Amid the Chicago International Film Festival’s bleak offerings, I found myself comforted by a trio of documentaries, which enchant as a reminder that hope for 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 landmark, former Pizza Hut restaurants transformed into places where people from marginalized identities can gather and finding comfort – these are the narrative gateways to this elevation. proclamation. This is not to say that these documentaries don’t tackle serious or heavy topics. While not shying away from depicting hardship, they celebrate the fact that hope need not be superficial or naive, but can be just as multidimensional as grief.

Director Rana Segal “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 in honor of activist and suffragist Ida B. Wells. The 35-foot-tall monument currently stands in the Bronzeville neighborhood. As Segal documents Hunt’s building process and sheds light on how he became interested in art and sculpture, she draws interesting parallels between his artistic talent and Wells’ activism.

It would have been easy for a documentary like this to force a connection between the two artists when there might have been superficial similarities, but “The Light of Truth” avoids that by showing how Wells and Hunt inherently led the way. same battle. for racial justice, equality and dignity simply through distinct means. In one sequence, Segal explores how Hunt’s work took a distinct turn after seeing the mutilated body of Emmet Till. His art became much more politically charged as he explored the particularities of black suffering through the lens of abstraction. In this sense, Hunt was an artist turned activist. Segal also cleverly shows the opposite by focusing on how Wells’s writing and authorship constituted his art form. By putting Hunt and Wells in conversation, even though they lived in different eras, Segal and his team push back against the idea that justice work is always done in isolation; a community connection binds across time and space.

Vince Singelton, an assistant professor in the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago who served as the film’s cinematographer, also elevates the film in the way it presents the monument being erected. Incorporating a mix of drone shots and close-ups gives the monument a look that is both larger than life and accessible; it’s a testament to how Wells and Hunt, for all their groundbreaking work, were also people who weren’t looking for a platform but instead wanted to take care of the communities in which they found themselves.

A local tale from director Kyle Henry, who is also an associate professor at Northwestern, “Passages of time” is a disarming, devastating and sweet documentary about what it means to be honest and honoring when telling stories about our family. It serves as Henry’s time capsule as he documents his relationship with his elderly mother, Elaine, who, at the height of her filming, struggles with dementia. This occurs at the height of lockdown, much of the footage of the conversation consists of video calls of Henry with Elaine.

Some of my favorite documentaries experiment with form in a way that doesn’t come at the expense of the message. Henry’s narration in “Time Passages” is experimental, incorporating the use of unconventional documentary techniques (in one sequence, he has a conversation with himself where he plays his mother, wig and all; in another, it recreates an argument his parents had but uses figurine models and voiceover). It’s a feature, not a bug, though, as its still-smooth storytelling speaks to the strange way time passed during the height of lockdown and the disembodiment of our interactions. It’s a specific story for him and his mother, but what’s moving is how he uses the particularities of his own experience to make universal observations, lest he document deterioration.

Henry has a gift for nonchalantly asking the deepest questions, the ones that stick with you long after the film’s action has overtaken his investigation (“Are all these stories important to remember?” he muses in a scene). In its end, “Time Passages” is a film that celebrates life in its multifaceted complexity, reminding us that we can be present with someone their entire life without ever truly knowing them. There is sadness here, but also beauty, because it simply means that there is a richness of personality and identity in people that eclipses our ability to fully grasp it.

I didn’t expect to be moved while watching a documentary about the past, present and future of Pizza Hut. However, director Matthew Salleh “Slice of life: the American dream. In old Pizza Huts. surprised me because of the personal approach he took to his radical story. Although Pizza Hut is still in business (it are at least thirteen within the Chicago city limits), many of them have had to close their doors in recent years. Salleh shares how a handful of small business owners remade these boarded-up Pizza Hut buildings with their distinct trapezoidal windows and unique roof structure in their own image. From an LGBTQ+ church in Florida to a cannabis dispensary in Colorado, the film serves as an anthology of resilience and the renewal of communities who can find new homes and a place to come together. The film celebrates people who no longer have to be alone.

The pleasure of Salleh’s film is meeting the different personalities who redeveloped the buildings. It’s interesting to see how they took the same layout but did something unique based on their business needs; the aforementioned church transformed the trapezoidal windows into stained glass while Pizza-Hut-turned-cannabis-store owner Jim Hillaker quips, “Now we have our own salad bar with our own kind of lettuce.” » Salleh also tells the story of how Pizza Hut came to be as well as how the chain is unique among other fast food restaurants in the way it uses inventive marketing strategies.

It’s fitting that even when some franchises close, their renovation embodies the metamorphic spirit of Pizza Hut. “When things continue to transform, beauty can come from it,” says featured church deacon Susan Charron. It reminded me of a verse in the Bible where God commands his people to “beat their swords into plowshares,” indicating how something used for harmful purposes can be transformed into something life-giving. “Pizza Huts into Cannabis dispensaries” may not have quite the same ring to it, but the sentiment applies there too.