While gun violence was on the decline in most major US cities, why did it continue to increase in Chicago's segregated communities? What is known about the systems that created the problem, the laws that isolated it, and the policies that abandoned it? Using dramatic footage, including interviews with residents on the front lines over the last 15 years, this documentary opens a rare historical window into the systematic creation of poverty stricken communities plagued by gun violence.
Black Thoughts (2020)
A man that is a stranger, is an incredibly easy man to hate. However, walking in a stranger’s shoes, even for a short while, can transform a perceived adversary into an ally. Power is found in coming to know our neighbor’s hearts. For in the darkness of ignorance, enemies are made and wars are waged, but in the light of understanding, family extends beyond blood lines and legacies of hatred crumble.
¿Que Haces Aqui? A Documentary About Karen (2021)
Can flipping through the channels change your life? For Karen, a former prosecutor living in Chicago, her world changed forever when she accidentally fell in love with telenovelas. Now she has quit her job, and she's moving to Mexico City to write the telenovela she's always wanted to watch.
Eliot Ness vs. Al Capone (2009)
January, 1947. The public receives the news of Al Capone's death with indifference, although twenty years earlier he had ruled Chicago's crime underworld with brute force and corrupting many touchable individuals. Until the day the head of the Untouchables Brigade, Eliot Ness, entered the scene. Since then, a cruel battle between the two of them began, a battle that ended in trial, conviction, disease, insanity and death.
Widows (2018)
A police shootout leaves four thieves dead during an explosive armed robbery attempt in Chicago. Their widows have nothing in common except a debt left behind by their spouses' criminal activities. Hoping to forge a future on their own terms, they join forces to pull off a heist.
Montréal: The Neighborhood Revived (1974)
This full-length documentary from the Challenge for Change program addresses housing issues affecting Montreal in the mid-1970s. As the city is restoring older apartments through direct action and government subsidies, new, low-rent housing is being integrated into old neighborhoods.
The Big Heat (1953)
After the suspicious suicide of a fellow cop, tough homicide detective Dave Bannion takes the law into his own hands when he sets out to smash a vicious crime syndicate.
The Order of Myths (2008)
In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is celebrated... and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether.
James Bulger: The New Revelations (2018)
25 years after the verdict in the Jamie Bulger murder trial, we reveal what the jury, public and press never heard, and what his two killers, Thompson and Venables, said during their time in custody from arrest to release.
U.S. Marshals (1998)
U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard is accompanying a plane load of convicts from Chicago to New York. The plane crashes spectacularly, and Mark Sheridan escapes. But when Diplomatic Security Agent John Royce is assigned to help Gerard recapture Sheridan, it becomes clear that Sheridan is more than just another murderer.
Murder by Numbers (2002)
Tenacious homicide detective Cassie Mayweather and her still-green partner are working a murder case, attempting to profile two malevolently brilliant young men: cold, calculating killers whose dark secrets might explain their crimes.
White Out, Black In (2014)
Shots fired inside a club frequented by black Brazilians in the outskirts of Brasilia leave two men wounded. A third man arrives from the future in order to investigate the incident and prove that the fault lies in the repressive society.
The Green Book: Guide to Freedom (2019)
In 1936, Victor H. Green (1892-1960) published The Negro Motorist Green Book, a book that was both a travel guide and a survival manual, to help African-Americans navigate safe those regions of the United States where segregation and Jim Crow laws were disgracefully applied.
Capone (1975)
Young Al Capone catches the eye of Johnny Torrio, a criminal visiting New York from Chicago. Torrio invites Capone to move to Illinois to help run his Prohibition-era alcohol sales operation. Capone rises through the ranks of Torrio's gang and eventually takes over. On top, he works to consolidate his power by eliminating his enemies, fixing elections to his advantage and getting rich. In his spare time, Capone courts the principled Iris Crawford.
The Janes (2022)
Defying the state legislature that outlawed abortion, the Catholic Church that condemned it, and the Chicago Mob that was profiting from it, the members of “Jane” risked their personal and professional lives to support women with unwanted pregnancies. In the pre-Roe v. Wade era — a time when abortion was a crime in most states and even circulating information about abortion was a felony in Illinois — the Janes provided low-cost and free abortions to an estimated 11,000 women.
Gun Crazy (1950)
Bart Tare is an ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns, he meets a kindred spirit in sharpshooter Annie Starr and goes to work at a carnival. After upsetting the carnival owner who lusts after Starr, they both get fired. Soon, on Starr's behest, they embark on a crime spree for cash.
I Am Richard Pryor (2019)
The life story of Richard Pryor (1940-2005), the legendary performer and iconic social satirist who transcended racial and social barriers with his honest, irreverent and biting humor.
Connie and Carla (2004)
After accidentally witnessing a mafia hit in the Windy City, gal pals Connie and Carla skip town for L.A., where they go way undercover as singers working the city's dinner theater circuit ... disguised as drag queens. Now, it's not enough that they become big hits on the scene; things get extra-weird when Connie meets Jeff -- a guy she'd like to be a woman with.
Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
Set in Prohibition era Chicago, bootlegger Robbo and his cronies refuse to pay the greedy Guy Gisborne a cut of their profits after Guy shoots mob boss Big Jim and takes over. When Big Jim's daughter, Marian, gives Robbo a large sum, believing he has avenged her father's death, the gangster donates to an orphanage, cementing his reputation as a softhearted hood.