The small Quad Cities area town of Aledo is getting lots of attention on the silver screen, thanks to two film projects from producer Christina Shaver.
The critically acclaimed feature, “Everything Fun You Could Possibly Do in Aledo, Illinois,” was first shown locally in August 2023 at a private screening at the Center for Living Arts, Rock Island, and returned for public showings at the Aledo Opera House last summer during the town’s Rhubarb Festival.
Narrated by country star and Aledo native Suzy Bogguss, “Everything Fun You Could Possibly Do in Aledo, Illinois” reunites two childhood friends from the Mercer County seat after three decades apart. It’s now available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and filmmaker Christina Shaver is currently in production on a new documentary about Surrealist painter Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977), who spent two years as a child in Aledo, from 1914-1916.
Shaver -- a Chicago native and Northwestern alum whose paternal grandmother lived in Aledo – was pleasantly surprised to see her low-budget Aledo comedy as subject of a major feature in the Chicago Tribune, Jan. 27, 2026.
“That they featured it so prominently was absolutely a surprise. And it was really cool,” she said recently.
Directed by Bethany Berg (and co-written by Shaver), the film stars Chicago theater actors Jennifer Estlin and Sara Sevigny as the mid-life friends reuniting in their hometown, and the Tribune story said “there’s a quiet sweetness to their antic friendship…”
In a radiantly glowing review (Jan. 31, 2026) by Chris Jones of Overly Honest Reviews, he noted the women’s performances “never strain for laughs, and that restraint becomes one of the film’s greatest strengths.”
He wrote that Aledo is “treated as a character rather than a backdrop, and the film’s affection for the town is evident in every choice. It doesn’t mock small-town life, nor does it romanticize it into a postcard version of Americana. Instead, it captures the heartbeat of a place where everyone knows your past, whether you want them to or not. The local sheriff, played by Eddie Heffernan, isn’t the expected villain so much as an embodiment of that familiarity. If you live in Illinois (outside of Chicago), you’ll immediately feel at home with so much of this film!”
Jones wrote the film is blissfully free of irony.
“It doesn’t wink at the audience or undermine its own tenderness. In a landscape crowded with indie films that mistake detachment for insight, this one commits to warmth, community, and honesty,” the review said.
Shaver’s favorite film festival screening was in Phoenix in April 2024, in a big theater.
“When you're the filmmaker, filling a lot of seats is so cool and also, like, so scary. And this place was packed to the gills,” she said. “It was literally standing room only.”
A Blaze Radio review of the Phoenix showing said: “Everyone deserves friendship, romance and kinship, whatever variety it may be. This film masterfully shows how enriching these concepts can be.”
Suzy Bogguss (the country star and 69-year-old Aledo native) wrote three new songs for the film, which she narrated, and was filmed in the town (pop. 3,633) in 2022.
Shaver has fond memories of visiting Aledo as a child, and it had been at least 20 years since she last was there before starting shooting.
“I'd be there a lot. I'd spend a couple weeks there every summer with my grandmother. And then holidays, just regular weekends,” she said of visiting there. “I wanted to make this movie was just because I missed it, because my grandmother passed away a long time ago and my family's moved away, and I'm like, I love that town.”
Shaver was especially gratified to show the movie several times during Aledo’s Rhubarb Festival in 2025, at the restored Aledo Opera House.
“And I'm so proud to be a board member of the Opera House, so it was just really cool to actually see the opera house come back to life in that way,” she recalled. “And just to have such a big premiere for the opera house and for the town that weekend was great.”
Shaver was ecstatic to see reactions from local residents – “People were smiling ear to ear,” she said.
“I've seen this movie a million times, and what I like to do when the movie's playing is to actually look at the audience. So just the smiles on people's faces was so nice,” she recalled. “So many people have come up to me at those screenings where they say, you know, ‘I think this was about me. Like, my best friend's just coming in from out of town and we were going to get together.’ I think there is some type of just warmth of friendship and also nostalgia and also the renewal of the friendships that this movie captures.”
“To have me go back and really honor the town too, that was super important when we were writing it,” Shaver said.
It first became available to stream on Amazon Prime this past New Year’s Eve. They wanted to time it close to Bogguss’s big induction ceremony to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, surrounded by some of the most important people in her life and career (including Trisha Yearwood and Reba McEntire).
The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter was inducted during a live Opry performance on Jan. 16, 2026. Bogguss made her Opry debut on May 12, 1989.
Shaver hopes the Amazon streaming will help her career.
“I think it helps all of us, all of the creative people involved. It's nice to have something on a really big platform,” she said. “And now our real push is trying to get it into more households and kind of create a bigger audience for it.”
Giving a singular artist her due
In 2023, Shaver returned to Aledo over many months to film for her artist doc on the unique Gertrude Abercrombie, a leading figure of Chicago’s mid-20th century art scene who’s been called “Queen of the Bohemian Artists.”
Her fame has skyrocketed since her 1977 death, with a record single auction sale of $864,100 for Silo at Aledo (1953) at Bonhams in 2024. That year also saw Abercrombie art sales total $4 million in global auctions.
Shaver has taken her documentary crew to Maine, New York, Florida, and Ireland. The filming should be done later this year, with an anticipated release date in 2028, she said.
“There's this biographical documentary, art history part to it. But her today story is so interesting,” Shaver said, noting the artist’s popularity and sales in recent years.
The film will also cover a massive fraud and forgery case the FBI is pursuing against men who created or altered artworks in Michigan, attributing some to Abercrombie that sold for more than $300,000 each at auction.
Shaver learned about the artist from an Aledo developer (and Abercrombie collector) who recommended pursuing her story.
“I had not heard of her or anything. And I looked her up and I, as a musician, was so enthralled by the fact that she had all these huge jazz icons just hanging out with her at her house in Chicago,” she said of Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and the Modern Jazz Quartet. “And I was flabbergasted. I'd never heard of that before because so many people would just go there and jam and I think I'm interested.
“And then just breaking open this whole story just about her biography, which is really interesting,” Shaver said. “And then what's happening with her art today is very compelling.”
Like many artists who become much more famous after their death, the law of supply and demand applied to Abercrombie.
“During her lifetime the issues were, yes, sexism, she's a female artist, but also living in Chicago, which is not an international artistic hub,” Shaver said. “It's not Paris, it's not New York, it's not Berlin. She's just in Chicago and she's a woman artist. And the work that she was doing was also kind of more forward-thinking. And so she was almost a pioneer in the surrealism, the type of surrealism that she does.
“It wasn't appreciated at the time. So for all those reasons,” she said. “She was definitely recognized for her artwork. And she knew that she was going to be somebody someday. But the reason why it happens after you die is actually supply and demand. And I have discovered this in creating this documentary that most artists, their work doesn't become well-known until after they die, truly, because of supply and demand. Really interesting.”
The documentary features Abercrombie expert Susan Weininger, professor emerita of art history at Chicago’s Roosevelt University. Shaver filmed her when a traveling exhibit of many works was at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
“So that was really great,” she said. “It's really neat to be in a space where you see all of her work or a lot of her work.”
One painting the Art Institute of Chicago has (among several of Abercrombie in its permanent collection), that’s part of the traveling exhibit, is “The Past and the Present,” which is typically displayed next to the iconic “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper.
“And to have a Gertrude Abercrombie right next to that is like, incredible. So that's really cool,” Shaver said. “And we do have that in the film and actually in the movie or what we filmed. I don't know if we'll make it in the movie. We did film the Mercer County High School students coming to visit the Art Institute and seeing that painting there next to ‘Nighthawks’ with Susan. It was really sweet.”
Weininger was filmed speaking in September 2023 at the Essley-Noble Museum at Mercer County Historical Society, Aledo, which has some Abercrombie art in their permanent collection. Weininger was also filmed speaking at the high school in Aledo.
Exhibit coming to Milwaukee
Although born in Texas, Abercrombie spent most of her life in Chicago. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and studied figure drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Her family first moved to the Hyde Park neighborhood (near University of Chicago) in 1916. In 1936 and 1938, Abercrombie won prizes at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Annual Exhibition of Works by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity. During the 1940s and ‘50s, she was known for holding parties and artistic gatherings at her Hyde Park home, inviting visual artists and prominent jazz musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie.
Her home became a salon of sorts for such writers and musicians as Gilespie, Sonny Rollins, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn and Thornton Wilder, among others. It was through Thornton Wilder that Abercrombie met Gertrude Stein in 1935. Stein advised Abercrombie that she had to “draw better” and Abercrombie took her advice, developing the Surrealist style for which she is best known, according to a bio from Richard Norton Gallery.
Her career took off after this 1935 meeting with Stein, as Abercrombie won her first award at the Art Institute of Chicago. Abercrombie became a colorful presence on the Chicago art scene, hosting wild parties and driving around town in a battered Rolls Royce.
The traveling exhibit, “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery,” will make its only Midwest appearance at the Milwaukee Art Museum, March 27–July 19, 2026. It was previously at Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine, July 12, 2025 – Jan. 11, 2026, and Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jan. 18-June 1, 2025.
Bringing together nearly 80 paintings from major museums and private collections, Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery reveals an artist “whose spare, dreamlike imagery including moons, owls, cats, solitary figures, and doors leading to unknown places, become a language of introspection and imagination,” the Milwaukee museum website says.
“Her art, like her life, was infused with rhythm, humor, mystery, and quiet rebellion,” the site says.
Abercrombie once said, “The whole world is a mystery.” Through her eyes, “the Midwest becomes a place of imagination and wonder, where ordinary objects become symbols, and solitude gives way to discovery.”
Critics across the country are celebrating this retrospective as a major moment for an artist long beloved in Chicago, but only recently recognized on the national stage. Vogue calls Abercrombie’s paintings “Mysterious and precise as a well-composed jazz solo.” The Wall Street Journal describes the exhibition as “a long-overdue celebration of one of America’s most enigmatic surrealists.”
“Very connected to Gertrude”
Like Shaver’s own life, the producer said Aledo was very influential to Abercrombie’s art and she also returned there often to visit family. Shaver said she feels “very connected to Gertrude in that way.”
Abercrombie was an only child of strict Christian Scientist parents and she had many relatives in Aledo. She married twice and had one daughter, who Shaver says has since died.
“She was part of this big warm family in Aledo, and her cousins kind of became like her siblings,” Weininger said in 2023. “She had a very close relationship with her cousins.”
“Aledo represented to her a warm, enveloping family feeling that she wasn’t getting in her nuclear family,” she said. “She’d spent summers here, holidays, maybe other school vacations.
She continued to come back to Aledo for years, when she was grown and married and had her own child. So it remained a really, really important thing in her life.
“It represented home to her in an emotional way,” Weininger said, similar to Shaver’s feelings.
Shaver said there was a song written in her honor, “Gertrude’s Bounce,” by jazz pianist Richie Powell, that she hopes to use in the film.
An NPR October 2021 profile called Abercrombie a “bohemian self-styled witch who hobnobbed with the leading jazz luminaries of her era was also an accomplished painter.”
She died at age 68, after years of declining health due to alcoholism and arthritis. But after the East Village gallery Karma mounted a retrospective in 2018, Gertrude Abercrombie became, posthumously, an art world star.
"It was her first exhibition in New York since the 1950s," Robert Cozzolino said in the NPR profile. "People lost their minds. [Co-chief New York Times art critic] Roberta Smith wrote a long review, singing her praises. They published this thick book and it sold out immediately. And you know, I think when Gertrude Abercrombies come to auction now, they're insane."
She showed in New York at one solo show in her lifetime, but never had a national reputation, Weininger (the retired professor) said.
The artist lived in a ramshackle frame house on Chicago's South Side, sweeping around in pointy black hats and capes, the NPR piece said.
"She was a character for days," said Cozzolino, curator of the touring art show Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art. "I'm surprised somebody hasn't made a biopic about her."
Faced with exploding demand for Abercrombie’s work, which only Weininger can authenticate amidst a rapidly developing forgery market, "Susan becomes the arbiter of Gertrude’s legacy," says a synopsis about the new doc on its website (gertrudefilm.com). “But as the artist’s paintings are bought by private buyers, Gertrude’s dream of keeping her work publicly accessible is slipping away and Susan begins to wonder who will pick up the torch after her.
“Weaving together stories from an ensemble cast of those impacted by Gertrude’s rise, archival media and imaginative explorations of Gertrude’s paintings and the real- life landscapes they depict, ‘Gertrude’ ignites reflection on whose work we value and why,” the site says.
Shaver has visited friends of the artist from her years in Hyde Park, one remaining family member in California, and recorded a phone conversation with the famous jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins (now 95), who was a friend of Gertrude.
The doc’s director is Julia Hunter (the Aledo movie cinematographer), a Chicago-based documentary director and cinematographer who has worked on shows for Apple TV+, AMC, VH1, Discovery+, and countless independent projects.
Hunter is a graduate of Knox College in Galesburg, which is 37 miles from Aledo, and Shaver said she's got a soft spot in her heart for the area.
For more information on the documentary in progress, visit the film website HERE.
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