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.