:: FRIDAY, JUNE 16 - THURSDAY, JUNE 22 ::

📽️ AFRICAN DIASPORA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF) goes through Sunday, with screenings at both FACETS Cinema and the Gene Siskel Film Center. Select films reviewed below; find the full schedule and more information here and on the venue websites.

Val Lopes’ THE AFRICOLOGIST (Cape Verde/Documentary)
FACETS Cinema – Friday, 6pm
More of a mixtape than a full-fledged album, THE AFRICOLOGIST alternates between essay film, explanatory documentary, and low-budget science-fiction as it considers the evolution of African society over the past thousand or so years and into the present and future. Val Lopes, who wrote and directed, also appears as the onscreen host; in between passages about African history, he relates his own experience as the European-born offspring of immigrant parents from Cape Verde. Lopes also turns things over at times to the title character, a 3D-animated woman who travels through time and communicates with the past with the aid of a talking djembe. Some of this plays like an educational film, with sections devoted to Africa’s golden age, the effects of the slave trade on African civilization, and so on, but it becomes it more engaging when Lopes starts talking about the 21st century and finding solutions to contemporary problems in traditional African wisdom. Particularly interesting is when Lopes considers how the organization of communities in golden-age African societies might provide ideas about sustainable living in the future. The film goes into full Afrofuturist mode in the final passages, when Lopes starts talking about how the inevitable colonization of other planets may bring about the return of slave labor, as there are no labor laws in outer space. The movie ends before he gets to explore this idea in much depth, but THE AFRICOLOGIST offers enough jumping-off points for discussion that you might just do this yourself after the show. (2022, 72 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
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Mengameli Nhlabathi’s BLIND EYE (South Africa)
FACETS Cinema – Friday, 8pm
“South Africa is crying because the government is messing with us” goes the refrain of a pop song played a few times in BLIND EYE, a topical thriller about systemic corruption. The heroine is a young auditor named Zandile, who entered her profession after her father was undone by a government corruption scandal. Assigned to recover a large sum of money that was supposed to fund a sports arena in a small community, Zandile finds her life in jeopardy once she starts investigating the case; apparently, the people who stole millions from the government aren’t too keen on being exposed. The film progresses smoothly from police procedural to high-stakes thriller, and this shift in generic focus emphasizes the seriousness of the social problem under consideration. Writer-director Mengameli Nhlabathi accomplishes some effective widescreen imagery in addition to fluid storytelling, though the film’s masterstroke occurs during the final credits, when Nhlabathi undercuts a seemingly happy ending with some sobering facts about the rise in political assassinations in South Africa over the past decade. What had appeared to be a familiarly cynical thriller about the inevitability of corruption becomes an urgent docudrama about a very real concern. (2021, 75 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
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Daouda Coulibaly’s WÙLU (France/Mali)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm
Referred to as the Malian SCARFACE, Daouda Coulibaly’s feature debut establishes table stakes right off the bat. Onscreen text illuminates a rite of passage in Bambara culture that seeks to make members of fraternal societies—the religious and social structure of the Bambara people, already their own Mandé ethnic group native to West Africa—valuable to their community. The final level, the level of the dog (Wùlu, from which the film takes its name), “enlightens the member on his place in society,” suggesting that what follows is not an aberration but the circumstances under which the characters must operate; their place in society’s tenuous network is confirmed only inasmuch as they acquiesce to its rules. This likely isn’t what the rite of passage necessitates, but such is the case for Ladji (Ibrahim Koma) and his sister Aminata (Inna Modja). Ladji is an apprentice on a passenger bus; while serving as the attendant inside, he dreams of becoming the driver. When that dream, already modest in its breadth, is unjustly taken from him, he reconnects with a former acquaintance involved in the West African drug trade. All this happens with little exposition, and this sets the tone for the rest of the film, which traverses the breakneck speed at which Ladji rises through the ranks as a trafficker. But his reasons for doing this aren’t motivated solely by money. Aminata had been a sex worker in order to make ends meet, and her brother turned to drugs in order to alleviate this hardship. She takes to the newfound wealth unapologetically, while he develops a singular focus on his work, displaying skill and shrewdness that otherwise would have enabled him to excel in a legitimate profession. Koma’s expressionless visage recalls that of Buster Keaton, the down-and-out everyman inured to life’s hardships; he careens forward without emotion or fear, abandoning all life’s joys in the process. Coulibaly is  French-Malian, having been born in Marseilles. He had hoped to shoot the film in Mali, but the socio-political climate following the 2012 coup made it too dangerous. Instead it was primarily shot in Senegal. Regardless, it’s beautifully lensed by Pierre Milon (who also shot Robert Guédiguian’s 2021 film DANCING THE TWIST IN BAMAKO). Medium-wide shots provide for a sense of atmosphere and keep viewers enthralled in its progression. And though sequences shot at night are also stunning, Coulibaly (who wrote the script) and Milon’s utilization of the hot desert sun and the brightness it shines upon even the darkest undertakings make daytime even more suspenseful. Text periodically appears on screen to denote a location or a time period, all leading up to an epilogue that illuminates how the cocaine trade (which is shown as being a source of financing for terrorist groups) presaged “the collapse of the Malian state in 2012.” Despite this specificity, Coulibaly has said he’s “not an activist” and that he just “wants to make films.” This comes through in WÙLU, a testament as much to the tightly drawn thriller as it is to his home country. (2016, 95 min, Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]
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Robert Guédiguian’s DANCING THE TWIST IN BAMAKO (France/Senegal)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2pm
Although it relates a familiar narrative of a young idealist growing disillusioned with socialism, the period drama DANCING THE TWIST IN BAMAKO is nonetheless eye-opening for its portrait of Mali in the early days of national independence. Set in 1962, it centers on Samba, a Socialist Party member in his early 20s whose job is to tour the villages and sing the praises of the new, postcolonial political system. In one village, he encounters Lara, a young woman fleeing a forced marriage; he helps her get to the capital of Bamako, and as Lara forges a new, independent life, she and Samba fall in love. The threats to their romance take two forms: first, there are Lara’s brother and husband, who vow to track her down and forcibly return her to her family home; and second, there’s the morally prescriptive leadership of the Socialist Party, who frown upon Samba being involved with a married woman. Those leaders aren’t fond of dancing either, and as they ratchet up their pressure on Samba, they also start to persecute the young people who frequent the new, western-style nightclubs. This development suffers a bit from its obvious moral shading. How can one not dislike a political order that hates young people doing the twist? At the same time, cowriter-director Robert Guédiguian makes an effort not to demonize the party chiefs entirely. Some of the movie’s most compelling scenes entail conversations between Samba and superiors who argue for the necessity of socialism as a means of freeing Mali from European influence; these moments point to the complicated reality of building a postcolonial society (and, as the film’s haunting, 2012-set coda reminds us, a nation can suffer fates much worse than socialism). DANCING THE TWIST IN BAMAKO also benefits from two charismatic lead performances and a winning soundtrack filled with French and American pop hits of the early 1960s. (2021, 129 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Jacques Lessayne and Musidora's POUR DON CARLOS (France/Spain/Silent)

Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm

Some films are worth seeing not for their compelling narrative or coherent aesthetic but rather for their place within the history of the medium and their creator's innate ability to command the screen. Musidora (born Jeanne Roques) made her name as an actress in Louis Feuillade's LES VAMPIRES and JUDEX before forming her own production company and directing some ten features, most long lost. Painstakingly restored from nitrate fragments of what was intended to be a three-hour war epic, the surviving 80 minutes, presented here courtesy of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, is a semi-abstract sequence of scenes that never quite cohere into a story. The plot concerns a minor French functionary taken hostage by forces loyal to Carlos VIII, pretender to the Spanish throne, in the 1870s, and the tug of war for both the Frenchman's heart and his political allegiance. The military conflict is difficult to parse due to large chunks of film being missing, but what remains front and center is Musidora in a parade of guises—from rabble-rousing guerrilla leader to miserable wild-haired street urchin—commanding attention with the slightest side-eye. The beauty of the Basque countryside provides an apt setting for a star turn that easily eclipses a story whose political valence today would, I suspect, be mostly lost to time even at this film's original running length. Few films helmed by female directors survive from the early days of cinema, so on that basis alone this one is worth seeing, but there are enough striking images—tinted at times in yellow, red, and lavender, according to the tenor of the scene—to keep an adventurous viewer's attention no matter its authorship. Longtime Chicago composer and filmmaker, Tatsu Aoki, will accompany the film playing a live original score, which will undoubtedly accentuate the experience of taking in this flawed but fascinating relic of Musidora's career. (1921, 80 min, 35mm) [Dmitry Samarov]

Daddy Issues at the Gene Siskel Film Center

Through Thursday, June 29

Vittorio De Sica's BICYCLE THIEVES (Italy)
Friday, 6pm
BICYCLE THIEVES may not have started Italian neorealism, but it was (and still is) the most beloved and influential film the movement produced. Every scene of this concentrated masterpiece speaks volumes about the state of postwar Italy and the indignity of poverty everywhere, but the movie never feels academic or dogmatic. Rather, it is a supremely emotional work, developing such strong empathy for its protagonists that the viewer comes to share in their anxiety, anger, and small joys. Vittorio De Sica cited Chaplin as his favorite filmmaker, and one feels Chaplin’s influence on BICYCLE THIEVES in the precision of the characterizations. The gestures are graceful and expressive, and they create a direct link between the viewer and whatever the characters are feeling. A fine actor himself, De Sica deserves much credit for the beautiful performances, but one shouldn’t write off the cast, most of whom hadn’t acted before and who don’t play their characters so much as embody them. The use of non-professional actors here inspired countless other directors, notably Abbas Kiarostami, whose work with children (and the sweet-and-sour effect he often achieved with them) seems to have grown directly out of De Sica's work with eight-year-old Enzo Staiola on this film. Staiola’s Bruno is one of the most enduring characters in cinema, an adorable little boy hardened by growing up in Rome after it was decimated by war. One of the film’s most shocking moments is of Bruno starting his shift at a gas station at a time when he should be in school—in just one shot, De Sica shows not only a life of hardship, but the dignity with which the boy accepts his position. Indeed, BICYCLE THIEVES is one of the most affecting of all films when it comes to the theme of dignity, specifically what people will do in order to preserve it. One continues to empathize with Bruno’s father Antonio even after he accosts and threatens strangers because De Sica—directing a script he wrote with neorealist mastermind Cesare Zavattini and five others—makes it clear that the character is acting out of desperation. Antonio only threatens others because he needs information about his stolen bicycle, which he needs to maintain his job putting up posters around Rome, which he needs to keep his family from utter destitution. His single-minded quest for the bicycle takes up a good deal of the film, though he briefly pauses from it to take his disillusioned son to lunch. Their brief fun at a restaurant registers as a miracle. (1948, 89 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Yasujiro Ozu's LATE SPRING (Japan)
Friday, 8pm and Sunday, 4:30pm
The appropriately titled LATE SPRING is the film generally considered the beginning of Ozu's late period. Not only does the film introduce stylistic elements with which Ozu's name has become interchangeable (little to no camera movement, geometric compositions, deliberately unemphatic line readings); it marks the director's first deployment of a story that would preoccupy him for the remainder of his career: a middle-class family must arrange the marriage of an adult child who, for whatever reason, is in no rush to be married. Like the great ceramic artists of Japan's late-feudal period, Ozu developed a totally personal body of work from the variation on familiar elements—in this case, narrative tropes of the shomin-geki ("common-people's drama"). By focusing on this critical juncture in the life of a family, Ozu found endless grace notes on the theme of generational conflict (more often than not passive, which would prove a goldmine for the director's sly humor), cultural changes (reflected visually in Ozu's painterly attention to the changing seasons), and the character of Japan. (1949, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Peter Bogdanovich’s PAPER MOON (US)
Saturday, 1pm
Laszlo Kovacs’ cinematography is a wonder to behold in PAPER MOON—especially during the night scenes, in which black skies appear so rich and deep that you almost feel you could swim in them. Shooting in high-contrast black-and-white (and frequently in Wellesian deep focus), Kovacs creates vivid images that make the past seem startlingly, palpably alive. (It was Welles himself who suggested that Kovacs shoot through a red filter to get the contrasts especially high.) Bogdanovich’s direction is another feat of hyperrealism: the film features numerous long takes that contain both lots of dialogue and complicated blocking; these sequences are all the more impressive given that one of the leads was only eight years old when the movie was made. The immersive, arty visuals—redolent of much '60s European art cinema (and the contemporaneous road movies of Wim Wenders)—mix surprisingly well with Alvin Sargent’s classical, three-act script, which features much '30s screwball-style dialogue and Chaplinesque pathos. Bogdanovich makes the old-fashioned qualities seem new again and the modernist elements feel rooted in tradition. Ryan O’Neal plays a traveling con artist in 1935 Kansas who gets saddled with a young orphan (Tatum O’Neal, the actor’s real-life daughter) after one of his schemes goes awry; the little girl turns out to be a born scammer, and the two go into business together. Bogdonavich maintains a delicate balance between sweet and sour, pitting the winning relationship between O’Neal and O’Neal against stark Dust Bowl settings and a fairly jaundiced view of humanity that reduces almost everyone to con artists or dupes. (The film abounds with scenes of callousness and petty cruelty—despite the presence of a precocious eight-year-old, there’s nothing cute about it.) The forces of cynicism and romanticism don’t cancel each other out, but rather combine to yield something multifaceted and grand. (1973, 102 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Andrei Tarkovsky's THE SACRIFICE (Sweden)
Saturday, 6pm
Critic Wesley Morris observed of our collective cultural habits, "I think everybody might have a handful of books or movies that they happily return to because they honestly don't remember the plot—they just remember the mood or the experience." Similarly, I think everyone has movies they return to solely for a particular moment or scene. These moments can be so singular that everything around them fades slightly into the background. This isn't to make a virtue of flawed memory, but rather to highlight those directors with the rare gift to sculpt a mood or moment that hovers above a film. Andrei Tarkovsky's cinema is rife with these exalted moments: Capt. Kholin's acrobatic embrace of Masha over a trench and her limp surrender in IVAN'S CHILDHOOD; a floating candelabrum and a chandelier's subtle jangle in SOLARIS. Tilda Swinton encapsulated this phenomenon in a speech referencing STALKER: "I saw an image of a dream that I have been visited by all my life made real... A bird flying towards the camera dips its wing into the sand that fills a room. Did I imagine this? I haven't seen the film for years. Can somebody tell me?" Released in 1986 and garnering Tarkovsky his second Grand Prix at Cannes (Roland Joffé's THE MISSION took home the Palme d'Or—a banner year for Christendom) THE SACRIFICE is considered by some to be a challenging, ancillary work by the Russian master. With time though the debates over 'slow cinema' and the film's relationship to Tarkovsky's legacy have faded, and what remain are some of the most haunting moments of the director's career: The sudden and uncanny desaturation of the film's image—courtesy of master cinematographer Sven Nykvist—as Erland Josephson roams his estate in a nuclear daze; the flickering TV test pattern reflected on the family in tableau; the film's breathtaking denouement, which never ceases to terrify me. These are the images I return to again and again, echoing Swinton's disbelief: Did I imagine this? (1986, 142 min, 35mm) [James Stroble]
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Maren Ade's TONI ERDMANN (Germany)
Sunday, 1pm
On paper, TONI ERDMANN is the stuff of early-aughts awards fodder, the sort of vehicle that might've starred Dustin Hoffman opposite Julia Roberts in an Alexander Payne production. And were Hollywood to remake it today, as they have already threatened, one easily imagines an Adams-De Niro pairing helmed by David O. Russell. As it is, it goes something like this: after the death of his beloved dog, Winfried Conradi, an eccentric music teacher of the hippie generation, alone, divorced, and on the wrong side of the retirement age, sets out on a desperate attempt to woo back his estranged daughter Ines, an eighties child turned management consultant in Romania, and a good soldier in the neoliberal conquest of Eastern Europe. With the aid of a set of false teeth and an ill-fitting wig, Winfried, an outrageous prankster, crashes Ines in Bucharest, assumes the role of Toni Erdmann, “consultant and coach," and proceeds to upend her scrupulously cultivated professional life through a slew of haphazard, grotesquely humiliating sneak attacks. Sound familiar? In Maren Ade’s hands, this story of generational conflict is anything but. There is an extraordinary level of attentiveness and restraint to Ade’s regard here. On the one hand, this is a matter of camerawork and editing that always respect the evolving moment. On the other, it’s a matter of a screenplay that refuses to take even standard shortcuts to hit its beats. At no point, does any hand-of-god logic assert itself to steer things more quickly or more surely to their end. Instead, Ade preserves a deep, abiding trust in her leads Peter Simonischek and Sandra Huller, coupled with a refusal to allow them even momentary transcendence of the discomfort of their situation, and deepened by a wry, alert sense for the banal absurdities of self-presentation that dominate far too much of our contemporary lives. The result achieves a momentousness of both scale and intimacy the cinema simply hasn’t seen since the likes of Maurice Pialat and John Cassavetes. It’s also hilarious. (2016, 162 min, DCP Digital) [Edo Choi]
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Charlotte Wells' AFTERSUN (US/UK)
Monday, 6:15pm
There’s something about the quality of DV home-movie footage that feels particularly, singularly fragile. Maybe it’s the tendency of the image to pixelate at relatively slight movements, or the fact that the format now exists in hindsight as a consumer video relic that experienced only the briefest of heydays before being usurped by HD and smartphones. Whatever the case, writer-director Charlotte Wells employs DV to poignant effect in her debut feature. The film opens in the low-resolution format, presented as video taken by 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) of her father Calum (Paul Mescal). The pair, whom we soon learn are sharing a motel room near a resort in Turkey, are spending one last summer vacation together before Sophie heads back to live with her divorced mother in Scotland. Wells will return to the girl’s video diaries throughout, although it takes one a while to situate them in time: are they sweet documents of the present or fragmented representations of the past? What’s the difference? Such temporal indeterminacy gradually reveals itself to be central to the meaning and effects of the film, which regards memory as always a hazy refraction of the then, now, and never-quite-was, an equation that, as it so happens, finds expression in the ontology of moving images. Not unlike the work of Wells’s compatriot Lynne Ramsay, AFTERSUN comes at its characters and events from oblique angles that delay or preclude our apprehension. In visual terms, this sometimes manifests as a darkness in which figures are barely or fleetingly perceptible; at other moments, Wells composes shots using various reflective surfaces, such as when we see Sophie’s live video playing on a tube television in front of a mirror, the source of the action never glimpsed directly, just as Calum’s unspoken inner turmoil remains elusive to Sophie. Based on Wells’ relationship with her own father, who passed away when she was an adolescent, AFTERSUN both diegetically depicts the splintered, wistful process of remembrance and evokes it through a nonlinear, diaphanous formal construction. During the climax, an outsize emotional crescendo set to “Under Pressure,” the film snaps into focus as a kind of spiritual bridge from daughter to father, through which their “last dance” leaves a perpetually echoing afterimage. (2022, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

4 by Wes

Music Box Theatre – See below for showtimes

Wes Anderson's MOONRISE KINGDOM (US)
Saturday, 4:30pm and Sunday, 1:45pm
If MOONRISE KINGDOM is any indication of Wes Anderson's future trajectory as a filmmaker, then making FANTASTIC MR. FOX may prove to have been decisive. The medium of stop-motion animation has a unique set of demands. For starters, a scene is not included unless it's already been thoroughly pondered, discussed, dissected, and designed; if a scene isn't integral to the story or at least the characters, it's usually jettisoned before it's even executed, no matter how clever or colorful the ideas behind it might be. In the world of animation, it's simply too laborious and expensive to go off on a tangent. That way of working seems to have spurred Anderson to create his most focused film since RUSHMORE. It's about the same length as THE DARJEELING LIMITED, yet feels much tighter, and he's chosen a story that's simple and sweet in all the ways that THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS was rococo and acrid. His trademark whimsy is still there (the non sequiturs, the natty production design, the carefully curated soundtrack, and so on). But, crucially, this time around those elements actually tell us something about the characters and their environs, rather than just serving as evidence of Anderson's exquisite taste. The bric-a-brac feels charming, not heavy-handed. As usual, Anderson has summoned a brilliant cast. Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, awkward and tentative, are perfect as the runaway youngsters. Standing out from the rest of the excellent star-studded ensemble is Bruce Willis, at long last given another chance to do the kind of the comedy he does best: his wry, earthy, low-key performance is exactly the kind of humble grit that keeps MOONRISE KINGDOM anchored to recognizably human characters. (2012, 94 min, 35mm) [Rob Christopher]
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Wes Anderson’s RUSHMORE (US)
Saturday, 7pm, Sunday, 6:30pm, and Monday, 9:20pm
Wes Anderson’s sophomore feature remains his best work. RUSHMORE establishes the distinct tones and textures of the director’s oeuvre in its mix of whimsicality and earnestness; it also marks the auspicious start of Anderson’s ongoing collaboration with Bill Murray. Perhaps most notably, it boasts one of the greatest soundtracks of all time, chock-full of energetically curated jams from the British Invasion that underscore the volatility and sincerity of Max Fischer’s exploits. Affectedly framed throughout, RUSHMORE feels at times like a storybook, telling the tale of the passionate, eccentric tenth-grader Max (a remarkable Jason Schwartzman), who attends the titular private school. Despite being a terrible student, he loves his school and dedicates himself to extracurriculars, among them a theater club (the Max Fischer Players) that stages amateur productions of R-rated films like SERPICO. Max's situation is rocked by his growing friendships with two melancholy adults: Herman Blume (Murray), a wealthy Rushmore father whose marriage is falling apart, and Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), a widowed first-grade teacher whose late husband attended the school. The odd love triangle that develops between these three spawns a number of complications, including Max’s expulsion from Rushmore. The film defines its characters through humorous slow-motion sequences and close-ups of text and objects; Anderson foregrounds the style with an early sequence, set forcefully to the Creation's "Making Time," that depicts the many (and oddly specific) clubs in which Max participates. Anderson is a master of exploring relationships through onscreen space, visually expressing emotions not just through the physical performances, but through how characters are situated in the frame in relation to one another. Despite the sense of heightened reality, Anderson's precise construction of scenes adds to RUSHMORE’s striking themes of loneliness, grief, and the bittersweetness of growing up. It all culminates in one of the most sentimental cinematic endings, set to the Faces' “Ooh La La,” that never fails to make me tear up. The performances are all excellent, but Murray stands out as the gloomy Blume. Look out, too, for his interactions with the younger actors that populate Rushmore; they provide some of the film's sweetest and funniest moments. (1998, 93 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
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Also screening are Anderson’s 2001 film THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (110 min, 35mm) on Friday at 7pm (featuring an introduction by Second City Film School) and Tuesday at 9:20pm and Anderson’s 2014 film THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (99 min, 35mm) on Saturday at 9:15pm and Sunday at 4pm. More info here.

Sidney Lumet's 12 ANGRY MEN (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm

Sidney Lumet was a drastically uneven filmmaker and, by his own estimation, not an auteur. He tended to think of himself as a director in the theatrical sense, an interpreter of scripts who made his presence felt through acting style, pacing, and marginal detail. But as far as these values are concerned, Lumet was undoubtedly a master. He brought the intensity and internalized realism of Method Acting to the screen more convincingly than Elia Kazan, and his eye for professional environments betrayed a knowing, beat-journalist alacrity. These qualities can be found readily in 12 ANGRY MEN, the first feature Lumet made for theatrical release after directing literally hundreds of television plays. For a movie set only in one room, it generates a remarkable amount of tension, even when a very '50s brand of over-earnestness threatens to turn things flaccid. (This is where the director's underrated cinematic sense comes in: Lumet and his cinematographer, Boris Kaufman, shot the opening scenes with wide-angle lenses and gradually increased the focal lengths to create the feeling that the room was getting smaller as the drama mounted.) But that over-earnestness, of course, is central to the movie's status as a testament to the rational virtue of the American Justice System. “12 ANGRY MEN: You Tell Me!” is presented as part of the Science on Screen series. Followed by a presentation from Reid Hastie, the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science at Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business, and author of Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making; and Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter. (1957, 96 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Ryan Steven Harris' MOON GARDEN (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, 4:15pm, Saturday, 1:45pm, & Wednesday, 9:30pm

Some films are destined to be cult favorites. There are certain films that will never be beloved by a mass audience, but for which there will be a small, devout group of fans whose love and repeat viewings will outweigh the cursory appreciation of a million ticket sales. MOON GARDEN is one of those films. Ryan Steven Harris has created such an incredibly dark twist on the WIZARD OF OZ story that it needs to be seen to be believed. A little girl, in the midst of her parents having an intense argument, accidentally falls down a flight of stairs and ends up in a coma. While her parents deal with the reality of her situation, she must navigate a dark, surrealist dreamscape of an Oz-esque liminal world in order to bring her consciousness back to her body. The story here is almost a MacGuffin for Harris' experimental visions of child's dream. Experimental in so many ways, from editing to lighting, blocking, and narrative presentation, MOON GARDEN truly does feel like a dream put to film. Visually it has a very '90s goth feel, when goth culture discovered the deep colors of the Victorian era. This feels like the art of Dave McKean (best known for his cover work for Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comic books) and Czech stop-motion master Jan Svankmajer by way of the music videos of Floria Sigismondi (Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People") and Michel Gondry (Bjork's "Human Behaviour"), with a touch of HELLRAISER and Argento's color-drenched SUSPIRIA thrown in for good measure. While the plot is a thin soup, the actual meal is a feast of incredible imagery. Honestly, I feel that narrative and plot have been given far too much importance in cinema and MOON GARDEN shows that what makes cinema truly amazing are the magical things one can do with the moving image—not necessarily how well a story is executed. Go read a book if that's your primary concern. Fans of Neil Gaiman and David Lynch are bound to be enchanted by this film. It's perfect fodder for late night screenings full of weirdos who prefer to see a movie at midnight with a room full of fellow ambivert weirdos than not. This is the type of movie that won't only be someone's all-time favorite film, but it will be the type of film that will become a certain type of person's entire personality for some time after watching it. The movie that they will show to a person they're romantically interested in and use their reaction to judge whether or not they're going to still like them. This is a very specific movie for a very specific type of person, and I'm sure by now you already know if it's perfect for you or not. (2022, 93 min, 35mm) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Lilly & Lana Wachowski's BOUND (US)

Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:45pm

At the Music Box several years ago following a screening of BOUND, Lana Wachowski shared that part of the inspiration for making the film was a traumatic viewing of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Lana had not transitioned yet, but she had struggled with her gender identity since childhood; she was physically shaken by yet another disturbing depiction of trans identity and queerness as psychopathic pathology. The Wachowskis were determined to create something different: an engrossing, entertaining genre film that didn't criminalize or pathologize queerness. The result, BOUND, is an incredibly entertaining debut from the directing duo who would go on to make THE MATRIX trilogy, CLOUD ATLAS, and the very queer sci-fi series SENSE8. BOUND stays true to its genre as a film noir set in Chicago (the Wachowskis' home town) with sumptuous cinematography by Bill Pope, who went on to collaborate with them on the first three MATRIX installments. BOUND tells a tightly wound (pun intended!) heist story centered around Corky (Gina Gershon), an ex-con and expert thief, who meets Violet (Jennifer Tilly), a high femme mob moll looking to get out of the family business. Sparks fly when Corky and Violet meet in the elevator of an art deco high rise and Violet pursues Corky aggressively with big Barbra Stanwyck energy. The first third of BOUND features a series of erotically charged moments that thrilled the queer community at the time with their authenticity, in large part because the Wachowskis hired Susie Bright, a queer writer, activist, and self-proclaimed "sexpert," to consult on the film. (Bright also has a brief cameo at "The Watering Hole," a classic lesbian dive bar filled with Bright's friends from the San Francisco dyke scene.) Things get complicated after Corky and Violet decide to pilfer $2 million from Violet's lover, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). In a Bogart-esque performance that descends into wild paranoia, Caesar derails Corky and Violet's careful plan to pit him against his mortal enemy, Johnnie Marzzone (Christopher Meloni). BOUND is a delight to watch on many levels: for the lesbian love story, the oh-so-'90s interior design of the claustrophobic film set, the suspenseful heist plot, and the creative visual and sound design that build a lush, atmospheric viewing experience. Presented by Ramona Slick and Rated Q - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema. Enjoy pre-show drinks and a DJ set in the Music Box Lounge at 9pm. (1996, 105 min, 35mm) [Alex Ensign]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Georgia Oakley's BLUE JEAN (UK)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Seeing that we're in the midst of yet another moral panic, it's important to remember that while this hellscape of anti-queer and trans outrage is awful, it isn't new. And it isn't even original. Set in Thatcher's England in 1988, which saw the passage of Section 28 (a law prohibiting "the promotion of homosexuality," aka "Don't say gay") BLUE JEAN is an incredibly personal story about a lesbian teacher who has to balance protecting her job with teenage students and her personal life as a queer woman. Oakley, who also wrote the film, brilliantly uses the ‘80s as both the grounded reality of history and a dreamspace of nostalgia. In western pop culture, the ‘80s have reached this mythological state of un-time. It's an era that was both nearly half a century ago but also just yesterday. In some cases—as in music, film, fashion—it still exists. The eternal kick drum of New Order's "Blue Monday" in this film serves to bridge the gap between the terrifying realities of the AIDS crisis and last night's dance floor debauchery. The easy route for a film like BLUE JEAN would be to have it be a condemning view of the past. Movies like this often look down on the past as a disreputable place, that we've all since moved onward and upward. Oakley doesn't care to do that. BLUE JEAN is the embodiment of Faulkner's adage, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." This is a story of survival in the midst of a moral panic that can kill livelihoods and actual lives. Because 1988 is 2023. The tint of melodrama in the film gives the stakes, already high, a sense of personal depth and urgency. The visuals of the movie (shot deliciously on 16mm) only add to the atmosphere of oppressive confusion. Everything is pastels and soft. Everything's rosy and lovely. But with the titular Jean, and her window twitching neighbors, suspicious colleagues, and the problem of one of her students starting to spend time at her one lesbian safehaven haunt, this softness becomes an oppressive expression of gender rigidity. Everything about BLUE JEAN is perfectly measured. To create a character study about a messy person in the midst of crisis is hard to pull off without it falling into cliche or pure melodrama, and Oakley pulls it off. This may be a film that is distinctively about the lesbian experience, but it's expressed as a universal story about anyone, or any group, that is systemically marginalized and oppressed. And often the finest of points make the broadest of statements. (2022, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Anton Corbijn's SQUARING THE CIRCLE (THE STORY OF HIPGNOSIS) (UK/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

Much like music videos were in the '80s and '90s, record album artwork is a popular but generally anonymous venture. Music videos were populist films, watched more times than some of the greatest and most successful commercial films of all time. But it's rare to be able to name the people who directed them. Similarly, some record covers have achieved a level of true pop art that would make Andy Warhol blush—let's be real, more people can recognize the cover of Dark Side of the Moon than any Rembrandt. But who can name the artist behind that timeless image? At the beginning of this movement, of album art as capital-A "Art", was Hipgnosis, an English photography and design studio. Breaking onto the scene after designing the cover of the second album by their friends Pink Floyd, Hipgnosis quickly became one of the most sought-after design firms for (primarily) British rock album covers. This film is gorgeously made by Anton Corbijn, himself a known quantity in the rock art world, having started by taking some of the most iconic photographs of Joy Division, along with making videos for Front 242, Echo and the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, U2, and Nirvana. Though formally a rather standard talking head rock doc, Corbijn appreciates the confluence of fine art and pop music in a way that allows this film to be visually arresting in a way that most films like this simply aren't. The talking head segments are done as black and white portraiture—what Corbijn has excelled in for the past 40+ years. With featured interviewees including the main members of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, as well members/employees of Hipgnosis such as co-founder Aubrey "Po" Powell, there is a level of cultural weight in the stories and conversations presented. SQUARING THE CIRCLE does a great job of pulling out from the iconic images we've seen for over half a century and showing how they were made via an extensive catalog of behind-the-scenes footage. We get to see how Hipgnosis made the covers for such classic records as Houses of the Holy, Wish You Were Here, Band on the Run, and Animals. Considering how powerful some of the images have become, it's a bit of a shame that there are no artists or art critics featured in the film. This is more of a tale of '70s rock and all of its well-documented ego and excess, and how it bloated to even include the album art. Even a design company had their own Behind the Music-esque rise and fall. We see how punk rock came and tossed Hipgnosis and their clients into the cutout bins of history. While this is definitely a film for the hardcore fans of rock/pop history who have spent hours staring at the sleeves of their Zeppelin, AC/DC, Scorpions, Floyd, Def Leppard and Wings albums, entranced by their surrealistic and often humorous beauty, it's a bit more than another purely nostalgic rock doc piece for the Boomer generation. SQUARING THE CIRCLE speaks about a very specific and unique time, when two-dimensional physical art was nearly as important in the music industry as the music itself. A time, half a century out, that seems just as strange, surreal, and imagined as the record covers that Hipgnosis themselves created. (2022, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s QUERELLE (West Germany/France)

Leather Archives & Museum (6418 N. Greenview Ave.) – Saturday, 7pm

With QUERELLE, Rainer Werner Fassbinder married the slick professionalism of his “German Hollywood” films with the stark mise-en-scène and starker philosophizing of his early work. If it seems like a valedictory film, that’s likely because Fassbinder died, at age 37, just six weeks before the premiere; his premature passing heightens the film’s aura of finality. QUERELLE presents sex, pain, and death as tragically, inextricably linked, making it not only an appropriate final testament from Fassbinder (who famously named his first feature LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH) but also one of the major S&M films. The themes of sadomasochism and the theme of the interconnectedness between eroticism and crime come directly from the 1947 Jean Genet novel on which this is based, and Fassbinder accentuates it with lurid color and highly theatrical sets that make all the onscreen behavior seem like ritualistic role-play. In some ways, it feels like a sequel to the director’s sole other film in color and widescreen, the quasi-Western WHITY (1970), which took a similarly garish approach to American racism. But QUERELLE aspires to a more opulent minimalism than WHITY did—the brazen artificiality of it all, which has the effect of making the sex seem more shocking than it already is, suggests a 1980s update on the films of Josef von Sternberg. This link must have been intentional, as Jeanne Moreau explicitly channels Marlene Dietrich in her performance (one practically hears Dietrich’s voice when Moreau sings her character’s theme song, “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves”) and the facsimile of Brest rivals the China of SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932) in its ersatz exoticism. As usual, Fassbinder invokes Bertolt Brecht as well, distancing the audience from the drama with impassive narration, explanatory intertitles, and detached line readings from the actors. These qualities further add to the sense of inevitability in QUERELLE, as if to say that expressions of vulnerability will always invite brutality. Screening as part of the Fetish Film Forum. (1982, 108 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

Manuela Martelli’s CHILE ‘76 (Chile/Argentina)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Carmen (Aline Küppenheim) finds herself unwittingly engaged in anti-Pinochet activity after she helps an injured young man in the region where she and her husband have a beach house. Drawn in by the local priest, a close friend of her family, she doesn’t realize the exact circumstances of his injury until some time later. Actress Manuela Martelli’s feature directorial debut is a slow build, focusing as much (at least at first) on the details of Carmen’s domestic life as her unknowingly clandestine services. The wife of a prominent doctor who had wanted to be a physician herself but was forbidden by her family, she lives for her children and grandchildren, tending to the day-to-day of their bourgeois lives in the midst of Chile’s military junta following the coup against Salvador Allende in 1973. Three years later—the same year Henry Kissinger visited Chile and advised Pinochet that the US was “sympathetic with what you are trying to do,” though the tide would begin to turn during the Carter Administration after the assasination of a Pinochet opponent on American soil—it would appear the affluent are unaffected. The details of such political skirmishes go unelucidated; Pinochet’s name is mentioned only once on the television, and neither the injured young man nor the one fellow resistance worker who Carmen meets up with at his request expand on their political ideologies. The shift in Carmen’s own beliefs, if it’s even safe to assume that such a shift occurs (Martelli excels in imparting a sense of uncertainty), also happens without words; Küppenheim brilliantly conveys all facets of Carmen’s characterization with only her self. It would seem as if the realization is dawning upon her that she and her family enjoy immense privilege as political violence occurs all around them. She also becomes more and more suspicious that her transgression has been discovered. She sees that a young woman has been found dead on the beach—is it the other activist Carmen had met, who failed to meet her for a second rendezvous? Uncertainties like that abound, aided in their increasing intensity by Mariá Portugal’s violent score, which resonates like the pounding of one’s heart in their chest when nervous. Francisca Correa and Estefania Larrain’s art and production design, respectively, firmly establish this distinct time and place in Chile’s history, and Soledad Rodríguez’s cinematography complements the vaguely spy thriller-esque tone both through expressive compositions and opaque fixations on seemingly incidental elements. All this, from a script by Martelli and Alejandra Moffat, coalesces into a powerful depiction of grievous political turmoil and the impact it can have on the ideologically blind newly beginning to see. (2022, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Sebastian Meise's GREAT FREEDOM (Austria/Germany)

Chicago Filmmakers – Friday, 7pm

Until 1969 there existed in the German Criminal Code a provision (known as Paragraph 175, which was made even harsher by the Nazis) that prohibited sexual activity between men. Though this facet of the code was later repealed, it wasn’t until 1990, following the reunification of West and East Germany, that it was abolished altogether. This isn’t too shocking, considering similar laws existed in the United States up to just a few decades ago (even if they were sparsely enforced, sodomy laws were only fully abolished in 2003); truly galling, however, is the fact that, when the concentration camps were liberated following the end of World War II, German survivors who had been deported because of their sexual orientation were sent back to prison to finish out the remainders of their sentences. Such is the case for Hans Hoffmann, the main character of Sebastian Meise’s staggering second feature, GREAT FREEDOM—he’s played by Franz Rogowski, who turns in as complex and nuanced a performance as he did in Christian Petzold’s 2018 masterpiece TRANSIT. The film begins with Super 8mm footage of Hans and several men engaging in sexual activity in a public bathroom; it’s then revealed that the footage comes from various sting operations and is being used to prosecute Hans under the aforementioned provision. He’s sent to prison, a place that seems familiar to him. It soon becomes clear via a clever narrative structure that this isn’t Hans’ first time in jail: presumably he’s been in and out of prison since the 40s, when his first sentence had been disrupted by his deportation to a concentration camp. The film cuts between that episode and two of Hans’ other prison stays, including one in the late 50s and another in the late 60s, with little explanation as to what he did in between. Each period of imprisonment is distinguished by its own unique drama. A through line, however, is Viktor (Georg Friedrich, impressive in his almost childlike severity), a surly prisoner serving a life sentence for murder. He and Hans are cellmates at first, with Viktor initially shunning Hans for his homosexuality. Viktor warms up to Hans upon realizing, by way of the tattoo on the latter’s arm, that he’d been in a concentration camp; Viktor offers to cover the marking, an activity that brings the two into a tentative understanding, if not exactly a friendship. Hans’ second detainment, in the 50s, revolves around his relationship with his partner, who’d been arrested with him. Hans’ radical tenacity is evident here, as he refuses to apologize for who he is and whom he loves. During Hans’ final stay (scenes of which are stitched throughout), he becomes closer with Viktor as he helps his avowedly heterosexual cellmate contend with the physical horrors of drug addiction. Gradually the pair begins to express both physical and emotional affection, and the story evolves beyond one of queer love to one of just plain love, between two people struggling against a merciless world. The deft narrative framework aside, it’s a strikingly simple story (almost oversimplified at times, the film’s one deficiency); the work of cinematographer Crystel Fournier, a frequent collaborator of Céline Sciamma, is stunning, further conveying via suggestive imagery the tale of these maltreated souls. Sporadic inclusion of 8mm footage, of Hans in the midst of sexual acts and, later, during a relaxing sojourn with his partner, reveal the freedom, illusory and otherwise, inherent to the sensation of privacy. The motif of confinement persists throughout, and Hans’ ultimate, antithetical embracement of it is as sublime as it is bewildering. Screening as part of the Reeling Pride Month film showcase, presented by MUBI. Preceded by Frédéric Moffet’s 2006 short film JEAN GENET IN CHICAGO (26 min). Moffet in-person for a post-screening conversation. (2021, 116 min, Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]

Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Monday, 7:30pm

Spike Lee's long and prolific career has been maddeningly uneven but he is also, in the words of his idol Billy Wilder, a "good, lively filmmaker." Lee's best and liveliest film is probably his third feature, 1989's DO THE RIGHT THING, which shows racial tensions coming to a boil on the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Lee himself stars as Mookie, a Black deliveryman working for a white-owned pizzeria in a predominantly Black community. A series of minor conflicts between members of the large ensemble cast (including Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito, and John Turturro) escalates into a full-blown race riot in the film's incendiary and unforgettable climax. While the movie is extremely political, it is also, fortunately, no didactic civics lesson: Lee is able to inspire debate about hot-button issues without pushing an agenda or providing any easy answers. This admirable complexity is perhaps best exemplified by two seemingly incompatible closing-credits quotes—by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X—about the ineffectiveness and occasional necessity of violence, respectively. It is also much to Lee's credit that, as provocative and disturbing as the film at times may be, it is also full of great humor and warmth, qualities perfectly brought out by the ebullient cast and the exuberant color cinematography of Ernest Dickerson. (1989, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]

Edward D. Wood Jr.’s GLEN OR GLENDA (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Wednesday, 7:30pm

As a burgeoning cinephile for whom Tim Burton’s ED WOOD (1994) was the height of arthouse cinema, I unduly bought into the criticisms surrounding the flagrant artlessness of its subject, the Z-movie director whose rough-hewn films top lists with titles like “Worst Movies Ever Made," who himself is routinely anointed the Worst Director of All Time and whose appreciation amongst fellow cinephiles is neatly coiled within the auspices of cult and kitsch. Everybody loves a winner, but it’s likewise true that people are fascinated with the nominal losers of the world, so do they inspire in us that dual sensation of scorn and hubris, with an abundance of fun to be had at their expense. Ironically, Wood would be considered the winner in that regard; in popular consciousness he’s thought to be a virtuoso of such films often declared so bad that they’re actually good. But, upon revisiting GLEN OR GLENDA, Wood’s first film and the making of which comprises part of Burton’s biopic, my assessment of Wood has shifted. Pending further re-examination of his other work, I think it’s possible that Wood isn’t so-bad-he’s-actually-good but maybe just… good? Wood’s first real feature after spending years in Hollywood writing and directing television shows, commercials, and even plays, GLEN OR GLENDA was made in just four days at the behest of exploitation producer George Weiss, who had been inspired by the story of Christine Jorgensen, a transgender woman widely known in the early 1950s for undergoing gender reassignment surgery. (It was incorrectly reported at the time that she was the first person to have the surgery, when it’s likely she was just the first person to have that fact so broadly publicized.) As luck would have it, when Jorgensen declined to collaborate with Weiss on the project, Wood was able to fill in the gaps with his own experience as someone who would then have been referred to as a transvestite. I’ll pause here to say this film trades in some terminology and ideologies that we today would find distasteful at best and offensive at worst. It uses the word transvestite, for example, and indulges in homophobia as well; Wood was avowedly heterosexual and seemed to resent the assumption that because he liked to wear women’s clothing he must have been gay. But because the film—a near docudrama/educational expose in its deliberation on “transvestism”—is so obviously personal to Wood (who stars as Glen/Glenda, though is credited as Daniel Davis), its problematic elements can be read within the context of its maker, an imperfect human yearning to be accepted by the world for his proclivities. Many of the film’s conversations among perplexed civilians center on whether people should be “allowed” to engage in non-gender-essentialist behavior or even transition their gender altogether. Endearingly, but perhaps fantastically, the conversations often conclude with those civilians deciding that people should be allowed to be their true selves. This takes on further gravitas considering the time during which it was made; the idea of post-war America then positively reconsidering the roles of men and women in its theretofore strictly binary society has a certain charming naivete. (Wood was nothing if not an optimist.) Horror legend Bela Lugosi infamously appears as “The Scientist,” an omniscient narrator whose bizarre framing imbues the film with its bewildering volatility. The core of GLEN OR GLENDA takes place by way of another framing device, a psychiatrist speaking with a policeman seeking his perspective on a man who’s died by suicide after being arrested several times for dressing as a woman in public. Before delving into the case of Glen/Glenda, the psychiatrist-narrator embarks on a lengthy lamentation on the current state of the public’s perception of crossdressers and transsexuals. The accompanying imagery is born of economy but evocative nonetheless. As Glen/Glenda, Wood gives a surprisingly nuanced performance; opposite him as Barbara, Glen/Glenda’s fiancée, is his then-real-life girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, occasionally adorned in an angora sweater (another of Wood’s real-life passions). Soon follows the aforementioned scene of two men discussing the subject of sex change in voiceover as stock footage of an iron foundry plays, the narration vaguely reminiscent of the conversation between the angels in Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. It may feel as if the foundry footage is Wood’s unintentional trademark of using random stock footage to flesh out his low-budget phantasms. And some of it is—but much of the imagery is keenly symbolic of the subject that it’s representing. Here the iron foundry reflects the sensation of being transformable, to which I’m sure Wood (and by extension, Glen/Glenda) could relate. Truly arbitrary, however, is a series of sequences depicting Glen/Glenda, Barbara, and various other non-characters in scenes of emotional, physical, and sexual distress. These bizarre vignettes were necessitated by Weiss so as to fulfill the demands of the exploitation genre; some are more relevant to the film than others, but all are extraordinary, almost avant-garde in their execution and haphazardness, bringing to mind the films of Luís Buñuel and Maya Deren. Toward the end, the psychiatrist tells the story of another person’s case, presumably a stand-in for Jorgensen, who goes the distance in surgically changing their sex. Glen/Glenda’s situation is again distinguished from that of the other, with Barbara coming to terms with her fiancé’s true nature and hoping to “cure” him of it via a sense of motherly affection that Glen/Glenda had lacked. One gets a sense of wish fulfillment during this part, as if Wood is grasping at the bendy straws of psychology to resolve an internal conflict between personal fulfillment and an adherence to society’s restrictive mores. To that end, GLEN OR GLENDA is a mess—a mess of contradictions, messy the way people often are, beautiful and perverse all the same. Preceded by a prerecorded introduction and discussion with historian and programmer Elizabeth Purchell and critics Willow Catelyn Maclay and Caden Mark Gardner. (1953, 74 min, DCP Digital) [Kathleen Sachs]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The 2023 CFA Media Mixer takes place on Thursday at 8:30pm. This year’s event will be hosted by Amy Beste. The 2023 Media Mixer curator is Emily Eddy. The 2023 Media Mixer artists are (video and sound) Paige Taul and olula negre; Jose Luis Benavides and Conjunto Primitivo; and Zachary Hutchinson and Haruhi Kobayashi. More info here. 

The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation now playing 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, which has a runtime of approximately 48 minutes, will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station. The video will run day and night through mid-March next year. More info here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
John Huston’s 1982 musical ANNIE (127 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 3:30pm; Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff’s 1994 musical THE LION KING (89 min, 35mm) screens Tuesday at 6pm; Denzel Washington’s 2016 film FENCES (139 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday at 6pm; and Peter Weir’s 1986 film THE MOSQUITO COAST (119 min, 35mm) screens Thursday at 6pm, all part of the Daddy Issues series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
It’s officially Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for films and showtimes.

Nicole Holofcener’s 2023 film YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (93 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.

The Chiodo Brothers’ 1988 horror film KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (88 min, 35mm) screens Friday at 10pm. Arrive early for face painting, cotton candy, balloon animals, vendors and more in the Music Box Lounge starting at 8pm. Co-presented by the Horror House.

Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske’s 1951 Disney film ALICE IN WONDERLAND (75 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am as part of the Stranger in a Strange Land matinee series.

Jim Sharman’s 1975 cult classic ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at midnight. Every screening has a shadowcast of the film (that’s actors acting in front of the screen during the film) performed by Midnight Madness.

John Angus Stewart’s 2021 documentary SLEEPING MONSTERS screens Sunday at 8:30pm. Screening with CHUNKY SHRAPNEL. Approx. 127 min total, screening on DCP Digital. 

Music Box of Horrors presents GIVE ME AN A (100 min), described as  “an urgent & passionate response from a group of women committed to protecting or securing their right to privacy, bodily autonomy, & health care. These films are a unified voice that tells the world how they feel about the overturning of Roe V Wade.”  Proceeds will go to Midwest Access Coalition; free Plan B will be available before and during the show.

Which Witch productions presents two short films, Adamson Novak’s TOOTH and Alexa Venereo’s HOW TO SPOT A HETEROSEXUAL, on Wednesday, with a networking hour at 7pm and screening beginning at 8:15pm.  

Kayano Takayuki’s 2022 Japanese film HOARDER ON THE BORDER (104 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday at 7pm. Programmed and presented by the Chicago Japan Film Collective. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema
Find information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – ALSO STREAMING

⚫ Media Burn Archive
On Thursday at 6pm, Media Burn Archive is hosting a virtual preview screening of excerpts from William Farley’s new WWII documentary I WANTED TO BE  A MAN WITH A GUN: THREE AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN WWII, followed by a discussion with the Farley moderated by scholar Bruce Jenkins, as part of the ongoing Virtual Talks with Video Activists series. Free. More info here.

CINE-LIST: June 16 - June 22, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Edo Choi, Rob Christopher, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Raphael Jose Martinez, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Dmitry Samarov, Michael Glover Smith, James Stroble