Not all the neighborhoods in Chicago are packed with swanky restaurants and glitzy architecture. A local filmmaker is highlighting everyday life in neighborhoods that don't fit that image---and he needs your help. more ›

The last episode of Prohibition, "A Nation of Hypocrites," airs tonight. more ›

Part two of the three-part miniseries Prohibition premieres tonight on WTTW Channel 11 at 7 p.m. This installment of the latest documentary film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick chronicles the aftermath of the passage of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, the law that both gave Prohibition enforcement its teeth and unwittingly set in motion a 13-year bender of rampant criminality in America. more ›

It was through a modified Auricon camera that University of Chicago undergraduates Stan Karter, Jerry Temaner and Gordon Quinn looked at the world in a way that still seems new. more ›

Alex Kotlowitz speaks about his years looking into the city's most vexing problems, the differences between writing and making movies, the neighborhoods President Obama's message of hope and change never seem to impact, and more. more ›

90s alt-rock titans Pearl Jam, featuring one-time Evanston, IL resident Eddie Vedder, recently debuted the trailer for the Cameron Crowe-directed PJ20. So how much of Chicago will be in this bad boy? more ›

The story of a year in the life of three "violence interrupters" as they step into confrontations at the moment they are about to turn into violent altercations in Chicago's toughest neighborhoods, the film's thoughtful and jarringly intimate look at a new approach to dealing with the persistent violence has struck a chord with audiences everywhere it's been shown, and we expect this will shortly be the movie everybody's talking about here. We sat down with Steve James, who is also known for other documentaries such as Stevie and features such as Prefontaine in addition to the legendary Hoop Dreams, at the offices of Kartemquin Films on the north side last week. Our interview with Kotlowitz will run separately. more ›

A documentary playing at the National Museum of Mexican Art Wednesday looks at one of the low water marks of the recent battle for immigration reform. more ›

The heyday of Chicago's post-rock scene of the 1990s found a lot of talented and ambitious musicians lumped under its rather non-specific banner. If it wasn't always easy to express just what fit Dianogah, Tortoise and U.S. Maple into the same classification, it was at least easy to notice that a handful of individuals kept cropping up over and over. Perhaps it was their complementary dispositions towards what made music worthwhile which held the whole thing together. The only inarguable point is that their influence has lasted longer and traveled farther than most localized "scenes." more ›

Bill Haney's film of the war between the people of Coal River Valley, WV and the energy companies literally blowing up mountains to more efficiently extract their coal, should be required viewing. more ›

The Chicago Film Archives summer residency at the Dorchester Project looks to be among the more interesting feats of film programming in a summer with no shortage of interesting things to see. more ›

The Interrupters is the product of Hoop Dreams auteur Steve James' return to Chicago and collaboration with writer/Chicagoist fave Alex Kotlowitz. A run on the festival circuit is giving the film some serious Oscar buzz. more ›

When a Kickstarter project that is as dear to our hearts as a documentary about Nelson Algren pops up, we are bound to tell you about it. more ›

Zach Levy made an acclaimed documentary about a man who leg-presses 10,000 pound dump trucks and can drive nails through boards with his bare hands, a man seemingly too strong for any obstacle. But when it came time to bring his work to Chicago in February, he ran into something nobody was able to overcome: the Chicago Blizzard of 2011. more ›

Cannes loves Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His first feature, 2002's Blissfully Yours, snagged the Un Certain Regard trophy, which recognizes young talent and innovation. Two years later his second film, Tropical Malady, became the first Thai film in competition at the festival and emerged with a special Jury Prize. Finally, his mesmerizing Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won last year's Palme d'Or. All he needs is the Grand Prix to hit for the cycle at the world's most prestigious film festival and put the cherry on top of a mountain of critical accolades, but the Eurpoean cognoscenti aren't the only ones who love Weerasethakul. There's more than enough for him here in Chicago, where he is known simply as "Joe." more ›

When Mark Kostabi was vacuuming up press attention in the boom art market of the 1980s with his schtick as a sensationalizing salesman of secondhand Andy Warhol ideas, the question seemed to be whether or not he was the next terrifying stage the art world's progress towards a complete self-absorption with its own compromised nature. Unfortunately for him, mocking the compromised relationship between art and commerce became a lot less relevant when the bottom fell out of the market. 20 years later, Con Artist: The Story of Mark Kostabi, an entertaining documentary on Kostabi having its Chicago premiere on Friday at Facets shows him to be both pioneer and harbinger of one of the 21st century's most thriving species: the fame whore. more ›

The Internet age has been marked unprecedented access to mind boggling amounts of information. That access may used in service of the good, like tracking the influence of money in politics via opensecrets.org or slicing up census data in productive and enlightening ways. Or it can be used to answer immediately (via wikipedia) a trivia question that would never have bothered you if you hadn't just spent 20 minutes clicking on "related videos" in youtube. With great power comes great responsibility... and incredible timewasting potential. more ›

If you missed the debut screening of "Ingredients: The Local Food Movement Takes Root" last month, you've got another chance this Sunday, March 27. Actually, even if you saw the movie last month, see it again - this event is too good to miss. Chef Dirk Flanigan has created a four-course meal to accompany the movie, which will be screened in the private Theodore Ascher room at The Gage. The meal will feature local meat and produce from Cook's Bison Ranch, Nichols Farm, Swan Creek Heirloom Farm and Seedling Orchard. The cost is $75, and the menu is after the jump. But wait, it gets better. If you make reservations by 5 PM on Thursday, you will be entered into a drawing to win a special prize from the sponsor, Local Food Wisdom. more ›

While the heat is starting to cool from last Sunday's documentary on the University of Michigan's "Fab Five", part of ESPN's wonderful "30 for 30" series, the next installment in the series is set to premiere at next month's Tribeca Film Festival. For Cubs fans, the film focuses on a moment in the team's recent history many of the would rather forget: the Bartman game. more ›

As cult figures go, they don't come with much more cred than Motörhead bassist and frontman Ian Fraser Kilmister, a.k.a. "Lemmy." Revered by even Ozzy Osborne as the godfather of Heavy Metal, the English expat has cultivated an image of the badass working man's hero through a career that spans the British Invasion, the Jimi Hendrix Experience (where he was a roadie), psych pioneers Hawkwind, and, since 1975, Motörhead. As his career motors full steam ahead into its sixth decade, directors Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski spent three years creating the ultimate rockumentary on the man behind the muttonchops, Lemmy: 49% Motherf**Ker, 51% Son Of A Bitch. more ›

Long after the last structure is demolished, Cabrini-Green will remain a potent symbol of 20th Century Chicago's complicated history of dealing with segregation and poverty. And long after the last resident moved out, Cabrini-Green will still be thought of as "home" by thousands of Chicagoans. Its complete story cannot yet be told, one local filmmaker is looking for help to put the latest chapter in the books. more ›

Pop songwriting virtuoso Stephin Merritt and his cult musical group the Magnetic Fields completed a pilgrimage from the music conservatory division of the indie rock avant garde in the early nineties to songwriting immortality with 1999’s monumental 69 Love Songs and never looked back. 2010 saw the release of their 10th record, a sold-out six-night stint at the Old Town School of Folk Music, and the premiere of a documentary about the group, Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields at SXSW. The film is an endearing portrait of the cerebral baritone who is often lazily labeled as simply prickly or aloof but is adored fiercely by his fans and guarded jealously by his friends and an ever-present chihuahua. We talked with co-director Kerthy Fix about this spending a decade making this documentary, about exploring the creative relationship between Meritt and his collaborator Claudia Gonson and about Meritt’s place in music history. more ›

Beginning on the banks of the Ohio River at the tip of Illinois and marching 400 miles through 14 counties north to Chicago, Halsted Street is America in microcosm. Follow it from downstate, through the suburbs, along the central swathe it cuts through many of Chicago's most integral neighborhoods and you'll get a great idea of what this state and this city are all about. 13 years ago, that's just what filmmaker David E. Simpson did, and he took his camera. The result was Halsted Street USA, which you can watch online in its entirety. more ›

When it opened in 1965, Dixie Square Mall in Harvey was hailed as a shopping center for the future, eventually growing to hold 64 stores by 1968. But the debt load of its construction and the high crime rate in Harvey plagued the mall from the start. By the time Penneys left in 1978, Dixie Square Mall was on life support, eventually closing one year later. more ›

On the northern outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, a dump truck is tipping its payload onto a football field-sized patch of uncovered trash at the edge of the world's largest landfill, the Jardim Gramacho. Before the garbage is even out of the truck, a few dozen people scurry up the sides of the still-forming pile, plucking prized recyclables from the waste with desperate, practiced quickness, flocks of vultures circling overhead and a post-apocalyptically barren man-made desert stretching all around. These are the catadores, or pickers of recyclable materials, who work among the trash and live in the nearby favelas. Waste Land follows artist Vik Muniz as he attempts to document this community of 3,000 or so pickers who extract 200 tons of recycling as they work day and night, extracting an honest living out of the things we all throw away... more ›

So this dude, Geoff Edgers, decided to take it upon himself to reunite The Kinks. While he failed to do that (sorry if we spoiled that for you) he did make a little documentary, called Do It Again, about his quest that we're hearing excellent things about. What we're trying to figure out is how he was able to get interviews with everyone from Sting to Paul Weller to Zoey Deschanal but he COULD NOT get The Kinks back together? more ›

We've expressed our love for Uncommon Ground many times before, and they tend to run awesome, informative events. Two in particular caught our eye. more ›

Can you believe it's only been 6 weeks since we planted the garden? Everything we planted has come up wonderfully, and we're finally starting to get a real harvest. Our first tomatoes turned red this week, baby jalapeno peppers are hanging on the plants, and all of the bush beans have flowers. We've already harvested lettuce and radishes twice and the new crops are sprouting! As we mentioned before, our only minor failure was our carrots, but even they have rallied and are now coming up strong. Take a look at our first all-garden salad! It was very tasty. more ›

When you're a team with a history like the Chicago Cubs - both good and bad - you're going to attract a lot of attention. And a lot of documentaries. While we still await the ESPN 30 for 30 entry on Bartman, Cubs fans can enjoy a doc that shows a much lighter side of Cubs lore: the Waveland/Sheffield "ballhawks." Mike Diedrich's documentary Ballhawks focuses on the dedicated fans who prowl the streets just beyond Wrigley's fences, jockeying for position to catch one of the blasted home run balls that make their way outside the park. Narrated by Cub-fan-celeb Bill Murray, the film gets a run this weekend at the Siskel Film Center which will be attended by Diedrich as well as some of the ballhawks featured in the film. If you're a Cubs fan and haven't planned out your Memorial Day weekend yet, this seems like something that should be put on the schedule. Check out the trailer here. more ›

The stock trading pits of Chicago are filled with volatile money induced chaos where outsiders are restricted. Very few are offered a glimpse into the high roller perspective, but that's exactly what Floored does, a documentary that takes you inside. The trading floors of Chicago have been losing their luster during the transition into the digital age. Alpha males shouting trades with the occasional violent outburst once dominated the floors, but now traders can work from the comfort of their suburban home behind a computer. more ›