With five films debuting over five days, the festival has brought a wide variety of independent features, directors, producers and actors to the AMC Pipers Alley theater in Old Town. Wednesday was ‘Chicago Night,’ and featured one short and one feature film that were both shot in Chicago with mostly local actors and crews.

The feature film, “Crime Fiction,” written by Jonathon Eliot, centers around James Cooper (also Eliot), a self-proclaimed failure and once-published writer working as a textbook editor in Chicago while his author girlfriend enjoys the rise of literary success in New York. The movie starts off innocently enough with James mooning around the city, taking lumps at his crap job and generally feeling sorry for himself. However, once his girlfriend (Amy Sloan) arrives at his doorstep by surprise one evening and James’ seething jealousy of her success exerts itself in a murderous act, the movie takes a turn for the darker. And once James decides to write a novel about a failed novelist who kills his girlfriend and then writes a novel about it (are you following?)- things just get downright twisted.

James’ novel becomes a huge success, and he pairs up with fellow crime writer/walking, talking asshole Don Lee Boone (Christian Stolte, professional scene-stealer) to do a book tour, slowly losing his grip on his remaining sense of morality and sanity along the way.

The movie is impressive for a few reasons outside of its winding narrative and talented cast. First is its fearless combination of meta-fictional theory with intriguing plot-driven mystery and suspense. The movie-going audience knows that James killed his girlfriend, and they also know that James wrote a best-selling novel about a writer who kills his girlfriend and writes a novel about it. However, James’ book-buying audience is only left to ponder what happened to his real-life missing girlfriend, and questions about James’ guilt and his sense of reality and fiction blend together as he starts to associate more and more with the ‘character’ he invented (who is, in fact, based in fact.) Where does the writer end and the character begin? Does a writer really have to experience murder in order to write about it effectively? (Whish sure gives credence to that whole ‘write what you know’ theory.) How much responsibility does a writer really have?

Throw in the fact that this is actually a story wrapped within a story wrapped within a feature film, and the levels of complication rise. However, “Crime Fiction” never gets too cerebral, never loses its audience, and never shows fear at laughing at its own meta-fictional premise. Like I said- impressive.

Then take into consideration that this movie was shot largely in and around Chicago, especially the Lincoln Park neighborhood, and it becomes understandable why it was admitted into the city’s first, and hopefully not last, GenArt film fest. With more talents like Eliot and director Slocombe running around the city with cameras and cherry pickers, Chicago might just pick up that coveted “Movie Production Center of the Universe” title after all. Just remember then who first coined it (hint:me).

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