Two local feature docs head up an expanded presence for documentaries at the 13th Annual IFP/ Chicago Filmmakers Conference that begins Thursday, Oct. 21.
“The heightened presence of documentaries is a reflection of the larger community,” said IFP/Chicago executive director Elizabeth Donius. “There’s a lot of really wonderful documentary work going on in Chicago and the Midwest, and we’ll show some of the work that’s been done in the past year.”
Peter Gilbert’s “With All Deliberate Speed” screens Thursday, Oct. 21 at 9 p.m. The film documents some of the heroes in the decades-long struggle to integrate America’s schools.
A Camera Planet production, Discovery Docs gave the film a five-city theatrical release last May, marking the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed school segregation.
Gilbert, a Kartemquin affiliate who shot and produced the seminal docs “Hoop Dreams” and “Stevie” and the narrative feature “Prefontaine,” will take questions after the screening.
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| Eva Mozes Kor in “Forgiving Dr. Mengele” |
Preceding the Flyover Zone Film Festival, Bob Hercules of Media Process Group presents his in-progress doc “Forgiving Dr. Mengele,” which he is co-directing with Cheri Pugh.
“Mengele” tells the story Eva Mozes Kor, who led the line of Auschwitz survivors leaving the death camp when Russia liberated it in 1945, and went on to lead a movement of reconciliation aimed at bringing psychological peace to herself and fellow Holocaust survivors.
“Forgiving Dr. Mengele” screens Saturday, Oct. 23 at 5 p.m. Hercules and Pugh will take questions after the screening.
Flyover Zone, beginning at 7 p.m. Saturday, features Movieside Film Festival organizer Rusty Nails’ short doc “The Ramones and I,” a testament to the impact that the punk rock pioneers had on the filmmaker’s life.
Opening the festival will be “Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst,” documenting the revolutionary Symbionese Liberation Army’s abduction and conversion of the newspaper heiress. “Guerilla,” which debuted at Sundance last January, screens Thursday at 7 p.m. Director Robert Stone (“Radio Bikini”) will take questions after the screening.
Jerry Blumenthal of Kartemquin moderates the panel “Trend or Fad: Political Documentaries,” featuring Gilbert, Hercules, Pugh and Stone, at 10:45 a.m. Friday, Oct. 22.
The Conference has been expanded to four days for the first time this year. “In the past we found that people often wanted to go to more than one panel, but they were counterscheduled,” Donius said. “The expansion is an effort to make sure that everybody who goes to the conference has the opportunity to see all the panelists.”
The Conference is at the School of the Art Institute Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus. Call 312/235-0161 or see www.ifpchicago.org.
? by Ed M. Koziarski, edk@homesickblues.com
