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The Chicago Underground Film Festival (CUFF) is an annual nonprofit international festival dedicated to the exhibition of underground and avant-garde cinema, video, and performance.^[1][2]The festival offers an opportunity for independent artists who are frequently overlooked by other conventional, market-driven film festivals to showcase and be recognized for their work though jury and audience awards.^[1] In addition to screenings, the festival also hosts events to build community amoungst the audience. Founded in 1993, the festival is widely regarded as the longest running festival of its kind.^[3]

The festival was founded in 1993 by Jay Bliznick with Mark Siska and Bryan Wendorf as an alternative to the mainstream film festival circuit, which was increasingly dominated by distributor product. The festival celebrated its 30-year anniversary in 2023.^[4] 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. The festival has an excellent reputation for curation and has become known for being one of the key events in the history of the underground. In February 2008 it was announced that the festival has become an official program of IFP/Chicago Independent Feature Project. From 2009 to 2010, the festival Was held at the Gene Siskel Film Center, a state of the art cinematheque connected to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2011 the festival has been held at the Logan Theatre in Chicago, a popular independent movie theater on city's North side. The festival runs over the course of several days, featuring an extensive lineup of films, videos, and performances, as well as parties and concerts. In 2019 the festival once again became an independent organization and in 2022 it received its 501(c)3 not-for-profit status.^[5]

CUFF welcomes a mix of films and videos of all lengths and genres, but the festival’s dominant focus is on works that chart new, experimental ground in form or content. The festival's mission is to showcase a selection of diverse films, videos, and related works to highlight filmmakers who take unconventional approaches to filmmaking and work to break boundaries in form, narrative, and length. It aims to provide audiences with a wide range of programming to promote innovative forms of media art and build an audience and community around the work.^[6]

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.The festival programming is diverse and varied and the festival's objective is to showcase the defiantly independent filmmaker by promoting film and video that challenges and transcends expectations. The festival has also featured retrospectives of legendary underground filmmakers such as John Waters, Kenneth Anger, and Alejandro Jodorowsky. The festival screens 100 films^[2] and hosts workshops, Q&A's, and after-parties to encourage discussions about underground art and build a community among attendees.^[1]

The festival jury presents six jury awards to films and videos selected as the best or most interesting in various categories well as "Made in Chicago" awards, which recognize films and videos made by local filmmakers. The jury awards vary from year to year and are determined by the current year's jury. Some awards given are more typical for festivals, such as "Best Documentary,"^[7] while others can be more creative and specific to the winning film, such as "Radical Empathy Award."^[8]Audience choice awards and honorable mentions also given in addition in order to recognize other outstanding films at the festival. ^[6][9] The film festival accepts a wide range of genres and styles of films for submission. The nine categories for festivial submission are narrative feature, narrative short, documentary feature, documentary short, experimental feature, experimental short, animation feature, animation short, and music video.^[6]

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