Saying he doesn't "give a damn" about how illness and surgery have disfigured his appearance, famed film critic Roger Ebert planned to attend his annual Overlooked Film Festival Wednesday night.

The 64-year-old, award-winning critic published a column in Tuesday's Chicago Sun-Times saying he would attend the ninth annual festival, which opens at the University of Illinois at Urbana.

Film critic Roger Ebert in his home office in Chicago Monday.
(Dom Najolia/Chicago Sun-Times/Associated Press)

"I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the festival. I’m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc.," Ebert wrote.

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out."

Ebert has undergone a series of surgeries in the past few years, including the removal of a cancerous growth from his salivary gland in June 2006. Doctors were also forced to remove part of his jaw and perform a tracheotomy — a procedure that opens an airway through an incision in the windpipe — to allow him to breathe.

The latter procedure has left the popular movie critic unable to speak pending further surgery.

"To paraphrase a line from Raging Bull, I ain't a pretty boy no more," he wrote. "I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers."

Won Pulitzer

He continued by saying society spends "too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my festival."

Ebert launched his festival to shine a light on titles he feels have been overlooked in some way. He has been selecting this year's selections as usual, festival organizers said.

However, his ongoing convalescence has forced them to find replacements to introduce programming and lead panels and post-screening discussions.

A film critic with the Sun-Times since 1967, Ebert became the first arts critic to be honoured with the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, in 1975. That same year, he teamed up with rival critic Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune for a movie review show which was eventually called Siskel & Ebert.

Siskel died in 1999. Ebert went on to co-host the renamed show with fellow Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper.

With files from the Associated Press