apr23

Every Little Thing

Every Little Thing

Film Description: The documentary about a Los Angeles woman who has made it her life’s mission to rehabilitate injured hummingbirds has a gentle sweetness that feels like a balm. Terry Masear, the subject of writer-director Sally Aitken’s film, has a no-nonsense demeanor, but her affection for these tiny creatures is unmistakable. She gives them names like Raisin, Cactus and Wasabi. She assigns them narratives as she observes their behavior. She painstakingly builds them elaborate aviaries and lovingly feeds them from a syringe. And she devotes every inch of her sprawling Hollywood Hills property, inside and out, to their care.

The Hills

The Hills

The Hills Film Description: When the steel mills on Chicago’s Southeast Side closed decades ago, they left behind toxic sites that look harmless to the naked eye. Deriving its title from a deserted 67-acre hill made up of slag that Republic Steel/LTV dumped there during the 1950s–80s, The Hills is a place-based documentary where contaminated land, water, and wildlife play a leading role alongside the voices of community members. Easily mistaken for gravel, slag is a byproduct of steelmaking and contains arsenic, chromium, lead, and other toxins. Recently declared a superfund site by the EPA, the abandoned Schroud property has long attracted heavy recreational use and toxins from the slag continue to leach into the adjacent Indian Creek. Providing a rich habitat for fish, beavers, and birds, Indian Creek links Wolf Lake, a major recreational fishing area, to the Calumet River which in turn connects to Lake Michigan, Chicago’s source of drinking water. The Hills uses this singular site as starting point to consider the area’s industrial history, labor, and current environmental justice struggles, including the fight against General Iron and the proposed expansion of the Army Corps of Engineer’s Confined Disposal Facility (CDF) right at the shore of Lake Michigan, the source of Chicago's drinking water.