Adventures/Aventuras: Family Friendly Animated Shorts
Various
Germany, Mexico, Portugal, United States 30 minutes
Synopsis
Audiences of all ages can enjoy these three stories of adventure, all highlights from our Family Friendly Animation program, presented at the Harrison Park Field House in Pilsen.
A girl connects with her Mayan heritage on a camping trip with her father that turns into an exciting adventure in Balam (Mexico, U.S.). After a tiger escapes from the zoo, a bored subway worker gets the surprise of a lifetime in Town Hall Square (Germany). A curious girl gets sucked into the bizarre and magical world of the book she is reading in Ana Morphose (Portugal).
Discover stories that resonate, inspire, and spark meaningful conversations in this year’s Community Cinema Shorts Program.
A lonely man is perplexed when his mother passes away and leaves him with her heart in a jar in the beautifully tender dark comedy The Heart(U.S). Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games (U.S.) delves into the historical use of hand games and artistic communication in Black culture.
In the summer of 2021, John Caleb Pendleton and a team of designers created a floral installation in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood in commemoration of Juneteenth. Beautifully blending poetry and collage-style imagery, Chronicle of a Summer Day is a testament to the power of artistic expression as a unifying force. Produced by Bronzeville Collective.
In the small rural Mexican village of El Eco, a teenage girl, Montse, dutifully works alongside her family, caring for the sheep and her grandmother with the same sense of curiosity and devotion. While frost and drought punish the land, she learns the ways of life and death. As in her auspicious fiction feature Prayers for the Stolen, with this lyrical coming-of-age docu-fable acclaimed Mexican-Salvadorean filmmaker Tatiana Huezo beautifully captures both the preciousness of adolescence and the region’s unforgiving elements.
Exquisitely textured and deeply empathetic, The Echo unfolds like a dream, shifting between the sweet and the dark. In sumptuous, vivid images, Hueso observes how children’s lives in these hardscrabble towns mirror those of their parents and grandparents in a generational cycle of struggle and hope.
Pulled pork, ribs, and liverwurst sandwiches — these are a few of the Southern delicacies filmmaker Eric D. Seals grew up eating alongside his father, Donnie Seals, Sr. But after facing death and undergoing the first of three quadruple bypass operations, the elder Seals decided to completely overhaul his life. Bike Vessel chronicles Donnie’s new chapter after becoming an avid cyclist, and follows the two men as they set out on an epic bike ride from St. Louis to Chicago.
Filled with flat tires, GPS snafus, and fast-food detours, the documentary is both a funny document of a father-son road trip and a powerful social statement. Through Eric and Donnie’s relationship, it takes a hard look at health disparities in the Black community and the systemic racism plaguing the well-being of Black men in America.
This film will be available to stream from October 16 at 12:00pm CT to October 22 at 11:59pm CDT, available only in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Learn more about streaming…