Back Alley Rip-Off

An unfinished narrative film by artist Don McIlvaine, shot in the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago with local actors. It follows two men that win a sweepstakes lottery, and the people who want to take the winning ticket from them (including a mobster and a man who wants to use the money to improve the neighborhood). The Art & Soul Gallery and several of McIlvaine's murals can be seen.; Back Alley Rip-Off is discussed briefly in Rebecca Zorach's 2019 book Art for People's Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975. Zorach describes that McIlvaine "wrote a treatment and portion of a script and shot sample scenes" and that "the script is inspired both by local context and by the sense of possibility in Hollywood's newfound interest in Black subject matter that spawned the blaxploitation trend."