Summary: From acclaimed Chicago filmmaking collective Kartemquin Films comes a collection of three important labor stories of the 1970's. These films not only allowed the workers and their union to tell their compelling stories but they also affected the course of events for each union. -- container.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Facets Video 2006

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Solidarity! All for One and One for All!₄ Founded in Chicago in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) took to organizing unskilled workers into one big union and changed the course of American history. This compelling documentary of the IWW (or The Wobblies' as they were known) tells the story of workers in factories, sawmills, wheat fields, forests, mines, and on the docks as they...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A look at what happened during the anti-war protest of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the subsequent trail brought against the protest organizers by the city. Includes animation, archival footage, and music from today's artists.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Paramount Home Entertainment 2008

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: The 1960s was defined by a common effort to fight against injustice. Mike Gray, a Chicago filmmaker, used his camera to document the politics of the streets from the riots in the social upheaval, to the rising of two prolific groups fighting prejudice.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Facets Video 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: This documentary follows two inner-city basketball phenoms' lives through high school as they chase their dreams of playing in the NBA.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2015

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: In this documentary, Che Smith (a.k.a. Rhymefest, the Grammy-winning rapper) reunites with his father, an alcoholic living on the streets of Chicago, and struggles to deliver him to safety and an existence that is productive and meaningful, in essence, taking responsibility for the man who had abandoned him as a young child.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "A documentary examining the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke and the cover-up that ensued"--Container.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A haunting portrait of Henry Darger, a reclusive janitor by day and a visionary artist by night.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Wellspring Media 2005

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Explores the little-known history of some of Chicago's hidden treasures.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Window to the World Communications, Inc. 2008

Copies Available at Woodmere

Jacobs, Greg

Summary: Follows four high school poetry teams who compete in the world's largest youth poetry slam, Louder than a Bomb.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Virgil Films 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: At 83, Chicago legend Buddy Guy remains the standard-bearer for the blues, an icon determined to see the art form live on long after he's gone. Enter young guitar phenom Quinn Sullivan, who has been mentored by Guy since he was a kid. This stirring documentary, amplified by electrifying musical performances, charts the guidance Guy himself received from the likes of Muddy Waters and Howlin'...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: I am somebody : Records the 1969 strike by black, predominantly female, hospital workers in Charleston, S.C. for better working conditions and higher wages. Shows how the struggle was won by a coalition of local and national union and civil rights groups plus the local black community through nonviolent marches and demonstrations. Highlights Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King, Ralph Abernathy,...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2018

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: A look at the subject of abortion where there can be no absolutes, no "right" or "wrong." Equal time is given to both sides, covering arguments from either extremes of the spectrum, as well as those at the center, who acknowledge that, in the end, everyone is "right" or "wrong."

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Thinkfilm 2008

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: The rise and fall of chef Charlie Trotter, who revolutionized American cuisine and paved the way for today's celebrity chefs. His eponymous Chicago restaurant was one of the world's top dining destinations. With exclusive access to never-before-seen material, the film reveals Trotter's relentless pursuit of excellence. Featuring Grant Achatz, Emeril Lagasse, and Wolfgang Puck.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Captures the tail end of the last great era of blues on Maxwell Street. Chicago's legendary Maxwell Street was home to an open-air market that thrived for decades. It was there that the Chicago blues was born as African American street musicians, who had fled the rural South for the city, played regularly on the dirty corners, empty lots, and broken sidewalks. Together, they hammered out a...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Facets Multimedia 2011

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Using historical footage and dramatic reenactments, this film focuses on one of the seminal events in the march for human rights -- the grape strike and boycott led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta in the 1960s. Thousands of people from across the nation joined in a struggle for justice for the some of the most exploited people in the United States.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Southern Poverty Law Center 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: The award-winning true story of third-generation American farmer John Peterson's hero's journey of success, tribulation, failure and rebirth. He's not only a farmer, he's an artist too.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Gaiam Media 2008

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson, Invisible Hands is the first feature documentary to expose child labor and trafficking within the supply chains of the world's biggest companies. Filmed in six countries, including India, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Ghana, it is a harrowing account of children as young as six years old making the products we use every day. Invisible...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2018

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "Emmy Award-winner John Scagliotti, producer of the landmark films "Before Stonewall" and "After Stonewall", guides us in a wondrous tour of erotic history, poetry and visual art in this point-of-view documentary on same-sex desire from ancient times to Victorian crimes. He explores how the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the growth of LGBT political power in the 1990s cleared the path for...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: An interrogation of the culture's fascination with Hitler and Nazism is set against the backdrop of the current rise of white supremacy, the normalization of anti-Semitism and the weaponization of history itself.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: IFC Films 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: In his final days in office, Governor George Ryan, was left to decide whether 167 death row inmates should live or die. Deadline details the gripping drama of the state's clemency hearings highlighting one man's historic actions against the system.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Home Vision Entertainment 2004

Copies Available at Woodmere

Zappa, Frank

Summary: Details the story behind Frank Zappa's record labels, Straight and Bizarre, and the artists he brought to the labels.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Sexy Intellectual 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere