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Filmmaker Showing Documentary Where South Siders Picked What He Shot

By Sam Cholke | April 21, 2016 5:38am | Updated on April 22, 2016 11:46am
Takin Place Trailer
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Cyrus Dowlatshani

DOUGLAS — A filmmaker is returning a year after finishing an intimate depiction of the city to again show the documentary he created by letting South Siders take him wherever they wanted to go.

Director Cyrus Dowlatshahi is returning a year after the Chicago premiere of “Takin’ Place” for a second screening on Friday as part of a new exhibit of his photographs and work by artist Amanda Williams at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Starting in June 2011, Dowlatshahi let people in Woodlawn, Englewood, Washington Park and other parts of the South Side lead him deep into their neighborhoods.

“I organically met people and went with them wherever they would go,” Dowlatshahi said in 2015 shortly before the premiere of his documentary at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

Dowlatshahi will screen the film at 6:30 p.m. at the McCormick Tribune Campus Center, 3201 S. State St., followed by a question and answer session at 8 p.m.

In the film, Dowlatshahi talks his way behind the bulletproof glass at Pete’s Italian Beef, 7352 S. Halsted St., where he meets Tammy, who tells him about dealing with people constantly asking to borrow money. She takes him along to her hair appointment, where he gets instructions about the benefits of safeguarding your money in your bra.

There he also meets a Jamaican jerk food truck driver, who ferries him around, and these connections continue weaving Dowlatshahi and his film through the many neighborhoods of the South Side.

“You find community there you don’t find in other places,” Dowlatshahi said. “It is really the opposite of what we’re led to believe.”

Dowlatshahi also captured a shooting during a Fourth of July barbeque in Englewood.

“That was scary,” Dowlatshahi said in 2015. “But we went back outside and started lighting off fireworks — I was pretty shocked how normal it was for some people.”

The screening is part of the “A New Portrait: Englewood” exhibit at SmallRoom Gallery, 35 W. 33rd St.

An opening reception for the exhibit will be held at 5 p.m. Friday.

The screening and exhibit are free and open to the public.

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