WTTW to premiere Suffredin’s “@home” homeless doc

IN ADVANCE OF ITS BROADCAST PREMIERE Dec. 17 on Ch. 11, Kindling Group, the production company behind Susanne Suffredin’s documentary @home, is conducting a series of media training workshop for homeless service organizations.

@home is a portrait of homeless advocate Mark Horvath, who was formerly homeless and has since created the online video series Invisible People, on which he posts unedited testimony of homeless people he meets across America.

The workshop series, supported by the Polk Brothers Foundation, aims to foster a dialogue around homelessness in Chicago. 

Participating groups include the Center for Housing and Health, Goldie’s Place, Cross-Cultural Interpreting Services, Matthew House, Facing Forward to End Homelessness, the Northwest Side Housing Center, and the Christian Community Health Center.

Kindling Group’s Danny Alpert was the executive producer and producer of the documentary.  

A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE BEARS 85: The Untold Story of the Greatest Team in NFL History, the Bears’ last Super Bowl-winning team, is being directed by Scott Prestin (John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster).  Otis Wilson, an ’85 linebacker is producing with Prestin, Rich Lenkov (Rock of Ages), and Tom Pellegrini (Hesher).

CHICAGO STUDIO CITY co-owner Joe Credidio has two pilots in submission for development on Amazon Studios: the dating comedy The Catch featuring Will Clinger, and the used car salesman comedy The Lot.

THE WORLD PREMIERE of Brent Huffman’s Kartemquin Films-produced documentary Saving Mes Aynak, is Nov. 23 in the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam.  It’s about the campaign to preserve a 5,000-year-old archeological site in Afghanistan from destruction at the hands of a Chinese copper mining firm.

A FREE WORK-IN-PROGRESS SCREENING of Cyrus Dowlatshahi’s Takin’ Place, his observational documentary about working people on the South Side is Thursday, Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. at the University of Chicago Logan Center, 915 E. 60th St. “As they work, chill, hustle and survive,” Dowlatshahi says, Takin’ Place “reveals the common aspects of all neighborhoods and communities around the world: a desire to share, grow and celebrate.” 

NATHYN MASTERS of TimeCode Mechanics (Epitaph: Bread and Salt) is writer/director of The Perfect Letter, an experimental horror film about a mysterious letter that “leads a writer on a frightening quest for answers and sanity.”

DEAN KENDRICK is making the 2D, hand-drawn animated short Project: Victor, a gay teen love story set in “a society where homosexuality is considered deviant and dangerous.”  Music is by The Irritants.