Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
to
to
Exclude
Only includes titles with the selected topics
to
In minutes
to
1-50 of 91
- The filmmakers return to the Taylor chain plant to show labor and management working together against the odds, trying to save the plant from becoming the latest victim of anti-union legislation and the globalization of cheap, exploitable labor.
- Now We Live on Clifton follows 10 year old Pam Taylor and her 12 year old brother Scott around their multiracial West Lincoln Park neighborhood. The kids worry that they'll be forced out of the neighborhood they grew up in by the gentrification following the expansion of DePaul University.
- Mossadegh & Me is a film about how we remember the 1950s in Iran, and the CIA coup that ousted then Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. In 1979, the Iranian Hostage Crisis shocked the world. The crisis received more non-stop press coverage than any other event since World War II. Americans, for the first time, asked, "Why do they hate us?" As an Iranian-American kid, director Gita Saedi Kiely asked that question, too. That's when her father told her about Mohammed Mossadegh.
- Terra Incognita is a feature length documentary film and companion civic engagement campaign featuring the story of Dr. Jack Kessler, the current chair of Northwestern University's Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurological Sciences, and his daughter, Allison, an undergraduate student at Harvard University. When Kessler was invited to head up the Neurology Department at Northwestern, his focus was on using stem cells to help cure diabetes. However, soon after his move to Chicago, Allison -- then age 15, was injured in a skiing accident and paralyzed from the waist down. In the moments following the accident, Dr. Kessler made the decision to change the focus of his research to begin looking for a cure for spinal cord injuries using embryonic stem cells. Through Kessler's story, we bring the stem cell debate to the public for discussion. The film follows the constantly evolving interplay between the promise of new discoveries, the controversy of modern science and the resilience and courage of people living every day with devastating disease and injury.
- Documentary featuring blues and gospel performances by legendary Chicago musicians Robert Nighthawk, Johnny Young, Blind Arvella Gray, Jim and Fannie Brewer, Carrie Robinson and many more.
- A documentary about neighborhood people creating change. Produced for the MacArthur Foundation by Kartemquin Films, this piece features six vignettes on community organizing in different Chicago neighborhoods: LeClaire Courts, Marquette Park, Roseland, Pilsen, Uptown, Rogers Park and Garfield Park.
- Disbelief, shock, hostility and superstition confronted the wife of one of the filmmakers when she decided to give birth without pain medication using the Lamaze method of childbirth. Her tale is about trusting oneself and accepting responsibility even when it means rejecting popular beliefs and establishment authority.
- This propaganda film by immigration reform activists uses the story of Tony and Janina Wasilewski's family, which is torn apart when Janina is deported back to Poland. Set in the backdrop of the Chicago political scene, and featuring Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez at the heart of the immigration reform movement, this film follows the Wasilewski's 3-year struggle to be reunited, as their Senator Barack Obama rises to the Presidency.
- Inspired by dramatic educational films created by the BYU Motion Picture Studio of the 1960s.
- In this cinema-verite documentary, a teenage youth group called Thumbs Down, decides "to bring Christ to their neighborhood" by holding an anti-war Mass at their conservative Chicago parish. Neither militants nor hippies, they simply believe that Christianity means social action and concern with issues. They present this belief to the community and the confrontation reveals the deepening crisis of communication between the young Christians and their parents, priest, and neighbors.
- In 1968, striking students at the University of Chicago occupied an administration building. Many were suspended and a few were expelled. A year later, two expelled young women were asked by their former classmates to talk about the experience as a class project. The women confront the students about their convictions and how far they are willing to go to defend their values.
- Two young women, one in middle school and the other in medical school, discover the healing power of food. Both share a love for healthy eating, inspiring family members and other students to cook nutritious meals. Their personal experiences show that even small efforts can add up to healthier lives.
- A woman who grew up with a mentally-ill mother, tries to find her brother, who hears imaginary friends in his head and has wandered off, possibly suffering from the same illness as his mother had.
- Depicts the experiences of two elderly people in their first month at a home for the aged--a man, isolated from the world he knew, and a woman, wrenched from a family setting. The film focuses on the feelings of the two new residents in their encounters with other residents, medical staff, social workers, psychiatrists and family. A touching, sometimes painfully honest dramatic experience, it is valuable for in-service staff training, and for all other audiences both professional and non professional, interested in the problems of the aged.
- A look at the 40-year career of acclaimed feminist artist Nancy Spero, who, in her own works, is concerned with "rewriting the imaging of women through historical time." With Spero's own voice as narration, this documentary tracks her development as she matured against the grain of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Pop Art when "there wasn't room in the art world to make way for political or activist art."
- Through the stories of a Hispanic girls soccer team at Kelly High School in Chicago, IN THE GAME illustrates the enormous challenges facing inner-city girls in their quest for higher education and, most importantly, success in life.
- For more than 75 years, the Chicago Maternity Center provided safe home deliveries for Chicago mothers. However, when modern medicine's attitude toward home birth changed and funding from Northwestern University declined in 1974, the center was forced to close. This film interweaves the history of the center with the stories of a young woman about to have her first baby and the center's fight to stay open in the face of the corporate takeover of medicine.
- This documentary explores the growing difference in the voting patterns of men and women (the gender gap) that could no longer be denied by the mid-1980's. Issues like compensation equality, environmental preservation, subsidized childcare and healthcare became wedge issues in Ronald Reagan's America as more and more women joined the workforce.
- Striking workers in one Chicago unemployment compensation office talk about working conditions that led to a walkout in July, 1975. Workers and claimants suggest possible solutions to the problems of understaffing and compulsory overtime. This tape was used to organize other offices to support the strike.
- In 1864, George Pullman began selling his famous railroad sleeping cars which helped him build a vast industrial empire that was supposed to last forever. In 1981, however, Pullman workers found themselves in the midst of a fight not only for their jobs but the future of the American rail car industry. One hundred years of government, union and corporate policies are traced in this engaging story.
- Oscar-winning filmmaker Haskell Wexler returns to his hometown of Chicago to document the Occupy Movement's demonstrations against the 2012 NATO Summit.
- Leon Golub's massive canvasses depict scenes most of us would prefer not to see - mercenary killings, torture, and death squads. Golub offers not simply a profile of a painter with a political conscience, but an investigation into the power of the artist to reflect our times and to change the way we think about our world. This one-hour film juxtaposes scenes of violence and political repression around the world, statements by American politicians and others, the responses of viewers to Golub's exhibitions and an extended sequence capturing the artist at work. In his New York studio, he creates a huge canvas that depicts a brutal assassination - a reminder, he says, of U.S. subsidized activity in El Salvador. While tracking a major retrospective of Golub's work across the United States and Canada, the documentary also follows the creation of his monumental canvases, detailing his complex and unorthodox techniques. It then accompanies the finished painting, White Squad X, to its European opening in Derry, Northern Ireland in a joint exhibition with Nancy Spero, Golub's wife. Interviews and discussions filmed in Derry raise questions about First Amendment rights and the venues available for art to speak to these issues. When a women in the audience talks about a lack of safety for Irish artists who "reflect reality" Nancy Spero says, "...it's different in the United States. I don't think that they're afraid of what an artist has to say." And Golub responds, "Society does not censor you until it really thinks you're dangerous, and we have not been considered sufficiently dangerous."
- A video made to accompany an art exhibit at The Spertus Museum addressing the relationships of African Americans and American Jews. This video takes you in to the studios of 12 artists, six Black and six Jewish, as they prepare their work for the show.
- ON BEAUTY follows fashion photographer Rick Guidotti, who left the fashion world when he grew frustrated with having to work within the restrictive parameters of the industry's standard of beauty.
- Suspended between life and death, a Mexican American mother explores uncertainty through dance.
- Higher Goals encourages young athletes to put their dreams of professional sports in perspective and focus on getting an education. The real life stories of two high school athletes demonstrate that the sports skills of practice and discipline can be applied to academics as well.
- At 31, filmmaker Joanna Rudnick faces an impossible decision: remove her breasts and ovaries or risk incredible odds of developing cancer.
- A Good Man follows acclaimed director/choreographer Bill T. Jones for two tumultuous years, as he tackles the most ambitious work of his career, an original dance-theater piece in honor of Abraham Lincoln's Bicentennial.
- Unbroken Glass is a documentary about filmmaker Dinesh Sabu's journey to understand his parents, who died 20 years ago when he was six years old. Traveling to India, Lousiana, California, and New Mexico, Dinesh pieces together the story of his mother's schizophrenia and how his family dealt with it in an age and culture where mental illness was often misunderstood, scorned and taboo. Dwarka and Susheela Sabu lived complicated lives bridging two countries and cultures. Unbroken Glass is more than a story about immigrants or mental illness, it is a nuanced story of one family and their struggles. More than a linear narrative of their lives, Unbroken Glass is an impressionistic portrait of who Dinesh's parents were-- as immigrants, family members, as complex people subject to social forces. It weaves together his journey of discovery with cinema-verite scenes of his family dealing with still raw emotions and consequences of his parents lives and deaths. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, roughly 1% of the US population is affected by schizophrenia, and there is a proven genetic component to the illness. Some research has pointed to a link between "acculturative stress," the kind of stress immigrants experience adjusting to a new life, and the onset of mental illness. Dinesh hopes that telling this story will raise awareness about schizophrenia and empower families of the mentally
- Sonia Reich- who survived the Holocaust as a child by running and hiding - suddenly believes that she is being hunted again, 60 years later. Prisoner of Her Past is the story of a woman who appeared to be a normal, self-sufficient adult until she ran out of her house in the middle of the night, convinced that someone was trying "to put a bullet in [her] head." In effect, Sonia was re-enacting the traumatic events of her lost childhood. Separated from her family, she was deprived of 5 years of adolescence, as she fled from the Nazis during the Second World War. During that time, we know that her mother and most of her extended family were killed in mass executions. We also know that she was starving, frostbitten, constantly endangered and, as one psychiatrist described it, "a jungle child." What she witnessed and how she survived, we may never know. She refuses to discuss her past. Prisoner of Her Past is a documentary film that tells the story of Sonia and her son, Chicago Tribune journalist Howard Reich, and his journey to uncover Sonia's tragic childhood in order to understand why she is reliving it, so many years later. The film also reveals the interventions that are being done for today's young trauma survivors: children who survived death and destruction in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans.
- First General Motors shuts down their century-old plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. The the state blows up in political turmoil over the future of unions. We follow workers and town leaders trying to reinvent their town and lives amid an economic and political crisis that grips their community and the entire nation.
- Taylor Chain I tells the gritty realities of a seven-week strike at a small Indiana chain factory. Volatile union meetings and tension-filled interactions on the picket line provide an inside view of the tensions and conflicts inherent to labor negotiations.
- Norman Malone, survivor of devastating childhood trauma, surmounts barriers to fulfill his love of music. Heartwarming tale of talent and passion, channeled for his survival and shared with students via public school choir coaching.
- Supper club restaurants were the hot dinning trend in the mid twentieth century. They provided a place for people to spend their evenings enjoying cocktails, home cooked, high quality food and entertainment. The supper club scene slowly faded from the rest of the country, but kept a strong hold in Wisconsin due to a culture that allowed it to thrive. Around for decades, supper clubs in Wisconsin have been able to hold their own style and traditions. While chain restaurants continue to expand and threaten their future, supper clubs are fighting to survive while continuing to offer the same exceptional dinning experience and a personal touch that is not seen in the modern lifestyle of dine and dash. Old Fashioned: The Story of the Wisconsin Supper Club takes you into this uniquely Wisconsin institution.
- Two young nuns explore Chicago--from a supermart to the Art Institute and in front of churches on Sunday--confronting people with the crucial question, "Are you happy?" They meet many people--a lonely girl, a happy mother, a nun, some lovers, two hippie musicians, a lady sociologist, a college professor, even Stepin Fetchit; and receive many answers--"Happiness is the absence of fear," "Avoiding people," "Rasberries," "Joy in knowing Christ." The humor and sadness of these honest encounters lift the film beyond its interview format to a serious and moving inquiry into the concerns of contemporary man, and also into the circumstances in which men will actually express their concerns.
- The work and times of American artist, Leon Golubfrom 1985 to his death in 2004, taking us from images of interrogations and torture to the ironies and dark humor of old-age. Over-sized canvasses with screaming mercenaries and rioters urinating on a corpse; photographic fragments used as information and inspiration; the making of one of Golub's death-squad series from start to finish and to its exhibition in Derry, Northern Ireland; news footage from around the world; museum-goers' responses; disturbing music: out of these disparate elements the film creates a dialogue between image and audience that reflects what Golub calls the "disjunctiveness" of modern life. In the aftermath of September 11, and with the photos from Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Golub's ferocious, monumental work of the 70's and 80's (used to this day by human rights groups such as Amnesty International) remain prophetic and essential, even as they give way to the snarling dogs, erotica, and wise-cracking meditations on mortality which began to appear in his paintings in the 1990's. When we revisit Golub in 2001, the aging artist tells us "my work these days is sort of political, sort of metaphysical, and sort of smart-ass. I'm playful and hostile. Let's see if you can keep up with my slipping around." Half empty canvasses are dotted with birds of prey, smoking skulls, neon chorus girls, pierced hearts, and snickering text: "Bite your tongue. Save your ass." The film captures an historic artistic journey, shared with his wife and studio partner of 50 years, the prominent anti-war and feminist artist, Nancy Spero. We see them as each other's most valued critic and most ardent supporter. Golub continued in his later paintings to "report" on what's going on in the world, but he does it with the kind of dissonances and discontinuities that led Theodor Adorno in his essay on Beethoven to proclaim, "In the history of art, late works are the catastrophes."
- Charting the intersection between rural America and contemporary graphic design.
- Filmmaker Colette Ghunim takes her parents to find the ancestral homes in Mexico and Palestine that they had fled from decades earlier.
- Raising Bertie is a longitudinal documentary feature following three young African American boys over the course of six years as they grow into adulthood in Bertie County, a rural African American-led community in Eastern North Carolina. Through the intimate portrayal of these boys, this powerful vérité film offers a rare in-depth look at the issues facing America's rural youth and the complex relationships between generational poverty, educational equity, and race. The evocative result is an experience that encourages us to recognize the value and complexity in lives all too often ignored.
- 63 Boycott chronicles the Chicago School boycott of 1963 when more than 200,000 Chicagoans, mostly CPS students, marched to protest the segregationist policies of CPS Superintendent Benjamin Willis, who placed aluminum mobile school units on vacant lots as a permanent solution to overcrowding in black schools. The Kartemquin film features then and now interviews with organizers and participants of the boycott with never-released 16mm footage of the march and student interviews. 63 Boycott and its companion website will provide a modern perspective on the impact and legacy of this forgotten history 50 years later as it reconnects the participants to each other and the event itself.
- Set during the height of the Movement for Black Lives in Chicago, 'Unapologetic' captures a community of millennial organizers confronting an administration complicit in state violence against its Black residents.