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1-9 of 9
- Set within Chicago's labyrinth of alleyways, Scrappers is a cinema verite portrait of Otis and Oscar, two scrap metal scavengers searching for a living with brains, brawn and battered pickup trucks. The film shows how globalization, the 2008 financial crisis, crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and widespread scrap metal theft effect these men and their families.
- Central Standard: On Education, an original web series, focuses on education as seen through the eyes of five 8th grade students at very different publicly-funded schools across Chicagoland. The stories follow these students' transition to high school. See the different layouts, strategies, and cultures that define the schools, a representation that takes on greater meaning when viewed in the contrasts among the different communities, representing both inner city and suburban systems, and both high and lower-performing schools. All of the schools are publicly-funded, including one charter school. Central Standard is brought to you by WTTW Chicago and Scrappers Film Group in partnership with PBS Digital Studios and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The show compares the experiences of five 8th grade students from different socioeconomic backgrounds as a lens to consider educational issues facing the nation at large, with the drama for the story turning on admission to Chicago Public Schools' 10 selective-enrollment high schools. Four of the five students applied to selective enrollment, and their families' navigation of that system is the subject of several episodes. Featured are a student at Wilmette Jr. High School (Rahm Emanuel's alma mater), a student at an UNO network charter school, another at a "turnaround" (reconstituted) CPS neighborhood school, one at Walt Disney Magnet School (the city's first magnet), and another at a low-performing suburban school in Calumet City. The story is told from the point of view of the students and their families, and aims to give voice to youth in the education discourse.
- On Chicago's South Side, one woman's five-year struggle against displacement by a multi-billion dollar freight company exposes a community's strength and fragility.
- Stateville Calling is a documentary exploring parole reform and the struggle of aging inmates in Illinois. Bill Ryan, 84-years-old and with a southern drawl from his Kentucky upbringing, has spent the last several decades befriending and advocating on behalf of a group of men and women incarcerated for life, helping to abolish the death penalty in Illinois, publishing a newspaper written by prisoners, and ceaselessly negotiating with victim's advocates, legislators and lobbyists from both sides of the aisle. The hour-long film illustrates the forces that created our system, and surveys the competing arguments and data points at play to equip viewers to decide for themselves what should be done about criminal justice in Illinois.
- Smartphones revolutionized citizen access to cameras - could drones do the same for air space? The second episode of Rights Lab, a cross-genre web series using cinema verite techniques to explore the most pressing civil liberties questions of our day, takes you on a whirlwind tour of the ever-changing legal drone landscape and considers the civil liberties implications behind the drone boom. Rights Lab uses real-life case studies, featuring local activists and offering clear and compelling explanations of ongoing legal debates to explore drone technology, when and how it is legal to film a police officer, Stingray technology, where you can protest, and much more.
- Episode 3 of Rights Lab uses experiments and performance art to explore the gap between what the law says and how recording law enforcement plays out on the ground. Artists Ricardo Gamboa and Steven Beaudion will take to the streets of Chicago to film police in a handful of different situations, with shockingly disparate results. Rights Lab uses real-life case studies, featuring local activists and offering clear and compelling explanations of ongoing legal debates to explore Stingray surveillance, when and how it is legal to film a police officer, the burgeoning debate behind consumer drone flight, what you can and can't do on social media, and much more.
- The First Amendment's right to protest is one widely defended in the progressive sphere - but what if the group doing the protesting is also interfering with access to reproductive healthcare? Rights Lab uses real-life case studies, featuring local activists and offering clear and compelling explanations of ongoing legal debates to explore Stingray surveillance, when and how it is legal to film a police officer, the burgeoning debate behind consumer drone flight, what you can and can't do on social media, and much more.
- Rights Lab takes you on a crash course of surveillance law and through the streets of Chicago with two activists to find out everything you need to know about the secretive Stingray devices that may be capturing your cell phone signal. Rights Lab uses real-life case studies, featuring local activists and offering clear and compelling explanations of ongoing legal debates to explore Stingray surveillance, when and how it is legal to film a police officer, the burgeoning debate behind consumer drone flight, what you can and can't do on social media, and much more.