(Case study · Music film)
Forum Friday Cypher
The Forum on 43rd Street held Black political speech and Black music for most of a century, then sat dark. In 2021 we put a cypher inside the unrestored building and filmed it to bring the room back. The goal was fifty thousand dollars. It was met.
- Client
- The Forum,
Bronzeville - Year
- 2021
- Role
- Produce, direct, DP,
edit, camera rental - Raised
- $50,000 goal,
met
The room
(01)43rd Street, built 1897. After the Great Migration the Forum became one of the gathering places Black Chicago organized in. The National Negro Congress met there. So did the Scottsboro Defense Conference and the Freedom Riders. It was a jazz room too, the kind Nat King Cole played. Then it closed, and for decades it was a boarded building on a corner.
The idea
(02)A restoration fund is a hard thing to make anyone feel. So instead of filming the building empty and asking for money, we filled it. A cypher is the same thing the Forum was built for, speech and music in one room, a century later and in a different form. We shot it where the work was needed, surrounded by the damage.
The cypher
(4:26)Shot in black and white inside the building, before restoration. Bare joists, bare brick, and whatever light came through the windows.
Inside the building
(Stills)Frames from the film. Nothing was dressed and nothing was lit to hide the condition of the room.
Put the ask in the room it is for.
Fundraising film that earns the money instead of explaining why it is needed.
Video and Documentary