Some are turned away. Would there have been an inclination to, say, follow this story from one angle if you had only two or three hours to tell it?

“I didn’t want to ignore it,” said James, “but at the same time I wanted to show that Chicago has so much more to it than just that image.”. This footage comes just one day after the world, including numerous Black celebrities, voiced their disgust and outrage over lack of indictments in the killing of Louisville resident Breonna Taylor by police. We see how similar Halloween looks like in mostly white Portage Park on the Northside and integrated but majority Black Hyde Park on the South Side and Pilsen, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood on the lower West Side. But aside from Ken Burns’s documentaries, the docu-series as a form hasn’t been that common until recently. (This seems obvious, but you wouldn’t know it to hear pundits discuss “the Black vote.”) Yet how likely is it that either the South Shore barber or his veteran client would get a warm welcome should they walk into the Bridgeport shop?

PSAs, presented in conjunction with the organization I Am A Voter will also air during the event encouraging viewers to vote. This kind of loose yet elegant juxtaposition pervades City So Real, an essential five-part documentary from the great nonfiction filmmaker Steve James … Even then, before the latest protests, before the latest voter suppression tactics, before Kanye Vision, it was clear that Chicago’s problems were America’s problems, that its strengths were America’s strengths, and that “City So Real” had captured a moment in time that resonates beyond cities and states, to the whole country. In contract, "City So Real" is a panoramic view designed to convey the massiveness of Chicago on a grand scale, and while the backbone of the plot is built around the 2019 mayoral election it's also an experiential tour through an American city whose identity is changing even as many aspects of its identity remain unchanged. ET on Nat Geo. James’ car-ride discussions with Lori Lightfoot and post-press conference footage of Toni Preckwinkle shed the speechifying for innate human interactions. “City So Real” is perceptive and insightful, carefully cut together and impressively encapsulating. "I presume this is going to pass," says another voice in the city council chamber, "because anybody who has $5 billion to throw around will get their way.". Has that changed your thinking about what types of films you want to make? And this refers to the charming parts and the hideous ones. There are sit-down interviews with the mayor and a lengthy trip to the cop-friendly barbershop.

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", That declaration's poetry is beyond compare. There are telling trips to two barbershops: one Black-owned and -operated, the other a haven for ex-cops; man-on-the-street interviews illustrate the disparity of community engagement between neighborhoods; even capturing the first half of a (notorious) Bears game from a South Side bar and the second half on the North Side goes a long way toward grounding “City So Real” in a tangible reality. The presentation will be commercial free. James couldn’t have known when he shot the first four parts of City So Real that coronavirus was on the horizon, but in revisiting several characters from earlier episodes, he captures what happens when a population that’s already struggling gets blindsided by cataclysm. This Article is related to: Television and tagged City So Real, Hulu, Nat Geo, Steve James.

Lawyers cited mistakes on pages that didn’t exist, and signatures were challenged despite the signatory sitting right next to the challenger; not one but two candidates had signatures ruled illegitimate that were given by their own mothers. This isn't entirely off base, and there are corners of this series in which the filmmaker's sweeping ambition to encapsulate as much of Chicago in all its beauty and blight gets the better of him. Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. By signing up you are agreeing to our, Khloe Kardashian Reveals Her Coronavirus Diagnosis. Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst The years-long trial culminated with a prison sentence of six years and nine months, but the officer was not found guilty of official misconduct. You see why it behooves insiders to romanticize this stuff. I’ve seen many of them, and I’ve loved many of them, but in those films you usually are aligned with one candidate. Lori Lightfoot celebrates a preliminary victory as the Chicago Mayoral race comes to a close.

But much of that prosperity has not flowed to the city’s poorer, majority-black neighborhoods, where new jobs have not replaced the flight of industrial manufacturing in the late 20th century. Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Will Help the World Recover From the Bitter Pill of 2020, Why ‘Mank’ and ‘Borat 2’ Are Serious Oscar Contenders in a Very Strange Year, ‘Soul’ Aims for Oscar Glory as Disney Shifts to Streaming, but Not All Films Deserve the Same Release, Introducing ‘Deep Dive’: Damon Lindelof and His Team Go Behind the Scenes of ‘Watchmen’, ‘Succession’: How Editing Helps Every Dinner Scene Come to Life — Deep Dive, Becoming Hooded Justice: The ‘Watchmen’ Craft Team Analyzes the Emotional, Pivotal Scene – Deep Dive, 38 Must-See New Movies to See This Fall Season, The Fate of Movie Theaters Could Hinge on the Outcome of the Election, Zoe Lister-Jones Shook Up Hollywood with Her All-Female Crew, Now She’s Doing It with ‘The Craft: Legacy’. And James acknowledges them. In one of his definitive works, "Chicago: City on the Make," the author likens his love for the place to "loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. More recently, James’s “The Interrupters” (2011) detailed a bold strategy to curb the city’s gun violence, and his 10-part Starz series, “America to Me,” spent a year at a multiracial Oak Park high school that doesn’t always live up to its ideals. Episode 5 was captured over the summer, and James revisits some of his subjects in person as well as via Zoom. All rights reserved. Yeah, we have a really serious problem in Chicago. Getting the word out about voting and the upcoming election has been a staple of 2020. We could start at the Bears’ playoff game at a South Side bar and then finish it in a North Side bar, and those are two very different worlds, although they are all rabid Bears fans. Black celebrities, voiced their disgust and outrage, Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst, 'City So Real' Is Exactly What Everyone Should Be Watching This Weekend. Garry McCarthy, a former CPD superintendent fired by Emanuel for his role in the McDonald cover-up, feels that he—along with cops in general—was unfairly scapegoated. Before Tuesday’s election, the director, producer, editor, and cinematographer behind “Hoop Dreams” and “America to Me” will debut his latest work, “City So Real” — an impossibly prescient look at an American city at a crossroads, just days before America decides which path to take for the next four years. For years, James had wanted to make a documentary about Chicago, a city of neighborhoods that have distinct ethnic and racial identities, sharp class divisions and competing political constituencies. For the city as a whole, there’s neighborhood pride. No matter where we move to or how long we're transplanted in that new place, many of us still defend the city's grand institutions like the Cubs, deep dish pizza and hot dogs dressed with mustard, onions, celery salt, neon green relish, a pickle spear and fresh tomatoes. Like 15 minutes you’re thinking?” And I was like: “Sure. With that very much in mind, James returned to his favorite city to shoot an additional episode covering the latest protests over police brutality as well as the way COVID-19 has reshaped Chicago. But it ain’t going to be easy. When “City So Real” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, it had four parts, covering the mayoral election and a swirl of issues surrounding it, including the police killing of Laquan McDonald and the multibillion dollar Lincoln Yards project, which had become the center of a fight over gentrification. So James and his crew masked up and took to the streets for Part 5, an 80-minute postscript that has never been screened publicly. They, too, believe the “system sucks”, but because “laws are out here to protect these idiots on the street”, one ex-cop says. Each candidate offers a different way into the notorious boondoggle that is Chicago politics. There’s first-hand footage of peaceful protests that turn violent and first-person commentary on the local government’s role in the escalation. His barber, a younger guy with a felony conviction, suggests working within the white power structure makes the man a sellout. You get a good idea of who they are, or at least what motivates them, and better still: Their campaigns are mostly framed by their would-be constituents.

"City So Real," Steve James' documentary on Chicago's 2019 mayoral race, is now the most prescient and meaningful TV about 2020 America. A man who calls himself the Dreadhead Cowboy rides a horse through Black areas urging people to fill out their census forms and just generally spreading joy. Like the men in their respective barbershops, these Chicagoans are simultaneously members of various demographic groups and unique individuals. The only difference is that all the children on the North Side are white, and the Hyde Park kids are Black.

Well, there are a few, really. ", Now that the Hideout is threatened by the 50-acre, multibillion dollar construction called Lincoln Yards which is set to be located directly across the street, we see Tuten and his wife Katie head into a public hearing in the hopes of dissuading the city from approving the permits required to construct it. Putting a sharper point on this notion of several disparate Americas contained in one city James contrasts two barbershop experiences: Sideline Studio in the South Shore Community versus Joe's St. in largely white Bridgeport. This kind of loose yet elegant juxtaposition pervades City So Real, an essential five-part documentary from the great nonfiction filmmaker Steve James … In this sequencing, City So Real traverses the chasms of race, class, age and political engagement from resident to resident, restaurant to restaurant, neighborhood to neighborhood. For one, “City So Real” isn’t repetitive or reductive. 15 minutes. Long before Kanye West tardily disrupted the 2020 presidential election, the pioneering force in American hip-hop put himself smack in the middle of Chicago’s crowded 2019 mayoral race.

Toni Preckwinkle, a career politician who loses to Lightfoot in a runoff after seeing her reputation marred by an association with a corrupt alderman, illustrates the pros and cons of working within a broken system. So would he. That’s been historically true, and I think there’s still a lot of truth to that. It’s all useful preparation for the final chapter. Mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot is one of many Black women running for government office in Chicago and we hear about the corruption that will eventually explode onto the national stage. Most of the best insights into what Chicago needs come from private citizens. But I can’t imagine much of City So Real feeling foreign to anyone who has spent time during the last few years—and especially 2020—in a major American city.



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