HYDE PARK — A film more than four years in the making and set in Hyde Park will get its premiere on Saturday.
“Alchemy in Hyde Park” follows four characters in Hyde Park as they struggle with relationships and the budding personal crises of entering one’s mid-20s.
“Hyde Park is sort of a character,” said writer and director Robert Beshara. “There was a personal reason: I lived in Hyde Park and felt a fascination with the neighborhood and wanted to honor that.”
The film opens with a montage of the places imprinted in the minds of Hyde Parkers, like Promontory Point and the University of Chicago, before introducing the four characters whose relationships dominate the story.
Beshara imbued each character with the qualities of the ancient Greek elements — earth, air, fire and water — and then used a system he developed based on European esotericism to find their motivations.
“It is basically an abstract system of correlations between colors, characters, numbers, days, planets, astrological signs, chakras, musical notes, elements, and Tarot cards based upon esoteric knowledge from East and West,” Beshara said in his director’s statement.
The cocktail of spiritualism and the occult was then used to direct how characters like the flighty yoga teacher Mira, played by Beshara’s wife, Maria-Constanza Garrido, would confront the fiery Louise, played by Kymberly Harris. Paul Durica is the fluid Rumi and Kevin Baylor is the grounded Franco.
“We have different parts in us, different voices, and that may sound like psychosis, but I think it’s natural,” Beshara said. “It’s tapping into the complexities of being human.”
Originally planned as an improvised movie, Beshara said he found these qualities drove a story about each character’s relationships to the others and shot a rough script over the summer of 2011 and spent the next three years editing.
“I’m happy to be finished,” Beshara said, adding that the project cost less than $10,000 to film.
Beshara, currently a graduate student at the University of West Georgia, is flying back to Chicago for the 7 p.m. premiere at the former O’Gara and Wilson bookstore space, 1448 E. 57th St.
He said it will be the first time many of the cast and crew, who nearly all worked for free, will get to see the finished film.
Beshara said he’s limiting his hopes right now for the film to the Saturday premiere.
“Ultimately, I want people to see it and enjoy it if they can,” Beshara said.
Tickets are $5.
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