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CIFF 2024: Light of Truth: Richard Hunt Memorial to Ida B. Wells, Flows of Time, Slices of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizzerias | Festivals and awards

CIFF 2024: Light of Truth: Richard Hunt Memorial to Ida B. Wells, Flows of Time, Slices of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizzerias | Festivals and awards

Amid the bleak offerings of the Chicago International Film Festival, I took comfort in three documentaries that captivate with reminders that hope for renewal and transformation is never too far away. A son trying to connect with his mother in the late stages of dementia, the construction of an iconic monument in Chicago, the transformation of former Pizza Hut restaurants into places where people with marginalized identities can gather and find comfort – these are the narrative entrances to this uplifting preaching. This doesn’t mean that these documentaries don’t deal with serious and difficult topics. They are not afraid to present difficulties, they celebrate the fact that hope does not have to be shallow and naive, but can be as multidimensional as sadness.

Director Rana Segal “The Light of Truth: Richard Hunt’s Memorial to Ida B. Wells” is an eye-opening exercise highlighting the symbiotic relationship between art and activism. The film shows the late sculptor Richard Hunt building the “Light of Truth” monument in honor of activist and suffragist Ida B. Wells. The 35-foot-tall monument currently stands in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Segal, in documenting Hunt’s construction process and shedding light on his interest in art and sculpture, notes interesting parallels between his craftsmanship and Wells’s activism.

For a documentary like this, it would be easy to force a connection between two artists when there could have been similarities on a superficial level, but “The Light of Truth” avoids this by showing how, by nature, Wells and Hunt were fighting the same battle for racial justice, equality and dignity just for through separate media. In one sequence, Segal explores how Hunt’s work took a distinct turn after he saw Emmet Till’s mutilated body. His art became much more politically charged as he explored the details of black suffering through the prism of abstraction. In this way, Hunt became an artist-turned-activist. Segal also cleverly shows the reverse, focusing on how Wells’ writing and authorship was his form of artistry. By bringing Hunt and Wells into conversation even though they lived in different times, Segal and her team counter the notion that justice is always done in isolation; a common connection connects time and space.

Vince Singleton, an assistant professor in the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago who was the film’s cinematographer, also elevates the film by depicting the monument being erected. A combination of drone shots and close-ups make the monument appear both larger and approachably intimate; this shows that Wells and Hunt, for all their groundbreaking work, were ultimately also people who were not looking for a platform, but rather wanted to care for the communities in which they found themselves.

A personal story from director Kyle Henry, who is also an associate professor at Northwestern, “The Changes of Time” is a disarmingly devastating and sweet documentary about what it means to be honest and honorable when telling the stories of our family. It serves as a time capsule for Henry as he documents his relationship with his elderly mother, Elaine, who struggles with dementia at the height of filming. This is at the height of lockdown, so most of the call recordings consist of Henry’s video calls to Elaine.

Some of my favorite documentaries experiment with form, not at the expense of the message. Henry’s story in “Time Passes” is experimental, using unconventional documentary techniques (in one sequence he has a conversation with himself, in which he plays the role of his mother, wig and all; in another he recreates his parents’ quarrel, but uses action figure models and a voice-over). . This is a feature, not a bug, however, as its ever-fluid narrative speaks to the strange time that has passed during the height of isolation and how disembodied our interactions have been. It’s a specific story for him and his mother, but what’s moving is how he uses the details of his own experience to make universal observations about the pain of documenting deterioration.

Henry tends to ask the deepest questions in a nonchalant way that haunts him long after the film has passed beyond his inquiries (“Are all these stories worth remembering?” he wonders in one scene). By the end, Time Flows is a film that celebrates life in its multifaceted complexity, reminding us that we can be with someone our entire lives and never really know them. There is sadness here, but also beauty, because it simply means that people have a richness of personality and identity that eclipses our ability to fully understand.

I didn’t expect to get excited watching a documentary about the past, present and future of Pizza Hut. Still, director Matthew Salleh “Slice of Life: The American Dream. In old pizzerias.” it snuck up on me because of its personal approach to its extensive story. Although Pizza Hut may still be operating (there If at least thirteen within Chicago’s borders), many of them have had to close their doors in recent years. Salleh describes how a handful of small business owners rebuilt the shuttered Pizza Hut buildings, adding distinctive trapezoidal windows and a unique roof structure in their own image. From an LGBTQ+-friendly church in Florida to a cannabis dispensary in Colorado, the film is an anthology of the resilience and renewal of communities that can find new homes and gathering places. The film is a tribute to people who no longer have to be alone.

The fun of Salleh’s film is the meeting of different personalities who changed the purpose of the buildings. It’s interesting to see how they took the same layout but created something unique based on their business needs; the church in question transformed its trapezoidal windows into stained glass, and Jim Hillaker, owner of the marijuana-converted Pizza-Hut, jokes, “Now we have our own salad bar with our own kind of lettuce.” Salleh also weaves in the story of Pizza Hut’s founding and how the chain stands out from other fast food restaurants in terms of using innovative marketing strategies.

It’s good that even after some franchises have closed, their renovations embody the metamorphic spirit of Pizza Hut. “When things change, beauty can come out of it,” says Susan Charron, a deacon at the designated church. This reminded me of the verse in the Bible where God commands God’s people to “beat their swords into plowshares,” which signals that something used for harmful purposes can be repurposed into something life-giving. “Pizza Huts to cannabis dispensaries” may not have the same ring, but the sentiment applies there too.