Learn the fundamentals of camera operation and cinematography from three seasoned filmmakers. Teachers will go over: Exposure Triangle (ISO-Aperture-Shutter Speed); Framerate; Camera navigation; Camera Settings; Pulling Focus, Shallow/Deep Focus.

Screenings: Onomichi (1963); The Masters of Disaster (1986)

This workshop is part of a series of skill shares for our group-led documentary, Halsted St. We will be conducting interviews up and down the street, going from Northalsted all the way down to Cave in Rock, a small town in southern Illinois. Poetry, historical re-enactment, and many other things will also feature in the doc. No problem if you can’t make them all, we’ll take whatever time you’ll give!

This September is the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Global War on Terror. On September 12th, "the day after,” please join the Independent Labor Club for a film screening and retrospective discussion on 25 years of GWOT social revolution and the role of media workers in resistance.

On the 25th anniversary of the War on Terror, join Mouse members in considering a definitive document of the American invasion of Iraq: “Homeland: Iraq Year Zero” by Iraqi-French film director Abbas Fahdel. The two-part, six hour documentary records Fahdel’s family’s life before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is a monumental and shattering work made of thousands of ordinary moments of life in and around Baghdad.

Join Saul Levin, host of Hum Podcast and organizer of one of the nation’s largest anti-data center coalitions for a community forum on organizing in the AI age. Learn about what anti-data center tactics win, the history of previous successful struggles, and what the future of the fight looks like in urban, suburban, and rural America. Saul will be joined by other anti-data center activists from throughout Illinois.

Demystify “the real” and come make a movie. We’ll give an overview of the medium, its basic parts and styles - with many examples! Plus a conversation about ethics and a look at a secret “Holy Grail” of documentary filmmaking.

This workshop is part of a series of skill shares for our group-led documentary, Halsted St. We will be conducting interviews up and down the street, going from Northalsted all the way down to Cave in Rock, a small town in southern Illinois. Poetry, historical re-enactment, and many other things will also feature in the doc. No problem if you can’t make them all, we’ll take whatever time you’ll give!

Screening: Halsted Street USA (David Simpson, 1995, 56 min)

For this installment of the Municipal Finance Book Club, we’ll read David Schleicher's In a Bad State and explore the question of what happens when state and local governments face full-blown crises, defaults or bankruptcies requiring federal intervention (or, at least, a distinct decision not to intervene). Published in 2023, this historical survey ranges from the speculative bank runs of the 1830s and 1840s to the interwoven and simultaneous problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For this meeting, please read through the end of the book. 

The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19) commemorates the worst incident of racial violence in the city’s history. The event has been long forgotten despite its impact on the subsequent shape and development of the city. Our 2.5-hour historic bike tour allows people to see, first-hand, some of the locations related to the events of 1919, the long shadow of residential segregation, as well as the incredible resilience of the local Black community.

Come practice Arabic with speakers of all levels. Conversation will be friendly, accepting, and fun!

Bring your current textile project or one you'd like to start and learn from your fellow textile artists while working communally. Knitting, weaving, embroidery, crochet, and all other textile projects are welcome, as are all skill levels.

Come vent about your workplace issues and organizing struggles at a fun, informal game night, featuring cards, board games, and chess. Open to anyone interested in labor organizing, from organizing veterans, to workers completely new to organizing, who are curious about improving their workplace. Complaining builds community! Every fourth Friday of the Month.

In our moment when shared ethical languages seem impossible and where associational life is in decline, this reading and discussion group aims to investigate several related questions: What conditions do ethics require? Is it possible to create a shared ethical world that is neither oppressively exclusive nor so capacious as to be meaningless? Is ethics even a useful register through which to discern "a good life" or are they dependent upon other social/material questions?  For this session, we'll segue from Hegel to Marx by discussing A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right.

Our monthly gathering of newshounds and journalists. Like old pub gatherings where people would go to hear the town crier read the news aloud, a trio of journalists will each explain a story they’ve worked on recently, followed by audience questions, comments and concerns.

Journalists from all publications are invited to work together at the club all day, whether you’re a member or not. We will have a citywide pitch meeting/discussion at 1 pm.

Join us on Tuesday, August 25th, for a listening party and group poetry session to celebrate the publication of Signal Hill’s third issue. Signal Hill is an audio magazine that publishes sonic stories in myriad forms: long-form reporting, experimental essays, fiction, profiles, dispatches, and more. The latest issue features an oral history of a poetry-writing class taught at Manhattan’s PS61 in 1969.

Join Roshini Collective, an arts organization focusing on platforming South Asian artists, for a group critique session of works in progress. For this event, artists are encouraged to bring wall-based artworks. Meet fellow artists as we come together for constructive criticism, different artistic perspectives, and reflection.

The bob has been a lightning rod for our ideas about style and femininity for decades. Join three professionals whose jobs force them to engage with and think about bobs, from the salon to the stage. The bobbed and bob-curious are all welcome, more info to come!

Join us on Wednesday, August 18, for an informal conversation about how traffic court, immigration enforcement, and the criminal legal system intersect. We'll discuss Injustice Watch reporter Kelly Garcia's investigation into Cook County prosecutors seeking arrest warrants for people who missed traffic court after being detained or deported by ICE, and explore what the story reveals about due process, accountability, and access to justice.

Read Kelly’s piece here: ICE deported them. Cook County prosecutors still want them arrested for missing court.

This classic film chronicles the adventures of a 23 year old Ernesto “Che” Guevara, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, as he travels across the continent of South America in 1952, along side his companion Alberto Granado. The two travel initially by motorcycle and bear witness to the disparity between social classes and the exploitation of indigenous labor by wealthy capitalists. The film is an adaptation of Guevara’s memoir by the same name, and lays the groundwork for what caused the great revolutionary to be radicalized. Screening as part of the Anti Imperialist Cinema series, which aims to showcase films dealing with resistance, class conflict, organizational struggle and the fight against imperialism.

Come practice Arabic with speakers of all levels. Conversation will be friendly, accepting, and fun!

Filmed over a period of almost ten years (2010-2018), “Miners, Groom, Pneumoconiosis” delves into the semi-legal mining industry in the southern Chinese province Hunan from the perspective of local workers and their families. In this region, the lackluster economy drove people to work in the mines despite government restrictions and the constant news of mining disasters. Over time, many miners develop pneumoconiosis, or “dust lung disease” as it was locally known. 

Join fellow Mouse members to help create our collaborative documentary investigating Halsted Street. We will be conducting interviews up and down the street, going from Northalsted all the way down to Cave in Rock, a small town in southern Illinois. Poetry, historical re-enactment, and many other things will also feature in the doc. Have any ideas, film experience, or any other feedback? Please come! No prior documentary experience necessary, and you need not have come to any prior planning meetings.  

Come vent about your workplace issues and organizing struggles at a fun, informal game night, featuring cards, board games, and chess. Open to anyone interested in labor organizing, from organizing veterans, to workers completely new to organizing, who are curious about improving their workplace. Complaining builds community! Every fourth Friday of the Month.

Our monthly gathering of newshounds and journalists.  Like old pub gatherings where people would go to hear the town crier read the news aloud, a trio of journalists will each explain a story they’ve worked on recently, followed by audience questions, comments and concerns.

Journalists from all publications are invited to work together at the club all day, whether you’re a member or not. We will have a citywide pitch meeting/discussion at 1 pm.

Bring your current textile project or one you'd like to start and learn from your fellow textile artists while working communally.

Knitting, weaving, embroidery, crochet, and all other textile projects are welcome as are all skill levels.

The film is set largely in Chicago and the geography of the city is an integral part of the training of the militants in the film. As we enter the new era of NSPM 7 this film and the history of its banning can be really useful to understanding what the FBI saw as effective opposition in the previous cointelpro era. Before the film we will have a short talk about the history of the film, probably some stuff about George Jackson, Young Lords, and other Chicago revolutionaries.

Join three seasoned flavor professionals for an exhilarating group-led discussion of the ins-and-outs of flavor science. Dan Petry, senior flavorist at Imbibe, will be joined by Lisa Chou, a fa!rlife milk product development specialist and another special guest. Learn about flavor science’s origins to traditional medicine and its ongoing connections to the world of fragrance production. You won’t want to miss this.

The war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran triggered the mother of all commodity-supply shocks. In response, Iran had all but closed the Strait of Hormuz, bringing to a standstill the delivery of huge amounts of the world economy’s critical inputs. For a time we were bracing for a period projected to be more severe than the monumental oil shocks of 1973 and 1979. As U.S. bombing resumes we’re left wondering what this war means for both global energy and the U.S. empire.