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BLUES SEASON MAXWELL STREET FILM SERIES.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Claudia Cassidy Theater, Chicago Cultural Center
78 E. Washington St., Admission is free.
The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in conjunction with the Maxwell Street Foundation and the Mayor's Office of Special Events presents the Blues Season Maxwell Street Film Series in anticipation of the 25th annual Chicago Blues Festival in June, from 1-5 pm on Saturday, May 24, 2008, in the Chicago Cultural Center's Claudia Cassidy Theater, 78 E. Washington St. Admission is free.
The films to be shown are: And This Is Free, introduced by filmmaker Gordon Quinn; At Maxwell Street, introduced by filmmaker Tom Palazzolo and friends; The Church on Maxwell Street, introduced by filmmaker Marvin Newman; and Maxwell Street Blues, introduced by filmmaker Raul Zaritsky. The film series will conclude with closing comments from the Maxwell Street Foundation. (Scroll down for schedule.)
This special collection of films explores the former open-air market on Maxwell Street and its connection to the blues and gospel music that occurred there. Migrants to Chicago in the late 1920s found that the Maxwell Street Market served as a ready-made audience for their acoustic sound. The Chicago form of Blues grew out of a mixing of these rural street musicians from the south with urban street musicians in Chicago who amplified their instruments by plugging into the electricity of shops along the street. This electrified Chicago Blues became the root of rock'n'roll, and has had international influence on the music industry as well as music history.
Filmmaker Profiles:
Gordon Quinn. Gordon Quinn has produced and directed over thirty documentaries over the past forty years and is President and founding member of Kartemquin Films, which was the 2007 recipient of the MacArthur award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Quinn makes cinéma vérité films that investigate and critique society by documenting the unfolding lives of real people. In 1963, he worked, along with Second City founder Howard Alk, on Mike Shea's film And This Is Free that documents a classic episode of Maxwell Street's history as a place for pitchmen, vendors, merchants, and street musicians.
Tom Palazollo. At Maxwell Street was filmed by the quintessential Chicago filmmaker, Tom Palazollo, who formerly taught in the Film Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1983, he took his students to film at Maxwell Street that he then incorporated into this larger production that reflects the spontaneous characters and unique merchandise found at the Maxwell Street Market. Chicago has been the subject of Palazollo's work since the early 1960s, and he has been involved in numerous gallery shows, including most recently at the Stephen Daiter Gallery in "The Last Great Maxwell Street Picture Show."
Marvin Newman. Marvin Newman is a well-known photo journalist who has won national contests in photography and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. He has been a major contributor to Sports Illustrated since its inception, as well as to Life, Look, Newsweek, and Smithsonian magazines. Newman was drawn to the Maxwell Street Market for its visual vibrancy and excitement. The gospel music he filmed with Yasuhiro Ishimoto at the outdoor market for The Church on Maxwell Street reflects the rural roots of these musicians whose families migrated to Chicago from the south.
Raul Zaritsky. Raul Zaritsky currently works in the area of emerging visual technologies for education. He has served as a cognitive scientist, instructional designer, museum curator, educator, filmmaker and media artist. He has authored numerous publications and directed many films, including Maxwell Street Blues, which covers a fifty-year span of Blues musicians who performed at the Maxwell Street Market, and features interviews with the street musicians who performed there.
Schedule:
1:00PM-1:10PM, Introduction by Gordon Quinn, filmmaker
1:10PM-2:00PM, And This Is Free by Mike Shea, Howard Alk, and Gordon Quinn (1963, 48 min.)
2:15PM-2:25PM, Introduction by Tom Palazollo, filmmaker
2:25PM-3:00PM, At Maxwell Street by Tom Palazollo and Friends (1983, 36 min.)
3:15PM-3:25PM, Introduction by Marvin Newman, filmmaker
3:25PM-3:32PM, The Church on Maxwell Street by Marvin Newman and Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1951, 7 min.)
3:45PM-3:55PM, Introduction by Raul Zaritsky, filmmaker
3:55PM-4:51PM, Maxwell Street Blues by Linda Williams and Raul Zaritsky (1980, 56 minutes)
4:50PM-5:00PM Maxwell Street Foundation - concluding comments
The Maxwell Street Foundation
The Maxwell Street Foundation preserves and presents the history of the Maxwell Street neighborhood as a Chicago portal for immigrants, migrants, and entrepreneurs through lecture programs, books, films, and other projects. The Foundation supports the continuance of the New Maxwell Street Market, and the preservation of the remaining built environment in the original neighborhood.
Travel expenses for out-of-town film presenters are generously provided, in part, by Lewis and Anne Neri Kostiner.
For more information on the Maxwell Street Foundation, visit maxwellstreet.org.
The Chicago Cultural Center:
Public programs at the Chicago Cultural Center are presented by the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and are partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
For more information on this program and other film programs presented by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, please call 312-744-6630 or visit www.chicagoculturalcenter.org
25TH ANNUAL CHICAGO BLUES FESTIVAL.
Thursday, June 5, 2008, thru Sunday, June 8, 2008
Grant Park, Admission is free.
Go to www.chicagobluesfestival.us for more information.
Come visit the Maxwell Street Foundation booth at the Chicago Blues Festival, see the historic Blues Bus, the actual bus that was a fixture at the old market, and get a free Maxwell Street Blues poster.
Look for us in the southeast corner of the festival grounds, near Buckingham Fountain.
"THE MAXWELL STREET MARKET."
Every Sunday, 7:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Canal Street, North and South of Roosevelt Road
No, it's not the same, but what is? The Maxwell Street Market is still a lot of fun. There are many merchants selling a wide variety of merchandise. Some of it is used, of the flea market variety, but some is new and unique. Depending on the season, there is fresh produce and flowers. There are food stands and, sometimes, music. Many of the merchants used to sell proudly at the old location and do whatever they can to retain that heritage at the new site. Although there is no actual Maxwell Street intersection at Canal, someone usually tries to put up a sign to show where Maxwell would have crossed Canal Street in the old days (it's approximately on a line with the front of the big grocery store there).
Although it is not the same as the old Market, the basic principle of freewheeling and raucous entry-level entrepreneurship is alive and well. The Maxwell Street Market is operated by the City of Chicago Department of Consumer Services (DCS). Click here to go to their web site.
The Maxwell Street Market will move from its present Canal Street location to Desplaines Street and Roosevelt Road in September of 2007, according to DCS.
The new location will follow Desplaines Street north from Roosevelt, across Taylor, spreading east and west onto Polk, and continuing north on Desplaines, almost but not quite to Harrison. DCS is calling the new location "a permanent home."
MAXWELL STREET COLLECTION
Photography Portfolio (Fundraising Project)
The Maxwell Street Collection is a portfolio of limited edition photographs by eleven Chicago photographers. All proceeds from the Maxwell Street Collection benefit the Maxwell Street Foundation, a not-for-profit organization preserving the legacy of Chicago's legendary Maxwell Street.
The photographers are: Tom Arndt, Patty Carroll, Ron Gordon, James Iska, Jack Jaffe, Kenneth Josephson, Nathan Lerner, Tom Palazzolo, Marc PoKempner, Bob Thall, and Jay Wolke.
The Maxwell Street Collection portfolio has been produced in an edition of seventy-one copies, of which sixty are for sale. Eleven have been distributed to the contributing photographers.
The black and white enlargements, by the Ron Gordon studio, were printed on 11" x 14" Ilford Multigrade IV FB or Ilford Multigrade FB Warmtone papers. They were developed in ILFORD Bromophen developer and toned in Selenium per museum standards.
For further information about the Maxwell Street Collection please contact:
Ed Hirschland
312-201-1111
hirschland@aol.com
Public Screenings of Shuli Eshel's Documentary
MAXWELL STREET: A Living Memory
"Maxwell Street: A Living Memory" is a 30-minute documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Shuli Eshel about the Jewish experience on Maxwell Street. The film captures the essence of the Maxwell Street Market through memories of children and grandchildren of the Eastern European Jewish immigrants who built it. Includes period film and photographs, some never before seen. It was produced in association with the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition (former name of the Maxwell Street Foundation). Click here for information about ordering a copy on VHS or DVD.
Jewish Maxwell Street Stories by Shuli Eshel and Roger Schatz (2004) is a collection of personal recollections from residents of the historic Maxwell Street neighborhood during its Jewish heyday. Eshel and Schatz collected these stories from former Jewish residents of the Maxwell Street neighborhood after Ms. Eshel directed and produced the highly-praised documentary, "Maxwell Street: A Living Memory, the Jewish Experience in Chicago." This book is an anthology, offering more details of stories from the documentary as well as many new stories collected from the hundreds of people who offered them after seeing the documentary. The book also includes vintage images of the century-old businesses and homes in the Maxwell Street neighborhood that promised a new beginning for Jewish immigrants early in the 20th century. Trade paperback, 128 pages, Arcadia Publishing, May 2004. (ISBN 0-7385-3240-1)
Click here to order a copy through the Maxwell Street Foundation. (Sales benefit the Foundation.)
Click here to order a copy through Amazon.com.
To order an autographed copy, contact the authors at 773-868-4140 or by e-mail at eshelred@aol.com, or visit the Cavalcade Communications Group website.
This book of photographs of the historic Maxwell Street Neighborhood was compiled by Grove and Kamedulski, who are board members of the Maxwell Street Foundation (formerly known as the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition). It was produced in asssociation with the Chicago Historical Society. 200 photos, 128 pages, soft cover. $19.99. Click here for ordering information. You can also find it at many Chicago-area bookstores.
Co-authors Laura Kamedulski (left) and Lori Grove (right)
sign
books at Barnes and Noble at Webster Place in Chicago,
February 8,
2003. Photographer: Linda Hempfling (Laura's mother).
"And This Was Free" is a lively street theatre performance that recreates the spirit of Chicago's original Maxwell Street Market and neighborhood; the place where immigrants from Eastern Europe, African American migrants, and Mexicans settled in search of a better life. Spanning almost a century, the Maxwell Street Market emerged from a 19th century immigrant neighborhood that served as the port of entry for virtually every ethnic group that composed 20th century Chicago. In the vicinity of Hull-House, the densely packed community produced entrepreneurs and street entertainers who used the market as a platform for economic enterprise, cross-cultural expression, and social exchange. Based on real-life characters from Ira Berkow's 1977 book "Maxwell Street, Survival in a Bazaar," the 30-minute presentation is a series of vignettes about the merchants, vendors, shoppers, Blues musicians, and residents of Maxwell Street and its market, where '...the only color that mattered was green.' (Produced by the Maxwell Street Foundation; original script by Idris Goodwin and production directed by Kimberly Baker.)
For information about how to book a performance of "And This Was Free" for your group or event, email us at info@maxwellstreet.org or write to Maxwell Street Foundation, P.O. Box 6435, Evanston, IL 60204
Chicago has been home to hundreds of synagogues over the years. But for many, their role in the story of Jewish Chicago is in danger of being lost. Maxwell Street Foundation director Robert Packer has been trying to do something about that.This is the result of his efforts, 282 pages of photographs of current and former houses of worship in the original Jewish neighborhoods of Chicago.
As a city building inspector, Packer drove by Chicago’s defunct synagogues hundreds of times without ever knowing they existed. In some, the only remnant of Judaism is the Hebrew letters fading in the old stones or the Hebrew date etched into the cornerstones. It was not until he researched the history of his wife’s family in Chicago that Packer realized how quickly this Jewish history was disappearing. He went to the site of his wife’s former shul, Congregation Beth Itzchok in Albany Park, and found nothing at the address but a park. "There wasn’t even a plaque saying that for 75 years there was a magnificent shul here," says Packer.
Packer's discoveries became an obsession as he began to collect photographs and data on these forgotten synagogues.
Click here to visit the "Forgotten Synagogues" web site.
Click here to order a copy through Amazon.com.
Public Screenings of Mike Shea's
1964 Maxwell Street Documentary
AND THIS IS FREE
"And This Is Free" is a slice-of-life look at Chicago's Maxwell Street Market. Filmed on several Sundays during the summer of 1964, it was directed by Mike Shea with music consulting by Mike Bloomfield. Includes performance footage of Robert Nighthawk, Jim Brewer and Arvela Gray.
Rights to the film "And This Is Free" are held by Studio IT, which also released a terrific CD set of music from the film. The film was released on VHS some years ago but is currently unavailable. The CD set is also out-of-print. Go to the Studio IT Web Site for more information.
Near West Side Stories: Struggles for Community in Chicago's Maxwell Street Neighborhood by Carolyn Eastwood (2002) is a history of the Maxwell Street neighborhood as told by four residents who were active in the struggle to save it. Eastwood's introduction provides a very clear explanation of the conflict that took place between three powerful institutions (the City of Chicago, the University of Illinois and the Archdiocese of Chicago) and ordinary people fighting to save their community. The four in-depth first person accounts are similarly insightful. The four interview subjects were chosen to represent the four major ethnic groups that called the neighborhood home; Jews, African-Americans, Italians and Hispanics. Paperback. 355 pages. Click here to order a copy through Amazon.com.
Maxwell Street is important as the primary immigrant gateway neighborhood in Chicago for more than 150 years and home of the world renowned Maxwell Street Market. From approximately 1880 to 1920, it was a neighborhood of poor Jews from Eastern Europe and as such it is central to the history of Chicago's Jewish community. Maxwell Street was also the birthplace of Chicago blues.
For more extensive history, see:
"Maxwell
Street, Still Hanging On."
"The
Maxwell Street Beat."
"Requiem for Maxwell Street."
The Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition's
National Register nomination application, section 8.
Maxwell Street, a world-famous landmark, was almost completely destroyed by a greedy combine of developers and public officials, fronted by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The university was aggressively insensitive to the culture and history of the neighborhood, and initially tried to obliterate all memory of it.
Most of the old buildings in the Maxwell Street neighborhood are gone, their unique fixtures discarded, their bricks bundled for resale as vintage masonry.
In 1994, the Maxwell Street Market was closed by the City of Chicago and transplanted to a new site one-half mile to the east, on Canal Street. The New Maxwell Street Market still operates there every Sunday morning between 8:00 AM and 2:00 PM. It is still a lot of fun. You should go.
In 2000, the City of Chicago imposed a compromise plan on UIC and its developers, and they executed an intergovernmental agreement. They agreed to save 8 buildings and 13 facades. The buildings are primarily on the east side of Halsted Street both north and south of Maxwell Street. The facades were re-erected onto new buildings, including a parking garage, on the block of Maxwell Street between Halsted and Union. Only a couple of facades were re-erected in their original locations. The rest were taken from elsewhere in the neighborhood.
In 2004, the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition became the Maxwell Street Foundation. We remain committed to monitoring UIC and City compliance with their intergovernmental agreement, supporting the historic businesses that wish to remain in the neighborhood, supporting neighborhood institutions such as St. Francis of Assisi parish, supporting the new market, and preserving the memory and history of Maxwell Street through archival and educational activities.
Volunteers and donations are needed to help us continue this work.
Current projects include:
Despite the massive destruction, everything in the Maxwell Street neighborhood is not gone. With your help, the last remnants of the authentic, historic Maxwell Street can be preserved and protected as an asset for the new neighborhood, and for all of Chicago. Your voice can help make that happen.
Here are some examples of what still can be done:
Who is the Maxwell Street Foundation?
See the News Update page for the latest information.
There are several ways you can help the Maxwell Street Foundation continue its important work. First, you can buy something at the "Save Maxwell Street" Store, like a book or video. Proceeds help support the work of the Maxwell Street Foundation.
You can make a donation. The Maxwell Street Foundation is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and donations are tax deductible. Send your check to: Maxwell Street Foundation, P.O. Box 6435, Evanston, IL 60204.
You can volunteer to help the Foundation. We are a community-based, grass roots organization, which means we are just a bunch of regular folks who believe strongly in this and who invest our time and energy to preserve the legacy of Maxwell Street for future generations. To volunteer, contact us at info@maxwellstreet.org.
Another important way to help is to let UIC and the government know you support Maxwell Street and the preservation of its heritage.
To express your support for Maxwell Street and its heritage, contact University of Illinois President White, UIC Chancellor Manning, Mayor Daley, and Governor Blagojevich, to let them know you care about the fate of Maxwell Street. (Send copies of your letters to the Maxwell Street Foundation.)
E-mail to:
B. Joseph White, President
University of Illinois
Sylvia Manning, Chancellor
University of Illinois at Chicago
Richard M. Daley, Mayor
City of Chicago
Governor Rod Blagojevich
State of Illinois
When you write:
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