Movies: Tom Palazzolo

"The once teeming Riverview Park was shut down in 1967 (with Tom Palazzolo on hand to document the bitter end). The Tattooed Lady of Riverview is a portrait of its final occupant, Jean Furella, the titular tattooed lady of Riverview's sideshow. Furel...

A 14-minute almanac of Midwestern America and its funky Americana at the end of the Love Generation, Love It / Leave It begins with proudly naked people parading about for all the world to ogle at the annual Naked City beauty pageant in Roselawn, Ind...

Chesterton, Indiana's annual WIZARD OF OZ parade (as well as their many Oz-themed festivities) provides the backdrop for I MARRIED A MUNCHKIN, Tom Palazzolo's study of the life and career of Mary Ellen St. Aubin. Self-described as "normal, but little...

Lisa Gottlieb's Oscar-winning spoof of misogynist film noir....

Lillie Santangelo had for most of the 20th century owned and operated a wax museum at New York's Coney Island. She leads us on a final tour, just before her museum is closed and her wax figures and exhibits are auctioned off. Old age and declining at...

On August 13, 1969 thousands of Chicagolandians flocked to downtown Chicago to get a glimpse of the first humans on the Moon (Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, Jr.). Chicago Filmmaker Tom Palazzolo captures the Chicago Apollo 11 Pa...

Surreal film melding documentary footage of Chicago and its residents, featuring fast paced montage sequences set against a rollicking 1960s musical backdrop. The film aptly deconstructs the absurdities of contemporary American life, particularly the...

JERRY'S DELI is a testament to a bygone era when shrieking lunatics could run successful (even popular) businesses. Shot on film-stock leftover from television cameramen, Tom Palazzolo's portrait of Jerry Meyer offsets sequences of the tyrannical del...

Tattooed Lady of Riverview...

“(T)he difficulty with which an adult represents his own childhood--let alone another's--is the running gag of Tom Palazzolo's Caligari's Cure. In Palazzolo's cosmos, the kids are even played by grownups; he's recast incidents from his Catholic midwe...

We traveled to Indiana back roads to see and shoot the annual Miss Nude Universe Contest held at a “notorious” nudist camp. They wanted $15 a head at the gate so we parked down the road and crawled through the brush. Once in, we encountered truckers ...

A music and costume filled portrayal of the 1976 Gay Pride Parade by filmmaker Tom Palazzolo. All is fun and games until a bystander hurls an egg at Palazzolo's camera lens. It resumes quickly though....

A short documentary on wet t-shirt contests at a Chicago bar....

Chicago filmmaker Tom Palazzolo turns his lens to film a very different portrait of Vivian Maier, the mysterious Chicago photographer whose work was only discovered posthumously....

Palazzolo's cameras are there as Mayor Richard Daley reveals the Picasso gifted to the city from the famed artist. Nicknamed "the Bride" and bad mouthed almost universally upon its unveiling, we get some of that social commentary here, as well as lot...

A documentary on a Neo-Nazi rally in Marquette Park, Chicago, on July 9, 1978 features footage from inside the Neo-Nazi headquarters in Chicago (led by Frank Collin) and protesters in Marquette Park. In the headquarters they discuss logistics, chit-c...

Documentary about the first annual Miss Illinois Bikini Contest, held by the Amateur Athletic Union at a theater on Chicago's south side. The event was staged as a means of drawing more eyes to the Junior Mr. Illinois bodybuilding contest held the sa...

ADDED LESSONS is an absurdist fever dream that follows young Francis (Liam Hayes) as he's bounced between maternal demands, burgeoning sexual desires, the church, and pretensions of the art world. Filled with painted sets, symbolic gestures, and a wh...

A behind-the-scenes look at a local car commercial....

16mm short film at the Riverview Circus....