Amidst the grim offerings of the Chicago International Film Festival, I found myself comforted by a trio of documentaries, which enchant in their reminder that the hope of renewal and transformation is never too far away. A son trying to connect with his mother amid her late-stage dementia, the construction of an iconic Chicago monument, former Pizza Hut restaurants being repurposed into places where those from marginalized identities can gather and find solace – these are the narrative entryways to this uplifting proclamation. That’s not to say these documentaries don’t canvass in serious or heavy subject matters. While not shying away from depicting hardships, they celebrate how hope doesn’t have to be shallow or naïve but can be just as multidimensional as grief.
Director Rana Segal’s “The Light of Truth: Richard Hunt’s Monument to Ida B. Wells” is an eye-opening exercise highlighting the symbiotic relationship between art and activism. It follows the late sculptor Richard Hunt as he built the “Light of Truth” monument to honor activist and suffragist Ida B. Wells. The 35-foot-high monument stands at present in the Bronzeville neighborhood. As Segal documents Hunt’s construction process and sheds light on how he became interested in art and sculpting, she draws interesting parallels between his artistry and Wells’ activism.
It would have been easy for a documentary like this to force a connection between the two artists when there may have been surface-level similarities, but “The Light of Truth” avoids this by showing how inherently, Wells and Hunt were fighting the same battle for racial justice, equality, and dignity just through separate mediums. In one sequence, Segal explores how Hunt’s work took a distinct turn after he saw Emmet Till’s mutilated body. His art became much more politically charged as he explored the particulars of Black suffering through the lens of abstraction. In this way, Hunt was an artist turned activist. Segal also cleverly shows the inverse by focusing on how Wells’ writing and authorship was its form of artistry. By putting Hunt and Wells in conversation with each other, though they lived in different times, Segal and her team push back against the idea that justice work is ever done in isolation; a communal connection bonds across time and space.
Vince Singelton, Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago and who acted as the film’s cinematographer, also elevates the film in how he presents the monument being erected. Incorporating a mix of drone shots and close-ups makes the monument feel both larger than life and accessibly intimate; it speaks to the ways Wells and Hunt, for all of their groundbreaking work, were also people at the end of the day who didn’t seek a platform but rather wanted to care for the communities they found themselves in.
A homegrown tale from director Kyle Henry, who is also an associate professor at Northwestern, “Time Passages” is a disarmingly devastating and sweet documentary about what it means to be honest and honoring when telling stories about our family. It serves as a time capsule for Henry as he documents his relationship with his elderly mother, Elaine, who, at the height of his filming, is wrestling with dementia. This takes place at the height of lockdown, so much of the conversation footage consists of Henry’s video calls with Elaine.
Some of my favorite documentaries experiment with form in ways that do not come at the expense of its message. Henry’s storytelling in “Time Passages” is experimental, incorporating the use of nonconventional documentary techniques (in one sequence, he has a conversation with himself where he plays his mother, wig and all; in another, he reenacts an argument his parents had but uses figurine models and voiceover). It’s a feature, not a bug, though, as his ever-fluid storytelling speaks to the weird way time passed during the height of lockdown and how disembodied our interactions were. This is a specific story to him and his mother, but what’s moving is how he uses the particularities of his own experience to make universal observations on the pain of documenting deterioration.
Henry has a way of nonchalantly asking the most profound questions, ones that stick to your ribs long after the film’s action has moved past his inquiry (“Are all of these stories important to remember?” he muses in one scene). By its end, “Time Passages” is a film that celebrates life in its multifaceted complexity, reminding us that we can be present with someone their whole life and still never really know them. There’s sadness here but also beauty because that simply means there’s a richness of personality and identity to people that eclipses our ability to fully grasp.
I didn’t expect to get emotional watching a documentary about the past, present, and future of Pizza Hut. Still, director Matthew Salleh’s “Slice of Life: The American Dream. In Former Pizza Huts.” snuck up on me due to the personal approach it took for its sweeping story. While Pizza Hut may still be in business (there are at least thirteen within the city limits of Chicago), many of them have had to close their doors in recent years. Salleh chronicles how a handful of small business owners have remade these closed-down Pizza Hut buildings with their distinct trapezoidal windows and unique roof structure in their image. From an LGBTQ+-friendly church in Florida to a cannabis dispensary in Colorado, the film serves as an anthology of resilience and renewal of communities who can find new homes and a place to gather. The film celebrates people who no longer have to be alone.
The fun of Salleh’s film is meeting the different personalities who have repurposed the buildings. It’s interesting to see the ways they’ve taken the same layout but done something unique based on their business needs; the abovementioned church transformed the trapezoidal windows into stained glass ones while Jim Hillaker, owner of the Pizza-Hut-turned-cannibis-store, quips, “Now we have our own salad bar with our own type of lettuce.” Salleh also weaves in history about Pizza Hut’s formation as well as how the chain is unique amongst other fast food restaurants in the ways it employs inventive marketing strategies.
It’s fitting that, even when some franchises close, their refurbishing embodies the metamorphic spirit of Pizza Hut. “When things continue to transform, beauty can come from it,” says Susan Charron, a deacon of the church featured. It reminded me of a verse in the Bible where God orders God’s people to “beat their swords into plowshares,” signaling how something used for harmful means can be repurposed into something life-giving. “Pizza Huts into Cannabis dispensaries” may not have quite the same ring, but the sentiment applies there too.