:: FRIDAY, MARCH 7 - THURSDAY, MARCH 13 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Oscar Micheaux’s THE SYMBOL OF THE UNCONQUERED (US/Silent)

Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm [Free for Music Box members]

Of the twenty-two films that pioneering director Oscar Micheaux helmed in the 1920s, only three of them are known to have survived, leaving behind just a fragment of the artistry of one of cinema’s earliest chroniclers of Black experience in the United States. Even within this isolated glimpse of Micheaux’s filmography shines a filmmaker with a keen sense for complex storytelling (WITHIN OUR GATES), towering screen presence (BODY AND SOUL), and—displayed here in THE SYMBOL OF THE UNCONQUERED—the power of melodrama to wrestle with topics of political and social importance. When dealing with works of the silent era, there’s often a reticence from contemporary audiences to engage with works that aren’t either inherently comedic or filled with stylized visual aesthetics, yet Micheaux’s early grasp on how dramatic structure can operate within the medium of film is utterly foundational to how we watch movies today. Similarly remarkable is the despairing rarity of watching various multi-layered facets of Black life portrayed within the context of early fiction cinema. Here, the dual narrative of Eve Mason and Jefferson Driscoll, two characters whose Black identity is shrouded by their respective abilities to pass as white, poses compelling and complex dramatic scenarios where each grapples with how the constructs of race function in our country in ways that are financial, emotional, and ultimately malicious. Micheaux’s work, certainly held to a high standard in certain film circles, more than deserves further canonization in wider film history. Case in point: in D.W. Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), a film all-too-frequently held up as a bastion of early cinematic technique, Griffith’s camera drips with adoration for the monstrous Ku Klux Klan, framed as heroic bastions of that film’s epic narrative. Meanwhile, in one of this film’s most harrowing final sequences, Micheaux’s coverage of the Knights of the Black Cross is unabashedly drenched in despair, fiery imagery shrouding the frame in darkness, all too familiar with the horrors they bring into the country, the reverberation of bigoted thoughts and actions echoing through film history more than a century on. Preceded by TWO KNIGHTS OF VAUDEVILLE (1915, 11 min, 35mm). Live musical accompaniment by the Alvin Cobb, Jr. Trio. (1920, 66 mins, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]

Towards The Light: An Evening With Daïchi Saïto (Canada/Experimental)

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

While calling art “elemental” has become a meaningless cliche, it’s hard to find a better term for Daïchi Saïto’s films in either a figurative or literal sense. With increasing scale, his films have found their own lane in Canada’s experimental film scene as landscape works with power and scope, culminating in his most recent (and longest at 30 minutes) work EARTHEARTHEARTH (2021). Both this and his second-most recent ENGRAM OF RETURNING (2015) are 35mm productions, already a gage-size above the bulk of experimental work in their peer group. But one feels them pushing against their frames, threatening to become 70mm or some heretofore unknown omnitheater-sized type of celluloid. His films are earth-sized, and have the quality of Biblical accuracy, not reshaping or reinterpreting the environment so much as trying to access its innate energy, something intuitive and felt but rarely seen in conventional nature photography. In EARTHEARTHEARTH, the subject is the Andes mountains, with each shot containing one or more horizon lines between mountain and sky that differentiate the pulses of gradated color treatment and flicker that distinguish the two elements. This painterly approach extends to ENGRAM OF RETURNING and his earlier TREES OF SYNTAX, LEAVES OF AXIS (2009), which apply a similar approach to foliage and bodies of water. They’re films that defy description because they’re so "elemental," making and unmaking earthly matter in front of your eyes through rapid changes in exposure and color saturation. Sound is key to the films’ effect too, with Jason Sharp’s muscular saxophone accompaniments giving both 35mm films a more human center. In EARTHEARTHEARTH in particular, Sharp uses circular breathing to create one sustained musical phrase over the film’s 30 minutes that commingles with breath sounds and the click-clack of instrument keys to create something fluidly bionic, blending with the film’s real/exaggerated imagery to reach a transcendental blend. While he’s developed this multimodal and rigorous style over his career, Saïto’s approach has always had an enveloping quality, pulling one into his visual and audial tones with an acid-tinge that invites a sublimation between the viewer and the staggering beauty they’re seeing. It’s a given that one should see the films, the question is whether a viewer can take themselves back to their corporeal life afterwards. Saïto in person. (2003 - 2021, 70 min, 16mm and 35mm) [Maxwell Courtright]

Michael Snow's PRESENTS (Canada/Experimental)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 6:30pm

The so-called Structural arm of avant-garde film is routinely and casually pegged as dry, academic, and formal to a fault. What is often overlooked in cursory treatments of this side of the field is its surprisingly common use of humor—everything from the sly intellectual sort to downright slapstick. Michael Snow's PRESENTS has both ends covered. The first ten minutes tweaks expectations as the image slowly unsqueezes from a vertical slit to reveal a nude woman on a bed. The next two sequences are absurdist explorations of "camera-movement": in the first it is the set that moves, with the performers struggling to stay afoot; in the second, the camera invades the set, demolishing everything in its path. Finally, the back wall collapses revealing a window on to the real world. What follows are hundreds of hand-held shots: automobiles, birds, street scenes, demolition sites, stovetops—a cataloging of the filmmaker's environs. Many of the shots are peculiarly pedestrian and seemingly artless—given Snow's background, they feel deliberately so. With a drumbeat at every cut Snow riffs on one definition of the title, crying now, now—and with this section's hour-long duration, it's an eternal now. This concluding sequence is both strangely compelling and frequently tedious, and it seems that's the point. It's a game of dare with the audience: can you stay till the end? Screening as part of the Back and Forth, Around and Around: Michael Snow on 16mm series. (1981, 90 min, 16mm) [Patrick Friel]
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Screening as part of a Michael Snow mega-screening that also includes SEATED FIGURES (1988, 42 min, 16mm), THE LIVING ROOM (2001, 20 min, 16mm), and SEE YOU LATER/AU REVOIR (1990, 19 min, 16mm).

Ron Shelton’s BULL DURHAM (US)

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

Ron Shelton spent four years as a minor league middle infielder, but it wasn’t his .260 batting average that made him a legend—it was what he did after. Playing for the Rochester Red Wings in 1970 and 1971, he helped win the Governors’ Cup and Junior World Series, earning a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But his real triumph came years later when he turned those experiences into BULL DURHAM, a film that redefined the sports genre with wit, sex appeal, and intelligence. Shelton had penned UNDER FIRE (1983) and THE BEST OF TIMES (1986) while gaining experience as a second unit director before his directorial debut BULL DURHAM. A former ballplayer turned filmmaker with a distinct voice led to a decade of dominating the sports film. He wrote and directed WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP (1992), COBB (1994), TIN CUP (1996), and PLAY IT TO THE BONE (1999), with additional writing and producing credits on BLUE CHIPS (1994) and THE GREAT WHITE HYPE (1996). Yet, despite this legacy, Shelton has often stated he’s not a fan of sports movies. Perhaps that’s why his films attempt to avoid the usual clichés—the underdog victory, the last-second triumph, the obligatory redemption arc. The sports film since THE KNOCKOUT (1914) has long been boxed into two categories, comedy and drama. Subgenres have emerged—the true story, the comeback, the underdog tale—but few films break free of their rigid structures. In 2020, when the Associated Press polled 70 writers and editors on the greatest sports movies, they crowned HOOSIERS (1986) their champion—inspired by a true story. Tied for second: ROCKY (1976), the ultimate underdog story, and BULL DURHAM, a film that barely qualifies as a sports movie at all. That’s because Shelton isn’t interested in the game; he’s interested in the people who play it. He strips away the usual markers of victory and defeat. When Nuke (Tim Robbins) is called up to the majors, we never learn how the Durham Bulls finish the season. When Crash (Kevin Costner) breaks the minor league home run record, it’s met with indifference. Shelton refuses to indulge in grandstanding, and BULL DURHAM is better for it. What truly elevates the film is Annie Savoy, baseball’s self-appointed high priestess. Susan Sarandon fought for the role because she understood Annie—smart, sexual, and unapologetic. Shelton gives her the film’s opening sermon: "I've tried 'em all, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball." She picks a player each season to mentor (and seduce), believing good sex leads to a better game. Her choice: the raw, undisciplined Nuke or the rugged, world-weary Crash. Annie’s lessons pay off—they always do. Shelton also refuses to indulge in outdated gender dynamics. Annie never bows to any man. Even when Crash tosses around monologues about Susan Sontag, Annie simply says, “Oh, Crash, you do make speeches.” The balance of power remains hers. Likewise, BULL DURHAM doesn’t tolerate slut-shaming. When a coach dismisses Millie (Jenny Robertson) as "a piece of ass," he quickly backtracks upon realizing who she is. Later, when Crash hears a teammate joking about exposing Millie’s past, he shuts it down. Even Millie’s moment of doubt—“Do I deserve to wear white?”—is met with Annie’s unwavering response: “We all do.” Unlike most sports films, BULL DURHAM isn’t about a single, climactic win. It’s about relationships—Annie and Nuke, Annie and Crash, Nuke and Crash—interwoven, evolving. Sure, Costner gets Sarandon in the end—it was 1988, after all—but the film never indulges in an alpha-male battle for dominance. Instead, Shelton crafts a world where love, like baseball, is unpredictable, frustrating, and, at its best, a little bit magical. BULL DURHAM endures because it’s less about home runs and more about the people on the pitcher’s mound, trying to figure out what to get someone as a wedding gift. Screening as part of Play Ball! A Baseball Series. (1988, 108 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Amateur Movie Day

Chicago Film Archives at the Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 7pm

Following in the footsteps of the well-established Home Movie Day, the newly inaugurated Amateur Movie Day, initiated by the Amateur Cinema Project and set for March 13, expands the focus to a wider range of small-gauge, local and regional, and still undervalued filmmaking. In its first year, more than a dozen screenings on or near the official date will be presented by various archives and venues across the US, Canada, and Europe. Among those is the Chicago Film Archives, which will present a selection of amateur films from its collection at the Music Box Theatre. The CFA’s program leans heavily into entertainment, with films focused on music, humor, parody, and plain goofiness. If you’ve followed CFA’s screenings over the years you’ve likely seen at least one film by Margaret Conneely, whose mini-narratives epitomize mid-century amateur filmmaking. Two of her films will screen: THE FAIRY PRINCESS (1956), a sweet film about a young girl’s wish for a dancing fairy princess doll, and MISTER E (1960), a comic tale about a wife’s extreme method for keeping her poker-playing husband home at night. Two of the lesser-known highlights of the program are a pair of films by Robert Davis, made in collaboration with Harry Hilfinger. Davis was hired right after high school by the Calvin Company in Kansas City, a prolific maker of educational and sponsored films. While in KC, Davis also made some comic musical amateur films with his co-worker Hilfinger. Screening are MODERN DESIGN (1941) and OBEY YOUR AIR RAID WARDEN (1942), in which the duo (with a third friend in the second) lip sync to recordings of the day by Tony Pastor and His Orchestra and Johnny Messner and His Orchestra. These shorts, made when Davis was only 19 or 20, have it all over anything you’d find on TikTok. Another highlight is FILM NO. 4 (1950) by San Francisco-based filmmaker Denver Sutton. This abstract animation perhaps blurs the line between amateur and independent filmmaking, as Sutton was part of the arts community and experimental film crowd in San Francisco and later moved into documentary filmmaking. Sutton’s bright, colorful, bouncy short is representative of post-WWII experimental animation and sadly not better known. RATAMATA (1970), an early film by a 16-year-old Jeff Kreines, who would go on to collaborate with Chicago independent filmmaker Tom Palazzolo and co-direct the classic documentary SEVENTEEN with partner Joel DeMott, shows his already-formed interest in cinema verité and direct cinema with its man-on-the-street interviews of teens and adults about topics both light and serious. Kreines here shares Palazzolo’s knack for finding both engaging common folk (like the teen girl talking about school spirit) and characters on the fringe (a proud-to-be-square mayoral candidate is a stand-out). Also showing are Helen and Sidney Moritz’s anti-smoking parody LISTEN (c. 1970), Bob Messenger’s instructional film TENDER LOVING CARE OF YOUR FILMS (c. 1963), John Nash’s stop-motion DANCING FLOWERS (c. 1941-46); along with a trio of student-made films: FEBRUARY 31ST (1972) by Mardik Sikat, Philip Tascon, Richard Saenz, and Raymundo Villarreal; THE BIG GREEN HOUSE ON THE CORNER (1982) by Mike and Bill Armstrong; and CLOSE TO YOU (1971) by David Strutzel. (1941-1982, Total Approx. 59 min, 16mm and Digital Projection) [Patrick Friel]

Chicago European Union Film Festival Spotlight: Poland

Gene Siskel Film Center – See showtimes below

Damian Kocur’s UNDER THE VOLCANO (Poland)
Sunday, 12:30pm
It is more than a little ironic that vacations, during which we ostensibly should be the most relaxed and contented, are often fraught with tension and argument. Where to eat. What sights to see. How much money should be spent. Few of us, however, will ever experience what the central family in Damian Kocur’s UNDER THE VOLCANO will undergo as they become temporary refugees due to the invasion of their homeland. Roman (Roman Lutskyi), his second wife Nastya (Anastasiya Karpenko), and his two children from his first marriage, Sofiia (Sofia Berezovska) and Fedir (Fedir Pugachov), are on their final day of vacation on the volcanic island of Tenerife before returning to their home in Kyiv when their flight is canceled by the Russia invasion of Ukraine. As they contact relatives and look for updates on TV and the internet, they find themselves set adrift, with access to cash difficult and travel plans on hold for the foreseeable future. Tensions within this lumpily blended family escalate as fear takes hold. What has happened to their home, friends, and loved ones remains a question mark. More concerning is whether Roman will join the fight when he is eventually able to return to Kyiv. Despite this being very much an ensemble piece, director Kocur zeroes in on the coming of age of teenage Sofiia who may be awakening to her same-sex attraction and who finds brief companionship with a young Senegalese man from a nearby refugee camp who, out of loneliness and loss, seeks her out and confides in her. The environment, both stark from ancient lava flows and lushly tropical with its palm trees and scantily clad, confident Canary Island residents, provide an image of paradise that really only exists if you have no cares in the world. UNDER THE VOLCANO, which compares favorably with another film of family soul searching under the sun, Charlotte Wells’s AFTERSUN (2022), is as unfortunately timely as it is affecting. (2024, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Krzysztof Kieslowski's THREE COLORS: BLUE 
Sunday, 5:30pm
In THREE COLORS: BLUE, the first in his French flag-inspired trilogy, Krzysztof Kieslowski puts forward the radical notion that liberty—here connected, like the later WHITE and RED (both 1994), with France’s national motto, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”—can be attained through loss. Juliette Binoche stars as Julie, a young woman who loses both her husband and young daughter in a car accident at the beginning of the film. Rather than piece her life back together after surviving the tragedy, she decides to leave it all behind, devoid of anything from her previous life except the blue crystal chandelier from her daughter's bedroom. Her husband was a famous composer (though it’s implied that Julie actually wrote his music, or at least helped more than anyone knew), and pieces of his last, unfinished symphony—a concert for the reunification of Europe—haunt her at particularly blue (pun intended) moments. She’s unable to fully escape her past, however, in large part because of that music. She’s pursued by a shrewd journalist and an eager public, both curious about her husband’s final work, as well as his creative partner, who’s in love with her. (Then there’s the weight of her husband’s secrets, which, naturally, include a mistress.) Compelling as the narrative is, it’s Julie’s vacuousness, realized exquisitely by Binoche, that resounds most beautifully. Grief is an inherently cinematic emotion—or, rather, a range of emotions brought about by some sort of drama, the action and aesthetic of which (e.g., the build to a devastating car crash, a somber funeral broadcast on television, two coffins: one big, the other small, etc.) make for compelling cinema. In BLUE, however, referred to as an anti-tragedy just as WHITE and RED are referred to as an anti-comedy and an anti-romance, respectively, Kieslowski cuts it off at the quick, allowing for only said external indulgences before beginning to interiorize Julie’s mourning. In concert with Binoche’s stunning performance, he employs a series of clever tricks to make such scenes understandable to an audience otherwise severed from Julie’s inner dialogue, namely his conceptual use of the French tricolor (mostly blue), musical interludes that signify her preoccupation with the unfinished score, and blunt fade-outs meant to indicate a lapse in focus rather than a shot change or scene transition. Throughout the trilogy as a whole, Kieslowski succeeds in humanizing the symbolism behind the flag’s complicated ideals, but, with BLUE, the canny motifs do not entirely blunt the piercing idea that only without emotional ties one can truly be free. (1993, 100 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
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Krzystof Kieslowski's THREE COLORS: WHITE
Tuesday, 6pm
The second installment in the Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy takes a lighter tone than the first and third. Following Karol Karol (a bumbling Zbigniew Zamachowski) as he seeks the love and then the downfall of his ex-wife (Julie Delpy), the Polish filmmaker crafts an anti-romance, a series of convoluted situations that aren’t actually that funny. He doesn’t intend to play these moments for laughs, but rather gives the audience a straight-laced version of a dark, absurdist comedy. Though WHITE has become the most forgotten of the trilogy, it lands its affecting blows near the end of the story, never opting for cheap twists or decisions that run contrary to the behavior of its central character. Zamachowski gives a slight performance as Karol, a man destined to lose even as he’s winning, and Delpy fills in the gaps in her limited screen time, always a welcome presence in any movie. But this film is a chance for Kieslowski to once again prove his ability to contort expectations and offer up something new in a vein that many of us can recognize. In WHITE, he’s reshaping our idea of the romantic comedy, putting forward a portrayal of love that’s far different than what was common in hits of the 1990s. WHITE isn’t the funniest film, or the gushiest, but it still has heart and appeal, even in a drab color palette and a disheartening story about the power and perils of love. (1994, 91 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Michael Frank]
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Krzysztof Kieslowski's THREE COLORS: RED
Thursday, 8:30pm
One of the culminating films of the 20th century, RED not only brings Krzysztof Kieslowki’s “Three Colors” trilogy to a grand close, but stands at the summation of one of the great careers in modern European movies. Kieslowski and his longtime co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz symphonically interweave their major themes (fate, coincidence, the possibility of transcendence in modern life), creating a story that’s remarkable for being both dense and flowing. Where BLUE was inspired by the idea of liberty and WHITE by the idea of equality, RED tackles the concept of fraternity, inviting viewers to contemplate how individuals are connected to one another by the social fabric. It centers on the relationship between a burgeoning fashion model (Irène Jacob) and the retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) whom she meets by chance after she hits his dog with her car. The young woman wants to do good by the judge, but she doubts her mission as she gets to know him; the old man turns out to be a misanthrope and a voyeur who uses audio surveillance technology to spy on his neighbors. Kieslowski and Piesiewicz counterpose this story with one about an aspiring young judge who comes to suspect his lover of being unfaithful, and while this tale is more comic in nature, it gains resonance from its parallels with the principal narrative. Like few other directors, Kieslowski was able to suggest the perspective of a compassionate deity looking out on humankind, and in RED, he uses that gift to advance a perspective that’s at once intimate and global. These characters could be anybody (Kieslowski’s camera could have followed any telephone wire from that opening montage, could have landed on any subject); that they experience individual desires and moral aspirations inspires wonder with the depth and variety of human existence. Piotr Sobocinski’s cinematography, with its emphasis on deep reds and blacks, adds to the film’s inviting power. (1994, 99 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
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View the full schedule for the Chicago European Union Film Festival Spotlight: Poland here.

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Jean-Luc Godard’s A WOMAN IS A WOMAN (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Jean-Luc Godard seems to have made his third feature, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, in a state of giddiness, and who could blame him? Not only was he in love and internationally famous (thanks to the revolutionary impact of his debut feature, BREATHLESS, a year earlier), he was getting to make his first film in both color and widescreen, properties that he and his colleagues at Cahiers du cinéma had celebrated at length in the 1950s. Indeed, there’s a kid-in-the-candy-store quality to the film; it teems with visual and verbal jokes, and the whole thing is based on a knowingly impossible mashup of Hollywood musical comedy and Italian neorealist drama. (Or, as Godard once put it, “Chaplin said that tragedy was life in closeup and comedy was life in long shot. I wanted to make a comedy in closeup.”) There are also songs, fourth-wall-breaking gags, and more movie references than you can shake a stick at. Yet there’s always seriousness behind Godard’s playing at cinema, and in this case, he’s considering whether a director can truly “put everything into a film,” as he exhorted his peers to do around the time he made it. With A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, Godard is trying to express how he feels about life and cinema at the end of 1960 (it was shot in December of that year), thereby making the movie an extension of his work as a film critic, something he would continue to do regularly until 1965. In his criticism, Godard defended a lot of popular genre movies, as he felt they had the potential to serve as canvases on which directors could express their personal visions. Following suit, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN employs the conventions of musical comedy as a framework in which Godard can reflect on his blossoming relationship with the film’s star, Anna Karina, whom he would marry between the time the film was shot and when it premiered. Karina plays as a burlesque dancer who decides on a whim that she wants to have a child; her husband (Jean-Claude Brialy) doesn’t, and complications ensue. We root for Karina’s character to have her way from the very beginning, since Godard uses whatever tools the cinema has to offer to make the audience fall in love with her the way he has. There’s something patronizing about this love, however; in hindsight, it makes perfect sense that Godard and Karina’s marriage would dissolve after a few years. Karina would go on to be one of the key actors of the French New Wave, while Godard, in addition to remaining one of the world’s most revolutionary filmmakers for another six decades, would become a legendary curmudgeon. How bittersweet, then, this documentary about the brief period when he was truly happy. (1961, 84 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Atom Egoyan’s SEVEN VEILS (Canada/Finland/US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

In 1996, just a few years after the release of his seminal work EXOTICA, Atom Egoyan, a rising star of the Toronto New Wave, staged a radical reinterpretation of Richard Strauss’ Salome for the Canadian Opera Company. Egoyan’s staging—a bona fide hit with remounts in 1997, 2002, and 2023—brought a level of surreality and emotional excavation to the piece, most notably transforming the famous “Dance of the Seven Veils” from a lavish striptease to an outsized flashback sequence unpacking Salome’s motivations and deep-seeded trauma. Like the best stage directors out there, Egoyan found new ways of aesthetically interpreting the text without ever betraying the intent of the piece. This metatextual frame continues to expand while watching SEVEN VEILS, which Egoyan filmed concurrently with his own 2023 Salome remount. Questions of artistic intent within his own initial vision are here transplanted onto the fictional director’s chair occupied by Amanda Seyfried’s Jeanine, a regional theater director tasked with remounting her late mentor’s own acclaimed Salome. Sitting in the director’s seat, Seyfried’s eyes bulge out with ecstasy as she gives notes to her actors, her fingertips overflowing with passion as she attempts to inject this resuscitated production with her own living instincts. Egoyan’s gambit of intertwining stagings eventually proves to be entirely transfixing, as, a dance shedding one veil after another, we’re slowly let into the truth of the matter, this “real-life” staging having taken inspiration from Jeanine’s narrativized past, her trauma and abuse at the hands of her own father becoming artistic fodder to be recycled by her mentor for years on end. This intermingling of art and life becomes the true meat of SEVEN VEILS, with Mychael Danna’s score weaving its way through Strauss’ opera, backstage drama with the cast and crew mirroring the abuses in the plot Salome, and the horrific events of Jeanine’s childhood becoming inextricable from the visuals embedded in this staging, full of shadows and blood and haunting industrial scenery. For Jeanine, the choice becomes whether to lean into the artistic mirroring of her abuse, or to pull things in a new direction, securing the reins of her own legacy. Seyfried, in her second collaboration with Egoyan, leaps with abandon into the role, her alchemical mix of trepidation and vigor becoming the lodestar for a work whose thematic ambition—even in moments with no singing—reaches operatic heights. (2024, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

José Ramón Larraz’s VAMPYRES (UK/Spain)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm

A psychosexual feast of sex and blood, VAMPYRES adheres the lesbian vampire subgenre while also turning it on its head. Directed by under-appreciated Spanish exploitation filmmaker José Ramón Larraz, the film was produced in the UK, combining a gothic Hammer-style with dreamy erotic Euro horror. Murdered in their bed, bisexual lovers Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska) become vampires, residing in an abandoned Victorian mansion in the English countryside. They find victims to feed upon by seducing unsuspecting motorists, luring men into their home with the promise of wine and sex. Fran, however, decides to keep middle-aged Ted (Murray Brown) just short of alive, as he slowly learns for himself the horror taking place. A side plot features a couple (Brian Deacon and Sally Faulkner) camping on the mansion’s vast property, the woman terribly nosy about the two ladies running around the woods while her boyfriend dismisses the entire thing. VAMPYRES feels quite unhurried at times, as vampire films often do, with characters wandering around cluttered, aged spaces, trying to figure out the danger at hand before it’s too late. It’s contrasted against the verdant, hazy outdoor landscape, though by the end, it’s clear Fran and Miriam can traverse either, as demonstrated in the film’s frenzied, violent finale. VAMPYRES is more complicated than it appears at first glance, in its not-so-subtle but effective take on the vampire genre; the women kill primarily not with fangs but with a large, curved knife, preferring to then drink the blood of their victims from gaping wounds. Men are just meals, first courses before the women eventually end making love with each other on their submissive bodies. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1974, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Michael Haneke's THE WHITE RIBBON (Germany/Austria)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago – Saturday, 5pm

I'll tell you this: the scene in THE WHITE RIBBON where a little boy is told about death is better than the whole of THE PIANO TEACHER. In fact, THE WHITE RIBBON is Haneke's best film after CODE UNKNOWN. Lars Von Trier called THE BOSS OF IT ALL "a light comedy;" Haneke has called this one "a film about the rise of fascism." Both are puckish statements of intention, not descriptions of the results. It all starts with a wire strung between two trees to trip a horse. A year or so before World War I, in a small Protestant community, the balance created by the ordinary cruelties of the upper class is undermined by extraordinary cruelties by mysterious perpetrators. Everyday negligence is responded to with planned attacks. All of these events are investigated by a schoolteacher (played by Christian Friedel as a young man and by the voice of Ernest Jacobi as an old one), who is the first Haneke character who could be called a "hero" rather than a "protagonist." Haneke's camera, like Visconti's or Sirk's or Mizoguchi's or von Sternberg's, has always held a privileged position, an ability to either stare at what the director feels the audience would avert their eyes from, or to see shapes, patterns, and causes that the characters can't. There's a scene in THE WHITE RIBBON, shot in a single immobile take, where a poor man comes to look at the corpse of his wife, who's just been killed in a sawmill accident. Her upper body is blocked out of view. The man, his head held low, approaches the bed she's been laid on and, in a moment of unknowable misery, becomes obscured. It's at this moment that Haneke relinquishes the aforementioned privilege and it becomes clear that THE WHITE RIBBON is the most openly empathetic film he's ever made. Screening as part of the Board Picks series. (2009, 137 min, DCP Digital) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Claire Denis' HIGH LIFE (International)

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

“Beauty pisses me off,“ Claire Denis once said. No wonder Monte, the protagonist of HIGH LIFE, was first inspired by the greasily gaunt Vincent Gallo, Denis’s one-time muse of American scumminess, and subsequently developed for Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose mass of gut, skin, and stubble always felt tailored to fit a personal core of self-loathing. In the intervening years as the project sought funding, Gallo would burn out in a manner clownishly characteristic of the lowlifes he had played, while Hoffman would check out tragically so. Fifteen years on, HIGH LIFE comes to us at last, but in a fashion unimaginable at its time of origin. Claire Denis has officially broken out. Someone I met at a recent screening of L’INTRUS drove this home upon remarking the high volume of “youngs” in attendance. Robert Pattinson is one of these “youngs,” as are other members of the ensemble gathered around him here: Mia Goth, Ewan Mitchell, Claire Tran, and Gloria Obianyo—all in their twenties or early thirties. These millennials comprise one half of the crew that mans the spacecraft in HIGH LIFE. An older half consists of André Benjamin (yes, that André), Agata Buzek, Lars Eidinger—all early forties—and Juliette Binoche, the oldest at 55. I list the whole cast, leaving aside one key character, to emphasize how Denis has adapted her vision generationally to fit her leading man. The 32 year-old Pattinson has come to epitomize the current state of the film industry, where star actors pursue their personal favorite auteurs in an art house cinema version of millionaire spelunking. He has already drawn much deserved praise for the fierce commitment he brings to HIGH LIFE, but I’ve seen few considerations of how his presence, with all it implies, affects the ecological balance of Denis’s art and, more importantly, how she responds to it. This is not a matter of pop cultural status alone. It’s a matter of a certain type of beauty, the beauty Denis once reviled, as well as of youth. The director’s previous films are filled with both youth and beauty of course. Young, beautiful bodies, and the sense of temptation and taboo they invite, have animated Denis’s cinema from CHOCOLAT to 35 SHOTS OF RUM, but no actor Denis has previously engaged exudes the ethereal, almost sacred beauty of a Hollywood star like Pattinson, and Monte was not originally supposed to be young. Denis wanted Hoffman for Monte, because he seemed “tired of life.” The story she would tell around this tired man involved a failing spaceship light-years from earth, a morgue filled with dead bodies, and a newborn baby. Through flashback, it would emerge how the crew, death row convicts on a suicide run to a black hole, had self destructed under the mental and physical strain of their circumstances, leaving only this man caring for this baby, the spawn of kinky fertility experiments. HIGH LIFE preserves the outline, but embodied by Pattinson, Monte becomes less a figure of age and waste than of wasted potential and stunted growth. His youth and the youth of his fellow convicts suggest a surrogate family of orphans in juvenile detention, the older inmates Benjamin and Buzek—ship’s gardener and pilot respectively—surrogate older siblings, and Eidinger and Binoche—captain and doctor—their surrogate parents. For HIGH LIFE is a film about family, how a family forms between bodies in space, specifically when that space is a prison. Denis displays little interest in man’s relationship to technology or the possibility of the infinite, the major themes of nearly all space science-fiction since 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. The spacecraft she conceives is a low-tech system of interconnected rooms organized along an inescapable corridor. The space beyond is an implacably black void promising nothing but descent. Here there is only the body, its needs and desires, and the space that maintains and preserves it, while also regulating, restraining, even satisfying it, without accommodation for pleasure. This focus on body matters has led many to draw a connection with Ridley Scott’s ALIEN and its related vision of space as a source of genetic hostility, but the comparison only functions on a conceptual level. The sensations of HIGH LIFE feel closer to Mario Bava’s ALIEN precursor PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES with its psychedelic eroticism, albeit channeled through the environmental existentialism of Andrei Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS. As in Bava, color filtered lights seem to encase the characters in an almost tangible manifestation of their repressed urges, and, as in Tarkovsky, the fecundity of earth, here represented in remnant form by the ship’s greenhouse, returns them briefly to the memory of home. At a more basic level, the signature physicality of Denis’ art achieves a greater concentration in this setting than her previous earth-bound projects ever permitted. The force of mere looks, gestures, and poses of the body in HIGH LIFE restores something of the formal balance between the abstract and the concrete that Howard Hawks perfected under the studio system in films like ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS and RIO BRAVO. And just as Hawks required the muscular presences of Cary Grant and John Wayne to hold the center of mythic constructions, Denis needs Pattinson in HIGH LIFE for his iconic potency. Again and again, Denis cuts to images of her star’s head, shaven, shapely, in terrifyingly intimate close ups. These shots register the repressive effect of each new trauma Monte witnesses, each new indignity he endures, over the course of this most perverse space odyssey. By the film's end, it seems we have spent a lifetime with this once young man, drawn by the decay of time, the weight of gravity, the predations of people, in this prison of space. Screening as part of the Inner Voyages series. (2018, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Edo Choi]

David Lynch's ERASERHEAD (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Friday, 9:30pm and Monday, 7pm & 9:30pm

"It's my PHILADELPHIA STORY. It just doesn't have Jimmy Stewart in it." In Lynch's debut feature, a man and a woman conceive a monstrous child somewhere in between suburban alienation and industrial rot, a mostly conventional situation with the most grotesque punchline. Watching ERASERHEAD now feels like wandering through a nightmare more than ever, due in part to its central conceit and the expected barrage of disturbing events and images that it entails—distended faces, animal carcasses, etc.—but even the film's few familiar features add to this dreamlike quality. For example, most of ERASERHEAD takes place in an apartment building whose lobby is recognizable as the Other Place from TWIN PEAKS, and its checkerboard floors trigger a series of half-conscious connections, the common dream trope of a location playing the role of another location. But for every fact we know about the film's production, we're equally uncertain about what it is we're actually looking at, including the creature-child itself, whose uncertain origins have inspired theories that claim it as everything from a cow fetus to an elaborate puppet. Then, amidst this uncertainty, the film's most destabilizing quality emerges: its sweetness. As the father, Jack Nance has a constant wide-eyed, beleaguered stare that is almost as infantile as the creature-child that he tends to, ambivalently at first and then urgently as soon as he sees it in distress. It's effectively moving for the same reason that it's effectively dreamlike, with conscious logic and psychological realism applied to unreal conditions. But because Lynch's mind doesn't seem to format in the conditional or hypothetical, this aspect of unreality is always underlined as literal, so that the scenario of a largely silent father figure demonstrating real concern over his freak spawn is never played as what would happen but what is happening, shifting the focus onto affect and away from conditions. The silhouette of Nance's head has become a visual shorthand for the film, and is also emblematic in many ways of this oddly bound logic; its shape is both inexplicable and inevitable, and the only place is could possibly make sense is on the floor of a pencil factory, which is exactly where it ends up. (1977, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Anne Orchier]

David Lynch's BLUE VELVET (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Saturday, 11:30am and Sunday, 3pm

This is where the legend really began. It's curious to think how Lynch's career would have developed if DUNE (1984) had not been a box office failure, but cinema history can thank him for not playing it safe with this rebound project. Though Lynch had already made three features, BLUE VELVET was the first full articulation of his core theme of the evil that lurks in small towns everywhere. Not the outright surrealist endeavor that was ERASERHEAD, it is also not the most accessible of narratives. Dark, violent, sexual, and reeking of 1963 suburbia, the film is at times a noir mystery and at others a violent thriller. Many of the visual symbols that would populate TWIN PEAKS are introduced here, such as red curtains appearing when danger is present in a scene, and Lynch's continued growth as a complete cinematic artist is evident. Despite having a cast that didn't feature a legitimate star (Dennis Hopper may be the exception, but his career was in the dumps when he was cast...as the third choice), the film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, as well as praise from critics throughout the world. It's also notable that Kyle MacLachlan (essentially playing Dale Cooper) might never have worked again if not for his excellent performance. Still dangerous all these years later, the film is as gorgeous as it is classic. (1986, 120 min, DCP Digital) [Jason Halprin]

Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham & Rachel Szor’s NO OTHER LAND (Norway/Palestine/Documentary)

Alamo Drafthouse – See Venue website for showtimes

“This is a story about power.” Basel Adra, a lifelong resident of the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank, speaks these words to cap off a story about former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s visit to the region, a visit that—while perhaps nothing more than a publicity stunt—resulted in the IDF's previously scheduled demolitions of Palestinian schools and homes to be called off. But this film, NO OTHER LAND, is also a story about power, about needless emotional and physical damage, about the constant barrage of senseless destruction of peoples’ livelihoods that so many around the world have either become desensitized to or have found labyrinthine methods of justifying to themselves this continued degradation of humanity. The framework of the onscreen narrative stretches from the summer of 2019 through October of 2023, and it focuses on the growing friendship between two of the film’s directors: the aforementioned Basel and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist who has arrived to learn more about the continuing Israeli mission of Palestinian subjugation. The footage we see is, at the very least, rage-inducing: homes and schools and entire villages senselessly bulldozed to oblivion, supposedly for the flimsy excuse of being turned into “military zones.” The ensuing carnage and accompanying attitudes perpetrated by the Israeli soldiers captured on film oscillates between “duty-bound” apathy or entitled machismo, in one instance resulting in a soldier shooting and paralyzing a friend of Basel’s, Harun Abu Aram. The law is, indeed, on the side of the Israelis, so why should these Palestinian children be so upset when their homes are destroyed in broad daylight when it’s perfectly “legal” to do so? The filmmakers make a point to highlight the intentional existential ploy being pulled off here, where Israelis can come and go as they please throughout the West Bank, whereas Palestinians are legally bound to the region and otherwise othered in all aspects of Israeli society (Basel notes, despite having a law degree, he would only realistically be able to find a job as a construction worker were he to move to Israel). Throughout it all—perhaps to actively combat it all—there are still laughs shared among family members, there are still games played in the snow during winter, and the children still play and swing around and try to find some semblance of joy amidst their displacement. Underneath the political mire of the “complicated” banner so often thrown at the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, there are simply families wanting to share a meal together, mothers caring for sons, fathers keeping businesses afloat, and countless young people staring at their phones, because what else is there? That the directing team is comprised of both Israelis and Palestinians points towards some kind of hopeful future where a shared understanding of the horrors at hand can be truly realized (some of the more noteworthy and thorny passages arise when various Palestinians question Yuval’s own complicity in the continued settlements of the region, though the film leaves these points dangling rather than digging deeper, for better or worse). Additionally, that the film failed to find US theatrical distribution, while still receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature, speaks to how open endorsement for Palestinian rights tends to only go so far. Perhaps the true power of NO OTHER LAND, and of this entire story, is the continued resilience and drive in Palestinians capturing the reality on the ground and urgently spreading the truth as far as possible. Here, the camera proves mightier than the sword. (2024, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Robert Aldrich's WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Sunday, 11:30am

One of Aldrich's secret weapons was composer Frank De Vol, with whom he worked multiple times. Better known as simply DeVol, he churned out the theme songs as well as the incidental music for TV shows like Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch: catchy, yet generic-sounding stuff was his forte. He worked the other end of spectrum too—check out his score for KISS ME DEADLY. Aldrich knew that DeVol could be counted on to supply meat and potatoes cues like "Joan Uncovers the Rat" and "Bette Kicks the Shit Out of Joan." A sort of grotesque musical wallpaper, his music effectively magnifies shock and revulsion but without sufficient individuality to call attention to itself; DeVol was the anti-Bernard Herrmann. It's exactly what WHAT EVER requires. Aldrich keeps the focus squarely on Joan and Bette, the yin and yang of "has-been showbiz legends," playing Jane and Blanche, two made-up "has-been showbiz legends." Celebrity and "reality" and fiction blur together more deliciously than ever before or ever since. (1962, 134 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]

Osgood Perkins’ THE MONKEY (US)

Alamo Drafthouse and the Music Box Theatre – See Venue websites for showtimes

A blood-drenched Adam Scott torches a drum-banging toy monkey with a flamethrower, but the cursed relic returns to his twin sons, Hal and Bill (Theo James). Too late, the boys realize that winding the key brings only suffering. Desperate, they discard it in a well, where it remains silent for twenty-five years—until the drumming starts again. No one is safe. Osgood Perkins adapts Stephen King’s short story from Skeleton Crew but takes creative liberties, transforming a tale about suppressed trauma finding its way back into a visceral expression of trauma. Perkins’ film unfolds along multiple threads: two orphaned brothers growing estranged, a son struggling to reconnect with his absent father, and an overarching meditation on inherited anguish. The monkey—don’t call it a toy—becomes both a harbinger of death and a metaphor for generational suffering. Perkins even stitches his own past into the film, drawing from the loss of his mother on 9/11 and the enigmatic shadow of his father, Anthony Perkins. One character states outright that 9 and 11 are just numbers, which highlights the point Perkins is trying to make about the absurdity, pointlessness, and ultimate randomness of death. By shifting the tone of the source material, Perkins makes the story more interactive. Seeing THE MONKEY in a packed theater is the best way to experience this carnival ride. Step right up and see a man's intestines stretched the length of a pawn shop. The FINAL DESTINATION films attempt these feats of Rube Goldberg-style death traps with sincerity, but Perkins strips away the earnestness, leaving only the absurdity. Balancing horror and comedy is no small feat, but a strong narrative and razor-sharp dialogue make it work. The quarrelling and hopeful reconciliation of the twin brothers is an element added by Perkins. Osgood is the older brother of singer-songwriter Elvis Perkins, and within the twin brothers of Hal and Bill there is sibling rivalry, estrangement, and resentment, but theirs is a story of coming back to one another. Whatever relationship the Perkins brothers may have had in the past, they certainly work well together now. Elvis provided scores for THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER (2015) and also LONGLEGS (under the name Zilgi). There is something larger at work within Perkins' variation of King's short story. A reflection of the paradox of human experience where suffering and laughter console each other. Moments of gallows humor offer a relief from the tragedy, while the tragedy itself deepens the stakes of the comedy. The Structuralist view of this link says that tragedy moves from order to chaos and comedy moves from chaos to order. This leaves only a liminal space for laughter and sorrow to greet one another. This absurdist quest to find meaning where there is none, stays within the confines of that liminal space and is on full display in THE MONKEY. Within the stages of grief, moments of dark humor can be necessary and healthy. Perkins' own tragic past works its way into his narratives. He has called his own work a Trojan Horse for exploring his own loss, using genre as a vehicle for deeply personal storytelling. THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER dealt with sorrow and longing through possession while his other films have been attempts at connecting with his father, his mother, how attachments to the past can get in the way of growth, and now with THE MONKEY, the lasting effect of laughter in the face of incomprehensible pain. Obviously, gallows humor and Grand Guignol spectacles may not elicit catharsis for everyone, but it absolutely did for Perkins, which shows in every frame. Staring into the void has never been this much fun. (2025, 95 min, 35mm or DCP [check venue listings for format]) [Shaun Huhn]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Ben Blaine and Chris Blaine’s 2015 film NINA FOREVER (98 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info here.

⚫ Alliance Francaise
Celia Aniskovich’s 2023 documentary short TAKING BACK THE GROOVE (Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 6:30pm, as part of the Festival de la Francophonie, followed by a discussion between Chicago-based Franco-Algerian DJ Jérôme Derradji (who features in the film) and Vince Lawrence, American dance music record producer, businessman, and one of the leading innovators in house music. Guests will also enjoy a post-screening reception featuring complimentary French wine and beats curated by Derradji. More info on all screenings here.

⚫  Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Felicia D. Henderson’s 2024 film THE REBEL GIRLS screens Friday, 6pm, with Henderson and cast in attendance for a post-film discussion. Following the event, there will be a reception in the Block Museum's lobby.

First Person Plural: New and Rediscovered Trans Documentary Shorts screens Thursday at 7pm. Filmmaker Connor O’Keefe presents two recent shorts alongside three newly digitized portrait films from the 1960s and ‘70s, exploring first-person testimony. More info on all screenings here. 

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

⚫ The Davis Theater
Trust Fall, a monthly “blind” movie screening in collaboration with Oscarbate Film Collective, takes place Sunday, 9:30pm, with Brooklyn-based queer film historian, programmer, and filmmaker Elizabeth Purchell in person. More info here. 

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
A special screening of John and Lem Amero’s 1981 film BLONDE AMBITION (84 min) takes place Friday, 9:30pm, with an introduction by queer film historian, programmer, and filmmaker Elizabeth Purchell as well as a Q&A with Purchell following the screening. 

Peter Jackson’s 2001 film THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (179 min, 35mm) screens Saturday, 8pm, as part of the Board Picks series.

New 4k restorations of António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro’s 1964 short film DO CÉU AO RIO (17 min, DCP Digital) and their 1989 film ROSA DE AREIA (87 min, DCP Digital) screen Sunday, 4pm, as part of the Peasants of the Cinema: António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro series. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ FACETS Cinema
Cinema4aCause presents a special screening of Ayçil Yeltan’s 2024 film FIDAN (79 min, Digital Projection) and Q&A with Yeltan on Saturday, International Women’s Day. Doors open at 6pm followed by the screening and Q&A at 6:30pm and a reception at 8:30pm.

Nathan Deming’s 2024 film FEBRUARY (50 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 11am, followed by a post-screening Q&A with Deming led by Chicago filmmaker Lori Felker. Free admission.

Rebellion & Restless Youth: Anime Club Goes Live-Action screens Thursday starting at 7pm. This secret double feature steps outside the world of animation, showcasing two bold, experimental live-action films from the late ‘90s and early 2000s that capture the raw intensity of youth, rebellion, and self-discovery. Free and exclusive to Film Club Members ($15/Month or $150/Year). More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Mystery Movie Monday takes place Monday at 6pm. 

Denis Villeneuve’s 2010 film INCENDIES (131 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of the Shadows of War lecture series. 

Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold: Black Fire screens Thursday, 6pm, as part of Conversations at the Edge, followed by a conversation with the filmmakers; Emily Martin, Distribution Manager at Video Data Bank; and Paige Taul, Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at SAIC. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Instituto Cervantes de CHICAGO (31 W. Ohio St. )
José Sánchez-Montes’ 2022 documentary EL UNIVERSO EN UNA CAJA (80 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 6pm. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Media Burn Archive (Virtual)
Virtual Talks with Video Activists: Video Portraitist Joan Logue, with Helena Shaskevich takes place Thursday, 6pm, featuring videos from throughout Joan Logue's career, curated by Logue and moderator Helena Shaskevich. Logue, a pioneer in video portraiture, will showcase works from the 1970s to the 2010s, including rare early pieces and celebrated portraits of figures like Nam June Paik, Rosa Parks, and Noam Chomsky. Free with advanced registration. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Bong Joon Ho’s 2025 film MICKEY 17 (137 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes. 

Elric Kane’s 2025 film THE DEAD THING (95 min, 35mm) screens Friday and Saturday at 9:30pm with Kane in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. 

The Chicago Humanities Festival presents Paul Reiser: A Career-Spanning Conversation on Thursday, 7pm, with Reiser in person. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Rewind Room
Wendell B. Harris Jr.s’ 1989 film CHAMELEON STREET (94 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 7pm, at 3054 N. Sheffield Ave. More info here. 

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
Wendy Clarke: Love is All Around screens as part of VDB's new virtual program, curated by Kristin MacDonough. This program features a selection of five excerpts from Clarke’s iconic LOVE TAPES series, showcasing personal reflections on love from 2,500 diverse individuals. The LOVE TAPES project, ongoing since the late '70s, explores various interpretations of love, from lust and friendship to first love and familial bonds. This VDB TV program highlights newly remastered works, preserved by Clarke and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. More info here.

CINE-LIST: March 7, 2025 - March 13, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Edo Choi, Maxwell Courtright, Rob Christopher, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Patrick Friel, Jason Halprin, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Anne Orchier, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky