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: 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

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: 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: A determined group of women, midwives, and doctors fight to increase access to abortion pills in the United States outside of a clinic setting. In 2014, Francine, a social scientist based in Los Angeles, and her partners launched Plan C to spread the word about access to abortion pills online. This is the story of the work done between 2020 and the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

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: "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: 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

Young, Helen

Summary: Follows a group of Catholic nuns and priests who, along with other nuclear disarmament activists, break into two top-secret facilities to demonstrate the vulnerability of America's nuclear weapons.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Passion River 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2018

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: An intimate portrait of job-seekers desperately chasing the broken American Dream to the tiny oil boom town of Williston, North Dakota. With the town lacking the infrastructure to house the overflow of migrants, a local pastor starts the controversial 'overnighters' program, allowing down-and-out workers a place to sleep at the church. His well-meaning project immediately runs into resistance...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2014

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, leading to three nights of rioting by the city's LGBT community. With this outpouring of courage and unity the gay liberation movement had begun. Newly restored for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, this documentary pries open the closet door, setting free the dramatic story of survival,...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Working for change: Explores the birth of the social documentary in the U.S. and U.K. during the years of the Great Depression and the New Deal, featuring interviews with several of the people who helped define and shape the form.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: On March 8, 1971, eight ordinary citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, a town just outside of Philadelphia, took hundreds of secret files, and shared them with the public. In doing so, they uncovered the FBI's vast and illegal regime of spying and intimidation of Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. Despite conducting one of the most thorough investigations in...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2015

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Contains interviews with some of the protesters. In May of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. asked black people of Birmingham, Alabama to go to jail in the cause of racial equality. The adults were afraid to go to jail and so the school children marched and over 5000 of them were arrested. This lead to President Kennedy sponsoring the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the march on Washington. Portions of...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Southern Poverty Law Center 2005

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Explores the process of childbirth in America and the options open to expectant mothers, from hospital deliveries to private deliveries at home.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: New Line Home Entertainment 2008

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Summary: Adapted from Sandra Schulberg's monograph, Filmmakers for the Prosecution retraces the hunt for film evidence that could convict the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trial. The searchers were two sons of Hollywood brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg serving under the command of OSS film chief John Ford. The motion pictures they presented in the courtroom became part of the official record and shape our...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Follow the courageous journey of John Lewis, a civil rights hero, congressional leader, and human rights champion whose unwavering fight for justice spans the past 50 years. The son of sharecroppers, Lewis grew up in the segregated South and rose from Alabama's Black Belt to the corridors of power on Capitol Hill. His humble origins have forever linked him to those whose voices often go unheard.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "AFTER TILLER intimately explores the highly controversial subject of third-trimester abortions in the wake of the 2009 assassination of practitioner Dr. George Tiller. The procedure is now performed by only four doctors in the United States, all former colleagues of Dr. Tiller, who risk their lives every day in the name of their unwavering commitment toward their patients. Directors Martha...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Oscilloscope Laboratories 2014

Copies Available at Woodmere