Documentary Tells Complicated Story Of Local Artist Peter Anton
(CBS) -- A documentary playing at the Siskel Film Center Sunday afternoon aims to tell the complicated story of a prolific local artist.
Peter Anton has been drawing portraits, painting and making other kinds of art for 70 years, mostly in his home in East Chicago, Indiana.
The 83-year-old is the subject of "Almost There," a documentary co-directed and co-produced by Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden.
The pair met Anton at Whiting's Pierogi Fest in 2006 where he was drawing children's portraits, says Rybicky.
At first, he says, they didn't even want to make a movie about him. They just wanted to help him fulfill his last life wish - to show his work publicly.
Rybicky says just ahead of an exhibit that Rybicky and Wickenden set up at Intuit, an art center in Chicago's West Town, a charge from Anton's past surfaced and threatened to derail the show.
They kept filming because about a year after Anton's exhibit, he was forced to move out of his decrepit home and into a retirement center in Calumet City, says Rybicky.
Anton came to the film's sold-out premiere Friday night and took questions along with the directors.
Rybicky is hopeful "Almost There" will air again after this weekend, but hasn't confirmed anything yet.