The Rise and Fall of the Mail Order Giants

Becoming a Rose

2025

This Rose will forever be Chicago Red.

When the West Side Burned

2024

In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, chaos erupted on Chicago’s West Side. Grief turned into anger as protests, riots, looting, and fires consumed some neighborhoods. Audio-narrated descriptions of key visual elements are available.

The Boss and the Bulldozer

2023

Chicago mayor Richard J. “Boss” Daley had a lofty vision for Chicago’s downtown. Over the course of his 21 years in office, Daley’s ambitious urban renewal initiatives were the foundation of the city’s infrastructure and at the same time displaced the poor and people of color while perpetuating racial segregation. Audio-narrated descriptions are available.

Share the Care

1941

An anti-littering public service announcement from the Chicago Park District

Soldiers

2026

In a time of political turmoil, a striking factory worker struggles to find sexual satisfaction. As unrest turns to violence, his desire takes him down an unexpected path.

House Music: A Cultural Revolution

2025

House music is a genre that connects, uplifts, and unites people. It resonates globally and is prevalent on the world’s biggest music stages. Born in Chicago, this sound developed during the turbulent 1970s when a group of predominantly gay Black artists, who faced constant harassment, pioneered a new type of dance music at underground venues. House music became the anthem of safe spaces, free from the racism and homophobia of the outside world, ultimately igniting a cultural and musical revolution.

Chicago in the Spotlight: A Retrospective with the Cast and Crew

2014 · ★ 6

Stars, director and producers of Chicago (2002) are interviewed about the film with a decade of hindsight.

For Those That Lived There

2024

Amidst the ivy-draped remnants of once-notorious public housing projects, FOR THOSE THAT LIVED THERE weaves a visual tapestry, navigating the poignant impacts of gentrification, the displacement of Black legacies, and the emergent migrant narratives. Against Chicago's ever-evolving skyline, this evocative exploration immerses audiences into the soul of a neighborhood transformed.

Crust Fund Pizza: The Motion Picture

This documentary short profiles John Carruthers' Crust Fund Pizza project, which slings alley pizzas for the benefit of the people who make Chicago a better place to live. Benefiting a variety of local nonprofits, since August 2020 Crust Fund Pizza has raised more than $115,000–fueled by word of mouth, social media FOMO, and Chicagoans’ obsession with all things pizza.

Fired-Up! “Public Housing is My Home”

Chicago Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) introduces tenant management into Chicago Public Housing at Cabrini Green, Ida B Wells developments. Bertha Gilkey worked with tenets. Seen nationally on PBS.

Nine Miles West

Separated by just a few stops on the green line, nine miles west of the bustling financial epicenter of the Chicago Loop is Austin, one of the most impoverished and underserved neighborhoods in the city. Surrounded by violence, gangs, guns and drugs in his daily life, a graduating high school senior reflects on his experience growing up in this neighborhood and how the traumas associated with it shaped his life.

The Cliff Dwellers of America

1916

The first picture of the new Paramount-Burton Holmes Travel pictures recount Mr. Holmes' motor trip of the summer of 1913 through the more picturesque and interesting portions of New Mexico. As the journey leads through the lands of the former cliff-dwellers and former and present occupants of these prehistoric apartment houses called pueblos, Mr. Holmes chose to begin his trip at Chicago, there to see the cliff-dwellers of today threading in countless throngs the deep "Canyons" flanked on each side by the abodes of the modern "Cliff-dwellers." This is but a momentary glimpse, as the train is seen taking the audience to Santa Fe. From Santa Fe the travelers are taken to the famous pueblo of Taos and thence to the even more celebrated pueblo of Acoma, which was just as old, to all appearances, when the Spanish Conquistadores came up out of Old Mexico in 1740, to convert the Indians and conquer the country in the name of their King...