The Here Now Project
The Here Now Project weaves together self-shot video from a single year—no narration, no talking heads—to create an unprecedented visual diary of the impact climate change is already having on ordinary people around the world.
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email siskel/jacobs |
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1 773 271 9500 |
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Louder Than A Bomb
Our first feature documentary, Louder Than a Bomb tells the story of four Chicago high school poetry teams as they prepare to compete in the world’s largest youth slam. Winner of seventeen festival awards, LTAB was hailed as “one of the ten best documentaries of 2011” by Roger Ebert, and received a perfect 100% rating on rottentomatoes.com. The film was an official selection of the Oprah Winfrey Network’s “OWN Documentary Club.
No Small Matter
No Small Matter is the first feature documentary to explore the most overlooked, underestimated, and powerful force for change in America today—early childhood education. Narrated by Alfre Woodard, the film lays out the overwhelming evidence for the importance of the first five years, and reveals how our failure to act on that evidence has created an everyday crisis for American families, and a slow-motion catastrophe for the country.
The Road Up
The Road Up follows four participants in Cara, a Chicago job-training program, as they seek to make the long journey from rock bottom to stable employment. Throughout, they are guided, goaded, and challenged by their impassioned mentor, Mr. Jesse, whose own complicated past drives him to help others find hope in the face of poverty, addiction, homelessness, and trauma.
Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich
A history of photography unlike any other—a century of unforgettable images, filtered through the unmatched eye of Sandro Miller, and the inspired mind of John Malkovich.
102 Minutes That Changed America
102 Minutes That Changed America reconstructs—in real time—the events of 9/11 in New York City, using only sound and video from that morning. One of the most acclaimed documentaries of recent years, 102 Minutes received three Primetime Emmys in 2009, including Outstanding Nonfiction Special, and has now been seen by tens of millions of people in over 150 countries.
9/11 Day
9/11 Day tells the deeply moving and surprisingly hopeful story of how two friends joined forces in the wake of 9/11 to transform America’s darkest hour into its largest annual day of service.
Memorial
A meditation on memory and trauma, Memorial commemorates those who lost their lives in the July 4, 2022 mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, and chronicles the spontaneous emergence of a public memorial in the days that followed.
1916: The Irish Rebellion
On Easter Monday in 1916, a band of rebels gathered in Dublin to proclaim the birth of an independent Irish Republic. The Easter Rising, as it came to be known, only lasted a week, but its reverberations can still be felt today. This three-part documentary series, narrated by Liam Neeson, explores the impact and legacy of that pivotal event.
Grace
A short film about breast cancer, tattoos, and the battle that begins when everyone else thinks the war is already won.
Head On
Head On is an unforgettable look inside an obsessive American subculture: the bone-crushing, blue-collar world of "team demolition derby" in Joliet, Illinois. The show follows the sport's two top teams, Orange Crush and Stranglehold, in the month leading up to the last race of the season—the team demolition derby "National Championship." In the end, it all comes down to one epic showdown, with the dreams of each driver—not to mention their families, their fans, and their crews—hanging in the balance.
Witness: Katrina
Distilling over six hundred hours of video and audio from more than a hundred sources (many of them never before seen on network television), Witness: Katrina reconstructs Hurricane Katrina as it happened, entirely through the eyes of those who experienced it. This two-hour special captures the storm and its aftermath in all its epic human complexity—raw images of fear, grief, and anger, side by side with unforgettable scenes of resilience and even humor. Witness: Katrina received the 2011 News and Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Historical Programming.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
In this short doc, legendary cellist Yo-Yo Ma works with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago on their first annual "Artistic Challenge": performing Beethoven's 6th Symphony in its entirety, without a conductor.
Driehaus Museum Gala 2024
Featuring multi-hyphenate artist and choreographer Brendan Fernandes, this year’s Driehaus Museum gala video highlighted the transformative impact of the newly opened Murphy Auditorium and the incredible backstage work that allows the Museum to put on the best “performance” possible every day, for every visitor.
National Public Housing Museum
Two decades in the making, the National Public Housing Museum is an amazing new museum and cultural hub dedicated to the past, present, and future of public housing in America. This video, produced for the Museum’s inaugural gala luncheon, is designed to connect the individual stories that animate the Museum, the broader history it explores, and the richness of the institution itself.
Unexpected Justice: the Rise of John Paul Stevens
Unexpected Justice: The Rise of John Paul Stevens tells the surprising story of a 1969 Illinois judicial corruption scandal and the investigation that followed, which launched a brilliant but little-known Chicago lawyer named John Paul Stevens on the path to the U.S. Supreme Court.