Where I'll Be Tonight

Tonight is the final night of the annual Silent Summer Film Festival at the grand Portage Theater.

The final night of these festivals always shade me with melancholy--as much fun as I have on these final nights, I know the fest is over and won't be back around until the following summer, though silent films will still be shown there from time to time in the interim and even more frequently--monthly, in fact--at the Music Box's wonderful (and strangely underrated) Silent Second Saturday series.

This year, though, the melancholy is a bit more noticeable--because the future of the Portage Theater remains in doubt.

While it's true that the Portage dodge the proverbial bullet last month when Chicago Tabernacle withdrew their bid to buy the theater and convert it into a church, another possible buyer came forward: The current owner of the popular Congress Theater.

The Congress, once a movie palace (I saw my first movie there) and now a music venue affiliated with Chicago's House of Blues, has become a controversy magnet in recent years, most because of the condition of the theater and its attached building (rundown and shabby, with promises to fix the facility up and turn it into a showplace largely unfulfilled) and security concerns within and without the venue (a teenage girl who'd tried to get into the theater this past New Year's Eve was sexually assaulted very close to the theater, and there have been numerous reports of unruly patrons causing trouble).

The worry--a legitimate one, I think--is that said current owner of the Congress will buy the Portage, turn it into a full-time concert venue and run it just as "well" as he's run the Congress.

I would love for the Portage to remain what it is--primarily a movie theater--but I have to be realistic: It may not always be so, and this Silent Summer Film Festival could very well be the last held there. Somebody with deep pockets can come along and turn the Portage into whatever their cash and ego dictate. I just want the new owner, whomever that winds up being, to recognize the jewel they will have in their hands and polish it the way it deserves to be.