PHANTOMS OF THE FIREHOUSE is a screening series presented by MUBI. Featuring four films over two days, it’s the perfect way to kick off the Halloween weekend. Whether you’re looking for a few scares or your new favorite film, stop by the Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse this weekend!

TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (A Review by M. Woods)

It is an absolute privilege to partner with MUBI in presenting one of the greatest horror movies ever made, TETSUO: THE IRON MAN. An underground, surrealist masterpiece of extreme Japanese horror, directed by one of the genre’s foremost auteurs, Shinya Tsukamoto, TETSUO THE IRON MAN plunges us into an abysmal, metal-hydraulic contortion of human reality relentlessly torn apart by the Id. In one the most disturbingly tactile cinematic experiences, Tsukamoto condemns Capitalist escapism and its exterminating, hyper-violent core.

Tetsuo clearly evokes the extremes of 20th century Japan, following the atrocities of nuclear war and the hyperreal nightmare of a misogynist, mechanomorphic hell, a cinematic dissolution of the body into endless decay and waste. The movie opens up into ferocious stop-motion sequences, swirls of industrial dissonance that pits our consciousness deeper into this Futurist fantasy of a body - free of its mortality, but fused, abraded, and finally destroyed by the Demi-God sprouting from within. Tsukamoto depicts this evolutionary destiny towards the cyborg in explicit terms. Tetsuo’s misogyny and compulsion for lust is bound in rupture and destruction, where even the sexual is replaced by purely mechanical sadism and domination. Not for the faint of heart, Tetsuo the Iron Man stands as one of the most influential works of cinema - a standard bearer for both horror and underground film.

On Saturday, October 28 at 7PM Central, visit Chicago Filmmakers for TETSUO: THE IRON MAN.

For tickets: www.chicagofilmmakers.org/upcoming-screenings-and-events/

A review by M. Woods

Trailer for TETSUO: THE IRON MAN

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RUSSELL BANKS: I WRITE IN ORDER TO BE A BETTER PERSON | IN-PERSON (10/10)

$10.00

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

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LEGALLY DRUGGED | IN-PERSON (10/23)

$10.00

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.

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READING THE WORLD | IN-PERSON (10/30)

$10.00

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.

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