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The Greater Chicagoland Hip Hop Filmmakers Caucus NFP sets special ‘SPOOK’ screening in old stomping grounds.

Cult black protest feature film classic “The Spook Who Sat by the Door” (MGM/UA, 1973) will screen Sat., Dec. 29, at the very South Side intersection it filmed at slightly more than 30 years ago and will be followed by a panel discussion of guerrilla filming featuring the film’s writer and producer and generations of urban independent filmmakers who’ve succeeded him.

The screening and panel discussion, titled “Guerrilla vs. Enterprise Filmmaking from Old School to Newest School,” will be 1-4:45 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Bessie Coleman Branch of the Chicago Public Library, 731 E. 63rd St., in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood (near the southwest corner of 63rd Street & Cottage Grove, under the terminus station for the Jackson Park/Harlem branch of CTA rapid rail’s Green Line El). Both events will launch the Greater Chicagoland Hip Hop Filmmakers Caucus NFP’s monthly motion picture screening and production discussion series Eine Kleine Kinoklatsch, which the organization offers to the general public at public institutions, theaters, art galleries, and nightclubs. Admission is $5.

“Spook” was adapted from Greenlee’s equally popular novel under the same name.

Besides Greenlee, the panel will include notable independent urban filmmakers Coquie Hughes, Derek Dow, David Spearman, and Jeff Award-nominated actor Sati Word. Coleman is within feet of where the “Spook” tech crew “liberated” shots during the infancy of a non-supportive Chicago Film Office before the production moved to friendly Gary, Ind., to shoot the remainder of the film’s crucial scenes. Screen editor Dixon Galez-Searle will moderate the panel discussion.

Hughes, whose work has encompassed LGBT themes, is featured in an HBO documentary on the 50 top black women filmmakers that includes Kasi Lemmons and Maya Angelou. Dow is a Chicago State University film school graduate who was a featured filmmaker and actor at Chicago’s 2007 Black Harvest Festival of Film, Video & TV. Spearman is an international documentary and feature filmmaker who’s been featured at Black Harvest and who teaches videography production at Kennedy-King College in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago’s Southwest Side.

Word has appeared in Steppenwolf, ETA, and Black Ensemble Theater productions and is appearing in feature shorts these days.

For discounted earlier registration of $4, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , 773.568.6574, or www.myspace.com/chicagohiphopfilm .

CHICAGO SCREENWRITERS BOOKS SAM GREENLEE FOR FILMMAKING TALK

Chicago Screenwriters Network will receive legendary underground filmmaker Sam Greenlee as the featured speaker for its month meeting in January.

Mr. Greenlee will address Chicago Screenwriters and answer questions and comments at 6 p.m. Sun., Jan. 6, at Lincoln Restaurant, 4008 N. Lincoln Ave., in the Portage Park neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side (near tri-corner of Lincoln and Damen avenues and Irving Park Road, the restaurant with the Lincoln headshot in its sign). Admission is $3, and the restaurant minimum is $6.50.

Having grown with fellow underground filmmaker Mevlin van Peebles, dating “Star Trek” star Nichelle Nichols, and seeing pioneer black filmmaker Oscar Michaeux cruising in a Cadillac in the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago’s Southeast Side, Mr. Greenlee co-wrote and co-produced the screen adaptation of his cult classic black protest novel “The Spook Who Sat by the Door” (MGM/UGA, 1973).

The “Spook” technical crew “liberated” several crucial scenes near Woodlawn’s main intersection of 63rd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue before an infant hostile Chicago Film Office under the administration of Mayor Richard J. Daley forced the production’s relocation to friendlier Gary, Ind.

That intersection is still the center of an unofficial Bronzeville Renaissance historic district that includes nearby former haunts of essayist and award-winning playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Illinois Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks, jazz styliing vocalist Billy Eckstine, and drumming jazz virtuoso Ahmad Jahmal—all whom Mr. Greenlee knew intimately.

Mr. Greenlee is also a lead member of the Greater Chicagoland Hip Hop Filmmakers Caucus NFP, which, toward its partnership with Chicago Screenwriters, is collaborating on establishing for summer 2008 an annual Midwestern screenwriting competition of, by, and for serious screenwriters. He will be among the competition’s final-round judges. Mr. Greenlee, who boasts screenwriting credits on other big-screen and small-screen projects, also teaches the Caucus’ Screenwriters Power Course, which cuts down on theory, jargon, and preoccupation with scene and character and steers students to focus primarily on story development

For more information about the Greenlee appearance at Chicago Screenwriters, visit www.chicagoscreenwriters.org , www.myspace.com/chicagoscreenwriters , and www.myspace.com/chicagohiphopfilm .

The Greater Chicagoland Hip Hop Filmmakers Caucus NFP is a not-for-profit motion picture development corporation serving the independent urban filmmakers and actors of Northeastern Illinois, Southeast Wisconsin, and Northwest Indiana.