`Children’s Film Festival: Making a Difference,” a three-week event, will kick off July 12 at the Chicago Historical Society.
Spotlighting kids who make a difference in their communities, the program opens on the 12th with “You Must Remember This” (10 a.m. and 1 p.m.), a 90-minute account of a budding basketball star who discovers that her great-uncle, now a barber, was one of the early great black film directors in the late ’40s.
Subsequently, she helps him to accept his past and unearth a rich cultural legacy.
“Taking Care of Terrific” (58 minutes) and “Molly’s Pilgrim” (24 minutes) will be shown on July 19, both at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
In the former, an imaginative teenager, her boyfriend and a little boy team up with a street musician (Melvin van Peebles) to plan an entertaining evening for several bag ladies in the local park.
In “Molly’s Pilgrim,” a 9-year-old Russian-Jewish immigrant girl is taunted by her classmates because of her foreign accent, strange ways and peculiar clothes.
But when the children make dolls for a class display of the first Thanksgiving, Molly’s creation leads the others to understand Molly and her family’s search for religious freedom.
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The festival will close on July 26 with “Miracle at Moreaux” (10 a.m. and 1 p.m.), a 60-minute story of a nun (Loretta Swit of “M+A+S+H” fame) and her young charges who risk their lives to protect a group of Jewish children in occupied France during World War II.
The festival is free with regular museum admission. (Suggested admission: $3 for adults, $2 for senior citizens and students aged 17 to 22 with valid school ID; and $1 for children 6 to 17.)
For additional information, call 312-642-4600.