Errol Mark Morris is an American film director known for documentaries that interrogate the epistemology of their subjects, and the invention of the Interrotron device for his style of filmmaking. In 2003, his documentary film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His film The Thin Blue Line placed fifth on a Sight & Sound poll of the greatest documentaries ever made. Morris is known for making films about unusual subjects; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves the stories of a wild animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist and a naked mole rat specialist.
Out of the Past is a 1947 American film noir directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. The film was adapted by Daniel Mainwaring from his 1946 novel Build My Gallows High, with uncredited revisions by Frank Fenton and James M. Cain.
Faces is a 1968 American drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It stars John Marley, Gena Rowlands, Lynn Carlin, Seymour Cassel, Fred Draper, and Val Avery.
Fredrick "Chairman Fred" Allen Hampton Sr. was an American activist. He came to prominence in his late teens and very early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. A Marxist–Leninist-Maoist, Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying, "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all."
Hoop Dreams is a 1994 American documentary film directed by Steve James, and produced by Frederick Marx, James, and Peter Gilbert, with Kartemquin Films. It follows the story of two African-American high school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, in Chicago and their dream of becoming professional basketball players.
No Way Out is a 1987 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Will Patton, and Sean Young. Howard Duff, George Dzundza, Jason Bernard, Fred Thompson, and Iman appear in supporting roles. The film is based on the 1946 novel The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing, previously filmed as The Big Clock (1948) and Police Python 357 (1976).
Harold Michael Gray was an American writer, screenwriter, cinematographer, film producer and director.
Fred Hampton Jr. is an American political activist, based in Chicago. He is the president and chairman of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee and the Black Panther Party Cubs. He is the only child of Fred Hampton, the Black Panther Party leader assassinated by police in Chicago on December 4, 1969, with his fiancée, now known as Akua Njeri.
Suspect is a 1987 American legal mystery thriller film directed by Peter Yates and starring Cher, Dennis Quaid, and Liam Neeson. Other notable cast members include John Mahoney, Joe Mantegna, Fred Melamed, and Philip Bosco.
Mark Clark was an American activist and member of the Black Panther Party (BPP). He was killed on December 4, 1969, with Fred Hampton, state chairman of the Black Panthers, during a Chicago police predawn raid.
The Untouchables is a 1987 American crime film directed by Brian De Palma, produced by Art Linson, and written by David Mamet. It stars Kevin Costner, Charles Martin Smith, Andy García, Robert De Niro and Sean Connery, in the third collaboration between De Palma and De Niro, following 1968's Greetings and 1970's Hi, Mom!. Set in Chicago in 1930, the film follows Eliot Ness (Costner) as he forms the Untouchables team to bring Al Capone to justice during Prohibition.
The Organization is a 1971 DeLuxe Color American crime thriller film starring Sidney Poitier and directed by Don Medford. It was the last of the trilogy featuring the police detective Virgil Tibbs that had begun with In the Heat of the Night (1967), followed by They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970). In The Organization, Tibbs is called in to hunt down a gang of urban revolutionaries, suspected of a series of crimes. The screenplay was penned by James R. Webb, and the film co-stars Barbara McNair, Gerald S. O'Laughlin, Sheree North and Raul Julia.
Edward Vincent Hanrahan was an American attorney and politician who served as Cook County State's Attorney from 1968 to 1972. Hanrahan had been a prospective successor to Mayor of Chicago Richard J. Daley. His career was effectively ended after Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton and member Mark Clark were assassinated in a raid by police coordinated by his office in 1969.
American Revolution 2 is a 1969 documentary on the 1968 Democratic National Convention and its aftermath. Part of the film focuses on the creation of an alliance between the Young Patriots Organization and local Black Panthers. On its release Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, while The New York Times reviewer Roger Greenspun was more critical. The film was released on DVD in 2007 and received generally positive reviews.
Howard Alk was an American filmmaker based in Chicago, Illinois, and an original co-founder of The Second City theater troupe. In the 1960s he began to work in film with the Chicago Film Group, filming and directing documentaries, completing American Revolution 2 (1969) and The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971). He also collaborated for years with singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, producing films with him through 1981.
Cropsey is a 2009 American documentary film written and directed by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio. The film initially begins as an examination of "Cropsey", a boogeyman-like figure from New York City urban legend, before segueing into the story of Andre Rand, a convicted child kidnapper from Staten Island whose known or suspected crimes in the 1970s and '80s may have inspired or been blamed on Cropsey.
RogerEbert.com is an American film review website that archives reviews written by film critic Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times and also shares other critics' reviews and essays. The website, underwritten by the Chicago Sun-Times, was launched in 2002. Ebert handpicked writers from around the world to contribute to the website. After Ebert died in 2013, the website was relaunched under Ebert Digital, a partnership founded between Ebert, his wife Chaz, and friend Josh Golden.
The Film Group was a Chicago commercial film production company that made television commercials and political documentaries in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Filmmakers associated with the Film Group include Mike Gray, William Cottle, Howard Alk, Mike Shea, and Chuck Olin. The majority of their films reside at Chicago Film Archives within The Film Group Collection and Chuck Olin Collection.
Akua Njeri is an American writer, activist and former member of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Njeri was present at the December 4, 1969, police raid in which her fiancé, Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark were killed at the Chicago apartment she and Hampton shared. She is the mother of their son Fred Hampton Jr., born after his father's assassination.
William O'Neal was an American FBI informant in Chicago, Illinois, where he infiltrated the local Black Panther Party (BPP). He is known for being the catalyst for the 1969 police/FBI assassination of Fred Hampton, head of the Illinois BPP.
