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The Film Group
The Film Group was a Chicago commercial film production company that made television commercials and political documentaries in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Filmmakers associated with the Film Group include Mike Gray, William Cottle, Howard Alk, Mike Shea, and Chuck Olin. The majority of their films reside at Chicago Film Archives within The Film Group Collection and Chuck Olin Collection. Over its approximately ten-year existence from 1964-1973 the company went through a variety of name, location, and personnel changes. Mike Gray and Lars Hedman created Hedman Gray Inc. in 1964 and were located at Hedman's photography studio on 3325 West Huron in Chicago, Illinois. In early 1966 they added photographer Mike Shea. They changed the name of the company to Hedman Gray Shea Inc. and opened an 11,000 square foot state of the art production facility at 430 West Grant Place and soon after changed their name to the Film Group. At that point Hedman was the president, Shea was the direct ...
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Mike Gray
Harold Michael Gray (October 26, 1935 – April 30, 2013) was an American writer, screenwriter, cinematographer, film producer and director. Career Film and TV In 1965, Mike Gray and Jim Dennett co-founded The Film Group, a Chicago film production company. In 1968, the pair along with editor Howard Alk, produced the award-winning documentary ''American Revolution 2'' (1969), followed by the trio's ''The Murder of Fred Hampton'' (1971). The Film Group was also behind the seven part educational series, "Urban Crisis and the New Militants", consisting primarily of footage shot during the production of ''American Revolution 2'' but also includes footage of Chicago Black Panthers members (including future Congressman Bobby Rush) and a 1966 Civil Rights march in Cicero, Illinois. This series can be streamed oChicago Film Archives' websiteand . After moving to California, Gray shot ''The Gift'' (1973), a documentary about the life and art of Marc Chagall then co-wrote, with T. ...
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Sears
Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began as a mail ordering catalog company migrating to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores. Sears was based in the Sears Tower in Chicago from 1973 until 1995, and is currently headquartered in Hof ...
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1964 Establishments In Illinois
Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople meet in Jerusalem. * January 6 – A British firm, the Leyland Motor Corp., announces the sale of 450 buses to the Cuban government, challenging the United States blockade of Cuba. * January 9 – ''Martyrs' Day'': Armed clashes between United States troops and Panamanian civilians in the Panama Canal Zone precipitate a major international crisis, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and 4 U.S. soldiers. * January 11 – United States Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to one's health (the first such statement from the U.S. government). * January 12 ** Zanzibar Revolution: The predominantly Arab government of Zanzibar is overthrown by African nationalist rebels; a Unite ...
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Mass Media Companies Disestablished In 1973
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementary particles, theoretically with the same amount of matter, have nonetheless different masses. Mass in modern physics has multiple definitions which are conceptually distinct, but physically equivalent. Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure of the body's inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied. The object's mass also determines the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The SI base unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). In physics, mass is not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by measuring the object's weight using a spring scale, rather than balance scale comparing it directly with known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh ...
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Mass Media Companies Established In 1964
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementary particles, theoretically with the same amount of matter, have nonetheless different masses. Mass in modern physics has multiple definitions which are conceptually distinct, but physically equivalent. Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure of the body's inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied. The object's mass also determines the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The SI base unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). In physics, mass is not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by measuring the object's weight using a spring scale, rather than balance scale comparing it directly with known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh l ...
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Library Of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.; it also maintains a conservation center in Culpeper, Virginia. The library's functions are overseen by the Librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the Architect of the Capitol. The Library of Congress is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its "collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 470 languages." Congress moved to Washington, D.C., in 1800 after holding sessions for eleven years in the temporary national capitals in New York City and Philadelphia. In both cities, members of the U.S. Congress had access to the sizable collection ...
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National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception in 1988. History Through the 1980s, several prominent filmmakers and industry personalities in the United States, such as Frank Capra and Martin Scorsese, advocated for Congress to enact a film preservation bill in order to avoid commercial modifications (such as pan and scan and editing for TV) of classic films, which they saw as negative. In response to the controversy over the colorization of originally black and white films in the decade specifically, Representatives Robert J. Mrazek and Sidney R. Yates introduced the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, which established the National Film Registry, its purpose, and the criteria for selecting films for preservation. The Act was passed and the NFR's mission was subsequently reau ...
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Cicero March
''Cicero March'' is a 1966 short documentary film made by the Chicago-based production company, The Film Group. The film details a civil rights march held on September 4, 1966 in Cicero, Illinois. The film documents Robert Lucas and fellow members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) as they lead activists through Cicero to protest the city of Chicago's restrictions in housing laws. White residents of Cicero respond with vitriolic jeers as the police struggle to prevent a riot. ''Cicero March'' was filmed after Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, and other Southern Christian Leadership Conference members had come to Chicago to participate in the Chicago Freedom Movement and organize a movement calling for fair housing in Chicago. Chicago city officials, including Mayor Richard J. Daley, negotiated a Fair Housing agreement with Dr. King, Bevel, and others in August, and King and Bevel agreed to end demonstrations. Nevertheless, Robert Lucas and other members of CORE felt that ...
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Fred Hampton
Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an American activist. He came to prominence in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the antiracist, anticlassist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Hispanics), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. A Marxist–Leninist, Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying, "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.” In 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified Hampton as a radical threat. It tried to subvert his activities in Chicago, sowing disinformation among black progressive groups and placing a counterintelligence ...
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Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its Open carry in the United States, open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the police brutality in the United States, excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community he ...
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1968 Democratic National Convention
The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held August 26–29 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Earlier that year incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection, thus making the purpose of the convention to select a new presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. The keynote speaker was Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine were nominated for president and vice president, respectively. The most contentious issues of the convention were the continuing American military involvement in the Vietnam War and voting reform, particularly expanding the right to vote for draft-age soldiers (age 18) who were unable to vote as the voting age was 21. The convention also marked a turning point where previously idle groups such as youth and minorities became more involved in politics and voting. The convention of 1968 was held during a year of riots, politica ...
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The Murder Of Fred Hampton
''The Murder of Fred Hampton'' is a 1971 American documentary film about the short life and death of Fred Hampton, a young African-American civil rights activist in Chicago and leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party. During the film's production, Hampton was fatally shot on December 4, 1969 in a pre-dawn raid at his apartment by the Chicago Police Department. The raid was revealed to have been organized in cooperation with the FBI. When they learned of Hampton's death, filmmakers Howard Alk and Mike Gray, director and producer, respectively, went to his apartment, which was still unsecured. They took film footage of the crime scene. They later used this to challenge news reports and police testimony about the events. They also conducted investigative reporting into Hampton's death, with related material included in the film. Their conclusion is expressed in the title. In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library o ...
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