Lee Godie, Chicago French Impressionist
"...brilliant, touching, thoughtful, insightful and inspiring. Thank you so much for having the vision to produce this film and for the way you told her story."
-- Carl Hammer, October 2021
"...One of the accomplishments of this film is that it does not present Godie as a pathetic figure, but as an accomplished one."
---Margaret Hawkins, The Democracy Chain.org, January 2022
A homeless Lee Godie, at the age of 60, reinvented herself as a French Impressionist and survived on the streets of Chicago selling her art. A charming raconteur who embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of Chicago, this documentary portrait chronicles her family history and her artistic career, from many of the Chicagoans, who assisted her along the way.
Lee Godie (born Jamot Emily Godee) on the northwest side of Chicago in 1908, appeared on the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago around 1968 with scrolled up paintings, photo booth self-portraits and pen/ink drawings. She lived her life openly on the streets of Chicago and when the weather demanded in transient hotels. She had a wonderfully inventive personality that touched many who found her year-round selling her art up and down Michigan Avenue from the Drake Hotel lobby to the Art Institute lions.
Grants awarded
“This project is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.”
“This project is partially supported by an Individual Artist Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, as well as a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, a state agency through federal funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.”
Press Info
LEE GODIE, CHICAGO FRENCH IMPRESSIONIST
(2021), 74 min, USA
Kapra Fleming, director/camera/editor/producer
Tom Palazzolo, camera/producer
A Pandora lobo estepario Production
for more information: leegodiemovie(at)gmail.com
SYNOPSIS (Logline)
A homeless Lee Godie, at the age of 60, reinvented herself as a French Impressionist and survived on the streets of Chicago selling her art. A charming raconteur who embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of Chicago, this documentary portrait chronicles her family history and her artistic career, from many of the Chicagoans, who assisted her along the way.
SYNOPSIS (Short)
A Chicago native, Godie, at the age of 60 finding herself homeless on the streets of Chicago branded herself as a “French Impressionist” selling pen/ink drawings and paintings to collectors, art students and pedestrians on Michigan Avenue for over twenty years until her death in 1994. This documentary portrait relies on first-hand interviews with friends and Chicago art collectors about this unique artist, who embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of Chicago and masterfully wove a web of speculation about her life.
SYNOPSIS (Longer)
This documentary portrait of Lee Godie (nee Jamot Emily Godee), legendary within the Chicago art scene in the 1970s and 1980s, follows this Chicago-born woman who grew up during the Roaring 20s, had two failed marriages and abandoned children along the way. In the late 1960s, she appeared in the Old Town and Gold Coast areas of Chicago hawking rolled up paintings, photo-booth self-portraits and pen/ink drawings. She gained notoriety and supported herself with sales from her art, declaring herself a “French Impressionist” as the long lines in front the the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1980s proved there was high demand for this style of art.
The film looks at Godie’s work and life interweaving first-hand anecdotes about Chicagoans’ encounters with the artist’s ever-changing marketing strategies, her artistic career and her rise to national newsworthy notice mixed in with previously unknown facts from her childhood, two marriages and the children she left behind. Referencing her journals and many of the early 20th century songs she loved to sing, this documentary reveals an artist, whose outward demeanor and appearance often concealed her inner fortitude and belief in her outward beauty. In the early 1990s, after Lee became too frail to remain on the streets, she was cared for by her second-born daughter, who had only recently discovered her birth mother.
Godie was a charming raconteur and a roguish entrepreneur, who touched the lives of many Chicagoans. Her choice to live on the streets mimicked the birds she often painted as she flitted from place to place living life on her own terms and in her own style.