Hyde Park stars in its own film festival – and you can support local news while you watch

HYDE PARK – A film festival in support of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Newspaper will show next week how the community’s rich culture has been reflected in movies and TV shows.

Hyde Park On Screen will paste scenes from many films featuring the neighborhood, from public television and Vic Mensa Music Videos Hollywood movies and home movies.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Experimental Station Outer Yard, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Screenings start at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $ 10 via Eventbrite, within the limit of four per customer. Profits support the Hyde Park Herald.

A chat with the audience will follow the festival, providing residents with a way to “talk about any memories the films may have aroused in them, or thoughts. [the festival] could have stirred up the neighborhood, ”said Morley Musick, editor of the film festival and reporter for the Herald.

“Part of the purpose of the film festival, in bringing together so much disparate material, is to ask what makes this neighborhood unique,” ​​Musick said.

The majority of the films selected were suggested by members of the Hyde Park Classics Facebook group, Musick said. Neighbors shared community links with movies dating from the 1950s through to last year’s “Chicago 7 Trial”.

Among their acquaintances, University of Chicago graduate Tamar Simon Hoffs co-wrote and produced “Stony island, a 1978 story about booming musicians whose success allowed the fictional group to start playing shows in real life.

Hoffs’ father is Congregation Rodfei Zedek Rabbi Ralph Simon, who served as chairman of Hyde Park and the Kenwood Interfaith Council.

The 1959 test film “The cry of jazz”, Archived at the Library of Congress, has made waves for its black empowerment themes. At the start of the film, a character maintains that black people were “the only [ones] with the musical and human history necessary to create jazz.

According to University of Chicago Magazine. They are mixed with shots from South Side life and performances by the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Hyde Park “has a rich jazz history that intersects with its racial history, and which influenced the films made there,” Musick said.

If there is enough interest in Hyde Park On Screen, the Herald will hope to do another screening as it strives to become a “community anchor” and social hub in addition to a newspaper, Musick said. Participants can sign up for a waiting list through Eventbrite be alerted of upcoming screenings.

“I’m personally curious about what role neighborhood newspapers can play in helping to be one of the institutions that kind of put neighborhoods back together,” Musick said. “I envision that kind of experience in this role.”

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