:: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22 - THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Elaine May's ISHTAR (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am

Affectionate towards its idiot characters and vicious towards its political targets, Elaine May's improvisatory satire is one of the ultimate Hollywood film maudits—a massive critical and commercial flop that seems to get funnier and sharper the further its disastrous release recedes into film history. Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty play two absolutely awful songwriters who get booked to play in North Africa and then find themselves mixed up in a confusing political conflict; that the intrigues are almost painfully stupid is part of the point, as is the ease with which Hoffman and Beatty's bungling boobs stumble into international matters. This is both a wryly fond portrait of ugly Americanism and a bleak condemnation of American foreign policy. Screening as part of a Dangerous Business: Elaine May Matinees series. (1987, 107 min, 35mm) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Jonathan Glazer’s BIRTH (US/UK/Germany)

Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm

There are at least four auteurs of BIRTH—co-screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, director Jonathan Glazer, cinematographer Harris Savides, and star Nicole Kidman—and what makes the film such an interesting (and, to some viewers, frustrating) experience is that it often feels as though they’re working at cross purposes. Carrière is the most widely lauded of the bunch, having begun his career as the co-writer of French comedian Pierre Étaix and gone on to collaborate with a range of great filmmakers that includes Milos Forman, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, and Philippe Garrel. For all his accomplishments, though, he will always be best known for collaborating with Luis Buñuel on his final five features, and it’s Buñuel’s sensibility that looms largest over BIRTH; like many of the Spanish master’s films, it’s an elegant, deliberately nonsensical provocation. The premise of a wealthy woman falling madly in love with a 10-year-old boy who claims to be her long-deceased husband may well have tickled Buñuel, as he loved to show aristocrats behaving absurdly, though one wonders what the ever-modest filmmaker would have made of Glazer’s ornate approach, honed on music videos and indebted here to the mature work of Kubrick and Polanski. With its slow pacing, portentous line readings, and frequent Steadicam shots, BIRTH suggests a version of THE SHINING with all the overtly scary parts taken out. That may seem like a perverse strategy, but when you think about how perverse the subject matter is, it begins to make sense. The horror movie aesthetic is carried out brilliantly and given nuance by Savides, arguably the most exciting cinematographer of the 2000s with a résumé that includes James Gray’s THE YARDS (2000), David Fincher’s ZODIAC (2007), and multiple films by Gus Van Sant. The lighting and shadows often steal the show in BIRTH, and they augment the film’s theme of mourning. As Rocío Irizarry Nuñez writes in the Chicago Film Society program notes, “Muslin was used for light diffusion, as though the film itself is swathed in a burial shroud.” And why shouldn’t it be? Kidman’s character has spent ten years in mourning when the story opens, and her dead husband is invoked so much that he leaves a greater impression than many of the onscreen players. The primary cast is stellar, though, from Lauren Bacall (as Kidman’s mother) to Danny Huston (as the perseverant dolt who wants to marry her) to Cameron Bright (as the creepy ten-year-old). Kidman deserves special mention for her high melodramatic performance, which seems almost magically unaware of how bizarre everything around her is. She gives herself totally to the role of a woman who, for the sake of love, will allow herself to believe in anything. In this way, Kidman comes across as the ideal movie spectator, just as would a few decades later in those ads they play before movies at AMC Theatres. Preceded by a 10-minute Nicole Kidman trailer reel on 35mm. (2004, 100 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: A Celebration of Jonathan Rosenbaum (US/Experimental)

Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

Compared to André Bazin by Jean Luc Godard, Jonathan Rosenbaum has published a new book In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. For one night only, see the film programming of an international legend, followed by a post-screening Q&A. Tackling his nearly six-decade love for creative expression through album reviews and film criticism, the American thinker looks back on his career and reflects on the role of a critic in a rapidly changing world. Programming three short films, Rosenbaum begins with his one-time star vehicle, Peter Bull’s THE TWO-BACKED BEAST, OR THE CRITIC MAKES THE FILM (1978). In the short, Rosenbaum (appearing as himself) describes a nonexistent movie. All aspects of this figment are notated and inserted into Bull’s next film, thereby placing a position of analytics into creatively intuition space. Following is Michael Snow’s TABLETOP (1976), a comic parody where the camera itself, tracking forward, destroys the contents of an overstuffed breakfast table. To round out the evening, the program ends with Owen Land's ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKES AS CITED BY SIGMUND FREUD IN WIT AND ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS, OR CAN THE AVANT-GARDE ARTIST BE WHOLED? (1977). The film is a blend of deconstructive screwball and trouble arising from Land's recent conversion to fundamentalist Christianity in a bewildering yet hilarious 17 minute short. In preparation for the release of the book, Rosenbaum gave interviews reflecting on his career. He describes his work as a critic as pilot guiding audiences to new horizons, not providing a destination, emphasizing the role of the spectator to come up with their own conclusion about their work. Rather than ranking between high and low art, he’s more interested in the celebration of mediums, hoping for people to make their own decisions and discoveries. (1976-78, Total approx. 110 min, 16mm) [Ray Ebarb]

Gillo Pontecorvo's THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (Italy/Algeria)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

One of political cinema's enduring masterpieces, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS is also a world-historical document, an essential piece in the puzzle of a violent and hopeful time. No film before or since has conveyed the drama of insurrection with such intensity or precision. Depicting the bloody clash for Algerian independence waged against French colonial powers in the late 1950s, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS is defined by dualities, beginning with the central spatial dichotomy between the “European City” and the Casbah, which serve as the film’s primary locations. The use of these real locations, like the stark, hand-held cinematography, show director Gillo Pontecorvo absorbing the techniques of Neorealism, but his masterful control of suspense and emotion owes just as much to the clockwork thrillers of Hitchcock and Lang. Like the latter's M, the film is also a study in the diverging methodologies of the underground and the police, with a particular interest in organizations of power and technologies of surveillance, detection, and terror. BATTLE OF ALGIERS is legendarily detailed and unflinching representation of the violence committed by both French colonial and Algerian radical forces, which has made the film an invaluable primer on guerrilla warfare to Black Panthers and Pentagon pencil-pushers alike. Indeed, with alternating scenes of reciprocal bloodshed, Pontecorvo proves himself as expert an architect of ethical complexity as of narrative tension. But his even-handedness is hard to mistake for pure ambivalence—the film’s heart undoubtedly lies with the revolutionary spirit of the Algerian people. For one, the FLN freedom fighters are much more sharply individuated than the French occupiers, with the crucial exception of Colonel Mathieu, the focused and methodical leader of the French counterinsurgency. Himself a composite of several historical figures, Mathieu often serves as a mouthpiece to rationalize the brutality of their repression effort; Pontecorvo contrasts his chilling detachment with scenes stressing the emotional and physical impact of the anti-colonial struggle on the Algerians. In a sense, the question of the film’s political sympathies may ultimately be a question of the viewer’s inclination towards empathy. If you receive the film as the dispassionate exercise in pseudo-reportage it’s often characterized as, you may take more from its overtures to impartiality; if you experience THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS as the gripping, devastating, and ultimately rousing work of art I think it is, you’ll know which side it's on. Screening as part of the Propaganda and Counterculture Lecture series. (1966, 121 min, 35mm) [Michael Metzger]

Payal Kapadia’s ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (France/India/Italy/Netherlands/Luxembourg)

Gene Siskel Film Center - See Venue website for showtimes

Premiering as the first Indian film in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in thirty years, Payal Kapadia’s sophomore feature—and her first official foray into fiction filmmaking—dazzles with a confidence of voice and spirit that continues her emerging canon of poetic and politically charged narratives. Kapadia’s vision of feminine perseverance through lives of longing crafts a sprawling and complex vision of Mumbai as a nocturnal city that shines menacingly with wonder and opportunity. Voices that open the film tell us of the entrancing promise of money and stability that can be found in Mumbai, yet such gifts can only realistically be bestowed on the lucky few. For everyone else, you may end up like Prabha (Kani Kusruti) or Anu (Divya Prabha), two women living together and working together at the same hospital, each with varying levels of dedication to their work. Kapadia’s slice-of-life storytelling mode often finds these two at their most intimate and vulnerable in silent moments alone, each desperately working to take in the overwhelming world and circumstances around them. Prabha is stuck in time, her husband working abroad in Germany, with no attempts to contact her in months, save for a recent delivery of a rice cooker; Anu is conversely fixated on the promise of future love, with her nights spent with her new love—the charming Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon)—embarking on that most epic of quests: trying to find a place to hook up. Just like her previous film A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING (2021), the repressive politics of mainstream Indian society find themselves hideously seeped into the fabric of the story, most prominently with Shiaz’s Muslim faith becoming a roadblock for any future life with Anu in an overtly Hindu nationalist society. Yet love, lust, and independence fight their way through to Kapadia’s hopeful ending, where a trip away from Mumbai literally uproots our protagonists from the horrors of living lives of passivity, and provides them each with opportunities to finally move forward in their respective lives. The gift of Kapadia’s film is in how major of a work it feels even with such slight and understated tools, the power of these emotional bubbles filling up to the point of bursting in ways cathartic and mystical and joyously communal. (2024, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

John Huston's FAT CITY (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 4pm

The oft-quoted Truffaut-ism contends that, “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film.” The genre is like quicksand, so the theory goes: Grappling with its multifarious complexities only makes it worse. The same principle could be applied to the boxing genre: You find me a grim, slice-of-life boxing flick and I’ll find you a moviegoer gleefully shadowboxing through the end credits. No matter the intent, the sweet science inevitably plays as an elegant ballet or a savage spectacle featuring a morally complex warrior. Leave it to John Huston, director of one of the quintessential anti-war films (the 1946 documentary LET THERE BE LIGHT), to craft the quintessential anti-boxing film. Or if not “anti-boxing,” then profoundly indifferent toward its subject. Huston’s FAT CITY follows a perfectly cast Stacy Keach—rail-thin and wispy-haired—as Tully, a Stockton, California-based boxer stumbling into the lowest stakes comeback in the history of the sport. Tully’s prospects are bleak: deemed unemployable by even the Stockton box factory—a thriving paper-goods concern—he finds work picking fruit and meets Ernie (Jeff Bridges), a naïve amateur boxer at a local gym. In convincing Ernie to pursue a pro career Tully convinces himself to give his own stalled career another go. Along the way Tully enters the orbit of Oma, played by Susan Tyrrel, with whom he pursues a boozy, codependent affair. FAT CITY is littered with dark humor and a pessimism bordering on nihilism: The protagonists are not talented fighters, but maybe they are, but also maybe it doesn’t matter. For those familiar only with Huston’s early Bogart-collaborations, FAT CITY is a must-see, both for the ways in which it’s stylistically unrecognizable as a John Huston production, and for the core themes that are ever-present in his work. Just as LET THERE BE LIGHT derives its power from denying viewers any semblance of glory and focuses instead on its protagonists’ fragile internal lives and comedown, FAT CITY barely acknowledges Tully’s previous life and instead stares with him into the abyss. In the aftermath of Tully’s big fight, one can easily imagine the Walter Huston voice over: “In faraway places men dreamed of this moment, but for some men the moment is very different from the dream.” Screening as part of the Columbia Pictures in the 1970s series. (1972, 96 min, 35mm) [James Stroble]

Headlines and Hearsay: Reporting from Experimental Women Filmmakers

Film Studies Center (at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.) - Friday, 7pm (Free Admission)

Kelly Egan’s THE RANSOM NOTE (2011, 5 min, Digital Projection) is appropriate to begin this program of films by experimental women filmmakers centered on the concept of reportage. The stereotypical ransom note iconography and its haphazard assemblage of text from “legitimate” news sources becomes a means of reclaiming a narrative, as the film’s description states, “as a means of sorting out the filmmaker’s experience of feeling hijacked during the Toronto G20 Summit and subsequent riots of June 2010.” The program overall “builds upon interrogations of knowledge access and credibility… with an eye to feminist theory,” and THE RANSOM NOTE sets the tone in how the filmmakers included appropriate conventional modes to make statements both personal and wide-reaching about the state of things. In Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator,” the German philosopher opines that, “It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is exiled among alien tongues, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.” Lynne Sachs explores this notion in THE TASK OF THE TRANSLATOR (2010, 10 min, Digital Projection) as she considers three sources of information pertaining to respective processes around deaths born of wartime violence. One is considered quite literally in relation to the work’s inspiration as it finds a Latin teacher and her students attempting to translate an article about Iraqi burial rites into the “dead” (no pun intended, but it is an appreciable irony) language. About SNOW JOB: THE MEDIA HYSTERIA OF AIDS (1986, 8 min, Digital Projection), Barbara Hammer said it best herself: “I first heard of AIDS in 1985 when I was teaching at Columbia College in Chicago. I noticed the strange and inflammatory articles in the newspapers and I asked my students to collect hysteric headlines for me. And so I began my work on SNOW JOB: THE MEDIA HYSTERIA OF AIDS. I examined the public ignorance, stigmatization, and just plain wrong attitudes towards this new illness. By making a snow storm of newspaper clippings I could show what a 'snow job' the media was making.” The video part of Carolee Schneemann’s kinetic sculpture titled “War Mop,” SOUVENIR OF LEBANON (1983-2006, 6 min, Digital Projection) features a long pan of bombarded Palestinian and Lebanese villages intercut with black-and-white newspaper imagery and pleasanter images of Lebanon from the New York City Lebanese tourist bureau that closed the day Schneemann received them. A review in Artforum contextualizes the video in relation to the sculpture, which finds a mop continuously plopping down on the TV on which the images appear, aptly noting that it’s “the kinetic equivalent of counting to ten and still losing your temper. A contemporary Punch and Judy show, it epitomizes the helpless homebound viewer’s reaction to the news.” In combining the unusual biographies of various women—one, for example, who married the Berlin Wall, another declares herself to be a doorknob—creates a singular, even more unclassifiable narrative that resists easy subjection. In becoming one perhaps we all become more difficult to separate, the camaraderie of womanhood made literal, something itself exhibited in this program. Also screening is Dorothy Wiley’s 1973 short film MISS JESUS FRIES ON GRILL (12 min, 16mm). [Kat Sachs]

Vera Drew's THE PEOPLE'S JOKER (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, 9:30pm and Saturday, 2:15pm

Though initially catapulted into infamy for its legally-dubious use of characters from the Batman franchise, THE PEOPLE’S JOKER is far more than the faux-controversy surrounding its cheeky superhero antics. Director/writer/star Vera Drew’s multimedia collage of comic tomfoolery is as much a playful piece of comic-book lampooning as it is a deeply introspective origin story for Drew’s own coming-out as a trans woman, transplanting her life story onto the neon buildings and villainous cohorts of Gotham City. Drew’s fair-use feature is punk in every sense of the word; the melding of live-action actors, wonky CG imagery, stop-motion animation, and 2D cartoons makes for a tapestry of intertwining artistry. The casting of notorious alt-comic performers, from Maria Bamford’s freakish Lorne Michaels to Tim Heidecker’s Alex Jones-esque Perry White to David Liebe Hart’s transcendently tapped-in performance as the comic guru Ra’s Al Ghul, gives further shape and texture to the general reclamation, distortion, and anarchic reverence for the corporate properties on display. Drew’s own coming-out journey is delivered with humor and truth in equal measures. Her humor is oftentimes ribald and nonsensical, yet it never distracts from the earnestness at the root of her story, resulting in sequences that veer from delirious to artful in a matter of moments. It’s a tale that undeniably belongs to Drew but now, with the wide release of this film, can be shared with the world. Warner Bros. may own their specific clown prince of crime, but Vera Drew’s Joker the Harlequin is a character that now belongs to us all; a villain who’s lived long enough to see herself become our hero. Drew in person at both screenings. Screening as part of the I Am the Night: A Batman (mini)series. (2022, 95 mins, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Johan Grimonprez’s SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT (Belgium/France/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT offers an essential history lesson, as it breaks down the various multinational factors—particularly the direct involvement of the CIA—responsible for the overthrow of democratically elected Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1960; and befitting a movie with “soundtrack” in the title, the music is killer as well. That’s because SOUNDTRACK also covers one of the most robust periods in jazz history, touching on the bebop and free jazz movements through such figures as Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Charles Mingus. These artists, along with Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong, were also unwitting actors in the Cold War, it turns out. Drawing on impeccably documented research, SOUNDTRACK explains how their music was used to sell American culture to people around the world (particularly behind the Iron Curtain) and how “goodwill concerts” in African nations were often fronts for espionage activity organized by the CIA. Writer-director Johan Grimonprez cuts between footage of various jazz giants and vintage documentary material of the United Nations, the Congo, and other crucial sites in the short history of the Pan-African movement; in doing so, he conveys how far-reaching the Cold War was while creating an engaging sense of counterpoint between political and artistic histories. The musicians profiled here represented the vanguard of Black creative expression, while some of the other subjects (Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X) represented the vanguard of Black political thought; they’re united by the fact that the CIA undermined them all. Grimonprez effectively conveys the excitement around both jazz and revolutionary political movements in the late 1950s, which inspired people to believe in alternatives to white supremacy in both culture and third world politics. Ultimately, the film is about how different the world seemed when these alternatives were being seriously considered and the dominance of Western corporate interests over global affairs wasn’t so depressingly certain. (2024, 150 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Fred Halsted's SEXTOOL (US/Adult)

Music Box Theatre — Saturday, Midnight

Fred Halsted's fourth film was neither fish nor fowl. Uncompromisingly, and aggressively, perverted, SEXTOOL was equally hardcore pornography as experimental art film. Shot on 35mm, making it nearly impossible to screen at the gay porn theatres who generally ran 16mm, Halsted soon learned that while arthouses liked the sexually liberal fare coming from Europe at the time, they weren't so keen on cum shots and heavy BDSM. They preferred subtitles to sadomasochism. Already (in)famous for L.A. PLAYS ITSELF (1972) and SEX GARAGE (1972), Halsted genuinely hoped this film could be a crossover success. Unsurprisingly to everyone besides Halsted, it wasn't. Unlike most pornography, gay or straight, the sex in this film isn't the point. Well, it is, but it isn't. As Marshall McLuhan famously said a decade prior to the film's release, "the medium is the message." Halsted uses the medium of pornography as a way to facilitate an exploration of the erotic-- not just the act of sex. One could go to see SEXTOOL for strictly prurient reasons, but they would soon find themselves confused. Yes, there is sex, but the sparse, ominous electronic score feels more akin to Jack Nitzche's off putting soundtrack to descent into moral depravity and existential dread in HARDCORE (1979) than your standard upbeat funk groove generally associated with sex films of the time. It's a decidedly uncomfortable film. With a loose vignette-based story revolving around a party in LA, the narrative is sparse even by porn standards. While still making sure to have the most attractive people possible on screen (including Halsted himself with his real-life lover Joseph Yanoska/Joe Yale), the images of the body beautiful are simply tools utilized to make the film less about voyeuristically viewing the act of sex as much as an attempt to thrust the audience into the state of mind during sex. SEXTOOL utilizes the imagery and medium of pornography and, unironically, perverts it. A scene between a questionably straight cis man and a trans woman or a cop sexually forcing himself on someone nods to the sexual proclivities of chasers and uniform festishists that have always filled adult films and magazines--but the way they're presented makes it's quite obvious that there is something more profound, or at least intellectual, being explored. The medium is pornography. The message is: your pornography lacks the erotic by drowning us in sex. This film is stridently political in its perversion. Power is the sexual main attraction here. With its oblique references to Cabaret, it's clear that Halsted is positioning SEXTOOL as another look at the political crossroads of hedonism and authority/power. It takes a pervert's pervert to be sexually aroused by a man licking the open knuckle wounds of another man's fist. To allow the eroticism of violence to rise to the surface. To give the same power to the underlying and uncomfortably erotic as we always do to that which is comfortably, and obviously, sexual. This is pornography that goes beyond pornography. Restored by the Museum of Modern Art in 2020, and held in its permanent collection, SEXTOOL remains a rare film that is wholly unto itself. Simultaneously an art film that's too pornographic to be sold at the arthouse and a porn film that's too arty to be sold at the porno house, SEXTOOL is truly outsider art at its most literal and independent filmmaking at its most honest and pure. Programmed and presented by the Front Row and Olivia Hunter Willke, with an introduction by Scott Potis. (1975, 61 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Sofia Coppola’s THE BEGUILED (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm

Sofia Coppola’s revision of the 1971 THE BEGUILED, set in an elite school for Southern girls during the U.S. Civil War and made with macho efficiency by DIRTY HARRY director Don Siegel with DIRTY HARRY star Clint Eastwood at its center, takes Siegel’s reported underlying ethos of women’s desire to castrate men and serves it with a twist. The handful of women and girls who are holed up at the Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies, run by Miss Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman), are relatively isolated from the war not only because of their location in the middle of a dense forest, but also because leaving would not be safe. Nonetheless, the war gnaws at the fringes of their world, with the occasional boom of cannon fire, small groups of Confederate soldiers and captured “blue bellies” passing by their front gates, and smoke rising above the treetops. Finally, the conflict enters their sanctuary. Tween Amy (Oona Lawrence) finds injured Union soldier John McBurney (Colin Farrell) while she is gathering wild mushrooms. Christian charity motivates the ladies to tend to his wounds and shield him from discovery. An object of curiosity, he rouses in each of them a desire to attract his attention. While most of the residents of the school take McBurney into their confidence at one point or another, it is at his urging; he remains largely a stranger and potential enemy. Indeed, Edwina (Kirsten Dunst), an unhappy woman who teaches at the school, greets his professed ardor for her with, “But you don’t even know me.” McBurney is a male Blanche du Bois depending on the kindness of strangers to see him through. At the same time, it makes him a perfect screen to project back to the ladies their fondest wishes. These projections are really the only insight we are allowed into these characters, as Coppola is more interested in their self-defining fables and prejudices than their personal histories. Coppola and cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd create a look that has heavy psychological overtones. The colors are muted, almost desaturated in many scenes, like a period black-and-white photograph, with candles and sunlight seemingly the only lighting sources. The images of lush forest and overgrown garden offer a primal splendor and interiority to the formerly grand Farnsworth estate, while the women almost always wear light-colored clothing, without even a trace of dirt at the hem despite performing the manual labor formerly assigned to the slaves who ran off before the start of the film. Coppola is greatly aided by the performances of her skilled cast, particularly Kidman as Miss Martha, whom the girls obey without question. When she tells Edwina to fetch a saw and the anatomy book so that she can amputate the corporal’s leg after Edwina, in anger, has pushed him down a long flight of stairs, we are inclined to believe that the leg is irreparably torn and broken. Yet, her protestations that she doesn’t know how to set a broken leg, yet can saw it off, leads our thoughts in another direction. Coppola has no clichés to spin about repressed schoolteachers, deviant headmistresses, Lolitas in cotton bloomers, and slaves who stand by their masters. She isn’t particularly interested in the Civil War either. The director’s films are not intended to be history lessons—they are explorations of timeless, therefore contemporary, human nature, fleshed out but not overwhelmed by their period detail. Women have a great capacity for love and kindness, she suggests, but will defend their power and honor when men seek to undercut it. Part of the Women’s Paranoia: Cassandras and Conspiracies series. (2017, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Kevin Altieri, Boyd Kirkland, Frank Paur’s BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM (US/Animation)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, Midnight

Between World War I and World War II, German Expressionist filmmakers such as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, and Douglas Sirk emigrated to Hollywood, bringing with them a dark, innovative perspective that reshaped American cinema. Their work profoundly influenced film noir, resulting in a genre now defined by morally complex antiheroes, dramatic shadow play, and striking camera angles. These filmmakers transformed the American noir of the 1931 version of THE MALTESE FALCON or the 1932 version of SCARFACE into darker explorations of humanity, as exemplified by Fritz Lang's YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937) and Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944). A convergence of art movements occurred mixing the American adoration for the industrial artistry of Art Deco and the emotionally evoking German Expressionism. Without the merging of these styles, Orson Welle’s CITIZEN KANE (1941) may not exist. This stylistic lineage extends to the groundbreaking 85 episode run of Batman: The Animated Series, a cartoon that redefined children’s animation. The integrity of the artists behind the scenes to adhere to a form of Deco-Noir pushed the show beyond its childish confines. Developed by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, the series restored Batman to his original, sullen vigilante roots envisioned by writer Bill Finger and illustrator Bob Kane, creators of the Batman character. The Animated Series eschewed campy interpretations of the character in favor of exploring his complexity as a somber, relentless vigilante. The first season garnered critical acclaim, leading Warner Brothers to commission a theatrical film, BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM, before the second season aired. The film, like the series, reflects the film noir and Art Deco influences to blend mature themes with striking visuals. Writers Alan Burnett and Paul Dini along with sequence directors Kevin Altieri, Boyd Kirkland, and Frank Paur—veterans of acclaimed animated shows like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Gargoyles, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—all collaborated to give the film a distinct identity within the Batman mythos. MASK OF THE PHANTASM adapts elements from graphic novels: Batman: Year One and Batman: Year Two, which include flashbacks to Batman’s early outings prior to donning the cape and the villain named the Reaper whose appearance mirrors that of The Phantasm. The story begins with Batman pursuing counterfeiter Chuckie Sol (voiced by Dick Miller), who is abruptly murdered by the Phantasm, a masked vigilante targeting Gotham's gangsters. Batman is blamed for the killings, forcing him to piece together clues while being distracted by his past. Through flashbacks, Bruce Wayne reminisces about his former love Andrea Beaumont. These memories show the sacrifices Bruce made to become the Caped Crusader. As police, the Joker, gangsters, and the Phantasm all close in on Batman, he must solve the crime and reevaluate his past before it’s too late. Despite a rushed production timeline of only eight months and no additional budget, the team delivered a feature-length, widescreen film that transcended its original conception as a two-part 4:3 aspect ratio episode. With its visual references to the dark cinema of German-influenced Film Noir, Art Deco designs of buildings and machines, an overt homage to CITIZEN KANE, and psychological themes of duality, BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM establishes a balance of adult-oriented themes and kid-friendly action sequences that can be enjoyed by everyone. Screening as part of I Am The Night: A Batman (mini)series. (1993, 76 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Marie-Claude Treilhou’s SIMONE BARBÈS OR VIRTUE (France)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:30pm

There’s a lot to love about this little film. And here, little is good, little is all one needs. It’s little like its protagonist, the titular Simone (Ingrid Bourgoin), a tiny specimen of the night who is first seen working in a porno theater, incidentally the one where the director, Marie-Claude Treilhou had also worked. Clad in a tight black top and leather pants, she traipses around the small space of the theater’s lobby, taking tickets from random men who then dispense into the various dens of iniquity. She’s frustrated; her coworker, Martine (Martine Simonet), saunters in, apologizing for being late. Soon they enter into the dynamic that composes the first third of the film, the two women chatting while customers enter and the occasional tumult takes place outside its walls. Some of the male customers are creepy, while some seem to be friendly with the women, establishing nuance within the sordid proceedings. From there Simone goes to a lesbian bar, a near variety show of tricks and trade—on the stage and off—from an all-women's band, a sword fight, and a rock ‘n’ roll act, which is to say nothing of the servers who double as escorts. All this unfolds as Simone waits for her girlfriend, one of the servers; throughout this part she is most active as an observer, and we assume her position as such. When at the porno theater one might notice several neon lights shaped like eyes—though used primarily for the purpose of providing additional lighting, they also become the film’s totems, representing Simone who observes, the men who look, and us who watch. SIMONE BARBÈS definitely feels of a kind with the films of Paul Vecchiali, under whose subversive production company, Diagonale, it was made. The films of his I’ve seen ramble idly, saying nothing much but in doing so conveying quite a bit (ironic considering “Tout le mode au turbin,” “‘Everyone to work,” was his motto on set; he even subsidized his company by doing catering on the side), which is also how I’d characterize SIMONE BARBÈS OR VIRTUE, though of course there are idiosyncrasies that suggest Treilhou’s unique viewpoint. Where the first two parts involve some scrambling, moving to and fro, the third section centers on Simone driving the car of an older man who stopped to offer her a ride. The man wears a tux, a white scarf, and a tremendous mustache. As they commune he begins to cry silently, and soon thereafter he rips off the mustache, exposing his artifice and disarming himself in the process. Simone, too, seems to take off a proverbial mustache of her own, to some extent dropping the streetwise attitude of the previous sections. It feels trite to say it’s about a connection between two lonely people, but whatever kind of connection it might be comes through, even if ineffable. The sequence is shot through the car’s windshield, straight on, appropriate for the most straightforward of the three sections. Once finished it’s surprising to look back and realize just how much happened in 77 minutes. Yet it’s but one small story in these characters’ lives, and we’re but neon lights staring back at them, taking it all in. Screening as part of the Paul Vecchiali and Diagonale series. (1980, 77 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

John Cassavetes' MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm

"You know I think that movies are a conspiracy? I mean it. They are actually a conspiracy, because they set you up. They set you up from the time you're a little kid. They set you up to believe in everything. They set you up to believe in ideals and strength and good guys and romance and of course love... But there's no Charles Boyer in my life. I never even met a Charles Boyer. I never met Clark Gable. I never met Humphrey Bogart. I never met any of 'em! I mean, they don't exist! That's the truth. But the movies set you up, you know? They set you up, and no matter how bright you are, you believe it." So rants Minnie to her work friend Florence as a cynical introduction to her character in MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ, Cassavetes' manic, violent, disruptive deconstruction of a classic screwball comedy. Minnie, played by Cassavetes' wife and frequent star Gena Rowlands, is no innocent and pliable damsel to be saved by Humphrey Bogart or Charles Boyer. Nor is Seymour Moskowitz, played by longtime collaborator Seymour Cassel, a gallant hero or charismatic antihero. Both characters instead inhabit a realm of uncomfortable disappointment with themselves and others as they navigate a chaotic urban landscape and overwhelming loneliness, punctuated by scenes of transgressive violence and oversharing ignited by toxic masculinity and machismo, one of Cassavetes' favorite subjects to explore, especially in HUSBANDS (1970) and KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (1976). References to Hollywood movies and tropes peppered throughout the movie illustrate the disillusionment the titular characters face as they careen headlong into each other and attempt to find romance and connection. Minnie and Moskowitz do not hit it off, but nothing about this comedy resembles a classic screwball comedy as their friction continues. Fights between Minnie and Seymour as they develop a strange chemistry and magnetic attraction are visceral, frenzied, and messily unresolved, revealing Cassavetes' ambivalence about modern romance and the ability of two people to truly connect across the boundaries of regressive gender roles and neurotic impulses ingrained by modernity. Despite this ambivalence and the incredibly uncomfortable and terrifying situations Minnie endures at the hands of various repulsive men (Cassavetes plays one of the worst, Minnie's abusive, married boyfriend), MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ maintains a bizarrely relentless optimism about the possibility and longing for romantic love. The ending of the film may come as a surprise to first-time viewers, in that it is the only element of the film that seems to adhere to generic conventions, although it does reveal that, at least on some levels, Cassavetes was very much a romantic. Contemporary critic Pauline Kael was not a fan of Cassavetes in general, and gave this film a very negative review, writing, "Cassavetes built this movie on a small conceit—​a love affair between two people who are wildly unsuited to each other—​and it doesn't work." Famously, Cassavetes shared a cab on the way to an event with Kael and they argued so vociferously that he took off her shoes and threw them out the window. She had to attend the event in her stockings. Cassavetes' impulsivity and shocking behavior in this incident don’t stray far from the character of Moskowitz, which makes for an interesting reading of the film: perhaps this love story is just as unbelievable to Cassavetes himself, who still couldn't believe a bum like him got a classy woman like Gena Rowlands. (1971, 114 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Fernando Alle’s 2018 film MUTANT BLAST (83 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Terror Tuesday series, and the 2005 Japanese anthology film FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT (150 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info here. 

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Night II of Forecasting: a Climate Crisis + Media Arts film showcase takes place Friday at 6:30pm. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with CFA, presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, called we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station and will run day and night through March 15, 2026. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
A Digging Deeper into Movies film talk with Nick Davis, “August Wilson on Screen,” takes place Saturday, 11am, at the Alliance Française de Chicago (810 N. Dearborn St.).  More info here. 

⚫ Doc Films at the University of Chicago
Elia Suleiman’s 2002 film DIVINE INTERVENTION (92 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 4pm. 

Nathaniel Dorsky’s SARABANDE / COMPLINE / AUBADE / WINTER (2008, 2009, 2010, 2008; Approx. Total 67 min, 16mm) screen Sunday, 8pm, as part of the Devotional Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
The European Union National Institute for Cultures (EUNIC) Film Festival takes place through Sunday. More info here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
The National Theatre Live production of Suzie Miller’s play PRIMA FACIE (2022, 120 min, DCP Digital) starring Jodie Comer screens Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. Note that the Saturday screening is sold out.

Off Center: There Is Nowhere To Go But Here, featuring short films by Bruce Conner, Paul Sharits, Owen Land, Robert Nelson, and James Broughton, takes place Monday at 6pm, preceded by audience A&Q. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ The Hideout (1354 W. Wabansia Ave.)
Documentation of Re-Existence: Ukrainian Feminist Films, curated by the Filma Feminist Film Festival, takes place Friday at 6:30pm. More info here. 

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ 2024 horror film HERETIC (110 min, DCP Digital Projection) and Sean Baker’s 2024 film ANORA (139 min, DCP Digital) continue screening. See Venue website for showtimes.

Shannon Walsh’s 2024 documentary ADRIANNE & THE CASTLE (86 min, DCP Digital Projection) screens Friday at 4:15pm; Saturday at 7:15pm; Sunday at 11:45am; Monday at 4:30pm; and Thursday at 7pm. Walsh, film subject Alan St-George, co-writer/creator Laurel Sprengelmeyer, and actress SLee in attendance for a post-screening Q&A following the Saturday screening.

Tim Burton’s 1989 film BATMAN (126 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 6:45pm, and Sunday, 4:15pm, as part of the I Am the Night: A Batman (mini)series. Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film THE DARK KNIGHT (152 min, 35mm) screens Saturday, 10pm; Tuesday at 7:15pm; and Thursday at 7:45pm, also as part of the series.

Ryo Ushimaru’s 2023 Japanese film QUALIA (96 min, DCP Digital Projection) screens Sunday at 7pm. Programmed and presented by Chicago Japan Film Collective. 

Metal Movie Night presents Jukka Vidgren and Juuso Laatio’s 2018 film HEAVY TRIP (92 min, DCP Digital) and the Chicago premiere of HEAVIER TRIP (96 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday starting at 7pm. Featuring a pre-party in the Music Box Lounge starting at 6pm with DJ Metal Vinyl Weekend, vendor pop-up tables, plus a music video intermission in between films. Complementary corpse paint for guests (first come, first served). More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Nabala Cafe (4660 N. Broadway)
Yotam Feldman’s 2013 film THE LAB (60 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday at 8pm. Free admission. More info here. 

⚫ The Reel Film Club
The International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago Flora Martínez’s 2023 film ITZIA, TANGO & CACAO (88 min, Digital Projection)  as part of their Reel Film Club series on Tuesday at the Instituto Cervantes (31 W. Ohio St.). A reception with appetizers and wine starts at 6pm and the screening will begin at 7pm followed by a post-screening conversation. More info here. 

⚫ Rebuild Foundation
Débora Souza Silva’s 2022 documentary FOR OUR CHILDREN (102 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 4pm, at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6760 South Stony Island Ave.), with a reception at 3:30pm and a post-screening discussion. More info here.

⚫ Sideshow Gelato (4819 N. Western Ave.)
SUPER-HORROR-RAMA! presents Lloyd Kaufman’s 2006 film POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD (103 min, Digital Projection) on Thursday, 7:30pm, as part of this month’s Flipping the Bird: A Thanksgiving Series. Every screening includes a social hour with live music starting at 6pm, a surprise short feature in keeping with the theme of Thanksgiving and killer giveaways donated by House of Movie Monsters and The Shadowboxery at 7pm, and a brand new video intro by Drive-In Asylum, a fanzine exploring classic eras of horror, sci-fi, cult, and exploitation films through vintage newsprint ads. More info here.

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Find more information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its full screening and workshop schedule, here.

CINE-LIST: November 22 - November 28, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Ray Ebarb, Alex Ensign, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Michael Metzger, James Stroble, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky