
Chicago Underground Film Festival

Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF), founded in 1994, occurs each spring at various venues in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
History.
The festival's stated goal is "to focus on the artistic, aesthetic and fun side of independent filmmaking. CUFF promotes works that dissent radically in form, content and technique from both the tired conventions of Hollywood and the increasingly stagnant IndieWood mainstream."
Purpose.
While the festival has always explored the many different definitions of underground film, in its early years the festival's programming consisted mainly of low-budget b-movies and films in the tradition of the Cinema of Transgression but more recently moved its to focus more toward experimental and avant-garde films and videos and documentaries. In February 2008 it was announced that the festival has become an official program of IFP/Chicago Independent Feature Project. Since 2009 the festival has been held at the Gene Siskel Film Center, a state of the art cinematheque connected to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago