The first reel of the two-reeler that tells the story of Dann Gire’s cinematic life, is spent largely in the dark confines of screening rooms and flickering images with a subplot emerging that has placed the opinions of the affable, knowledgeable and articulate film critic in the pages of the Daily Herald for over four decades, with students in college classrooms, at film seminars, lectures and screenings, on broadcast television and at the forefront of a movement to establish the Chicago Film  Critics Association, a professional association that began in 1988.