PROGRAM 5: CENTERPIECE: MAKE A DISTINCTION
Friday, June 11 at 9:00 PM

In a special outdoor screening at the Chicago Filmmakers, Onion City presents the world premiere of Kera MacKenzie & Andrew Mausert-Mooney’s Make a Distinction. Drawing its title from the scientific process of identifying species and a speech given by Black Panther Party Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton, the film examines the shared political ecology of television production, police militarization, and field botany. The film issues a provocative challenge to the viewer: “name the enemy or become it.” The feature will be preceded by the world festival premieres of two shorts, Colonial Transfer by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos and The Circle by Jibade-Khalil Huffman. Colonial Transfer captures the disorienting experience of navigating the current online media landscape and outlines Mexico’s historical relationship with television. Blending voices from 1950s police procedurals with a cascade of found and original images, The Circle offers an idiosyncratic portrait of the search for community in a hyper-mediated police state. Each film proposes unexpected points of connection while seeking to understand the larger struggle against the colonial legacy of corruption and violence.

We strongly prefer that only vaccinated guests attend the outdoor screening. Masks and social distancing at the event will be required. Important: Chicago Filmmakers will implement safety precautions and protocols to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. These measures do not eliminate the inherent risk of potential exposure to COVID-19 in public spaces. By visiting Chicago Filmmakers, you voluntarily assume all risks associated with exposure to COVID-19.

Colonial Transfer

Colonial Transfer vindicates the eidetic chiasm that produced the arrival of television in the cinema as well as the absorption, transduction and digital expansion of television and historical film archives, all linked by the negentropic outburst of a source code in trance. This is the state of ever-expanding media landscape in the post-covid quarantine. Our state of space-time.

Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
Mexico, 2021, 07:00 mins

The Circle

Echoing the collective and personal pain of our current moment—marked by isolation in the global pandemic and the systemic racism it has made even more visible—The Circle is centered on the potential different kinds of support in light of the cyclical and interior nature of suffering and coping.

Jibade-Khalil Huffman
United States, 2020, 25:00 mins

Make a Distinction

A family has lunch under the shade of a C-47 warcraft. An army installation contains the last remnants of an endangered grassland ecology. Young filmmakers hone their skills making a cop show on Chicago streets. Stylized scenes of field botanists, retail clerks, and soldiers in Clarksville, Tennessee and television workers, and police in Chicago, Illinois reveal the unseen forces of imperialism in US daily life. 

Kera MacKenzie & Andrew Mausert-Mooney
United States, 2021, 62:00 mins