About Onion City
The Onion City Experimental Film Festival is one of the premier international festivals exclusively devoted to experimental film and video. Our mission is to provide local and regional audiences with an opportunity to view a wide variety of contemporary experimental works, focused on artistic excellence, but also with an eye towards representing differing styles, forms, and nationalities.
Onion City is a production of Chicago Filmmakers, a media arts non-profit that provides education, film exhibition, and resources for filmmakers and film lovers.
Festival Team
Nicky Ni & Elise Schierbeek: Onion City Programmers
Brenda Webb: Executive Director
Meet Our Festival Programmers!
Nicky Ni (she/her) is a Chinese expat living and working between Chicago and Beijing. She writes and curates exhibitions and screenings. Nicky has been a programmer for Onion City since 2022.
Elise Schierbeek (she/her) is a media archivist, film programmer, and writer from the Midwest who advocates for experimental and documentary film. She has programmed for the Onion City Experimental Film Festival since the fall of 2024, is part of the itinerant curatorial project Employees Only, and has served as a juror for festivals and programs around the US. Day to day, Elise works as Collection Manager and Film Restorer at the San Francisco Film Preserve, maintaining the catalog, loan program, and digital preservation while supporting on digital restoration projects. She previously served as Digital Collection and Media Manager at Video Data Bank and as Archive and Distribution Associate at the legendary documentary production house Kartemquin Films in Chicago. She began her career assisting in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's John M. Flaxman Library 16mm Film Study Collection and the Gene Siskel Film Center. Elise holds a BFA in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation from SAIC and is currently completing her MA in Visual and Critical Studies there. This summer, Elise is excited to take part in the 11th FIAF Film Restoration Summer School cohort at Cineteca di Bologna and L'Immagine Ritrovata, supported by the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film and the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes. Elise is an active member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, where she serves as an advisor for emerging archivists.