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"Rich and fascinating biography." – Daniel M. Gold, The New York Times
"Wholly engaging from its first frame to its last ... [Viewers] are guaranteed to leave the theater enlightened and perhaps more than a touch gobsmacked.” – Matt Fagerholm, RogerEbert.com
Before the appearance of this acclaimed documentary, Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald had been largely forgotten – except within the African American community, where his massive influence remained widely appreciated. A Russian peddler’s son who made a fortune running Sears, Roebuck & Co., the Chicago-based Rosenwald resolved to share his wealth. Connecting the dots between Russian pogroms and Southern lynchings, he focused his largesse on education for African Americans. His ingeniously financed Rosenwald Schools (inspired by his friend Booker T. Washington) provided unprecedented learning opportunities for black children in rural communities. His Rosenwald Fund nurtured the careers of a veritable who’s who of “talented tenth” eminences: Langston Hughes, Marian Anderson, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Ralph Bunche, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou...the list goes on and on. Director Kempner (THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HANK GREENBERG) creates a stirring tribute not only to a remarkable man but, even more so, to the leading figures of twentieth-century African American culture, an astonishing number of whom were empowered by Rosenwald’s generosity. DCP digital. (MR)
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6 at 6 PM: A Movie Club event, facilitated by Peter Ascoli, Julius Rosenwald's grandson and author of Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South.
Gabo: The Creation of Gabriel García Márquez
Gabo, la magia de lo real
2015, Justin Weber, Spain, 90 min.

Raised by grandparents in northern Colombia, Gabriel García Márquez, 1982 Nobel Laureate in Literature, found a lifetime of inspiration in the superstitions, poverty, violence, and family lore of his remote village, celebrated eccentrically and hauntingly through his fiction. Filmmaker Webster charts the political and artistic evolution of the law-school dropout and journalist, as his magic-realist novels including "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and “No One Writes to the Colonel," bring global fame, ande he advances to the forefront of Latin America’s struggles against dictatorship and oppression. In Spanish with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16: Tonight's screening is a Movie Club event facilitated by Andrea Sáenz, First Deputy Commissioner for the Chicago Public Library.