Podcast

CHICAGO – One more time, virtual and online. YippieFest 2021 will air on Twitch TV and through their website on Sunday, September 26th (7pm start). The freewheeling festival is usually a live theater and music event every August, but with the pandemic still lingering the show must go on, virtual and online. For more info, click YippieFest.com.

CHICAGO – Coming out as one’s true self is a benefit of our evolving social order. In “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie,” which will stream on Amazon Prime Video on September 17th, the title character is an intuitive teenage drag queen, and fights the last vestiges of prejudice against his destiny. Oh yes, and it’s a musical.

CHICAGO – When we last checked in with actor and filmmaker Ashton Swinford, she had just completed her hilarious web series ”Miss Information”. She is back with a new short film, equally funny, in the white privilege satire “Basic Witches.”

CHICAGO – One of the more fun, crazy and comic-book-like superhero films opening this week (August 6th) is “The Suicide Squad.” A band of imprisoned misfit rogues in the DC comics universe are sent on a suicide mission in South America, and if they accomplish the assignment they’ll be set free. David Dastmalchian portrays one of the rogues, the freakish Polka-Dot Man.

CHICAGO – It’s time again for live theater in Chicago, and The Factory Theater – in anticipation of their 2021-22 Season – is launching “Quiet Please! It’s A Silent Auction,” an online silent auction through the month of August (the 1st-31st). An amazing array of goods and services are available for bidding, and can be accessed by clicking here.

CHICAGO – The premiere of a documentary feature, “(C)answers: The Answer to Cancer” will take place this Saturday, July 31st, 2021, at the Gene Siskel Film Center and through online virtual cinema. Directed by Breht Gardner, the film takes us inside one young man’s emotional cancer battle and exposes the provocative truth about cannabis prohibition, where race, politics and the business of medicine powerfully intersect. For more info and tickets, click here.

CHICAGO – The Midwest Film Festival is celebrating the season with their upcoming “Summer Bash & Comedy Screening” on July 28th, 2021 (7pm), at the Chi-Town Drive In. The event will feature a meet-and-greet and an evening of funny-bone short films, including “Open House,” a directorial debut by Mikaela McParlan. For more info, tickets and the film line-up, click here.

CHICAGO – Local filmmaker Michael Glover Smith broke through the after-the-pandemic ceiling with his recently completed fourth feature film, “Relative.” The ten day production, shot primarily in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, follows the adventures of a family negotiating the youngest son’s graduation gathering.

CHICAGO – At the recent Doc 10 screening of “Pray Away,” a new documentary by Kristine Stolakis, Illinois State Representative Kelly Cassidy and Evanston (Illinois) Mayor Daniel Biss made introductory remarks regarding their role in establishing laws against “Conversion Therapy” … the industry that promises to “cure” gay or trans orientation.

CHICAGO – It’s Pride Week, ya all, part of Pride Month, culminating in the upcoming Pride Weekend … the more the Pride the better. 2021 marks the 50th Anniversary of the first official Gay Pride Parade in Chicago – the first “march” took place a year earlier in 1970, honoring the first anniversary of the Stonewall Inn Uprising.