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Latino Film Festival’s lone Chicago feature has encore screening June 28

By Ed M. Koziarski Jun 24, 2003

Antonio Franceschi (left) directs "Urban Poet."Among films from across the Americas that screened at the 19th Chicago Latino Film Festival was one feature film made in Chica...

Networking in Chicago, part two

Jun 12, 2003

by Joan Tortorici Ruppert In the digital age, face-to-face networking has become even more important as we relegate much of our communication to silence and text. B...

Producing pair launches animation festival and animation feature studio

Jun 12, 2003

It's an idea whose time has come. A full-fledged, super-sized, international spotlight on animated films. And it's being launched in late fall by a producing pair who brough...

The reality is, city shut down TV show building over permit lack

Jun 12, 2003

The City of Chicago shut down construction on the house where the network reality series "Starting Over" was set to shoot. Reality clashed with television "reality" thi...

Chicago Dramatists celebrate “Turning 25”

Jun 12, 2003

A small group of novice playwrights got together in 1979 to form a collective at the old Organic Theatre. They had little money, but great determination to write, act and pro...

Merger creates $100 million shop

Jun 12, 2003

Ebel, Signorelli & Welke/Chicago is the result of the June 1 merger of two medium-small agencies, Ebel Dunnell Merrick and Creative Alliance/Chicago, that's created a new $100...

UP AND DOWN THE AVENUE

Jun 12, 2003

Andy Madorsky is Grant/Jacoby's new executive creative director. He replaces Bernie Pizel who left the agency after a decade to open his own ad shop, Romani Bros. Advertising...

ReelScene: News and Notes

Jun 12, 2003

METROPOLITAN CHICAGO STUDIOS, the 22,000 sq. ft. of stage space and offices at 2500 W. Roosevelt Road, has officially closed. With industrial growth burgeoning to the west, o...

Momentum Entertainment signs
cable, video deals for urban indie

By Ed M. Koziarski Jun 12, 2003

Ta'sia Sherel and George Wilborn star in "Love Relations," due for release on cable and video this fall.In the last week of May, Momentum Entertainment signed two separate de...

North Side dentist learns the pain of filmmaking with first indie film

By Ed M. Koziarski Jun 12, 2003

Jet Chiranand just finished post for "Kyle & Heidi," the feature he made at his dental office Celebrity Smiles. When visionaries talk of synergies in the entertainment indu...

Documentarian Hakim Bellabes produces

By Ed M. Koziarski Jun 11, 2003

Hakim Bellabes has just completed his first fiction feature, ?Threads.? Hakim Bellabes was at work last year on a documentary about the impossibility of financing an indepe...

Documentarian Hakim Bellabes produces $600,000 Morocco/Chicago indie feature

By Ed M. Koziarski Jun 11, 2003

Hakim Bellabes has just completed his first fiction feature, "Threads."Hakim Bellabes was at work last year on a documentary about the impossibility of financing an indepen...

Bulletproof Film heads to Vietnam for veterans’ reconciliation doc

By Ed M. Koziarski Jun 11, 2003

Carmine Cervi (pictured) and his Bulletproof Film partner Ilko Davidov will shoot in Vietnam this August for their documentary "Teaching the Vietnam War: Reconciliation ...

Ambassador Entertainment, filmmaker Ruiz shoot non-stereotypical Latino indie this month

By Ed M. Koziarski Jun 11, 2003

Rob Ruiz (right) and Hafez Ali Muhammad (left) are producing the feature film "Gigs" in Humboldt Park and Puerto Rico starting this June. Weary of the stream of "thugs and ga...

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