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.
Upcoming Date/Time: Saturday, October 24 from 3 to 4:30pm at Chicago Filmmakers (1326 W. Hollywood Ave) AND on Zoom.
This month’s meeting will be hybrid, so writers may participate in person or online! Please register to receive the Zoom link via email.
The Queer Writers Club is a monthly meeting for LGBTQ+ writers; open to both beginners and experienced authors, regardless of genre. This is a queer writer’s safe space, a friendly club to hone your craft through creative writing exercises. This time includes focused practice in a group setting and a chance to meet other LGBTQ+ creatives. Whether you’re jotting down poems in a journal or working on your fifth draft of a Netflix-produced screenplay, you’re welcome to percolate fresh ideas, help form a new writing community, and share in the company of this generative space!
Hosted by Colleen O’Doherty (she/her), this club is a project of Chicago Filmmakers and Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival.
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.
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.