Gene Siskel Film Center Presents ‘Conversations at the Edge: 25 Years of Experimental Media in Chicago’

On Sept. 13, 2001, British filmmaker John Smith presented the first program of Conversations at the Edge just two days after the September 11 attacks. This fall, Smith returns to Chicago for CATE’s 25th anniversary season with a career-spanning program that includes Throwing Stones (2004), a film that looks back, in part, on that first Chicago visit and its effect on his life and work.

Since that inaugural screening, CATE has presented more than 600 screenings, performances, talks, and other events at the Siskel Film Center, becoming one of the longest-running experimental film and media art series of its kind at a US art-house cinema. Organized out of SAIC’s Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation, CATE occupies an unusual position between an art school and a public movie theater, bringing artists into sustained conversation with audiences across Chicago.

Over those 25 years, CATE has become both a fixture of Chicago film culture and part of the national and international network through which experimental film and media art circulate, with partners extending from MoMA to the Walker Art Center. Its guests have included Joan Jonas, Michael Snow, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Raqs Media Collective, Martine Syms, Sondra Perry, and Cardboard Computer–creators of the video game Kentucky Route Zero–among hundreds of others. The series has also shaped generations of artists in Chicago, including students who first encountered CATE from the seats of the Siskel and later returned to present work of their own. CATE enters its 25th anniversary with its strongest average attendance in more than a decade, including repeated sold-out shows.

“The point isn’t breadth for its own sake,” said Amy Beste, director of public programs at SAIC and curator of Conversations at the Edge. “CATE has approached experimental media not as a closed tradition defined by a single medium, aesthetic, or subculture, but as an evolving field shaped by exchanges between cinema, contemporary art, documentary, animation, and performance, as well as the internet, gaming, and other forms of new media.”

“For 25 years, CATE has made the Siskel a place not only to see adventurous work, but to encounter artists and ideas that are changing what cinema can be,” said Emily Long, executive director of the Siskel Film Center. “That sustained commitment to experimentation and conversation has made the series an important part of Chicago’s film culture.”

CATE’s anniversary year spans fall 2026 and spring 2027, bringing new and returning artists to Chicago while looking back at the people, works, and ideas that have shaped the series. The fall season begins September 10.

---

CONVERSATIONS AT THE EDGE FALL 2026

AN EVENING WITH KARIMAH ASHADU
Thursday, Sept. 10, 6 p.m.
Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.

British Nigerian artist Karimah Ashadu, winner of the 2024 Venice Biennale’s Silver Lion, presents a selection of bold and formally inventive films that plunge viewers into the tactile realities of labor, migration and colonial extraction across Nigeria and Germany. Followed by a conversation with Karimah Ashadu and audience Q&A. Presented in partnership with the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, in conjunction with Karimah Ashadu: Tendered (September 12–November 1, 2026).

NANCY ANDREWS: PHANTOM LIMBS
Thursday, Oct. 1 | 6 p.m.
Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.

The mysteries of the body, mind and natural world animate the dark and deeply tender films of the late artist and musician Nancy Andrews. Emerging from Chicago’s ribald 1990s performance art scene, Andrews developed a singular practice combining animation, performance, puppetry and music in genre-defying tales of medicine, transformation and the unexplained. Presented by filmmaker Jennifer Reeder and other Andrews collaborators.

ADAM KHALIL AND ZACK KHALIL: AANIKOOBIJIGAN [ANCESTOR/GREAT-GRANDPARENT/GREAT-GRANDCHILD]
Thursday, Oct. 8 | 6 p.m.
Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.

Winner of the Audience Award: NEXT at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, Aanikoobijigan follows Indigenous repatriation specialists reclaiming the human remains of Ancestors held by museums nationwide. Ojibwe filmmakers Adam and Zack Khalil (INAATE/SE/; New Red Order) blend vérité, essay and animation to reorient documentary around a spiralic Anishinaabe worldview. Adam Khalil appears in person for a conversation and audience Q&A. Presented in partnership with the Center for Native Futures.

AN EVENING WITH LILLI CARRÉ
Thursday, Oct. 22 | 6 p.m.
Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.

Animator, comics artist and sculptor Lilli Carré draws on the elastic traditions of cartooning and experimental abstraction in a selection of darkly funny, unruly films where bodies, lines and spaces mutate and rebel to evade power and control. Followed by a conversation with Lilli Carré and audience Q&A.

AN EVENING WITH JOHN SMITH
Thursday, Nov. 5 | 6 p.m.
Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.

Legendary British artist-filmmaker John Smith returns to CATE with a career-spanning program of wry, formally exacting films that undermine the boundaries between documentary and fiction to explore perception, politics and personal history. Curated by Abina Manning, who organized CATE’s inaugural program with Smith in 2001. Followed by a conversation with John Smith and Abina Manning and audience Q&A.

CATE’s 25th anniversary continues through spring 2027 with additional visiting artists, screenings and programs reflecting on the series’ history and the changing landscape of experimental moving images.

Be sure to check back here at SCREEN Magazine for more exclusive news and interviews. You can also click right here to subscribe to our weekly email newsletter.