CRUCIAL VIEWING
Joseph Losey’s MR. KLEIN (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
Watching MR. KLEIN, you’re never sure when director Joseph Losey will present the action with a fluid tracking shot or a shaky handheld camera; he alternates between the two methods so unpredictably as to instill the movie with a sense of instability. The seeming randomness of Losey’s method befits the content of MR. KLEIN, which charts one individual’s loss of control over his own life and, more generally, Europe’s societal breakdown during World War II. Alain Delon (who also produced) stars as the title character, a suave Parisian art dealer who doesn’t mind the Nazi occupation of France or the German persecution of his nation’s Jews. (In fact, he cynically exploits the persecution by buying art at cheap rates from Jews trying to get rid of their possessions so they may raise money to flee the country.) Over the course of 1942, he discovers that there’s a Jewish man in Paris who shares his name and that this other Klein has been taking advantage of the coincidence, switching identities with the art dealer to benefit himself. The first act of the film details Delon’s growing awareness of the other man (who never appears onscreen); this section conjures up the air of existential dread that Losey achieved in his first two collaborations with Harold Pinter, THE SERVANT and ACCIDENT. Once the antihero fully understands the situation, he finds that the authorities are beginning to believe he’s the Jewish Klein—and that he’s incapable of convincing them otherwise. In this development, the film escalates from low-lying dread to explicit nightmare, and Losey’s detached style makes the progression feel eerily inevitable. Many people who write on MR. KLEIN feel compelled to invoke Kafka, who died before the Second World War yet who articulated the nightmare of the Holocaust more vividly than almost any other author. The film is indeed Kafkaesque, as was the historical era it depicts. (1976, 123 min, DCP Digital) BS
Hollis Frampton's ZORN'S LEMMA (Experimental Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Tuesday, 6pm
Zorn's lemma as defined by set theory: Every partially ordered set contains one maximal totally ordered subset. With the birth of cinema came the emergence of a new form of communication and, although the likes of Eisenstein, Vertov, and Pudovkin explored the medium's manipulative abilities, each acting as early cinematic linguists, Hollis Frampton was certainly the most successful, if not the first, at breaking this new language down to study its syntax and phonemes. Of Frampton's work, no better example of this analysis exists than ZORNS LEMMA, in which he aims to catalog cinema's inherent traits as well as dissect filmic language into its constituent parts. The film sets in place early a one-second pulse, used as a unit of measurement for his exercises, as he ties together language, grammar, and conceptual visual representations. An early American text teaching grammar and the alphabet is read over black leader and is followed by the establishment of the film's pulse as it cycles through the English alphabet with images of word that begin with each letter. As this middle sequence continues, Frampton makes visual the definition of writing: the graphic use of abstract characters to represent phonetic elements of speech. Words representing letters of the alphabet are eventually replaced with an image (ocean waves, a fire, etc.), sublimating any previous representation into a purely visual symbolic language—from now on, Frampton is telling us, we communicate with images; we write with light. The capstone of our conversion to a visual alphabet is a choral reading of medieval philosopher Robert Grosseteste's "On Light," which discusses the inherently problematic role that the nature of light plays in one's understanding of objective reality. Considering all three sections of the film, ZORNS LEMMA posits cinema as a new system of thought, complete with its own lexicon, capable of shaping and defining reality by way of its manipulation of light. Preceded by Stan Brakhage's 1964 films SONGS 1-7 (25 min total, 16mm). Critic and artist Fred Camper lectures at the screening. (1970, 60 min, 16mm) DM
Paul Mazursky’s BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Monday, 9:30pm
Bob and Carol arrive at a California mountain retreat geared toward helping people discover spiritual enlightenment within themselves, almost certainly at a generous asking price. They take part in group activities that look more like acid trips than counseling sessions. All of it begins prickly at first, but eventually the couple finds something of value in the rituals. Discovering that they have a renewed view of physicality, honesty, and love within their relationship, they cannot wait to return to their upper middle class lifestyle and tell their friends Ted and Alice about it over cocktails. Good, healthy, and purifying ideas about honesty begin to get turned on their heads as Bob and Carol, coming down from the exhilaration of their experience at the new age resort, misdirect their newfound philosophy into trivial matters with their waiter. Ted and Alice don’t seem quite sure what to make of their friends’ new outlook on life. Director Paul Mazursky frames Bob and Carol’s excitement as youthful and invigorating, yet, at this point in the narrative, it is uncertain how much they’ve really understood. The two Boomer couples become caught up in the Free Love movement of the time, foreshadowing the radical notions of sex and love that are most susceptible to distortion, both mildly and monstrously (the latter not depicted here), as love for one another devolved into the impenetrable narcissisms of the “Me” generation. The conflation of the ego pops up most innocently when Carol asks their Dominican waiter how he feels about waiting on their table, even up to the moment she goes to apologize to him in the kitchen—a moment that certainly helps draw the comparison made between Mazursky and Jean Renoir (the former remade the latter’s BOUDOU SAVED FROM DROWNING as DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS). Eventually Bob and Carol rope Ted and Alice into their new takes on sex and love, which results in a both tender and hilarious dissection of emotional honesty. Beyond the biting human comedy, this film is wrapped up in the end of an era, as the ‘60s gave way to the ‘70s, and those approaching middle age tried to make sense of the changing times. The awakening Bob and Carol experience at the beginning of the movie gives way to raw moments of ridiculousness; it is this contrast that makes the film so deeply humane and teeming with an unexpected positivity despite all its satire. The lengths these two couples will go to to grapple with their own selves while still maintaining a marriage, are imbued with so much embarrassment and warmth, the main ingredients constituting real feelings, that it’s a shame that it hasn’t received wider acclaim (beyond it being notable as a “trad comedy of Boomer orgies,” which it is most certainly not). It’s not hard to view it cynically when simply looking at its poster image of four forty-somethings sitting naked in a bed together, but beyond that it is closer in spirit to the films of Albert Brooks or John Cassavetes, albeit his lighter works like MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ. Woody Allen’s films are often compared to Mazursky, but in the comparison Mazursky’s films reveal just how overly self-interested and intellectually-inflated a filmmaker like Allen can be. Not unlike the film’s title characters, Allen’s work can be intensely self-serious with its modernity in a way that doesn’t feel fully formed or understood. What Allen lacks as a filmmaker, Mazursky nails, in effect placing the work of Allen neatly inside this film’s very critique of a certain generation, with Mazursky displaying an honesty and humility Allen could only begin to hint at. It isn’t too important to situate Allen’s work alongside Mazursky’s, but it shows which of them understood themselves better as an artist and human being, an understanding key to making works as transcendent as this is. (1969, 105 min, 35mm) JD
Youssef Chahine’s ALEXANDRIA… WHY? (Egyptian Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Monday, 7pm (Free Admission)
In 1979, Youssef Chahine, the most famous of all Egyptian filmmakers, created a scandal with this taboo-busting autobiographical epic, the first of a trilogy that would include 1982’s AN EGYPTIAN STORY and 1989’s ALEXANDRIA, AGAIN AND FOREVER. ALEXANDRIA… WHY? recreates, with impressive period detail, the director’s hometown of Alexandria during the outbreak of World War II. The story interweaves the lives of many characters, chief among them Yehia Mustafa, a teen-aged student and movie lover (and stand-in for Chahine) who nurses his first stirrings of creativity as an actor and director in local theatrical productions. Two other narrative strands involve characters experiencing forbidden love: a Jewish woman who embarks on an affair with a Muslim man and, in the film’s most controversial angle at the time of its release, a gay English soldier who becomes involved with a rich Arab. But these personal stories are always juxtaposed against a wider political and historical context, as Chahine deftly uses stock footage of the war, clips from Hollywood musicals (which Yehia uses as a means to escape from the nightmare around him) and the depiction of air raids, black market activity, and interactions between Egyptian civilians and soldiers of the occupational British army. A supreme masterpiece of world cinema. (1979, 133 min, DCP Digital) MGS
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Clarence Brown’s THE SIGNAL TOWER (Silent American Revival)
Chicago Film Society and the Music Box Theatre (at the Music Box) – Saturday, 11:30am
Clarence Brown had one of the more interesting careers of the many Hollywood directors who never broke into the ranks of auteurist-approved. He’s perhaps best known for helming a string of late 1920s and early 1930s vehicles for several of the top female stars at the time (most famously Greta Garbo), but it’s his career-long occasional turn to what I think of as “Americana” films that I find most intriguing (a non-genre that I also associate with King Vidor, Jacques Tourneur, and John Ford). Brown’s career begins in earnest with one such film, the 1920 version of THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, which he took over when his mentor Maurice Tourneur was injured, and ends with another, 1952’s PLYMOUTH ADVENTURE. It’s in this vein that his 1924 silent film THE SIGNAL TOWER can be situated. Less, though, because of it’s story or characters; rather, because of its setting and occupational context. The story is about an idealized couple and their child, living in a remote California mountain location where the husband works as a railroad switchman, and the lecherous new co-worker who has unwholesome designs on the wife. But the film is really about trains and trees. Brown captures a lingering frontier spirit in this setting, “among the big trees” as he says. Brown’s tutelage under the great Tourneur is in evidence here. The images of locomotives wending their way through the heavily-forested mountainside are stunning. Similarly, Brown films closer views of the trains with a sense of both wonder and dread—their power is compelling, but also to be feared (the derailment of the young son’s toy train early on foreshadows the tense climax of the film). Rockcliffe Fellowes and Virginia Valli are fine as the couple, but it’s Wallace Beery as the newly-arrived signalman who steals the show (when there’s not a train onscreen), with his oily-smooth demeanor and self-satisfied smirk. Not a great film, but one with many flashes of promise, that, coupled with two better films shortly after (THE GOOSE WOMAN and SMOULDERING FIRES), demonstrate that Brown was capable of moving beyond mere pictorialism; he ultimately settled, though, into a role as a comfortable studio director (though one still worth watching). The restored print, produced by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, looks great, especially considering that it was made from two 16mm show-at-home prints (no 35mm survives). Preceded by Charles Giblyn’s 1915 silent short JANE’S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (20 min, 35mm restored print), which survives in an incomplete version, a fine, if unremarkable, drama about a young woman going against her father’s wishes to wed her military officer beau. It’s notable for its location shooting at the Presidio, and as a rare example of the prolific but short-lived Bison Motion Pictures company. Live accompaniment by Dennis Scott. (1924, 84 min, 35mm restored print) PF
Umbrales: Experimental Women Filmmakers from Latin America (Experimental Revival)
Nightingale Cinema – Wednesday, 7pm (Free Admission)
There are few artistic milieus in which women aren’t the minority, and that’s no less the case with experimental cinema in Latin America. While there are films made by women in some of the other Ism, Ism, Ism programs, this one is wholly dedicated to the minority within the minority, showcasing nine films by women filmmakers from various Latin American countries. Each one stands on its own; the lack of explicit formal or thematic throughlines in the program, unlike the others in this invaluable series, serves to illuminate the diverse ways in which Latin American women contributed to the medium. Perhaps the most well-known of the mix, Narcisa Hirsch’s COME OUT (1971, 11 min, Argentina) is mesmerizing and disorienting as it utilizes composer Steve Reich’s 1966 composition Come Out, originally made to benefit the Harlem Six, against footage of the record player, first extremely close up and then gradually brought into view as the sound becomes more and more incoherent. The image and the sound work in harmony to incongruous effect. Gleeful and spirited, Lydia Garcia’s COLOR (1955, 4 min, Uruguay) is referred to in the program notes as being “one of the first abstract experimental films from Latin America,” which she made when she was just a teenager. Set against a jazz score, it appears to be comprised of primary colored paint floating on water in a variety of visually appealing patterns. Formalist without being formal, Garcia’s film is pure essence, light and dance-like within the frame. Alluding to Diego Rivera’s painting of the same name, Silvia Gruner’s DESNUDO CON ALCATRACES [NUDES WITH LILLIES] (1986, 2 min, Mexico) engages with and pokes fun at Rivera’s evocation of the female form; its depiction of a clothed woman eating flowers could be said to reappropriate the appropriation present in Rivera’s work, taking back a subject matter—that of a woman’s body—he and other male artists so often blithely interpreted. My favorite of the films, Gloria Camiruaga’s POPSICLES (1982-84, 5 min, US/Chile), depicts her teenage daughters licking popsicles that, as consumed, reveal green toy soldiers inside, all while they recite the Hail Mary. A response to Pinochet’s authoritarian regime, Camiruage said that the “work is an interaction of the space, the symbols and the historical context in which I live as a woman on this side of the continent.” She brilliantly juxtaposes the playfulness—and provocations—of childhood to arouse a chilling political sentiment. Marie Louise Alemann’s UMBRALES (1967, 19 min, Argentina) is a queer cinematic tone poem, featuring only men (at least until the final, enigmatic shot) as they traverse doorways, corridors, stairways and staircases, in Buenos Aires and Paris. Umbrales means threshold, a motif explored both literally and figuratively in these spaces. A haunting piano score provides its elegiac inflection. The film most blatantly representative of its subject's origin, Cecilia Vicuña’s PARACAS (1983, 19 min, US/Chile), is a roughhewn animation based on a 2000-year-old textile from the Paracas/Nazca region of Peru that’s housed at the Brooklyn Museum. The figures from the textile come alive via stop-motion and are explored in short vignettes that illuminate their meaning. In DEVIL IN THE FLESH (2003, 5 min, Mexico), Ximena Cuevas confronts the dual tragedies that are boredom and artificiality, which are often a symptom of and solution to the other. Hypnotically abrasive images of Cuevas employing tricks that actors often use to feign emotion—such as eating peppers or, more viscerally, rubbing Vaseline into their eyelids—represent this stupefying dichotomy. The embodiment of a filmic lark, Vivian Ostrovsky’s COPACABANA BEACH (1983, 10 min, Brazil) depicts what’s purported to be an average morning on the beaches of Copacabana, its speed manipulated and with various tunes further helping to establish the rhythm. Finally, colonialism has likely never been so whimsically challenged as in Poli Marichal’s BLUES TROPICAL (1982, 4 min, Puerto Rico); through what appears to be animation rendered directly on the celluloid, she uses an almost primitive technique to facilitate pure expressions of both aesthetic beauty and latent emotion, the duality of which is an apt metaphor for the program overall. Co-presented by Block Cinema. (1955-2003, 79 min total, Digital Projection) KS
Brett Story’s THE HOTTEST AUGUST (New Documentary)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Friday, 7pm (Free Admission)
Exactly how calm is the so-called "calm before the storm"? The definition of the phrase causes one to wonder: “a period of unusual tranquility or stability that seems likely to presage difficult times." If it’s unusual and likely to presage difficult times, just how calm can it be? In her new documentary THE HOTTEST AUGUST, director Brett Story (THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES) seems to be asking these questions about the apparent calm that's presaging the likely devastating effects that climate change will exact upon us, but rather than address the subject straightforwardly, something that’s been done before and will be done again (but always to little avail), Story instead takes a random month—August 2017—and uses various happenings within it, in New York City, to present a microcosm of a contemporary society plagued by anxiety over the future. Inspired by Chris Marker’s 1962 film LE JOLI MAI, which Marker filmed over one month in Paris, Story, like Marker, wields the footage literally and figuratively in equal turn. In some scenes, it’s either explicitly audible or otherwise implied that she’s addressing her subjects (of whom there is a diverse mix, from a charming working-class couple in the Bronx to an African-American man who often dons a homemade space suit around the city), asking them particular questions about their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their finances, their aspirations, their desires for the future, whether or not they think there will be a future at all. Other scenes are more observational and thus more ambiguous and open to interpretation. Among the most elliptical sequences are ones that take place at a sandcastle-building contest and a 1920s-themed party; Story admits to welcoming the randomness, though in the sense that such haphazard vignettes speak to both the deliberateness and chaos of daily life. As evinced by this and THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES, Story has a knack for making connections between seemingly benign scenarios and the larger point she’s trying to make, which, in this case, is that climate change is likewise a cause and an effect of contemporary society. Accompanying all this is voiceover narration of passages from Zadie Smith’s Elegy for a Country’s Seasons, Karl Marx’s foundational text Capital (naturally, capitalism is a factor in the film, even when it’s not), and Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse” (August 2017 was the year of the solar eclipse, as well as the Charlottesville incident in which activist Heather Heyer was killed by a white supremacist, incidents that serve to contextualize the randomness). These imbue the documentary with a gravitas that mirrors the significance Story imports upon her subjects, some more adventitious than others, but all crucial to it. The ataractic voiceover, gorgeous shots of day-to-day life in one of the most vibrant cities in the world, the subjects’ lack of a conspicuous emotional response to the mercilessness of the challenges they face—unusual tranquility, indeed, and certainly presaging the most difficult of storms. Story in person. (2019, 95 min, DCP Digital) KS
Chicago International Children’s Film Festival
The Chicago International Children’s Film Festival continues Friday through Sunday.
Matthias Bruhn and Ralf Kukula’s FRITZI: A REVOLUTIONARY TALE (German/International Animation, Ages 11–14)
Davis Theatre (4614 N. Lincoln Ave.) – Friday, 9:30am
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall were momentous events in world history. Those of us who were glued to our TVs on November 10, 1989, saw hundreds of East Germans pass into West Berlin, climb on top of the wall that split the city, and beat on it with sledgehammers. However, not many of us knew how these previously unimaginable actions came to be. The beauty of FRITZI, based on a 2016 book by German author Hanna Schott, is that it gives young American viewers and their accompanying adults a chance to learn about historical events that are probably not on any American school curriculum from the point of view of those who lived through them. FRITZI, made entirely in English, zeroes in on the story of two families joined by the deep friendship of adolescent Fritzi (voice of Ali Lyons) and her best friend Sophie (voice of Lucy Carolan). Sophie and her mother depart Leipzig for a vacation in Hungary, leaving Sophie’s dog Sputnik in Fritzi’s care. In fact, the two are fleeing to West Germany through a temporary route that has opened up in Hungary. Fritzi becomes obsessed with returning Sputnik to her friend, while all around them East German citizens are meeting and planning protests to force the government to open the border. Fritzi’s parents are afraid of the Stasi, which they explain to her are the dangerous secret police who put down dissent. Nonetheless, Fritzi becomes convinced that joining the demonstrations is the only right thing to do. There is a lot in this film that will resonate with young people today who have watched youth around the world demonstrate for climate solutions. The beautiful animation, easy-to-follow story, and very cute antics of Sputnik will engage anyone interested in a politically engaged and emotionally engaging film. Archival footage over the closing credits show the real events depicted in the film and are a must-see. (2019, 105 min, Digital Projection) MF
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Cutting Edge Animation (International Shorts Program, Ages 14+)
Facets Cinémathèque – Friday, 7pm
The perniciousness of our plugged-in society gets an airing in BEST FRIEND (France, 2019, 6 min) from directors Juliana de Lucca, David Feliu, Varun Nair, Nicholas Olivieri, and Yi Shen. The darkly etched real world of Arthur is contrasted with the spritely one of his best friend, Cami, an electronic projection from an implant in his brain. The advertising that declares the benefits of “The friend only you can see—never be alone,” may have convinced the populace in Arthur’s world, but Arthur just seems miserable. CHIONOPHILE (Italy, 2018, 4 min) is a word that refers to an organism that thrives in cold weather. In Giulia Nicolina and Bianchi Sterbert’s atmospheric film, it signals the gulf between two people. It opens in a snowstorm as a narrator suggests that she cannot be reconciled to the world her partner inhabits. Under a big top, the rift between the couple is exemplified by his perch on an earthbound unicycle and her airborne trapeze. Beautifully drawn and animated, this meditation on connection is entrancing. Anu-Laura Tuttelberg’s WINTER IN THE RAINFOREST (Estonia/Lithuania/Mexico, 2019, 9 min) depicts in stop-motion and time-lapse animation the teeming life and sounds of a rainforest. Peculiarly lively orchid-like plants, along with an ibis, grasshopper, fish, and frog move against a live natural environment. When a tiny human is added, we understand her delight in her surroundings. SOUFFLE COURT (France, 2018, 6 min), a live-action/animation combination from directors Pierre-Marie Adnet, Jean-Luc Dessertaine, Guillaume Pochez, Tristan Poulain, Vincent Rouzière, and Alessandro Vergonnier, emphasizes the toxic masculinity of sports competition as Tom prepares for a motocross race by his bullying father. The result is both surprising and no surprise at all. Amir Houshang Moein’s AM I A WOLF? (Iran, 2019, 9 min), a wild freehand animation reminiscent of James Thurber’s work, retells the Grimm fairytale “The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats” as performed by a small group of child puppeteers. It’s a perfect depiction of the terror and frailty of children, and how they work to control their emotions. Yves Paradis’ M52 (Canada/Germany, 2018, 10 min) is an improvised film made one week at a time over the whole of 2017. This creative challenge yields a fairly opaque narrative, but the geometric life forms that eventually emerge from a dense city break through to life. It is an interesting experiment well served by the electronic score by Alexander Hohaus. Valerio Berruti’s THE CAROUSEL (Italy, 2019, 10 min), based on a short story by Filippo Bessone and beautifully rendered in line and wash, depicts the courtship of a man and woman that begins on a carousel and carries through their life together. Vincent Paronnaud and Denis Walgenwitz’s DEATH: DAD & SON (France, 2017, 11 min) is a comical and accomplished animation in which a son’s wayward view of the family business needs gentle revision by his loving father. I laughed all the way through this delightful film. Valerio Berruti, director of THE CAROUSEL, in person. (2017-19, 72 min total, Digital Projection) MF
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Poul Berg’s HACKER (Denmark, Ages 11–13)
Facets Cinémathèque – Sunday, 11:15am
With the recent announcement from Google that they have attained “quantum supremacy,” Danish director/screenwriter Poul Berg’s HACKER is extraordinarily timely. A conspiracy theory come to life, HACKER revolves around the efforts of the “deep state” to use a quantum computer to engineer people’s thoughts and personalities. Standing in their way is Anna (Signe Egholm Olsen), the computer scientist who went underground rather than give them the algorithm they need, leaving behind her 7-year-old son, Benjamin (Sylvester Panduro). The story picks up six years later, and Benjamin (Rumle Kærså) has become an extremely adept computer hacker who unwittingly becomes the bait the bad guys will use to find Anna. A little bit INCEPTION (2010), a little bit WAR GAMES (1983), HACKER has a charismatic lead in Kærså, whose ingenuity and energy propel this high-octane thriller that should enthrall digital-native children and their families. (2019, 97 min, Digital Projection) MF
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Steven Wouterlood’s MY EXTRAORDINARY SUMMER WITH TESS (The Netherlands/Germany, Ages 11–13)
Facets Cinémathèque – Sunday, 3pm
Sam de Jong (Sonny Coops Van Utteren) and his family are vacationing on an island off the coast of The Netherlands. The opening shot of Sam lying in a gravelike hole he dug at the beach reveals his morbid obsession with endings and fear of being alone. When his brother, Jorre (Julian Ras), falls into the hole while playing soccer with Sam and their father (Tjebbo Gerritsma), Sam runs off and encounters 12-year-old Tess (Josephine Arendsen), a resident of the island. The two become friends, but Tess is hiding a secret that involves Sam in an examination of what it means to feel really connected to life. Director Steven Wouterlood brings Dutch author Anna Woltz’s 2013 novel of the same name gloriously to life in this warm tale of friendship and family. The two lead actors are relatable and a pleasure to watch as they reveal their fear of rejection and hopes for a more authentic future. The sun-drenched landscape and local atmosphere are beautifully photographed and offer a nice window onto a different culture—one that favors fish to hamburgers for an oceanside snack. Highly recommended viewing for families and anyone who needs to find a reason to hope. (2019, 82 min, Digital Projection) MF
François Ozon's BY THE GRACE OF GOD (New French)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
Acclaimed French writer/director François Ozon (8 WOMEN) presents an absorbing true story, timely in its quest for truth. Something of a French SPOTLIGHT, this memorable drama moves quickly while taking all the time it needs to study three middle-aged survivors of sexual abuse who form an association to defrock a pedophile priest, Bernard Preynat, when they learn he is still working with children. These men live in the shadow of what Preynat did to them in their various ways: one devout and methodical (Melvil Poupad), one atheistic and hotheaded (Denis Ménochet), one troubled and misshapen (Swann Arlaud)—all courageous. The film features an unusual three-stage structure, with each man getting a turn as protagonist, and an interesting human messiness. Alternately heartbreaking, haunting, and heartening, and always engaging, this picture may have had real-world effects: after it opened in France, an ecclesiastical court defrocked Preynat. (2018, 137 min, DCP Digital) SP
Jonathan Lynn’s CLUE (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre — Saturday, Midnight
The term “cult classic” has become somewhat tired over the years as new releases aggressively—and without a trace of irony—market themselves as “future cult classics.” But the term does have an authentic place in film history, one that recognizes the importance that organic fandom culture has on a film’s lasting legacy. Few films embody a “cult” status quite like Jonathan Lynn’s CLUE, which was largely panned upon release and was just shy of its $15 million budget at the box office, but has remained a cultural touchstone for many viewers more than 30 years later. Loosely based on the board game with the same name, CLUE begins with a mysterious dinner party that quickly devolves into a game of whodunit, as blackmail, murder, and criminality bond the guests, all strangers, together. While CLUE features a strong ensemble cast, it’s Tim Curry as the wily butler Wadsworth who steals every scene—effortlessly guiding a plethora of personalities, as well as the audience, through the film’s outlandish twists and turns. It’s a bit all over the place and nonsensical, sure, but it’s a helluva good time regardless. With a seemingly endless arsenal of quotable one-liners, deductions developed at a breakneck pace, alternate endings, and even camp-like sensibilities, CLUE has evaded obscurity because of the passionate fans, old and new, who can’t help but adore its zany appeal. Presented with a live shadow cast and preceded by Allisyn Ashley Arm’s 2017 short film WEEJI. (1985, 104 min, DCP Digital) CC
Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER (Soviet Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Sunday, 7pm
Loosely based on the Soviet novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Tarkovsky's STALKER creates a decrepit industrial world where a mysterious Zone is sealed off by the government. The Zone, rumored to be of alien origin, is navigable by guides known as Stalkers. The Stalker of the title leads a writer and a scientist through the surrounding detritus into the oneiric Zone—an allegorical stand-in for nothing less than life itself—on a spiritual quest for a room that grants one's deepest subconscious wish. Tarkovsky composes his scenes to obscure the surroundings and tightly controls the audience's view through long, choreographed takes. Shots run long and are cut seamlessly. Coupled with non-localized sounds and a methodical synth score, sequences in the film beckon the audience into its illusion of continuous action while heightening the sense of time passing. The use of nondiegetic sounds subtly reminds us that this may be a subjective world established for the Stalker's mystical purpose. Where sci-fi films tend to overstate humanity's limitless imagination of the universe, Tarkovsky reappropriates the genre's trappings to suggest the cosmos' deepest truths are in one's own mind. STALKER posits—perhaps frighteningly—that, in this exploration of the self, there is something that knows more about us than we know ourselves. The writer and scientist, both at their spiritual and intellectual nadir, hope the room will renew their métier; the Stalker's purpose, as stated by Tarkovsky, is to "impose on them the idea of hope." But STALKER is a rich and continually inspiring work not for this (or any other) fixed meaning but rather for its resistance to any one single interpretation. With assistant cameraman Grigory Verkhovskiy and UofC professor Robert Bird in person. (1979, 163 min, 35mm) BW
Preston Sturges’ THE PALM BEACH STORY (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 7 and 9:30pm
Preston Sturges made one of the most revered screwball comedies, THE LADY EVE, in 1941 and continued his string of 1940s masterpieces in 1942 with another screwball classic, THE PALM BEACH STORY. The zany montage sequence set over the opening credits (scored with a speedy version of the “William Tell Overture”), tells viewers to expect a wild ride. Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) is an inventor living with his wife Gerry (Claudette Colbert) in New York. As financial burden sets in for the couple, Gerry comes up with the crazy idea to divorce Tom in order to marry someone rich, who will invest in one of Tom’s inventions. She travels to Florida via rail to file for the divorce and serendipitously finds someone who could help, J.D. Hackensacker (Rudy Vallée). Throw in love-triangled Tom, a quail-hunting club, and a mysterious subplot alluded to during the opening credits, and THE PALM BEACH STORY becomes an absurd juggling act orchestrated by Preston Sturges' dexterous hands. It wouldn’t be a Sturges film without whipcrack dialogue, and both McCrea and Colbert’s ability to perform physical comedy while delivering such ahead of their time lines is remarkable. The plot doesn’t have to make sense in a traditional way to make sense—the ride is worth the price of admission. (1942, 88 min, 35mm) KC
Mikhail Kalatozov's I AM CUBA (Eastern Bloc Revival)
PO Box Collective (6900 N. Glenwood Ave.) — Friday, 7pm (Free Admission)
The career of Georgian filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov is a virtual index of the changing prerogatives of the Soviet film industry. Following the formalist gambits of SALT FOR SVENETIA (1930) and NAIL IN THE BOOT (1931), Kalatozov was excommunicated from revolutionary filmmaking and eventually appointed Moscow's ambassador to Hollywood. With the post-Stalin thaw, Kalatozov was suddenly in vogue again. His 1957 film THE CRANES ARE FLYING was a festival phenomenon and even earned US distribution from Warner Bros. For Pauline Kael, Kalatozov represented a deceptively non-ideological strain of Communism kitsch, calculated to make Westerners swoon with drippy romantic sentiment. Kael didn't have much to fear. Kalatozov would soon begin work on I AM CUBA, a belligerent third-world epic practically engineered to alienate liberal sympathizers. Indeed, I AM CUBA never played in the States until a 1992 engagement at the Telluride Film Festival; shortly thereafter, it was picked up by Milestone and asserted itself as, in J. Hoberman's phrase, the "Siberian mammoth" of Cold War cinema. The formal brilliance of I AM CUBA is now well known and copied recklessly by capitalists everywhere (P.T. Anderson most unabashedly). The staggering, swaggering camera choreography and unapologetic reliance on white-hot infrared film stock acknowledged, we should also consider I AM CUBA as a daffy but ultimately sincere political document. Kalatozov and his cameraman Serguey Urusevsky were adolescents in 1917 and experienced the corrosion of the Revolution first hand. The poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko, who co-wrote the screenplay with Cuban Enrique Pineda Barnet, was born in 1933 and knew the Revolution only in its debased Stalinist form. To these artists, Castro's Cuba was a legitimate laboratory and a beacon of promise. One version of the film, with Spanish dialogue and a Russian overdub that translates each line, literalizes the superimposition of one political experience upon another. One regime salutes another and incubates a full-blown pulp creation myth. (1964, 141 min, Video Projection) KAW
Sydney Pollack and Alan Elliott’s AMAZING GRACE (New Documentary)
Rockefeller Memorial Chapel (5850 S. Woodlawn Ave., University of Chicago) - Friday, 7pm (Free Admission)
In 1972, Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul, decided to return to her musical roots with a live double-album of gospel music for Atlantic Records. Over two days in January, she lit up the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles with a holy thunder that has not and may never be bested. The result, Amazing Grace, won a Grammy in 1973, and is the top-grossing gospel album of all time, as well as Franklin’s best-selling album. Warner Bros. commissioned Sydney Pollack to film the concert, which it planned to release on a double bill with Gordon Parks’ SUPER FLY (1972), but Pollack failed to use a clapperboard to synch the sound with the action. With around 2,000 pieces of film without synch points, the documentary could not be finished. In 2007, Pollack, who was dying of cancer, turned the film over to producer Alan Elliott, who used to work at Atlantic and kept the project alive. Elliott solved the synching problem and finished the film, but it was held up by legal challenges from Franklin. Finally, nearly 40 years after the event, AMAZING GRACE has seen the light of day—and it was worth the wait. A reverential Franklin goes about the business of recording the album in a quiet, straightforward manner. Her powerful, pitch-perfect voice brought many in attendance to tears and caused dancing in the aisles treacherously laid with camera and sound cables. Alexander Hamilton, choir director of the spirited Southern California Community Choir, has a star-making turn in this documentary, and Pollack’s close-ups of Franklin dripping with sweat reveal her effort. Pollack trains his camera appropriately on gospel legend Rev. James Cleveland; on Franklin’s father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, speaking from the pulpit; and on her mentor, Clara Ward, sitting in the pews. But he can’t resist adding some additional star power to a film that doesn’t need it by focusing more than he should on Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts, who found their way to the church from their L.A. recording session of Exile on Main Street. This unique concert film, guaranteed to cause gooseflesh, is a must for anyone who missed seeing Franklin when she was at the height of her powers. Followed by a discussion with Jacqueline Najuma Stewart (Director of Arts + Public Life, UofC professor), Ayana Contreras (host/producer of Reclaimed Soul, Vocalo/WBEZ), and Dr. Walt Whitman (CEO, Soul Children of Chicago). (2018, 89 min, DCP Digital) MF
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Chicago Polish Film Festival in America opens on Saturday and continues through November 24 at various Chicagoland venues. More info and complete schedule at www.pffamerica.org.
The Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema continues through November 17 at various venues. More info at https://israelifilmchi.org.
The Black Alphabet Film Festival takes place Saturday and Sunday at the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago). Free admission, but RSVPs required. More info, complete schedule, and RSVP links at https://blackalphabet.org.
The Mostra Brazilian Film Festival Chicago continues through November 15 at multiple Chicagoland venues. More info and complete schedule at https://mostrafilmfestival.org.
The Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival, organized by Project Chicago, takes place on Friday and Saturday at Chicago Filmmakers (5720 N. Ridge Ave.). More info and complete schedule at www.projectchicago.com.
The Blow-Up Arthouse Film Festival takes place on Sunday and Monday at the Gene Siskel Film Center. More info and complete schedule at http://blowupfilmfest.com.
The Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) screens Zhang Nuanxin’s 1985 Chinese film SACRIFICED YOUTH (92 min, DCP Digital) on Friday at 7pm. Free admission.
The Film Studies Center co-presents Indigenous Futurisms in VR (2017, 22 min total, 360-Degree VR) on Thursday from 4-9pm and Friday, November 15 from Noon-5pm at the Hack Arts Lab (Crerar Library, 5730 S. Ellis Ave., University of Chicago). The program includes work by Canadian artists Postcommodity, Scott Benesiinaabandan, Danis Goulet, and Kent Monkman. Free admission.
The Conversations at the Edge series (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) screens Filipa César’s 2017 Portuguese/German/Guinea-Bissauan documentary/essay film SPELL REEL (96 min, Digital Projection) on Thursday at 6pm, with César in person.
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week: Spotlight on Undergraduate Filmmaking is on Thursday at 7pm, with works produced by students involved with the Northwestern University groups Multicultural Filmmakers Collective, Women Filmmakers Alliance, and Studio 22. Free admission.
The Seminary Co-op Bookstore (5751 S. Woodlawn Ave.) presents Jonathan Rosenbaum – “Cinematic Encounters 2” on Saturday at 3pm. Local critic Jonathan Rosenbaum discusses his new book with Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips. Free admission.
The MCA Chicago presents a program of work by Jordanian-born, Beirut-based video artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan on Thursday at 6pm, with Hamdan in person. Screening are: RUBBER COATED STEEL (2016, 22 min), WALLED/UNWALLED (2018, 21 min), and ONCE REMOVED (2019, 28 min). All Digital Projection.
The Museum of Contemporary Photography (600 S. Michigan Ave., Columbia College) presents Video Playlist: Infinite Loops on Wednesday at 6pm. Curated by Nicky Ni, the program includes work by Jiayi CHEN, Double-Color Balls Group (LIN Aojie and YU Yiyi), Sunday LAI, LIANG Ban, Coffe LEE, Cherrie YU, and ZHENG Yuan. Free admission.
Cinema 53 (at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) screens local filmmaker Coquie Hughes’ 2019 film IF I WAS YOUR GIRL AGAIN (Unconfirmed Running Time, Digital Projection) on Saturday at 7:30pm (reception at 6:30pm), with Hughes and the principle cast in person.
Full Spectrum Features screens Marcel Beltrán’s 2018 documentary MUSIC OF THE SPHERES (82 min, Digital Projection) on Sunday at 2pm, with Beltrán in person. The screening, part of FSF’s “Cuban Visions” series, is at the Athenaeum Theatre (2936 N. Southport Ave.).
Filmfront (1740 W. 18th St.) and its in-house bookstore Inga present a screening of Werner Herzog’s 1984 German documentary THE DARK GLOW OF THE MOUNTAINS (45 min, Video Projection) on Thursday at 7pm, as part of a dual book-release/pre-order event.
South Side Projections and Columbia College’s Hip-Hop Studies Minor and Hip-Hop Club present Michael Schultz’s 1985 film KRUSH GROOVE (97 min, Digital Projection) on Friday at 7pm at Columbia College (1104 S. Wabash Ave., Conway Center). Preceded at 6pm by additional short films and music, and followed by a discussion. Free admission.
The Chicago Cultural Center presents a screening of selections from WTTW’s new multiplatform digital series Firsthand: Gun Violence on Saturday at 2pm, followed by a discussion with director Dan Protess and two of the subjects profiled: Reality Allah (READ! Chicago) and Noemi Martinez (Community of Survivors Manager, Chicago Survivors). Free admission.
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) screens Trent Harris’ 1994 film PLAN 10 FROM OUTER SPACE (80 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission.
The Rebuild Foundation at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) presents ABC Mixtape Vol. 2 on Saturday at 6pm. Screening are short films by local filmmakers Tristien Marcellous Winfree, Juelle Davis, N. LaQuis Harkins, and Naeema Jamilah Torres. Free admission.
The Beverly Arts Center screens Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina’s 2017 animated film COCO (105 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 7:30pm.
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series (at the Pickwick Theatre, 5 S. Prospect Ave., Park Ridge) screens Philip Kaufman’s 1983 film THE RIGHT STUFF (193 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 1 and 7pm.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam’s 2018 Tibetan film THE SWEET REQUIEM (91 min, DCP Digital) plays for a week; Erin Derham’s 2019 documentary STUFFED (85 min, DCP Digital) has five screenings, Friday-Monday and Thursday; John Huston’s 1952 film MOULIN ROUGE (119 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 2pm, Sunday at 3:15pm, and Wednesday at 6pm; Christopher Munch’s 1991 film THE HOURS AND TIMES (57 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 4:30pm and Saturday at 5pm; and L.Q. Jones’ 1975 cult film A BOY AND HIS DOG (93 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 3pm and Wednesday at 8:15pm.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Francesco Rosi's 1979 Italian/French film CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI (220 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 7pm and Sunday at 11am; Riley Stearns' 2019 film THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE (104 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 7 and 9:30pm; Whit Stillman's 1990 film METROPOLITAN (98 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 4pm, with Stillman in person; Karel Zeman's 1962 Czech animated/live-action film THE FABULOUS BARON MUNCHAUSEN (83 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday at 7pm; Cameron Crowe's 1992 film SINGLES (99 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 7pm; and Guillermo del Toro's 1993 Mexican film CRONOS (94 min, Digital Projection) is on Thursday at 9:30pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Robert Eggers’ 2019 film THE LIGHTHOUSE (109 min, DCP Digital) continues; Mountainfilm on Tour, a program of works from the Colorado-based Mountainfilm Festival, is on Sunday at 5:30pm; April Wright’s 2019 documentary GOING ATTRACTIONS: THE DEFINITIVE STORY OF MOVIE PALACES (94 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday at 7pm, with Wright in person; and Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 film THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) is on Friday at Midnight.
Facets Cinémathèque screens a double feature of two Belgian/Cameroonian documentaries by Rosine Mbakam, from Monday through Sunday, November 17. Screening are: THE TWO FACES OF A BAMILÉKÉ WOMAN (2016, 76 min, Video Projection) and CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE (2018, 70 min, Video Projection); and Jason Maris and Danielle Bernstein’s 2019 documentary HOMEMADE (90 min, Video Projection) is on Monday at 7pm, followed by a discussion with Maris, documentary subject Adam Sorensen, and Nick Etten (former Navy Seal, government advisor for Acreage Holdings, founder of Cannabis for Vets).
MUSEUM AND GALLERY SHOWS/EXHIBITIONS
The exhibition Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through January 26. The show features a wealth of Warhol’s short films (fifteen “Screen Tests” and other early shorts, which are all showing on 16mm), videos, and television commercials, including some very rare items. A complementary exhibit, Cinema Reinvented: Four Films by Andy Warhol, will showcase four films over the course of the Back Again show’s run, all in 16mm. Up first is his 1966 double-projection film OUTER AND INNER SPACE (33 min), which will be on view daily from Sunday to November 17, screening at the top of each hour starting at 11am.
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The 16mm short films (1963-66, approx. 4-5 min each) showing are: ELVIS AT FERUS, JILL AND FREDDY DANCING, EDIE SEDGWICK (SCREEN TEST 308), ANN BUCHANAN (SCREEN TEST 33), PENELOPE PALMER (SCREEN TEST 255), BIBBE HANSEN (SCREEN TEST 128), NICO EATING HERSHEY BAR (SCREEN TEST 246), ME AND TAYLOR, MARIO BANANA #1, JOHN WASHING, JACK SMITH (SCREEN TEST 315), RUFUS COLLINS (SCREEN TEST 61), BILLY NAME (SCREEN TEST 194), MARCEL DUCHAMP (SCREEN TEST 80), and SALVADOR DALI (SCREEN TEST 67); and the three television commercials are: THE UNDERGROUND SUNDAE (1968, 1 min, Digital Video), CADENCE [STANDING WOMAN] (1965, 1 min, Digital Video), and CADENCE [BOTTLE] (1965, 1 min, Digital Video).
Re:Working Labor, a multi-media exhibition curated by SAIC faculty members Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg, is on view at SAIC’s Sullivan Gallery (33 S. State St.) through November 27. Included in the show are a ten-screen installation of Harun Farocki and Antje Ehmann’s LABOUR IN A SINGLE SHOT, Carole Frances Lung’s four-hour-plus video FRAU FIBER VS. CIRCULAR TUBE SOCK KNITTING MACHINE, and a series of five video programs curated by Aily Nash and Andrew Norman Wilson.
CINE-LIST: November 8 - November 14, 2019
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Cody Corrall, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, Doug McLaren, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael Glover Smith, Brian Welesko
