[img id=”80193″ align=”alignleft”] As the host of the Chicago International Documentary Festival (CIDF), Doc Films presented four days of documentary films last week, drawing filmgoers and filmmakers from around the world to the U of C campus.

Featured in seven venues across Chicagoland, this year’s CIDF introduced over 100 documentaries and offered audiences the chance to meet many of the films’ directors.

Among the films screened this weekend, Doc’s showing of The Big Sellout, a German film about Nobel Prize–winner Joseph Stiglitz’s views on economic privatization, garnered particular interest among filmgoers. The audience had a chance to meet Stiglitz, as well as the film’s director Florian Opitz, at the screening on Saturday. That afternoon featured a screening of Senator Obama Goes to Africa, a film by Chicago filmmaker Bob Hercules that documented Senator Barack Obama’s highly publicized August 2006 trip to Kenya.

Doc also screened The Murder of Fred Hampton, the story of a Black Panther Party founder who was killed by Chicago police officers, and The Blood of Yingzhou District, which explores the hidden AIDS epidemic in China. Both films earned recognition at the CIDF Awards Ceremony held at Doc Films on Saturday. The CIDF judges grant over $50,000 each year to outstanding films.

CIDF is presented by the Society for the Arts, a nonprofit organization based in Chicago. Established in 2003, the 10-day event celebrates the art of documentary filmmaking and the cultures and ideas presented in international works.