On the Rink

Chicago 1969: Activists from the Black Panthers, Young Lords, and Young Patriots united African Americans, Latinos, and poor whites to confront police brutality and unfair housing practices in one of America’s most segregated cities. A timely story of collective action, The First Rainbow Coalition tells this little-known chronicle of political struggle with insight and urgency using archival footage and interviews with those who lived it.

There's No Fish in Lake Michigan is a short documentary exploring salmon's surprising presence in Chicago and the communities, industries, ecology, and history surrounding it. Made by Allegra Hatem, Macallister Rescorl, and Joshua Silver.

Archival footage, animation and music are used to look back at the eight anti-war protesters who were put on trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

This Rose will forever be Chicago Red.

In this special documentary that inspired a two-season television series, scientists and other experts speculate about what the Earth, animal life, and plant life might be like if, suddenly, humanity no longer existed, as well as the effect humanity's disappearance might have on the artificial aspects of civilization.

Mike Leonard tells the inside story of how the west Loop’s St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, known to residents as Old St. Pat's, transformed itself from an empty church in a declining neighborhood into a Chicago hub of worship, culture, social life, education, and service -- revitalizing a then-struggling West Loop.

The colorful stories of Irish-American immigrants and their descendants who lived the history and exemplify the repeated cycle of the outsider becoming the ultimate Chicago citizen-insider.

The story of Catholic iconoclast Michael Pfleger who made it his mission to transform the drug ravaged south side Chicago community surrounding his parish. In so doing, Father Mike has run directly into conflict with the local Catholic hierarchy. The film explores issues of racism, the power of the media, and the tension between Pfleger's 'gospel of the streets' versus traditional Church theology.

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.

On Chicago's South and West sides, the scourge of guns and gangs is destroying countless lives. Taking matters into their own hands, two men dedicate their lives educating, empowering and healing young Black men at high risk for being victims—or perpetrators—of deadly gun-violence.

Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.

When you listen to The Years, the debut studio recording from Urbanites, you're hearing a band in progress. They wanted to make The Years differently, and decided to record the album together, live, in the same space - Studio A of Electrical Audio in Chicago, Illinois. With the exception of limited overdubs, (vocals, drum ensembles and laptop atmospherics) each song represented one collective take, warmly captured to two inch analogue tape. This recording method embraced the mistake as much as the moment. They also chose to document the making of the record with a film, appropriately titled, 'You Can't Rewind The Years'. With a new understanding and years of progress to come, these longtime friends are making the music that they'd always hoped to. As they sing, in The Years' standout track Restless, "Not without trial, not without err - this brokenness is ours to share."

The Vatican media documentary about the roots of Robert Francis Prevost in his native United States. It follows an itinerary that begins with his childhood in Dolton, through the memories of his brothers Louis and John, and continues among schools and universities, communities and parishes, featuring the voices of confreres, teachers, classmates, and longtime friends. A production of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, in collaboration with the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Apostolate El Sembrador Nueva Evangelización (ESNE), broadcast on the official channels of Vatican Radio – Vatican News.

Filmmaker Kevin McMahon accompanies the Haida delegation on a repatriation trip to Chicago in 2003. His film reveals the whole repatriation process through the stories and experiences of the people who participated, both Museum staff and the Haida people.

Few amateur films with sound were produced in the 1930s and fewer remain extant. A charming artifact that demonstrates the expressive possibilities and technical limitations of amateur talkies, "The Spider and the Fly" includes a backyard Labor Day gathering, a trip to the Riverview Amusement Park, and a homemade Halloween parade of witches and ghouls.

The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults is a two-hour live American television special that was broadcast in syndication on April 21, 1986, and hosted by Geraldo Rivera. It centered on the live opening of a secret vault in the Lexington Hotel in Chicago once owned by noted crime lord Al Capone.

Caged. Invisible. Shamed. Trapped. These words mark the tenants, clerks and even the owners of Chicago's last remaining Singe Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels. These small spaces are home for many at the bottom of Chicago's housing ladder. Cloaked in darkness and secrecy, these hotels are often maligned as drug dens and havens for prostitution but the people who live, work and own these hotels have never fully shared their stories. Caged Men is a feature-length documentary which examines the disquieting stories of near-homeless Americans living on the margins and their invisibility in a largely indifferent and, at times, hostile community. It attempts to lend a voice to SRO residents, clerks, owners and to the hotels themselves.

As one of his generation's quintessential Mad Men, television commercial director Joe Sedelmaier's work was iconic, dynamic, and instantly recognizable--some twenty to thirty years later, people are still wondering 'Where's the beef?” He turned the advertising world on its brain-damaged head by casting offbeat non-actors in still-unforgettable spots. His brilliant, frequently hysterical commercials for Wendy's, Alaska Airlines, Federal Express and others were snappy slices of cultural quirk that tapped into the Cold War-fearing, corporate workaholic zeitgeist of the '70s and '80s with a sense of humor that cracked billions of smiles, sold billions of burgers, and sped up the default rhythm of time-based media.

A group of friends, aged 69-99, refuse to hang up their skates and give up on fun.

Discover the rise and fall of the legendary department store Marshall Field’s.