There are times I think I must be not only the most active food filmmaker in Chicago, but the world. This week was one, with three different videos turning up online and the sold-out premiere of a 4th— only the second time I’ve ever managed to have a public screening of one of my films, which usually I only get to see with my family or a friend or two. I did premiere Raccoon Stories at a party at my house with maybe 15 or 18 people, but until now the only big screening was the event Supreme Lobster planned at the Shedd Aquarium for A Better Fish and In The Land of Whitefish.

Since the new one, The Butcher’s Karma, was inspired in part by a panel* at last year’s Family Farmed Expo (now the Good Food Festival & Conference), while it was in production I contacted Grant Kessler, who describes himself as more or less the marketing guy for Familyfarmed.org (even though he’s a photographer, not a marketing guy), and he immediately liked the idea of doing an event before the festival next month premiering the video and starring the three main characters of the film. Well, by the end we didn’t have any of the three main characters for various personal reasons, but we did have a sold-out house at Uncommon Ground…

and a fine dinner prepared by Uncommon Ground chef Chris Spear from pork supplied by Black Earth Meats (plus some pate sent over by The Butcher & Larder).

Yes, that was bacon and chocolate mousse. Anyway, a very appreciative crowd of about 60, quite a number of whom remembered the panel quite well (more than once I heard people talking about things that were said that were in the video, too); the film played after dinner and then Christopher Pax, who works for Black Earth, and I took a few questions. I’m not a personal-attention hog, but I’m not going to turn down getting applause in front of an audience, either, and this was up there with this in terms of making me feel good about the hours that go into this stuff.

So let’s see the film, you say. Well… hopefully soon. Because it involved shooting at Publican Quality Meats, which was not open yet and which had already made deals with various publications about exclusives on this or that, I have to get their signoff before it can be generally public. No question it will happen soon, it just may not happen right away. Just watch here for more details.

In the meantime, you can watch another video that I cut for Grub Street out of the footage from Publican Quality Meats. This one focuses on the store itself (which had just opened when it ran; the segment in the film is more in-depth about meat and farmers. (There’s only a tiny bit of overlap in terms of footage used between the two versions.)

But that’s not even one of the ones that premiered last week! I also shot at soon-to-be-open Nellcôte, and what I expected to be a short shoot about the unique flour mill they installed turned into a longer shoot involving actually making both pizza and pasta, so I cut it into two five-minute-ish movies:

And we’re still not done— the Key Ingredient series just keeps churning away at the Reader, and here’s the latest installment, with Iliana Regan, who does dinners in her apartment as One Sister:

Oh, and then I contributed to this Time Out Chicago bloggers’ roundup too: here, here and here.

So hopefully this quantity of material can tide you over until the 18th official Sky Full of Bacon podcast, The Butcher’s Karma, debuts. Big thanks again to Grant Kessler, Uncommon Ground (which by the way does a first rate job video-wise for a restaurant showing a movie) and FamilyFarmed.Org. And to everyone who bought tickets for the dinner… and allowed us to use the magic words “sold out.”

* I was already thinking about doing one with Bartlett Durand of Black Earth Meats, whom I’d met on a cheese junket, but the overall direction of the piece was finally set by the panel which included Rob Levitt, Paul Kahan, Durand and Herb Eckhouse of La Quercia, moderated by Ellen Malloy.