Immerse yourself in the real Chicago with four rarely screened documentaries about forgotten, unknown, or overlooked aspects of Chicago’s cultural landscape. 

Since the 1980s, FACETS has released independent, arthouse, and experimental films on VHS and DVD, including now-classics like Dušan Makavejev WR: Mysteries of an Organism (screening in the Milos’s Picks series this May) and Béla Tarr’s Satantango. To celebrate this legacy and independent film productions in Chicago, about Chicago, we present four films from the Real Chicago DVD series released on FACETS Label. 

The series opens with Raul Zaritsky and Linda Williams’s Maxwell Street Blues (1981), a documentary that captures the tail end of the last great era of blues on Chicago’s Maxwell Street, screening from May 6-8, 2022. Followed by Water is Wet (1969-1970) on May 13-15, 2022, which includes four short films originally produced as a children’s TV show, directed by the relatively unknown, but pioneering documentary filmmaker Gordon Weisenborn. Screening May 19-22, 2022 will be three shorts included in Tom Palazzolo’s Chicago (1979-2000), which present Palazzolo’s dark musings on Chicago’s urban landscapes. The series ends with Jill Godmilow’s The Popovich Brothers of South Chicago (1978), a documentary about a small community of steel workers, truck drivers, and teachers on the South Side of Chicago who keep the traditions of their Serbian homeland alive through music.  

Admission to this series is free and the films will be presented on loop from open to close on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays in FACETS’ studio in a gallery setting, allowing audiences to wander in and out of the screenings as they please. 

All films in the series are currently available to purchase at the FACETS Anniversary Celebration 50% off DVD Sale, running May 1-31, 2022. Start shopping.