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Tony and Janina's American Wedding, a Ruthless Films Production in association with Kartemquin Films, will have its first Chicago screenings in October, with a World premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival followed by a theatrical  premiere at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The new documentary is directed by Ruth Leitman.

The film is a feature length documentary that gets to the heart of the broken, red tape ridden U.S. immigration system. After 18 years in America, Tony and Janina Wasilewski's family is torn apart when Janina is deported back to Poland, taking their 6 year old son Brian with her.  Set on the backdrop of the Chicago political scene, and featuring Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez at the heart of the immigration reform movement, this film follows the Wasilewski's 3-year struggle to be reunited, as their Senator Barack Obama rises to the Presidency.  With a fresh perspective on the immigration conversation, this film tells the untold human rights story of Post-9/11, that every undocumented immigrant in America faces today, with the power to open the conversation for change.

Kartemquin's Gordon Quinn is Story Consultant on the project, Leslie Simmer is an Editor on the film and Jim Morrisette is the Colorist / On-line Editor.

The Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 7-21, with schedules yet to be announced. The Siskel Center screenings are on Friday October 22nd at 8pm and on Wednesday October 27th at 8pm. Get tickets and more information from Siskel Center.

Watch the trailer and follow the film on Facebook and Twitter.

On Tuesday, the trailer for Typeface was vaulted to the front page of YouTube thanks to one of the film's fans (read more about it here). Since this was a new experience for the film, we thought we'd share the stats on the impact this immediately had on our site traffic and sales, and also some thoughts on what it was like to have a mini-breakout into the mainstream away from the design, typography and letterpress community that has been such a huge supporter of the film from the start.

~ Before yesterday, the video only had a humble 1,679 views. In a single day, it became our YouTube channel's most watched video ever with 51,357 views (according to YouTube's analytics). It is still gaining large amounts of views today, though not at that pace. A number of our other films also received above average daily views as a result.

~ With those viewers came comments: from 0 to 50 in a single day (not counting obvious spam). Interestingly, the majority of these comments are from people who seem to have no discernible interest in the film's subject matter (or were even aware that there was a film) and so some of the comments were negative. A debate even seemed to break out between typography fans and casual viewers over the very validity of the project. This was new thing for Typeface, which has benefited previously from finding an adoring niche audience who have done a lot of positive marketing on our behalf, such as creating their own posters or spreading the word on twitter. Added to this were the many strange videos and friend requests we suddenly received. The perils of being popular...

~ Happily, YouTube also exposed us to typography lovers who hadn't yet found us. In a single day, we saw a traffic increase of +1,042.39% to the Typeface website, and a +733% increase in visits to the DVD's page in the Kartemquin store, resulting in one of our highest-ever sales days for DVDs (all proceeds of which go to outreach funds for the film and future Kartemquin documentaries). Not bad considering the DVD has been available for pre-order since April 28th 2010, is available on iTunes and Netflix, and has already screened over 50 times around the world.

~ The best part of all this? Karen Kavett, the fan who selected us for the YouTube homepage, told us on twitter that she hasn't even seen the film yet! She will soon though; we're sending her a free copy as a thank you.

So, overall we are of course extremely pleased by the greater exposure YouTube offered our film. What has been most exciting about bringing the film to the public is that each stage of growth has been as much led by our fan base as it has by our own efforts, and the YouTube impact is just the latest example of this. In that spirit, we're trying to embrace the crowd even further by launching a page where people interested in the film can request a screening near them. Check it out and hopefully we can bring Typeface to you!

The award-winning Kartemquin documentary Prisoner of Her Past is now available on Netflix. Add the film to your queue today!

If you are in the Chicago area however, perhaps you might want to see the film with Howard Reich in person at a special screening at the Spertus Institute on November 14th, 2010. Howard will introduce the film and sign copies of the DVD and his book. Tickets are available now from the Spertus Institute.

Prisoner of Her Past will also screen across the United States and in Greece and Czech Republic this fall. Check out the events page for details.

This weekend saw the final episode of At the Movies broadcast on American television. Kartemquin has always been fond of the program ever since it was so integral in raising awareness of Hoop Dreams with this famous review in 1994.

It seems we're not alone in feeling this way, as many other writers over the past few days have marked the end of the show with tributes that make special mention of that landmark Hoop Dreams review, including NPR, IFC.com, Reuters, and the superb Not Just Movies blog, who felt that most appropriate way to pay tribute to was by profiling Hoop Dreams in detail, since they discovered the film "solely through the attention it received on the program."

Our thanks and eternal gratitude go to Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert and At the Movies.