having that sense of discovery of new filmmakers or classic filmmakers that we haven’t seen and engaging in a dialogue about them and exposing people to those filmmakers, and as a result, maybe turn them into fans or raise awareness for a director’s work for the first time. It may be a niche audience, but hopefully, we’re serving that niche audience well.” It’s evident that this service is vital; in a press release, Kogonada shared, “I was introduced to podcasts via Filmspotting. I believe the conversation of cinema is vital to film culture and its ongoing progress. Filmspotting has played a key role in preserving and evolving this conversation in our ever-changing century.”

As for what a 40th-year celebration of Filmspotting may look like, the team is thinking through what it would be like to continually build out their listener base and beloved community while adapting to how people experience and interact with film. “From a practical standpoint, I’d like us to successfully navigate the podcast industry’s current transition from predominantly audio-based shows,” Kempenaar shares. Larsen co-signs this sentiment, citing that with the explosion of the internet, criticism shifted away from print reviews to online mediums like podcasting; he sees the space at a similar inflection point even if he acknowledges that podcasting isn’t what print newspapers are right now. “[Podcasting] is still a viable way of communicating with people…but it’s morphing into something new. We’re trying to figure out how to do what we want but in the spaces where people are. What’s a podcast on YouTube? What’s a podcast on Spotify?” 

For now, though, the Filmspotting Fest is a celebration of the podcast’s growth. For Kempenaar, another charming aspect has been the way he’s been able to see his children grow into budding cinephiles themselves. His kid’s voices famously appeared on episode #871, where Kempenaar and Larsen discussed “The Northman”; they did an introduction and concluding segment where they recited different iterations of Alexander Skarsgård’s berserker monologue. “When we started the show, my son, Holden, was about to turn three, and my daughter Sophie would have been about nine months old. Now, Sophie’s voice has appeared on the podcast over the years, and is this cinephile herself who loves Werner Herzog. We get to have conversations about some of the same films that I love.  It’s something you don’t think about, but being able to share this with your kids over the years has been rewarding.