Shrimp Chicken Fish

synopsis

Shrimp, mussels, onion rings, and other fried specialties from a stand tucked under the steel structure of the lift bridge on 95th Street in Chicago. The establishment, which made a brief appearance in the comedy The Blues Brothers (1980) during the legendary jump over the bridge, is still in operation today and is one of the city's unsung icons. Deborah Stratman intersperses bridge scenes from a videotape recording with her own shots of the environment, which is raw, bleak, and yet strangely homely.

“As a person drawn to unusual landscapes living in a chronically flat city, the highest road for hundreds of miles is interesting. I would go there sometimes to look at it at night, and on one of those drives, I found Calumet Fisheries. […] It wasn’t until I’d been there a couple of times that I noticed the little cut out newsprint photo of the Blues Brothers and realized that the film’s bridge jump scene had been shot right there. […] I like the way the location absorbs both its real and its fabricated pasts. The Blues Brothers’ jump casts no less substantial a shadow than the Skyway.” — Deborah Stratman

biography

Deborah Stratman (born 1967) is a prominent American artist and filmmaker living in Chicago. At Ji.hlava IDFF 2014, she was a jury member in the Between the Seas section, she led a masterclass, and her film Hacked Circuit won the award for best experimental documentary film. Since then, she has regularly returned to Jihlava with her work, most recently with the film Last Things (2022). In addition to experimental films, she also creates installations and site-specific projects. The topics that interest her include freedom, surveillance, public speech, sinkholes, levitation, grasshoppers, birds of prey, comets, evolution, extinction, exodus, sisterhood, and faith.

film details

director:	Deborah Stratman
producer:	Deborah Stratman