WHEN: Wednesday, September 23, 2026 at 6:30pm
WHERE: Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S Ashland Ave
ADMISSION: FREE
THE PROGRAM
MI RAZA: PORTRAIT OF A FAMILY (1972, Susan Stechnij, 30 min)
Presented by journalist Alexandra Salomon and followed by a post-screening conversation with director Susan Stechnij, Carlos Arango, former director of Casa Aztlan, and Norma Seledon, Director of Leadership, Development & Capacity Building at Equality Illinois.
Mi Raza: Portrait of a Family is a documentary film about a working class Mexican American family dealing with the stresses of maintaining their cultural heritage in the face of the dominant Anglo society. The film follows the daily activities of the multigenerational Navarro family living in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Each member of the family responds differently to the pressures of assimilation, revealing a complex family portrait. Mi Raza is an invaluable example of a new style of ethnographic filmmaking: an intimate portrait of working-class domestic life and a historical record of a community in a state of flux due to immigration and political upheaval. Mi Raza was preserved by Chicago Film Archives with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation in 2008.
Alexandra Salomon is a senior editor at WBEZ, where she manages a team of reporters covering immigration, health, housing, climate and the environment. She’s also an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Previously she was the senior editor for In the Room, a weekly podcast covering national security issues, which she helped create and launch. Before that she was the senior editor of podcasts at WBEZ, where she managed all aspects of production for the award-winning Curious City podcast. She was also the editor and reporter for the investigative podcast Motive Season 2. For eight years prior she was the senior producer for WBEZ’s Worldview, a daily global affairs show. Earlier in her career she was a producer for ABC News, based in Rome, Italy. In Europe she also reported for The Boston Globe, The Jerusalem Post and the Economist. Alexandra was the recipient of a Knight International Press Fellowship, which took her to Nigeria and Moldova.
This program is supported by:
Susan Stechnij
ABOUT THE INSIDE/OUT SERIES
Displacement implies a concept of home. At its best, home is a place where love, belonging and safety comfortably reside.
Chicago Film Archives presents Inside/Out: Stories of Origin and Dis/Placement, a series of four extraordinary films made by four Chicago-based women who by nature are adventurous, deeply curious, and brave. They are also mostly unheard of until now.
The concept of “displacement” is securely embedded in each of their stories, whether it resides within the communities they film or within their own lived experience. Although each filmmaker offers a narrative distinctly different from the others, efforts to survive and adapt to displacement surface throughout all of their films.
To better understand the effects of displacement, it may be useful to consider the concept of home: What does it mean to “feel at home”? Is “belonging” synonymous with “home”? Is having a sense of “home” essential to the well-being or understanding of self? Does “home” reside in a structure, a person(s), a country or a culture? What might be lost or gained when one is displaced?
To explore these concepts and considerations, Alexandra Salomon, Senior Editor with Chicago Public Media, Nissa Rhee, cofounder of Borderless magazine and a seasoned writer, editor and entrepreneur in the field of journalism, and Natalie Moore, a Chicago-based journalist and author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, will facilitate conversations around these four films and how “displacement” and its consequences are woven throughout lives in each story.
PROGRAMS IN THIS SERIES
All screenings will take place in The Sanctuary at the Epiphany Center for the Arts (201 S Ashland Ave in Chicago).
Admission is FREE.
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Wednesday, September 16, 2026 at 6:30pm
A NICE PLACE TO LIVE (1974, Maria Moraites, 55 min)
Presented by journalist Natalie Y. Moore and followed by a post-screening conversation with Deondré Rutues (a social justice advocate, community leader, and business psychologist on the west side of Chicago) and Pastor Marshall Hatch, Jr. (pastor at the New Mount Pilgrim Church-Chicago and cofounder and Executive Director of the MAAFA Redemption Project)
Wednesday, September 23, 2026 at 6:30 pm
MI RAZA: PORTRAIT OF A FAMILY (1972, Susan Stechnij, 30 min)
Presented by journalist Alexandra Salomon and followed by a post-screening conversation with director Susan Stechnij, Carlos Arango, former director of Casa Aztlan, and Norma Seledon, Director of Leadership, Development & Capacity Building at Equality Illinois.
Wednesday, October 7, 2026 at 6:30pm
STREET SIGNS: MURALS IN CHICAGO (1990, Susan Dobinsky & Julia Kurtz, 30 min)
Presented by journalist Alexandra Salomon and followed by a post-screening conversation with director Susan Dobinsky, artist Sandra Antongiorgi, and photographer Ivan Justiniano.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026 at 6:30pm
BURNT ORANGES (2005, Silvia Malagrino, 90 min)
Presented by Nissa Rhee, journalist and cofounder of Borderless Magazine, and followed by a post-screening conversation with director Silvia Malagrino and writer Monica Flores Correa.