Chicago (1945)

• 72%
• 1945
• Documentary

Jeff Altman, 27, a professional film and video colorist, paid $40 for a canister of film footage at a Chicago-area estate sale in the autumn of 2013. It included mid-1940s scenes of Chicago scenes at various beaches, schools and universities, business districts, factories, parks, scenic drives and more. Over the decades the film colors had become pinkish, and so Altman readjusted and sharpened the tints and focus, then uploaded the film to his Vimeo account in late March of 2014. Historians estimate the original release to have been within a twenty-month period between January of 1945 and September of 1946. When asked for its history, Chicago public-school authorities claimed they had located no reference to the film in their administrative records.