UPCOMING SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Chicago Filmmakers hosts a variety of screenings and community events at our historic Firehouse Cinema in Edgewater, in addition to our two annual festivals: Onion City Experimental Film Festival and Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival. We work with filmmakers and programmers to create a compelling schedule of screenings and events consistent with our mission.
Friday, October 23, 7:00 PM
Chicago Filmmakers (1326 W. Hollywood Ave)
Vagabond Beaumont | 2026 | 117 min | Digital Projection
Director Vagabond Beaumont and Co-Executive Producer Floyd Webb in Person!
Legally Drugged is the story of a Brooklyn boy who becomes a successful real estate investor but not without some major obstacles along the way. Richard Schneeberg tells his own harrowing yet ultimately triumphant true story. When Schneeberg is hospitalized for depression/insomnia and malaise, he is given antidepressants, which cause him to hallucinate, become manic, and even become suicidal.
He loses his marriage and custody of his child. A former teacher, his hospitalizations also left him jobless and homeless. But through shrewd business investments he becomes a multimillionaire, owning some of the most desirable real estate in the country. It’s a story of one man’s journey “from the nuthouse to the penthouse.”
An outspoken advocate of non-drug therapies for the mentally ill, Schneeberg makes a case that antidepressant medications are overused and points out that they can sometimes cause more problems than they solve.
Co-Presented by HotHouse
Friday, October 30, 7:00 PM
Chicago Filmmakers (1326 W. Hollywood Ave)
Catherine Murphy and Iris de Oliveira | 2025 | 70 min | Digital Projection
In 1963, global icon Paulo Freire led an experimental project teaching hundreds of rural farmers to read, write and vote in Brazil, until he was arrested and forced into exile during a U.S.-backed coup d'état.
Told through the collective memories of farmers, students, and educators who participated in the “Culture Circles," where they learned to read and write in 40 hours, Reading the World contains rare archival footage of 1960s Brazil that was recently recovered after being buried for decades. The innovative teaching method used critical and creative thinking instead of memorization and repetition. By contextualizing and personalizing the lessons, educators used their surroundings to teach vocabulary and construct meaning. Hundreds of Brazilians became literate and were allowed to vote as a consequence, strengthening the blossoming democracy and social movement that was disrupting the colonial structures. After a shocking coup d’état, the farmers’ notebooks were set on fire, and Freire was eventually forced into exile for 16 years, spreading his pedagogy around the globe and impacting democracy and education until today. Today Freire is considered one of the most influential philosophers of education in the twentieth century, and revered by educators across the world.
Saturday, October 10, 7:00 PM
Chicago Filmmakers (1326 W. Hollywood Ave)
Denis Mueller and Ilko Davidov | 2026 | 86 min | Digital Projection
Directors Denis Mueller and Ilko Davidov in Person!
Russell Banks: I Write in Order to Be a Better Person examines the life and work of the renowned American writer, author of the acclaimed novels Affliction, Continental Drift, Book of Jamaica, The Sweet Hereafter, and Rule of the Bone, focusing on his ability to use fiction to question his own life and to confront the biases and cultural assumptions, thus allowing him to become a better person. This drive to become a better person through literature allowed Banks to develop the empathy and compassion necessary to recognize the full, shared humanity of those with backgrounds and outlooks different from his own.
“A thoughtful, literary look at the works and life of one of the best US storytellers in the last fifty years” - Ron Jacobs, CounterPunch