Podtalk: Lonnie Edwards is Chicago Onscreen, Sept. 12, 2020

CHICAGO – As an artist, it doesn’t get any more high profile than filmmaker and man-as-happening maestro Lonnie Edwards. Edwards will be showcasing his latest short film, “Periphery,” as part of The Chicago Onscreen Local Film Showcase, a health-friendly outdoor screening event on Saturday, September 12th, 2020.

After he turned to filmmaking after a career as an installation artist, Lonnie Edwards broke out in 2014 with the award-winning short film “Parietal Guidance,” and from there has commented on black and societal issues with “A Ferguson Story,” “Exodus: Sounds of the Great Migration” and his latest “Periphery.” He is also involved now with Future Galerie, a “unified art auction platform that allows prominent artists to raise money for social organizations, to create a more just and tolerant future.” To add to his busy 2020, he also launched a fashion line.

Filmmaker Lonnie Edwards of The Chicago Onscreen Local Film Showcase
Photo credit: Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com

Edwards grew up in Chicago, and used his observations in his art dynamics. After “Parietal Guidance” won numerous film festival awards, he turned his filmmaking sensibilities toward the Michael Brown incident and Ferguson, Missouri, in “A Ferguson Story,” a film that began as a full length quasi-documentary that garnered interest from outside studios. Dissatisfied with that experience, Edwards recut the film to a shorter length, and moved on to to other projects, including the aforementioned “Exodus” and “Periphery.” According to him, he has made his “last short film,” and have moved on toward episodic series and feature length films in development.

Lonnie Edwards takes his experiences as a young black male in society, and creates artistic statements of purpose and power within that perspective, whether dealing with negative, positive or judgmental elements of the spectrum. In a Podtalk with Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com at the end of a historic summer, Edwards talked about his film work and his participation in Chicago Onscreen.

[19]	By PATRICK McDONALD [20] Editor and Film Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com [19]