Filmmaker to discuss how Chicago invented the U.S. film industry

Filmmaker, professor, and popular speaker Michael Glover Smith will discuss “How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry” on March 27 at 7:00 p.m. at the Wilmette Public Library, 1242 Wilmette Avenue, Wilmette.

Prof. Smith will describe how various innovations including Eadweard Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope, a projection device that debuted at the 1893 World's Fair, turned Chicago into the center of the U.S. film industry at the turn of the century. Clips from the early history of filmmaking will be shown.

This program is the first event in the Library's 2019 One Book, Everybody Reads series, which is featuring Rosellen Brown's novel, The Lake on Fire, this spring. The historical novel takes place in Chicago at the time of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

One Book, Everybody Reads is generously funded by the Friends of the Wilmette Public Library. Community partners for the 2019 One Book program include: The Book Stall, League of Women Voters of Wilmette, Make It Better, NS/Modern Luxury, Rotary Club of Wilmette, Rotary Club of Wilmette Harbor, Sheridan Road, Village of Kenilworth, Village of Wilmette, Wilmette Beacon, Wilmette-Kenilworth Chamber of Commerce, Wilmette School District 39.

Michael Smith's first feature film, Cool Apocalypse, premiered in 2015. His second feature, Mercury in Retrograde, starring Roxane Mesquida and Najarra Townsend, won the top awards at the 2018 Tallahassee Film Festival and the 2017 Full Bloom Film Festival and was the subject of a rave review by the Chicago Sun-Times's Richard Roeper. His third feature, Rendezvous in Chicago, had its World Premiere at the 2018 Adirondack Film Festival where it was an Audience Choice award winner.

Since 2009, Prof. Smith has taught film history and aesthetics at Oakton Community College, Harper College, Triton College, Harold Washington College and the College of Lake County and has lectured at Northwestern University and Facets Multimedia. His first book, Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry, a non-fiction account of early film production in Chicago, was published in 2015.

For more information, please visit www.wilmettelibrary.info/onebook or call the Library’s Recent Arrivals desk at 847-256-6930.