Where Are You, Jay Bennett

Sunday, September 20th at Noon
Tickets

Getting his master’s degree in Education at the University of Illinois, Jay became a substitute teacher in 1985, and began teach middle-school math in 1986 at Urbana Junior High, now known as Urbana Middle School. A musician and electronics technician, Bennett was a founding member in 90’s rock band Titanic Love Affair, and joined Wilco in 1994. He was famously fired on camera in 2001, as featured in the documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.

Where Are You, Jay Bennett covers all of this, as well as Bennett’s return to the Champaign area, where he recorded 4 albums before his untimely demise in 2009. The feature documentary explores his contributions to Wilco’s seminal albums, and his solo career though archival footage and interviews with family, friends, and bandmates. It’s both a joyous and mournful film.

While the film had a variety of screenings in 2021, and was released for home viewing in 2022, it has never screened here in the Champaign-Urbana region, and we are so thrilled to finally present it in Jay’s adopted hometown, and as the very first film at a new film festival.

Personally, since arriving in town in 2023, any musician I talk to tells me that Jay was not only an amazing musician, songwriter, and engineer, but also a caring, giving person that contributed much to the scene.

We’re also excited to be bringing co-director Fred Uhter back out to the CU. Fred was already here back in March, when he showed our audiences a secret test screening of another music documentary he’s working on. Honestly, I don’t know if I can say what movie we watched yet, so I’m going to leave it at that. We also expect to have co-director Gorman Bechard to talk to via zoom.

One last thing. Since the film is already available to watch at home, we’ve set the price for this screening at $1.