Sergio Mims, cofounder of the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Black Harvest Film Festival, dies at 67

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Sergio Mims, longtime film historian and co-founder of the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Black Harvest Film Festival in his hometown of Chicago, has died. He was 67.

Mims’ health had been failing in recent months, his sister, Lisa Mims, told the Chicago Tribune. He passed away Tuesday, Oct. 4 in Chicago, according to the report, which does not specify a cause of death.

“It’s a staggering loss,” Rebecca Fons, programming director for the Film Center, told the outlet.

Born in January 1955 in Chicago, Sergio was a lifelong lover of the big screen, frequenting the theater during his youth to see movies of all genres, from martial arts and blaxploitation, to westerns and James Bond films, according to the Tribune. 

“As long as I can remember, Sergio was a movie buff,” Lisa, an Indianapolis physician, told the outlet. “When I was a kid he’d bring me to the latest Bruce Lee martial arts movies in downtown Chicago.”

Despite graduating with an economics degree from the University of Illinois Chicago, Sergio continued to pursue his passion for movies through assisting on multiple production sets across the city, including “The Blues Brothers,” according to the report.

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After earning the role of second assistant to the director on the 1979 prison-based blaxploitation drama “Penitentiary,” Sergio helped launch the Blacklight Film Festival in the early 1980s, which eventually morphed into the Black Harvest Festival, per the Tribune.

The Film Center will host the 28th annual Black Harvest festival from Nov. 4-27 this year in honor of Mims’ legacy, as it will be the first iteration of the event to be held following Mims’ death.

“He was Black Harvest,” Film Center executive director Jean de St. Aubin, who had known Sergio since 2003, told the outlet. “Other people moved out of town, to different things, but Sergio was a huge part of the Chicago film community to the end.”

In addition to helping run the festival, Sergio was a radio host for “The Bad Mutha Film Show” on WHPK-FM, and taught courses in screenwriting at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, per the Tribune.

Sergio is survived by Lisa, his mother, Gladys and his sister, Judith. In Sergio’s honor, a foundation will be launched to aid Black screenwriters, Lisa told the outlet.

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