The community-sourced video tribute Ruth Ratny

Ruth L Ratny

The March 29 Ruth Ratny Memorial Celebration at Untitled Supper Club featured speakers from some of the most well known businesses and organizations in the Chicago creative community.

Mark Androw, Tom Duff, Craig Duncan, Julieanna Richardson, Barbara Roche, Roy Skillicorn and Joy Tillis were among those who grabbed the mic and shared personal memories of ReelChicago’s legendary late founder with the room full of people who turned out to celebrate her life.

The program, which was sponsored in part by AICE and AICP, included a memorial video from Optimus that was edited by Adam Henkel and produced by Terra Venteno under the tireless supervision of Tom Duff. Additionally, ReelChicago publisher Barbara Roche says that the celebration would not have been possible without the extensive assistance of Motion Post’s Nancy Reid and Dictionary Film’s Chris Rossiter.

Brian Broeckelman and Kyle McKenna captured the action, along with several individual interviews from guests throughout the evening, on behalf of Dictionary Films. Cutters Studios combined the footage with dozens of photographs and edited it into a fifteen-minute tribute to Ruth L. Ratny.

The resulting video is a warm and often humorous documentary of the life that she lived and the era that she graced. Filled with words that she wrote, lives that she touched and opinions that she never hesitated to express, it unquestionably proves that there will never again be another person quite like our Ruthie Lu.

No doubt, she is pleased.

To see the video on ReelChicago’s YouTube page, click here.