The Chicago International Film Festival claims to be the longest running film festival
in North America. Three years before it began, The University of Chicago’s Documentary Film Group put on its own festival.
Category Archives: Movies
Call Me I’m Always Here
The late eighties saw a burst of ads for 1-900 numbers that promised to relieve your feelings of loneliness. But the phone sex business can be traced at least back to the 1970s.
Bag of Chips
In the 1980s, video stores sold eighteen inch statues with oversized heads of celebrities from music, TV and film. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Esco Products of Brooklyn fabricated hundreds of different figures, from Groucho Marx to Louis Armstrong.
Get Up
In 1996 a scene from the film That Old Feeling was shot in the lobby
of the Royal York Hotel. The Empire Room at Chicago’s Palmer House
was a legendary supper club that feature vocal greats from Frank Sinatra
to Peggy Lee.
We Didn’t Quite Catch That
In 1988, Pussy Galore released a tape covering the entire Exile on Main Street. Not long after that, the Minneapolis trio Zuzu’s Petals performed their own cover of a Stones song at the 400 Bar.
Paul Mason Fotsch 