Chicago Fire Department Runs

This 1978 documentary classic is an inside look at the old-style Chicago Machine politics of the Richard J. Daley era, where Alderman Vito Marzullo ran his West Side 25th Ward virtually unchallenged from 1953-1985.

When two parties get in a head-on collision, it's up to emergency services to free them from the wreckage. What follows is a demonstration of what their job and duties entail.

The third iteration of a continuing diary film. Five years and one roll of film distilled into three and a half minutes. The filmmaker captures a distinct period in their life, living and moving from Ithaca, New York to Chicago, experiencing and exiting the pandemic, seeing friends and taking road trips. Sound captured separately on a micro cassette recorder between 2019-2022.

This documentary takes the viewer on a journey along Halsted Street, from the southern tip of Illinois, north through various Chicago neighborhoods, to the end of the road at Broadway in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood.

A love letter to the first three months of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Firefighters Chuck Ford and Larry Valentine are guy's guys, loyal to the core—which is why when widower Larry asks Chuck to pose as his lover so that he can get domestic partner benefits for his kids, his buddy agrees. However, things get dicey when a bureaucrat comes calling, and the boys are forced to present a picture of domestic bliss.

Walter Schmitt, a once-prominent Chicago hotel developer, fights to revive his stalled legacy through an ambitious international expansion. When the pressure mounts, a chance encounter with a mysterious, powerful investor sparks a high-stakes new chapter that tests the limits of his ambition.

Comedy about the members of an early 1900s fire company.

The story of Adam and Eve is told through stop-motion paper cut-outs.

A desperate actor's callback spirals when an embarrassing mishap with the group's intimidating captain forces them into a secret pact.

A small American town provides the setting for a look at the antics of a group of volunteers who comprise the area's only fire department.

Gala is preparing for the firefighter exam when she gets her period accompanied by severe menstrual pain. Together with her father Alfonso, they must figure out how to manage the situation.

ca. 1980-81, 4 min, Super-8mm. "In Blue Aura, a man and woman are asleep in bed. The dream begins with a crudely made, whirling paper spiral and the woman is twirled out of bed to her strange mission. The man remains in his own unconscious ritual, looking like a Byzantine saint in face and form. The sheets rise to either side of him in stylized drapes and fall across his body in curving pleats. The dream continues and the man joins the woman, but as if in a separate dream of his own. The film ends but the dream does not seem to; the man and woman are trapped in this half-life and dream on." — Barbara Sharres, "Trance Occurrences," Chicago Reader, January 15 1982.

"Piano Dance shows the viewer a shadowy piano accompanied by the sound of piano music. The piano is then seen to be a toy, the headdress of a woman with hollow eyes and a pasty face who moves like a marionette in a weird dance. She is dressed as if she were a cabaret performer in black tie and tails and white gloves. The images whirl and the piano is both large and small as the camera sees it in varying scale. The protagonist does not appear to move of her own volition but by the will of another. Her dance fades, not because it is over but because we are no longer privileged to see it. One feels that it continues eternally." — Barbara Sharres, "Trance Occurrences," Chicago Reader, January 15 1982.

After their roommate commits suicide by ceiling fan, two young men try to distract themselves.

A tour de force exercise in optical printing shot in the Chicago Loop

Up-and-coming artist Anisa is woefully unprepared for the pettiness and performative antics taking place at the gallery opening for her latest pieces. Everything but the artwork seems to take center stage. With an absent girlfriend and career-oriented bestie focused on their own priorities, Anisa is left to spiral alone at the end of the night.

An ecstatic exploration of a Chicago parking garage

In a field dominated by men, five pioneering camerawomen Mary Rogers, Cynde Strand, Jane Evans, Maria Fleet and Margaret Moth went to the frontlines of wars, revolutions and disasters to bring us the truth. As colorful as accomplished, these brave photojournalists made their mark by capturing some of the most iconic images from Tiananmen Square, to conflicts in Sarajevo, Iraq, Somalia and the Arab Spring uprising. But the world doesn’t know it was these women behind the camera. In the midst of unfolding chaos, the pictures they took for CNN both shocked and informed the world. This feature documentary by director Heather O’Neill tells their remarkable story.

An intimate look at the life, career and process of one of the most accomplished songwriters of all time, Diane Warren.