Please note that Doc Films at the University of Chicago has canceled the Friday screenings of Howard Hawks' BRINGING UP BABY and Carl Franklin’s DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS due to the air quality advisory. We recommend checking venue websites before planning to attend a screening while the advisory is in effect.
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Frank Simon's THE QUEEN (US/Documentary)
Chicago Film Society at the Siskel Film Center — Sunday, 5pm
Difficult to find until recently, this legendary documentary focuses the limelight on a remarkable time in queer history: that of drag culture on the cusp of something like mainstream popularity and recognition. In New York in the late 1960s, drag culture was already a staple of nightlife for gay men and those in the arts scene, but was still considered something of the "underbelly" to other New Yorkers and was virtually unknown to the world at large. Frank Simon, co-producing with the film's narrator, Flawless Sabrina (aka Jack Doroshow), and Andy Warhol, who greatly assisted in raising funds for THE QUEEN, shot the film in five days with five cameras, using only verité footage and Sabrina's witty and occasionally biting narration to give a riveting, behind-the-scenes glimpse of the New York Finals, a national pageant judged by Warhol himself as well as other notables of the day, including artist Larry Rivers. (Judy Garland, who had judged several of Sabrina's pageants in the past, dropped out when she heard the 1967 pageant was being shot as a documentary.) Warhol's friend Mario Montez also makes an appearance singing an extra-campy rendition of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." The pageant gained notoriety for a variety of reasons, and ultimately the documentary became a surprise hit in 1968, with a favorable review in the New York Times, screenings in major cities across the country, and even a screening at Cannes, marking the beginning of mainstream awareness of not only the drag subculture, but of gender variance and the as-yet-unnamed trans movement. Yet that historical notoriety takes second stage to the most fascinating and beautifully shot moments of the documentary. In the hotel rooms shared by the contestants, the queens lounge together before rehearsals, help each other prepare makeup and costumes, share a glass of scotch, and offhandedly relate stories of coming out, being rejected from the draft (I won't ruin the laugh by quoting some of the stories here; the delivery is everything, if you've ever heard a drag queen read anybody), and whether or not they would undergo the (until 1966, unavailable) sex-change surgery if they had the money. These candid discussions highlight just what a strange time it was in trans and queer history, before identity politics, before hormones, before the term genderqueer; it was a time of gender and sexual fluidity before identities and possibilities had solidified, and a time when drag was the only way for some to express their felt gender and perform in ways that made them feel truly free. This documentary even provides the fabled genesis of the ballroom scene memorialized in PARIS IS BURNING: Black contestant Crystal LaBeija went on to found the first official House of LaBeija in the ballroom scene after losing dramatically to Miss Harlow, a protegé of Flawless Sabrina, and delivering a blistering reading backstage. Preceded by Heather McAdams' 1988 documentary short MEET… BRADLEY HARRISON PICKLESIMER (32 min, 16mm). (1968, 68 min, 35mm) [Alex Ensign]
Chantal Akerman’s THE MEETINGS OF ANNA (France/Belgium/West Germany)
Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 3:30pm; Sunday, 12pm; and Wednesday, 8pm
As Chantal Akerman’s THE MEETINGS OF ANNA (aka LES RENDEZ-VOUS D’ANNA) could be described as the inverse of Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963), it’s worth comparing the two films in order to appreciate what makes Akerman’s so special. Both arrived three years after their respective auteurs delivered three-hour tours de force that were instantly recognized as masterpieces—LA DOLCE VITA (1960) and JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (1975)—and both found the directors considering themselves and how their lives had changed since making said masterpieces. Yet where Fellini looked inward and created a pageant of memories and personal fantasies, Akerman looked outward and created a series of vignettes inspired by life on the road, going from city to city to screen her film. Moreover, Akerman, who made some of the most concrete movies of all time, had little interest presenting fantasies or even the creative process. THE MEETINGS OF ANNA is all about the banalities and little bittersweetnesses that come with touring—train rides, hotel stays, one night stands, quick visits with old friends and family members—and while this sounds like the stuff of a minor work (and is often dismissed as such), the format allows Akerman to generate novel insights about some of her major themes, namely what it means to be a single woman, a Jew, and an artist in the postwar world. She’s ultimately less interested in looking at herself than in using her experience to reflect the experience of others. (Needless to say, that couldn’t be more different than Fellini’s celebration of his own imagination.) In her titular meetings, Akerman’s autobiographical stand-in encounters people still clearly impacted by World War II, both in West Germany (where she has a one night stand with a man who may have Nazi sympathies) and back home in Belgium (where she spends time with her mother, who, like Akerman’s mother, was a survivor of the Holocaust). Akerman presents the meetings in characteristic static long takes that grant tremendous dramatic weight to all her characters’ actions and monologues, not just those of her onscreen representation. Screening as part of the 20th Century Queers series. (1978, 127 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Germaine Dulac’s THE SMILING MADAME BEUDET and THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN (France/Silent)
Chicago Film Society at Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.) — Thursday, 8pm
Germaine Dulac began writing for feminist magazines at the turn of the 20th century before shifting interest toward the burgeoning French film industry in the 1910s, starting her own production company as well as directing. Her films blend French impressionism with surrealism, drawing too on German expressionism. The results are informed glimpses into both physical and internal spaces, examining everyday relationships through the command of the camera. THE SMILING MADAME BEUDET (1922, 43 min, 16mm) depicts a failing marriage, with Monsieur Beudet (Alexandre Arqullière) torturing his wife with unfunny practical jokes and glib threats of suicide. Alone in their home, Madame Beudet (Germaine Dermoz) dreamily ponders her unhappy life. Dulac highlights void spaces surrounding the characters, using shadow to boundary scenes within the domestic space. She also plays with the melodramatic form, emphasizing an intersection between objects of importance and escalating emotion; faces and things are equally displayed in close-ups, demonstrating film theorist Thomas Elsaesser’s idea that in melodrama, “the more the setting fills with objects to which the plot gives symbolic significance, the more the characters are enclosed in seemingly ineluctable situations.” The characters can no longer separate their interiority from the exteriority around them. In THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN (1928, 41 min, 16mm), cinematic, exterior expressions of emotion give way to a surreal journey into the interior. Following the peculiar, psychosexual visions of a priest (Alex Allin) lusting after the wife (Genica Athanasiou) of an officer (Lucien Bataille), the objects become more obtuse, the close-ups of faces more violent and deranged and, at times, eerily vacant. The grounded domestic space of The SMILING MADAME BEUDET is replaced with an airiness, reflecting the shift into the subconscious; shots of clouds and bizarre floating movements. It’s mesmerizing in its strangeness, though familiar too. Dulac’s work, especially THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN has had a clear and profound influence on later experimental filmmakers like Maya Deren and David Lynch. With live musical accompaniment by Where We Were (Erez Dessel on keyboard, Beth McDonald on tuba and electronics, and Tyler Damon on drums). [Megan Fariello]
Bruno Bozzetto’s ALLEGRO NON TROPPO (Italy/Animation)
Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
Perhaps the biggest compliment you could give ALLEGRO NON TROPPO—the highwire act of artistic buffoonery from legendary Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto— is how often his attempts at lampooning the hubris and grandeur of Walt Disney’s FANTASIA (1940) genuinely threaten to surpass his subject of ridicule. Thankfully, things do kick off with plenty of eye-poking and thumb-biting; presented as a means of trying to one-up the bigwigs over in Hollywood (“Grisney? Prisney?” our perfidious host scoffs), Bozzetto immediately frames this film as a work of class imbalance, with the wealthy producers and upper crust consuming their entertainment by literally wheeling in an orchestra of old Italian women like cattle being spared from slaughter while the sole animator at hand is literally unchained from a dungeon to perform his duties. The black-and-white live-action interstitials provide the narrative spine, providing political satire and physical comedy that are frequently more cartoonish than the actual animated segments. When we do hop into the animated sequences, we find a healthy balance of comic whimsy, tragic storytelling, and abstract visual splendor. As with its American predecessor, ALLEGRO NON TROPPO takes classic works of orchestral composition and pairs them with animated segments. Where Disney’s efforts brought dancing hippos, flowers, and magical mice to life with frolicking, fluid motion, Bozzetto’s artistry leans towards non-literal backgrounds and movements, these more abstract and impressionistic styles of animation providing a thrilling alternative to the happy-go-lucky style of the House of Mouse. And even here, Bozzetto’s hand-drawn vistas arrive all-but-entirely infected with the ills of modern society. Stravinsky’s Firebird—eventually used in the lesser FANTASIA 2000 (1999)—accompanies the snake from the Adam-and-Eve Bible story succumbing to the apple of knowledge and witnessing the demonic plagues of contemporary life, while Dvořák's Slavonic Dance No. 7, Op. 46 provides bounding energy to a caveman’s attempts at modernization being aped by his crudely drawn contemporaries. Animals show up here too, though they are all too often at the mercy of the more domineering human species; Vivaldi's Concerto in C major, RV 559 perfectly underscores a buzzing bee and her troubles as she faces off against a horned-up human couple in a field, while Sibelius’ melancholic Valse triste brings to life a wasteland where a cat wanders among the detritus of their home that once was. Outside of the general structure and frame, only two segments emerge as direct responses to Disney’s epic: Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune sees the idyllic Greek mythology previously seen in the Pastoral Symphony section of FANTASIA transliterated into the tale of an eternally horny satyr. The standout work, though, sees FANTASIA’s Rite of Spring sequence, with dinosaurs conquering the screen, here turned into a march through the evolutionary cycle of an alien species that has emerged from a bottle of Coca-Cola, all scored to the pulsating rhythm of Ravel’s Bolero. As with the rest of ALLEGRO NON TROPPO, it is at once absurd, mesmerizing, ridiculous, stunningly rendered, and nothing like what Walt Disney could’ve ever dreamed up. (1976, 75 min, New 2K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Kaye]
Oscarbate presents Carol Weaks Cassidy & Ruth Leitman’s WILDWOOD, NJ (US/Documentary)
The Davis Theater — Saturday, 7pm
Cyndi Lauper once said that girls, they wanna have fun. (That’s all they really want!) Carol Weaks Cassidy and Ruth Leitman's WILDWOOD, NJ is a pure expression of that desire. Sure, there's pathos to be excavated amidst the fun—important revelations to be had about the simultaneous whimsy and violence of girlhood—but a larger truth is self-evident and even more poignant than any interpretation one might dig for: that girls, despite the longstanding expectation that we embrace the drudgeries of domestic life, just wanna have fun. And that’s what they do on the boardwalk of Wildwood, a resort destination on the Jersey Shore that, like the girls themselves, is equal parts whimsical and unexpectedly violent, offering a bevy of chances to play (carnival games most literally) and to fight. WILDWOOD, NJ, which was shot on Super 8 film with an all-woman crew, isn’t deceptively straightforward; if anything, it’s the very directness of its approach, mirroring its subjects, that makes the film feel fresh even all these years later. Cassidy and Leitman interview women young and old about Wildwood, their experiences there, and their hopes and dreams more broadly. From this panorama of voices emerge a few recurring figures, such as Bonnie, who at one point confesses to having taken another girl’s life during a fight (though in self-defense, if true at all), and Betty, whose assertion that a woman always has a "check to cash," referring to sex, became a viral soundbite before such a thing existed. In fact WILDWOOD, NJ has had many lives since, ranging from a pre-Jersey Shore appreciation of the film by Gawker writer Rich Juzwiak in 2009 to the music video for Lana Del Rey’s “Diet Mountain Dew” in 2012 to its recent inclusion in a retrospective sidebar at this year's Berlinale; I spoke to the Chicago-based Leitman for an interview for the Cine-File blog and, at just over an hour, our conversation was longer than the film, something I found to be representative of the film’s ability to extend beyond itself so successfully. It seems so simple—girls talking about themselves, their lives, their plans for the future and even for that very day—and it is. Girls just wanna have fun, whatever that looks like for them, and WILDWOOD, NJ takes them at their word. Screening with Derek Erdman’s 1998 short film GIRLS AT THE CARNIVAL. Leitman in attendance for post-screening discussion. (1994, 59 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
---
Read Sachs’ interview with filmmaker Ruth Leitman on the Cine-File blog here.
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Bill Gunn's GANJA AND HESS (US)
Logan Center for the Arts (at the University of Chicago) — Sunday, 1pm
Any screening of GANJA AND HESS is cause for celebration, not least because it almost never existed in the first place. Its original producers, Kelly/Jordan Enterprises, were eager to capitalize on the commercial viability of BLACULA, which was released the year prior. Gunn, who was a fixture in the NYC theater scene, and had written the screenplay for Hal Ashby’s THE LANDLORD, was tapped for the project. Though he was leery of working in the Blaxploitation genre, Gunn saw an opportunity to use studio resources to bring about his own audacious vision. The result, despite winning the Critics Prize at Cannes in 1973, was a wholesale departure from the script approved by Kelly/Jordan, who subsequently sold the film, which lead to it being cut from 112 to 78 minutes and re-released under the guise of a handful of other titles like BLOOD COUPLE, DOUBLE POSSESSION, and so on. The original version was virtually unavailable for decades until MoMA restored a 35mm negative several years ago, enabling a Kino-Lorber re-release. If the producers were expecting anything resembling a formulaic Blaxploitation movie—or, for that matter, something with any semblance of a conventional narrative—you can see why they were dismayed by the final product. GANJA AND HESS is less campy B-movie and more Ingmar Bergman or David Lynch, with a plot that’s deliberately enigmatic and driven by poetic symbolism. The film centers on Dr. Hess Green, an anthropologist stabbed by his deranged assistant (played by Gunn) with a diseased dagger from an ancient civilization, thereby causing him to metamorphose into a vampire (although the term “vampire” is never explicitly used throughout the film). The titular Ganja arrives not long after and is infected with the vampiric germ, prompting the couple to spend the rest of the film attempting to satiate their newfound bloodlust. It’s not hard to read vampirism in GANJA AND HESS as a thinly veiled metaphor for drug addiction, an interpretation that has been confirmed by producer Chiz Schultz, but there are deeper valences here. Tasked with making a Blaxploitation film, Gunn instead opted to use the trope of the vampire—a creature that’s all about sucking up human life force—to tell a story about the actual exploitation of Black people throughout history. Gunn’s film is not didactic, though. Instead, his thesis is embedded within the visual syntax of the film, which employs elaborate montage editing techniques to subliminally display signifiers—including nooses, body bags, and copious amounts of blood—that conjure up the atrocities of racism throughout American history. Along the way, he interpolates surreal (flash)back to Africa imagery, religious symbolism, and shots of various artworks from the Brooklyn Museum (a commentary, I think, on the reification of living people into things). Moreover, the half-human/half-other hybridity of the vampire is used here by Gunn as an analog to decry the ways in which Black people are systematically treated as less than human—put simply, GANJA AND HESS is a horror film made by a director who knew that reality is much more horrific than fiction. Screening as part of the Screening Possession series and followed by a group discussion. (1973, 112 mins, DCP Digital) [Harrison Sherrod]
Ross McElwee x 2 at the Music Box Theatre
See Venue website for showtimes
Ross McElwee’s REMAKE (US/Documentary)
In film, auteurism is the consistent inclusion of the personal into work that might otherwise have been generic; ironically, this label isn't generally applied to, say, experimental and documentary filmmakers, whose work is explicitly, and sometimes interminably, personal. The distinction might lie in the lack of impediment to the filmmaker's personal expression. Even so, the ability to be fully personal doesn't automatically make the result successful. Ross McElwee is among the rare documentarians for whom it does—like Jonas Mekas or, from another mode, Joan Didion, his life experiences transcend the corporeal into the offhandedly existential, inspiring in others journeys and realizations of their own. After an almost 15-year break, McElwee has come back with what might be his most personal work yet. Ostensibly a documentary about the making of the narrative adaptation of his own 1986 documentary SHERMAN'S MARCH, it's actually about the death of McElwee's son, Adrian, from an accidental drug overdose in 2016. (In expanding the connection between McElwee and Didion, the latter's own daughter also died from addiction issues. In an interview with the International Documentary Association, he quotes Didion on her daughter's death: "Memories are what you no longer want to remember," something he challenges himself to do in the film.) Outliving a child is an unimaginable grief that resonates universally, and McElwee embraces the discomfort of it, letting something beautiful, if admittedly very painful, arise from this tension. Much of the film is footage of McElwee's family, much of it shot during the making of his previous films—namely IN PARAGUAY (2008), about the adoption of McElwee's daughter, and PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY (2011), which was partially about Adrian's struggles—creating a throughline in McElwee's oeuvre that connects directly to his relationship with his son. The parts about Adrian eclipse anything about the SHERMAN'S MARCH adaptation specifically, and the film becomes, in effect, about McElwee's filmmaking philosophy overall, looking back in order to qualify the present. Ultimately, it is the emotional weight that makes everything else feel secondary; by the end I felt as if I'd known Adrian and lost him as well. (2026, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
---
Ross McElwee’s SHERMAN’S MARCH (US/Documentary)
There are things about Ross McElwee’s SHERMAN’S MARCH that shouldn’t work, or, at the very least, might not have aged well. That it’s a documentary centered almost entirely on the white, male, heterosexual filmmaker’s search for romance sounds problematic when put in summary. Yet, through McElwee’s unconventional talent as a non-fiction filmmaker working in a distinctly personal register, it transcends its conceit and emerges as a profoundly empathetic, organically idiosyncratic treatise on life and love, both as it pertains to McElwee and, somehow, universally. Setting out to make a documentary about Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea, McElwee instead—one might say “also,” but the personal comes almost entirely to eclipse the historical, the latter becoming a supplement to the former rather than the other way around—ends up detailing his search for love in the American South, from which he hails. The film becomes a compendium of the women he encounters during this extended period of time, and in turn also brief portraits of the women themselves, whose personalities represent a vast range of interests and temperaments. McElwee depicts them almost ethnographically, though still as people rather than merely subjects, his romantic interest in them existing alongside rather than diminishing his curiosity. (To his credit, McElwee doesn’t completely exonerate himself from stereotypically male tendencies. One woman asks that he document her bizarre but nevertheless titillating anti-cellulite exercises and he readily complies; another, he playfully grills on camera about her history of having had love affairs with her linguistic professors.) Some reviews of the film can be disparaging of the women, citing them as being reflective of a shallowness inherent to the South or just generally nutty in unjustifiable ways. McElwee clearly finds them fascinating, as do I—my favorites, so to speak, are those of the anecdotes cited above. The former, Pat, is an aspiring actress who views herself, though somehow not egotistically, as a sort of female prophet (she describes a prospective screenplay in which her head, having been cut off by her lover, who’s also her toxic boyfriend in real life, dispenses wisdom that resonates with the whole world). The latter, Winnie, could be her exact inverse: a linguist working on her dissertation on a remote island off the Georgia coast near Savannah, where McElwee had obtained permission to film material relating to Sherman's campaign. These women embody the kind of attractiveness you see in old photos of your mother or grandmother, natural beauty that now often feels eclipsed by the pursuit of Instagram Face. Sherman is as much a “character” as they are; in one hilarious and edifying sequence, McElwee, having returned home from a costume ball, drunk and still dressed in a Confederate uniform, waxes poetic about the misunderstood general. Dressing as a Confederate soldier wouldn’t be acceptable in such a film nowadays; politics as they relate to the Civil War aren't expressly broached, only facts conveyed, though there’s a contemporary undercurrent pertaining to nuclear war that’s signaled by the film's subtitle, A MEDITATION ON THE POSSIBILITY OF ROMANTIC LOVE IN THE SOUTH DURING AN ERA OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROLIFERATION. This is evoked by longstanding dreams McElwee has of nuclear disaster, stemming from the rare but perhaps accursed opportunity to witness an overwater nuclear test as a boy. It’s a parallel to the concept of total war that Sherman infamously employed in his march to the sea, something McElwee fears becoming more fully realized in the era of nuclear proliferation. This throughline asserts an unexpected symmetry that's become a hallmark of today's facsimiles of the mode he helped pioneer; all of this feels undergirded by a famous assertion from the film, made by one of its most memorable characters, Charleen. She’s desperate to connect him with eligible women, and in doing so becomes frustrated when he doesn’t stop filming to take seriously her matchmaking, screeching at him, "This isn't art, it's life!” Much like life, the film is the sum of its parts, having aged only inasmuch as time has passed since it was made and first released. (1985, 158 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
Sergei Eisenstein’s STRIKE (USSR/Silent)
Eyewash Station — Friday, 6pm
The excitement of this film cannot be overemphasized. From its early experiments in silhouettes, mechanical abstraction, and reverse motion to the still-shocking concluding montage of workers being murdered interspersed with a butcher slaughtering a cow, STRIKE astounds with technical virtuosity and formal abandon. For generations, Eisenstein's involute editing—feature-length patterns of spatial movements, of figurations, of iconographies—have been studied by film students the world over as examples of hyper-intellectual montage. It is a shame, for his is a cinema as visceral, as glandular, as it is considered, and STRIKE is a film designed not to make us think but to change our very bodies. This is go-for-broke filmmaking at its best: a relentless stream of juxtapositions that pummel out of the projector as though we the audience, and not the capitalist crooks on screen, were the real villains of the piece. No petty montagist, Eisenstein aimed at nothing less than a total transformation wrought by cinema upon the body of the viewer him- or her-self, a conception of cinema no less radical or transformative (or disturbing) than Cronenberg's VIDEODROME. STRIKE is cinema-as-surgery, and the bourgeoisie, as far as the film is concerned, is not a class or even an attitude, but a veritable disease, one that STRIKE intends to cure. Later films, greater films, of Eisenstein achieve a degree of stylistic and structural intricacy that STRIKE does not, but never again is his cinema so intimately concerned with not just the bodies of performers but of viewers as well. An astounding film, and a dangerous one. Preceded by a short introduction and followed by a discussion. (1925, 82 min, Digital Projection) [Kian Bergstrom]
Music Box of Horrors presents William Girdler’s DAY OF THE ANIMALS (US)
Music Box Theatre — Friday, 9:30pm
JAWS created a feeding frenzy that chummed the waters of exploitation cinema forever. But it failed to deliver a shirtless, rain-drenched, and deranged Leslie Nielsen trying to fight an actual bear. Spielberg’s version of the "nature strikes back" film synthesized several tropes at once, blending a creature feature with nature as active aggressor and Moby Dick. The onslaught of nature-strikes-back films trying to cash in on the box office gold rush divided into two distinct camps: remake JAWS or remake Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS. Director William Girdler, nicknamed “The King of the Knockoffs,” earned this title by doing both. Girdler’s 1976 financial success GRIZZLY simply switched a shark out for a bear, a chief for a ranger, and a helicopter pilot for Quint. It wasn’t the first time Girdler had borrowed from a blockbuster; he was famously sued over his EXORCIST-inspired ABBY. With his JAWS imitation out of his system, he reunited the team to make his variation on the disaster-film formula with his forest-ready crew. Steve Buckner (Christopher George) is a tour guide who charters helicopters into the mountains, lands near the peak, and leads groups of hikers down. His latest group includes a TV reporter (Lynda Day George), a professor, a Navajo guide, an out-of-place mother and son, and a despicable advertising executive. Soon, reports surface about the depleted ozone layer affecting the mountain's wildlife, and once the birds of prey start slashing faces, group dynamics shift and the disaster film tropes become clear. Girdler’s film couples nature-on-the-rampage with ensemble mechanics and interpersonal melodramas while directly addressing contemporary fears of ozone depletion. DAY OF THE ANIMALS imagines increased ultraviolet radiation inducing violent aggression in forest wildlife. Public awareness of ozone depletion would not become widespread until the ‘80s, but even filtered through wolves tearing into throats and flying rats, the sentiment remains clear: Mother Nature will fight back. Girdler shows familiar social archetypes slowly fracturing under mounting pressure as hawks, wolves, snakes, mountain lions, and bears close in. Like AIRPORT or THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, the suspense comes as much from personality clashes as from spectacular deaths. Ultimately, Girdler suggests that humanity itself is just as susceptible to ultraviolet radiation. That idea reaches its unforgettable expression through Nielsen's ruthless Paul Jensen, whose vulgar civility dissolves into primal violence. His bizarre, bare-chested confrontation with a grizzly has become the film's defining cult image, but it also crystallizes what only the best nature-on-the-rampage films touch on: when humanity disrupts nature, the boundary separating civilization from animal instinct begins to erode. Girdler died in a helicopter crash less than a year after the film's release at the age of 30, leaving behind nine treasured exploitation films made within his six-year career. DAY OF THE ANIMALS mixes the ensemble melodrama of AIRPORT, the collapsing microcosms of Irwin Allen disaster films, the exploitation of nature versus, and a dash of George Romero’s THE CRAZIES, to create something unclassifiable and satisfying. (1977, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
Lucrecia Martel's OUR LAND (Argentina/Documentary)
FACETS — Saturday, 1:30pm and Sunday, 1pm
Lucrecia Martel’s four narrative features are some of the most important films of the 21st century, and one of the remarkable things about her first feature-length documentary is how it expands on themes of these previous achievements while operating on its own terms. Martel’s earlier work considered (among other things) white privilege in Argentina, with the country’s Indigenous people existing on the margins; in OUR LAND, she confronts the impact of colonialism and industrialization on Argentina’s native population, looking specifically the Chuschagasta community in the northwest part of the country. The film centers on the trial of several white men who killed a member of this community when he was resisting eviction from his land in 2009 (the shooter had claimed ownership of the region)—a trial that didn’t take place until nearly a decade after the events unfolded. Martel interweaves courtroom footage with profiles of the dead man’s friends and neighbors, gradually expanding her scope to consider the last two centuries of Argentine history vis a vis the Chuschagasta people. (To give a sense of how broad her perspective is, Martel starts the film with NASA footage regarding the Earth from space, and she frequently incorporates drone shots that observe the Chuschagastas’ land from above.) It’s a sobering history lesson about how Indigenous people have been consistently discriminated against and forcibly removed from land they’ve always known as theirs. One can observe traces of this historical ill treatment in the condescending attitudes of the judge and prosecutors at the trial, who seem barely able to hide their contempt for the Chuschagasta witnesses. At the same time, Martel tempers her portrait of these individuals (the first “villains” to appear in any of her movies, per a recent MUBI interview) with affectionate views of the Indigenous subjects, who recount their connection to their homeland and their struggles to get by over the decades. The complex form of OUR LAND speaks to Martel’s genius as a storyteller; the film’s intermingling of history and contemporary struggles has the effect of flattening time and allowing for a more holistic point of view. Per the director, this comes from “a conviction that the history of Indigenous communities has to do with the future of the country, not just the past.” Screening as part of the Must-Watch Indies series. (2025, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Brian De Palma's BODY DOUBLE (US)
Davis Theater — Thursday, 9pm
The '80s were a heady time: Apple released the Macintosh, Eli Lilly brought you Prozac, and Brian De Palma was constantly inventing new and exciting ways to fail the Bechdel test. BODY DOUBLE (1984) had the unenviable task of following up the director's DRESSED TO KILL (1980), BLOW OUT (1981), and SCARFACE (1983). Say what you will about those films—I think the horse is still breathing—but in the waning days of New Hollywood they occupied a certain place in its pantheon. Caine, Travolta, Pacino. Add to that mononymous list: Wasson. "Nobody's perfect" is the De Palma mantra though, and BODY DOUBLE manages to transcend its flaws en route to realizing its unique vision of Reagan-era Los Angeles. Craig Wasson plays Jake Scully, underemployed actor and amateur claustrophobic. When we meet Scully he's just suffered a series of unfortunate setbacks: he has a fit on the job, he catches his wife cheating on him, and is thus booted from their home. Temporarily adrift, an acting acquaintance offers him a plush housesitting gig high, high in the Hollywood Hills. From this lofty vantage point Scully makes a habit of spying on exhibitionist neighbor, Gloria, and under the flimsy pretense of chivalry the practice eventually evolves into outright stalking. No points for catching the Hitchcock nods; De Palma's allusions to (or outright theft of) works like REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO are so overt as to signal jumping off points rather than ends in themselves. In a surreal segue toward the end of the film, a lip-synching Holly Johnson of the band Frankie Goes to Hollywood leads Scully, suddenly decked out in thick-rimmed glasses and argyle, onto a porno set to the tune of "Relax." The sequence functions as a movie-within-a-movie; it's De Palma's "Broadway Melody Ballet," if you will, except Gene Kelly didn't find Cyd Charisse behind a door labeled 'SLUTS.' The "Relax" scene marks a tonal crossroads in BODY DOUBLE. Soon after, the proceedings begin to accelerate at an almost nightmarish rate and the tightly plotted thriller De Palma fashioned in the film's first half starts to unravel as the limits of internal plausibility are pushed to the extreme. If you're on De Palma's wavelength though it's a worthy tradeoff, as tension gives way to near mania. When the film was released, Roger Ebert characterized BODY DOUBLE as having De Palma's "most airtight plot" yet—an assertion it's hard to imagine Ebert leveling without cracking a slight smile. The virtue and, dare I say, greatness of BODY DOUBLE come not from bulletproof narrative or even rudimentary character development, but instead from a messier place. De Palma synthesizes a multitude of disparate references into a scathing critique of nice-guy chauvinism, critical Puritanism, and countless other -isms, all under the guise of mindless genre fare. Screening as part of the Not Quite Midnight series. (1984, 114 min, DCP Digital) [James Stroble]
Abbas Kiarostami's TASTE OF CHERRY (Iran)
Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
This is one of the great big-screen experiences, comparable in its effect to L'ECLISSE or 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Like those films, Abbas Kiarostami's Palme d'Or winner confronts some of the essential questions of existence; while Kiarostami's approach may be more modest than Antonioni's or Kubrick's, the poetic simplicity of TASTE OF CHERRY assumes a monumental quality when projected. The plot is structured like a fable: A calm middle-aged man of apparently good economic standing drives around the outskirts of Tehran. Over the course of a day, he gives a ride to three separate hitchhikers; after engaging each in conversation, he asks if the stranger will assist him in committing suicide. That the succession of hitchhikers (young, older, oldest) suggests the course of the life cycle is the only schematic aspect of the film. Each encounter contains enough digressions to illuminate the magic unpredictability of life itself—not only in the conversation, but also in the formal playfulness of Kiarostami's direction. The film is rife with the two shots that, paradoxically, form Kiarostami's artistic signature: the screen-commanding close-up of a face in conversation, eerily separated in space from the person he's talking to; and the cosmic long-shot of a single car driving quixotically across a landscape. Here, both images evoke feelings of isolation that are inextricable from human consciousness, yet the overall tone of the film is light, even bemused. The final sequence, one of the finest games conjured by a movie, sparked countless philosophical bull-sessions when TASTE OF CHERRY was first released, and it remains plenty mind-blowing today. Screening as part of the 25 for 25 series, in celebration of the Film Center’s 25 years on State Street. (1997, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Sally Potter's ORLANDO (UK)
Alamo Drafthouse — Wednesday, 4:15pm
Sally Potter's ORLANDO is not so much an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel as it is an interpretation respective to the nuances of its medium. "It would have been a disservice to Woolf to remain slavish to the letter of the book," Potter wrote. "For just as she was always a writer who engaged with writing and the form of the novel, similarly the film needed to engage with the energy of cinema." And it does, with such finesse that at times it's rather slow and mundane, just as life is often slow and mundane. Roger Ebert so eloquently wrote in his review of the film that "it is not about a story or a plot, but about a vision of human existence. What does it mean to be born as a woman, or a man? To be born at one time instead of another?" Potter doesn't attempt to answer these questions but instead relishes in their very existence. In addition to such existential ruminations, themes of gender, art, and conformity are also confronted, just as in the book. Titled Orlando: A Biography, Woolf's novel was meant to be something of a spoof inspired by her lovers' turbulent family history. (The lover in question was fellow writer Vita Sackville-West.) Both are about a young Elizabethan nobleman who mysteriously turns into a woman. In the book it's never explained, but in the film, eternal youth is granted to the teenaged Orlando by Elizabeth I, who's played to perfection by gay icon Quentin Crisp. It's fitting, then, for this and other obvious reasons, that Tilda Swinton was first able to explore her own conspicuous androgyny in the title role. For those all too familiar with her now archetypal aesthetic, ORLANDO will breathe new life into one's appreciation of her as both an actress and an icon. Potter's talents are no less extraordinary; a penchant for transformation is evident in most of her films, though it's realized more explicitly in this one. Director Jane Campion best spoke to its metamorphic capabilities: "When my son died, on the third day, I was devastated, I didn't know what to do with myself. I went to see ORLANDO. It was so beautiful. This earth can be transformed. There are moments of extreme wonder... and that's all worth living for." Screening as part of the Queer Film Theory 101 series. (1993, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Angela Schanelec's I WAS AT HOME, BUT... (Germany)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) — Tuesday, 8pm
The international distribution of Christian Petzold’s films in the 21st century, resulting in his critical coronation as contemporary German cinema’s preeminent auteur, has been a welcome development in the world of cinephilia. It is regrettable, however, that the films of Thomas Arslan and Angela Schanelec, Petzold's formidable colleagues in the movement known as the “Berlin School” (the first generation of graduates from the German Film and Television Academy to make their mark after the reunification of Germany), remain largely unknown outside of their native country. As critic Girish Shambu points out in a recent video essay, the Berlin School has been called a “counter cinema” for the way these filmmakers have reacted against the aesthetically and narratively unadventurous mainstream German movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s and have taken inspiration from the glory days of Fassbinder and the New German Cinema of the '70s instead. Schanelec is generally regarded as the most challenging of the Berlin School directors: her would-be 1998 breakthrough PLACES IN CITIES was panned as a “joyless snoozer” by Derek Elley in Variety who claimed Schanelec’s movies “throw out no emotional lifelines for the viewer.” I would argue, however, that, while devoid of obvious emotional signifiers and easy character identification techniques, Schanelec’s work, like that of her hero Robert Bresson, can be emotionally overwhelming if one is watching and listening correctly. I WAS AT HOME, BUT…, Schanelec’s latest, is an ideal introduction to her unique brand of cinema: a fragmentary, elliptical and non-linear tale of a young teen boy’s return to the home where he lives with his single mother and younger sister after having run away a week previously. Upon returning, the boy, Phillip, resumes rehearsing a grade school production of Hamlet in which he plays the title role, while also attempting to navigate life in a still grief-stricken home two years after the death of his father; one scene, where Philip and his sister Flo continually attempt to console their mother Astrid, who rebuffs them while cleaning a kitchen sink, is ingeniously staged by framing the characters from behind in a static long take that goes on for so long it eventually evokes a feeling of cosmic wonder. Astrid (the superb Maren Eggert), meanwhile, has a few misadventures of her own: one amusing subplot details her failed attempt to buy a bicycle from a man with a tracheotomy, and another sequence, gut-bustingly funny, sees her haranguing a Serbian filmmaker (Dane Komljen, playing himself) in the street after having walked out of his movie. Finally, a parallel story involving one of Phillip’s teachers (TRANSIT’s Franz Rogowski) debating whether to have a child with his own girlfriend may seem random initially but ends up poignantly underscoring Schanelec’s aim of painting a complex portrait of the joys and sorrows of parenthood. While her title may reference Ozu’s coming-of-age classic I WAS BORN, BUT… and a prologue and epilogue featuring a donkey obviously nod to Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, Schanelec ultimately generates a sense of majestic spirituality through an employment of image and sound that is entirely her own. This is nowhere better exemplified than in a remarkable, time-hopping sequence, scored to M. Ward’s muted cover of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” that begins in a cemetery at night before flashing back to years earlier in a hospital room then flashing-forward again to the present in a museum. A masterpiece. Screening as part of the Four by Angela Schanelec series. (2019, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
Sophy Romvari's BLUE HERON (Canada)
FACETS — Sunday, 3:30pm
Like a long-lost childhood memory, Sophy Romvari’s BLUE HERON exists within a series of flitting moments of comfort before shifting suddenly and revealing something entirely raw, pulling the rug out from under you in the process. Though this is her feature debut, Romvari has already made a name for herself with an array of short films that explore the uncanny marriage between media and memory. Her particular fascination, and the patient, anthropological methodology with which she explored it could have only culminated in something like BLUE HERON, a jarring yet kindhearted work whose efforts to prod nostalgia reveal nothing but a tender bruise in the aftermath. Romvari has oh-so slightly twisted and morphed her own biography to create the family at the center of the film, a Hungarian-Canadian quintet who have recently moved to a scenic new home on Vancouver Island in the late 1990s. The summer weeks that follow comprise the first half of the narrative, where brief, jutting memories emerge as revelatory moments within young minds. A young girl, Sasha, amusingly draws a mouse on Microsoft Paint while her two brothers play in the other room; an older brother, Jeremy, steals a bird keychain from a nature gift shop, while Mom peels potatoes, Dad develops photographs, and summer hours idle away. Romvari’s camera prefers static wide shots, entire canvases of nature bathed in cool tones providing the backdrop for a young family that is unknowingly in the midst of a personal crisis. Jeremy, the only child born from the mother’s previous relationship, has begun behaving in exponentially more aggressive ways, building to his own arrest for shoplifting, with his parents struggling to come to terms with their own inability to manage his social and emotional needs. The cast, comprised of both actors and nonactors (Edik Beddoes, playing Jeremy, was discovered from a clip Romvari had found of him talking about video games), move through these difficult spaces almost effortlessly, their naturalistic styles meshing together with ease. This would all be well and good for a charming film debut, but BLUE HERON levels up and takes a turn about halfway through, shattering the chronology we’ve become accustomed to and shifts from the story of a struggling family into the story of a struggling mind. We follow one of our characters, now twenty years older, and using the archival tools at her disposal to try and see where things all went wrong two decades ago. We eventually begin to grapple with how helpful it really is to use the art of film, of photographs, of recreation, to try and, in essence, bring someone back to life. BLUE HERON builds to a scene where characters move across time and space to dissect whether there’s any catharsis to even be found in using cinema to excavate trauma. Romvari has no answers, our distrust in our own memories merely a feature, not a bug, of this ugly, beautiful world of ours. But that doesn’t mean we can’t cherish the things we do remember, the lives we do live, and the art we do create. Screening as part of the Must-Watch Indies series. (2025, 90 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
John Waters' DESPERATE LIVING (US)
Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
From the film of his monologue JOHN WATERS: THIS FILTHY WORLD: "When I was growing up, 'Art' meant 'dirty,' which is the way it should be as far as I'm concerned." Art isn't as dirty as it used to be, and dirt isn't as arty as it should be. DESPERATE LIVING, a Douglas Sirk-style melodrama welded to a Jean Genet rewrite of THE WIZARD OF OZ, is the best kind of arty dirt. It's a comedy. Compare and contrast the genital mutilation scene here with the one in ANTICHRIST, where von Trier plays it straight and uses a great deal more blood. Sure enough, the scene is both harrowing and disgusting. But the spectacle of Mole McHenry removing their appendage with the help of pruning shears and a hungry dog in DESPERATE LIVING isn't merely disgusting. It's also in genuinely bad taste. Uniquely bad taste. Which is why, even after decades of witless, raunchy comedies and solemnly bloody torture porn, Waters' masterpiece still makes us feel dirty. God bless the Pope of Trash. Screening as part of the 20th Century Queers series. (1977, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]
Gints Zilbalodis' FLOW (Latvia/Animation)
FACETS — Saturday, 4:30pm; Sunday, 1pm; and Thursday, 7pm
As a film enthusiast fixated on the art of animation who also just so happens to be a cat owner, I was somewhat predisposed to have a visceral emotional response to Gints Zilbalodis’ FLOW, a dialogue-free animated adventure centered on a feline protagonist thrown into various episodes of peril. But my own personal biases aside, the joys of Zilbalodis’ feature become self-evident early on, the painterly images and gentle atmosphere immediately creating a world you’re thrilled to inhabit for its nimble less-than-ninety-minute runtime. Animated entirely on the open-source software Blender, Zilbalodis and his team have created something almost akin to an open world video game like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with charmingly rendered creatures navigating treacherous environs with puzzle-like intuition of how to get from one destination to the next. The narrative details of the world are purposefully thin, with preference given to a show-don’t-tell mode of storytelling that trusts the audience to imagine what may or may not have led to this world of abandoned homes and cityscapes surrounded by ever-growing greenery. Even within us filling in the world-building gaps, the ever-rising waters and lack of any human inhabitants can easily lead us down some climate-fueled apocalyptic rabbit holes. One can imagine the worse version of the film, the animal cast (here; a cat, a capybara, a secretarybird, a lemur, and several adorable dogs) given snark-fueled vocal performances from celebrity actors that completely burst the bubble of sincerity. Thankfully, what we have instead is a crew of creatures grunting and meowing and barking, nowhere near approaching anthropomorphism, but still granted enough distinct personality for us to become invested in their journey. Something almost spiritual starts to take over the film, the journey of our lead cat hero becoming less and less about reaching a set destination, and more so merely attempting to find some sense of peace and community with this new pack of disparate animal friends amidst a world falling apart in disarray. Above all else, FLOW succeeds in doing what animation does at its most holy: forgoing the rules and expectations of “real world” cinema to create something singular and spectacular from whole cloth. Most thrillingly, it’s in service of a story about stopping in one’s tracks to take in all that is bigger than ourselves and finding the beauty in knowing that none of us are alone in our journey. Screening as part of the Kids Camp series. (2024, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
Sasha Waters’ MARY OLIVER: SAVED BY THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD (US/Documentary)
Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 2:30pm and Thursday, 8:30pm
Some filmmakers just love a challenge: how does one document the life and impact of a lesbian poet who was a hermit and intensely private for most of her life? Director Sasha Waters, an experienced documentary and experimental filmmaker, rose to the challenge by using archival footage (diligently sourced from public archives) and photographs sourced from Mary's longtime partner, photographer Molly Malone Cook, to share earlier moments of Mary's life, including imagined moments of archival nature footage to represent her nature rambles, lyrically spliced to readings of her poetry in both her own voice and recited by others who are later interviewed on screen in the film. Oliver is one of our most famous American poets, often compared to Whitman (whom she adored), Thoreau, and other Transcendentalists who ascribed the natural world a power to bring us closer to spiritual enlightenment and understanding of the human realm. Her poetry often leverages metaphors found through observation of the natural world, an experience she describes rapturously, vividly, and with unabashed feeling throughout her body of work—though it meant her work was taken less seriously by critics and contemporaries who thought her subject matter dated, trite, and sometimes downright embarrassing. As a result, Oliver languished in obscurity in Provincetown, Massachusetts, for much of her adult life, working at a bookstore and doing other odd jobs so that she could take precious time to write and ramble in the woods. During her time in Provincetown, she became lifelong friends with John Waters, one of the star talking heads of MARY OLIVER and an astute, irreverent observer of her life and unique personality. Other talking heads include celebrity readers of her poetry (Stephen Colbert, Oprah, Helena Bonham Carter, Lucy Dacus) and fellow poets, critics, and writers. Over time, I became suspicious that this was going to be a train of celebrity fans masquerading as a documentary, but Sasha Waters tread carefully here, only inviting celebrities who were publicly ascribed admirers to read in the film. This is evident in the sheer emotion with which they speak of her work—especially Colbert, who is unable to complete the reading, being so overcome by emotion. These readings do end up taking second stage to Oliver's own readings of her poetry: her voice is powerful and unique in reading her works, which she did rarely in her early years of obscurity but executed almost to excess late in life, up almost until her death in 2019, as though making up for lost time. Several surprisingly powerful interviews in the film relate to this later, gregarious period of her life, so at odds with her decades of hermitage, sparked by a revelation that Mary was a victim of sexual abuse as a child by her own father. One is with V (formerly Eve) Ensler, who shared a similar story of abuse and was met with strong emotion by the typically taciturn Oliver backstage at a conference, and Maria Shriver, who learned of the abuse in an interview with Mary late in life that had been published in written form in Oprah Magazine, but also filmed and never aired—until Waters inquired during the making of this documentary. I like to think that this film will be as moving and insightful for longtime Oliver fans like myself as well as newcomers to her work. It serves as both a revelation to those who thought they knew her and a tender, moving introduction to her for those who are not familiar. Her words, treated with great care and attention by the filmmaker, deserve to be heard, not just read, through this unique opportunity, including these famous lines from "Wild Geese" read in the film by Helena Bonham Carter: "Whoever you are, no matter how lonely/the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—/over and over announcing your place/in the family of things." (2026, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]
John Early's MADDIE'S SECRET (US)
Alamo Drafthouse, Davis Theater, and the Music Box Theatre — See Venue websites for showtimes
Social media can be a real villain to self-image, causing us to unfavorably compare ourselves to others or worry about how we’re being perceived. When Maddie (John Early) unexpectedly lands a job as an online food influencer, her deep-seated insecurities about her body are triggered in destructive ways. She appears to be a total natural when presenting her new recipes on camera, but what people don’t see is her chronic struggle with bulimia nervosa, a condition that only becomes harder to handle when cooking and eating are her very vocation. The directorial debut of comedian, actor, and writer John Early, MADDIE’S SECRET exhibits the askew tone of some of his previous projects, mixing camp, earnestness, melodrama, and satire in ways that bring to mind John Waters and Douglas Sirk. His use of high-key lighting and expressionistic color (particularly deep blues and reds in the scenes in Maddie’s home) create a heightened, off-kilter atmosphere, while the more broadly comic elements, such as the performances from Conner O’Malley, Vanessa Bayer, and a deliciously hammy Kristen Johnston, tie the film to a playful sketch-comedy sensibility. Early is dealing with serious subjects — eating disorders, parental abuse, psychiatric treatment — and he manages to give them sufficient weight while still winking at the audience. Perhaps what is most admirable about MADDIE’S SECRET is the uncommonness, indeed the queerness, of characters rarely seen on screen in quite this way, from Maddie’s doting teddy bear of a husband Jake (Eric Rahill) to her lesbian best friend Deena (Kate Berlant). The most unusual might be Maddie herself, played by Early like a more sedate Divine from POLYESTER. No comment is made about this woman being portrayed by a man in drag; it’s just another element revealing the arbitrariness of body-image standards, and how feeling comfortable in your own skin is for nobody but you to decide. (2025, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Lena Dunham's 2010 film TINY FURNITURE (99 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday at 3:15pm and Tuesday at 4:15pm as part of the Sad Girl Cinema Club.
Herbert Ross's 1989 film STEEL MAGNOLIAS (118 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday at 6:15pm as a movie party.
Nicolas Winding Refn's 2016 film THE NEON DEMON (118 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday at 9:30pm.
Joel Schumacher's 2004 film THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (141 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6:45pm, as part of the Alamo Crafthouse series. Note that the lights will stay on so you can craft along to the movie.
Joe D'Amato's 1978 film PAPAYA: LOVE GODDESS OF THE CANNIBALS (84 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Terror Tuesday series.
Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's 2013 film THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS (102 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.)
The Chicago Alliance of Film Festivals and Filmmaker Friday Chicago present Smart Festival Strategy: From Submission to Showing Up on Friday, 7pm (doors at 6pm), at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.). The panel features programmers from the Chicago International Film Festival, Midwest Film Festival, and others. Free admission; RSVP required. More info here.
⚫ Chicago Public Library
The Chicago Public Library's Community Cinema program presents free film and TV screenings at dozens of neighborhood branches throughout the week. More info here.
⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Cinema/Chicago hosts its annual Cinema Soirée 2026 gala Saturday, 6pm, at The Geraghty (2101 S. Michigan Ave.). The evening honors filmmaker Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson with the Vanguard Award, author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn with the Artistic Achievement Award, and actor Ben Foster with the Tour de Force Award; NBC's Al Roker appears as a special guest. Tickets are no longer available online; contact vteng@chicagofilmfestival.com for last-minute requests.
Peter Luisi's 2023 film BONJOUR SWITZERLAND (88 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.), as part of Cinema/Chicago's Free Summer Screenings series. Free admission, though note that tickets are sold out online, but a standby line will be available at the venue. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Comfort Station
Steven J. Walsh's documentary SOUTHEAST: A CITY WITHIN A CITY (Digital Projection) screens Thursday, 6pm, at the Kimball Arts Center (1757 N. Kimball Ave.), presented by Comfort Station and Kimball Arts Center with artist Miguel Limón. Walsh and Limón will be in conversation following the screening. Free admission. More info here.
⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Whit Stillman’s 1998 film THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO (113 min, 35mm) screens Tuesday, 5pm, as part of the Disco Nostalgia series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Eyewash Station
Biff Hartwell's 2026 film BEACON OF FLESH (65 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 7:30pm, as its world premiere, with director Hartwell and star Robin Pleasure in attendance for a Q&A and afterparty.
László Ranódy's 1961 film BUBBLE BATH (80 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday at 6pm.
Also on Sunday, an animation shorts program screens at 7:30pm, with details forthcoming.
Mark Romanek's 2002 film ONE HOUR PHOTO (96 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 7pm. More info here.
⚫ FACETS
Anime Club and Cold Sweat present Mystery Miike Night, a surprise double feature of two films from the 2000s by the great Japanese auteur Takashi Miike, on Friday at 7pm. Film #1 begins at 7pm; film #2 begins at 9:30pm.
David Lowery’s 2026 film MOTHER MARY (112 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 4pm, and Sunday, 6pm, as part of the Must-Watch Indies series. The Sunday screening will be introduced by series programmer Marya E. Gates.
Also screening as part of Anime Club Presents 2026 are t.o.L.’s 2002 animated film TAMALA 2010: A PUNK CAT IN SPACE (92 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 7pm, and Nobuhiro Yamashita’s 2005 film LINDA, LINDA, LINDA (115 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 9pm.
Sweet Void Cinema presents a screenwriting workshop on Wednesday from 6pm to 9pm in the FACETS Studio.
Oscar Boyson’s 2026 film OUR HERO, BALTHAZAR (96 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday at 7pm. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Goethe-Institut Chicago (150 N. Michigan Ave.)
Lateral Entrant, a site-specific exhibition by Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist Maya Nguyen incorporating video, photography, and performance, exploring migrant strategies of camouflage and adaptation across languages and visual cultures connecting Vietnam, Germany, and the United States, is on view through July 31. Public viewing hours are available by advance registration on Eventbrite, and a state- or federally-issued photo ID is required for building check-in. More info here.
⚫ International Museum of Surgical Science (1524 N. Lake Shore Dr.)
Roy Ward Baker's 1971 film DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (97 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Scalpel Summer series presented by Stephanie Sack. Followed by a Q&A with Gaudy God. More info here.
⚫ Movies in the Parks
The Chicago Park District's Movies in the Parks series continues throughout the summer, bringing free outdoor screenings of Hollywood classics, family favorites, and local films to parks across the city for its twenty-sixth season. Check the Park District website for the full schedule of dates, locations, and titles. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Christopher Nolan’s 2026 film THE ODYSSEY (172 min, 70mm) begins screening officially and David Wain’s 2026 film GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS (93 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.
Andrew Jordan's 1989 film THINGS (84 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 10pm, hosted by writer Yasmina Ketita.More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Parkway Social
Gina Prince-Bythewood's 2022 film THE WOMAN KING (135 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday, 9pm, in the courtyard of the Parkway Ballroom (4455 S. King Dr.), presented by Parkway Social and Sandy Film Festival as part of the Feature Fridays: Kings on King series. Free admission. More info here.
⚫ Siskel Film Center
Stillz’s 2025 film BARRIO TRISTE (84 min, DCP Digital) screens this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
The National Theatre Live production of Marianne Elliott's Les Liaisons Dangereuses (180 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday at 11am and Sunday at 1:30pm. More info here.
⚫ South Asia Institute (1925 S. Michigan Ave.)
Rahul Milind’s documentary THE SHAPE OF BELONGING (Digital Projection) screens Saturday at 2pm. Free admission. More info here.
CINE-LIST: July 17 - July 23, 2026
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Rob Christopher, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Harrison Sherrod, Michael Glover Smith, Martin Stainthorp, James Stroble