If you are among those sick and tired of the tedious gamesmanship surrounding the future home of the Chicago Bears, allow me to direct your attention to a tussle that makes this football battle look almost tame and expeditious by comparison.

It is a documentary titled “Holding Pattern” that covers the quest for a third airport, so far an elusive dream for some, a nightmare for others, that has affected politicians and fired passions in people who would rather have been minding their own business and tending their farms. It is an idea first floated in 1968, an “Airport-in-the-Lake” pipe dream voiced by Mayor Richard J. Daley. Even though Midway was a very busy airport (the world’s busiest from the 1930s into the 1960s) and O’Hare was formally dedicated in 1963, Daley thought it would be a good idea to build another airport.

It would be on a man-made island in Lake Michigan, east of the Hyde Park neighborhood. That notion prompted head-scratching among many, laughter among some, and prompted columnist Mike Royko to offer, “There is no way you can have an airport in the lake without kissing off most of the South Side lakefront. It will turn into Mannheim Road on the Water.”

For more than a decade, the notion of a third airport was spoken of only in whispers, if at all, until 1984 and the creation of the proposed South Suburban Project. This was a cooperative venture between Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Chicago and the Federal Aviation Administration. There was a Lake Calumet proposal championed by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1989, but that soon enough died in the state senate.

But by 1992, planners began to focus third airport efforts on the tiny town of Peotone, a quiet Will County farming community of 4,000-some residents, 40-some miles south of Chicago. Its name is derived from the Potawatomi language and means “come here.”

This convoluted tale is told in a smoothly compelling fashion in the 60 minutes of a new film titled “Holding Pattern,” which will have its premiere on Saturday at the Chicago History Museum. It is peppered with video clips of politicians and protests as well as interviews with many of those who have long been involved with the matter.

You will most enjoy forthright George Ochsenfeld, Chicago born and raised, who moved to Peotone decades ago to farm and with his wife Maureen, became the leader of STAND (Shut This Airport Nightmare Down). He decries the third airport as “a crime against the Earth” and “a crime against future generations.”

He and such other local activists as Judy Ogalla moved from citizens to activists to politicians. They’ve long had their hands full, up against a series of politicians and their arguments that a third airport would stimulate economic growth in the south suburbs, which have for decades been economically battered and bruised.

No one has been more passionately pro-airport than Jesse Jackson Jr., who, running successfully for the 2nd District Congressional seat in the mid-1990s, used the third airport issue, at the suggestion of his political strategist Delmarie Cobb, as his principal campaign issue.

You will undoubtedly notice that the film is peppered with politicians who would eventually wind up in prison. In addition to Jackson, you’ll see George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich. Even Mike Madigan makes a brief appearance.

You will also learn that the state has invested more than $134 million, the largest part of that spent by the Illinois Department of Transportation’s use of eminent domain to acquire thousands of acres of farmland from unwilling property owners, taking over farms and razing homes. Eminent domain is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a right of a government to take private property for public use,” and the film reminds us (briefly) that it has been previously used to build such things as the Dan Ryan and Eisenhower expressways and the University of Illinois Chicago campus.

The height of this third airport land-buying took place from 2010 to 2015, but the film tells us that the state now owns 90% of the land needed for the first stage of airport building.

And so we wait. This film is the work primarily of director, producer and writer Tom Desch, who credits his being “raised among the cornfields” of Herscher (population 1,600) as an inspiration for this film, and producer/writer/editor Brian Kallies, a veteran of WTTW-Ch. 11’s “Chicago Stories” series. Each has been following this story for years. In the executive producer seat is John Davies, a longtime and award-winning filmmaker.

The film screening is free, though one must register. It will be followed by a panel discussion with filmmakers Desch and Kallies, airport proponent and long-time political strategist Cobb, and anti-airport activist and Will County Board official Ogalla. The former Fox News Chicago reporter Mike Flannery will moderate and it’s impossible to think of anyone who could do a more knowledgeable job.

And, as of this week, no shovels have pierced the ground and the Bears will surely find a new home long before there are planes in Peotone.

rkogan@chicagotribune.com

If you go

“Holding Pattern” will be screened at 12:30 p.m. June 13 at the Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St.; free RSVP and more information at chicagohistory.org