Images carry more weight than ever these days, and their viral proliferation can crowd out other realities. A relentless news cycle of taped-off crime scenes, memorial shrines, and survivors mourning gun victims can, by sheer accretion, become the media shorthand for a community at risk. Chicago’s south and west sides have been plagued by this as high murder rates have come to define their neighborhoods to outsiders. But this year’s 24th annual Black Harvest Film Festival, which runs through August at Gene Siskel Film Center, includes three Chicago-based documentaries that buck the media narrative, focusing on vibrant, determined, civic-minded personalities.
Chi-Town (82 min.) follows the thoughtful, resolute, and charming young basketball hopeful Keifer Sykes from his last year in high school to his four stellar years as a point guard at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay to his postgraduate pursuit of a professional basketball career. Nick Budabin, a show runner at Vice Media, was in Chicago in 2011, producing a documentary about Oprah Winfrey, when he met Sykes, then a senior varsity player for John Marshall Metropolitan High School in East Garfield Park. Budabin decided he’d found an ideal documentary subject, whereas Sykes was enthusiastic at the idea of emulating Arthur Agee, one of the protagonists of Steve James’s Hoop Dreams (1994), who had also played for Marshall.
Chi-Town ★★★ Directed by Nick Budabin. 82 min. Budabin attends the screenings. Fri 8/10, 8:30 PM, and Mon 8/13, 8 PM.
The G Force ★★ Directed by Pamela Sherrod Anderson. 58 min. Anderson attends the screenings. Sun 8/12, 3 PM, and Tue 8/14, 6 PM.
BLACK HARVEST FILM FESTIVAL. Sat 8/4-Thu 8/30. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11, festival passes $55 (excluding opening and closing nights).
