Synopsis

Based on the 1959 foundational Chicago play penned by the legendary Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun is a portrait of the experience a generation of Black families endured on the front lines of demanding recognition of their personhood while planting seeds of stability through one family’s battle of homeownership on the the shifting sands of integration on Chicago’s South Side. Realized for the screen in 1961 by director Daniel Petrie and made iconic through the unforgettable performances of a cast led by Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee, the film exposes the torturous reality of what happens to a dream deferred.

This Community Cinema screening is presented in observation of Black History Month and in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Chicago International Film Festival’s Black Perspectives program, which has championed and elevated Black storytelling for three decades.

Synopsis

ASCO: Without Permission profiles the extraordinary, LA-based, Chicano art group ASCO, and through a genre-defying approach, reimagines what is possible today in art and cinema while celebrating an iconoclastic group that was far ahead of its time.

ASCO: Sin Permiso presenta al extraordinario colectivo artístico chicano de Los Ángeles, ASCO, y, con un enfoque que desafía los géneros cinematográficos, reinventa lo que hoy es posible en el arte y el cine, celebrando nuevas formas de creación que expanden los límites de la representación al rendir homenaje a este grupo iconoclasta y de vanguardia.

Synopsis

Set in early 1960s Chicago, Cooley High follows best friends Leroy “Preach” Jackson and Richard “Cochise” Morris as they navigate their senior year at Cooley Vocational School near Cabrini-Green. Between everyday adventures, neighborhood tensions, and dreams of the future, they imagine lives far beyond the confines of their community. Directed by Michael Schultz and written by Eric Monte, this heartfelt coming-of-age classic weaves humor, energy, and poignancy in its portrait of friendship, ambition, and the challenges of growing up.

In collaboration with Kennedy-King College, Englewood Arts Collective, and Grow Greater Englewood, this screening of Cooley High marks the film’s 50th anniversary and includes a post-screening discussion.

Synopsis

Winner of four Ariel Awards—for Best First Feature, Original Screenplay, Actress, and Breakthrough Performance—and selected as Mexico’s official submission for the Best International Film Oscar, We Shall Not Be Moved tells the story of Socorro—played by Luisa Huertas in a tour-de-force performance—a retired lawyer consumed by her obsession to find the soldier who killed her brother during the student protests of October 2, 1968, when demands for democracy and justice were brutally silenced in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Square. Nearly six decades later, her relentless pursuit has fractured her relationships with her sister, Esperanza, and her son, Jorge. When a new clue emerges, Socorro sets out on a perilous quest for vengeance, putting her family, her legacy, and her own life in jeopardy. Shot in striking black and white, director Pierre Saint Martin Castellanos delivers a powerful and intimate reflection on the enduring wounds of Mexico’s modern history.

Synopsis

Intimate, epic, and lyrical, Seeds chronicles the lives of a community of Black farmers who have toiled on their land for over a century in the American South. From cotton harvesters rolling across the fields to men pulling corn, wrangling cattle, or bringing burlap bags of pecans to the market, the film poetically shows the eternal rhythms of farm life, at the same time as it reveals the precarity of the farmers’ plight. Trucks are in disrepair; banks refuse to lend them money; and promised federal funds aren’t reaching them. Still, they persist, driven by a duty to their ancestors, their children, and the need to maintain freedom in an increasingly challenging world.

Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary, Seeds is a tribute to the determination of filmmaker Brittany Shyne and her subjects. Shot over nine years and presented in pristine black-and-white, Seeds presents a reverent, elegiac, and almost timeless vision of a waning way of life.