“Fire Department, Inc.,” an independent documentary about the five-year legal battle following former North Riverside Mayor Hubert Hermanek Jr.’s attempt to privatize the village’s union fire department, will get its world premiere this weekend.
As part of the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival, the 78-minute film will premiere Saturday, May 4, at 7 p.m. at the Chicago Filmmakers Theatre in the city’s Edgewater neighborhood. The building was built as a firehouse in 1928, became a Chicago landmark building in 2003 and is now owned by the nonprofit Chicago Filmmakers.
The screening will be immediately followed by a Q&A with director Colin Hughes, producer Caley Fox Shannon and subjects who were interviewed in the movie. Hughes and Shannon both grew up in Riverside and started working together on the documentary after the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to return to the village.
“At one point we had a beer outside at Mollie’s, and he had caught me up on the whole story of what was going on with the North Riverside fire department, basically right in our backyard, and told me that he was interested in following the story and did I want to get in on it and become his partner on the film,” Shannon told the Landmark in January, while the film was still in its final stages. “It’s definitely a really intriguing story for people who care about labor and for people who live in a village like ours, where local politics really matter.”
Hughes said then that about 80% of the film’s $65,000 budget was funded by himself and Shannon, with the remainder coming from donations.
Tickets for the documentary’s premiere were $15 each, but the viewing is sold out online. A second sold-out viewing will take place the next day at 2 p.m. at the same venue.
For more information about “Fire Department, Inc.,” visit the documentary’s website.
