CRUCIAL VIEWING
Rosine Mbakam’s THE TWO FACES OF A BAMILÉKÉ WOMAN and CHEZ JOLIE COIFFEURE (New Documentary)
Facets Cinematheque — Friday, 7:30pm and Saturday and Sunday, 1 and 4pm (showing as a double feature)
With these two short documentaries, the Belgium-based filmmaker Rosine Mbakam announces herself as a significant new voice in nonfiction cinema. Both films deal creatively with the director’s split identity as a Cameroonian native and an émigré to Europe, and both convey a remarkable intimacy with their subjects. THE TWO FACES OF A BAMILÉKÉ WOMAN (2016, 76 min, Digital Projection) is a portrait of the director’s mother, who still lives in a village in Cameroon. Mbakam made the film seven years after emigrating to Belgium, and her perspective here vacillates between one of an insider and one of an outsider. On the one hand, the director seems to have no trouble getting her mother to describe painful memories about a range of topics: Cameroon’s war for independence, the death of her first husband, and her second marriage to her first husband’s son by another wife. On the other hand, Mbakam’s conversations with mother reveal the filmmaker’s detachment from her family traditions; a recurring subject is Mbakam’s marriage to a white European man, which seems to weigh more heavily on the director than on her mother. Mbakam also reflects explicitly on her emotional distance from Cameroon in her thoughtful voiceover narration, which she interweaves through the interviews and verité-style sequences of her mother’s daily life. (The film’s mix of documentary styles is consistently surprising.) What emerges is an uneasy reunion that points to the irreconcilability of an emigrant’s two homelands. In CHEZ JOLIE COIFFEURE (2018, 70 min, Digital Projection), the principal subject seems to reconcile her life in Belgium with her memories of Cameroon by creating a small piece of Cameroon in Brussels. The film takes place entirely within a beauty salon managed by a Cameroonian émigré named Sabine and whose customers are mostly other African émigrés. Early in the film, Sabine describes her journey from Cameroon to Lebanon, where she worked in semi-slavery for three years before escaping to Turkey, then Greece, then Belgium. One can only imagine what Sabine’s customers went through to get to where they are now (the film contains few other backstories), but what predominates is a sense of community reminiscent of what Mbakam depicted in BAMILÉKÉ WOMAN. The film captures the bustle of workaday life, the camaraderie between employees and customers, and the general chattiness of the salon. Despite the intimacy of the single location, the film is rich in incident and character. BS
Filipa César: Four Short Works (Experimental Revival)
The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) – Friday, 7pm
Much like her feature length essay-documentary SPELL REEL (2017) that played on Thursday in the Conversations at the Edge series, Filipa César's four short films screening at the Nightingale fixate on epistemological and political themes with a clear, calm, ruminative eye. Each work confronts the shameful legacy of Portugal's centuries of colonialism, and the more recent shadow of the authoritarian regime that emerged during the rise of fascism in Europe, much like in Portugal's neighbor Spain. Layered upon these historical-political explorations are deeper questions about the built environment, what can truly be seen and self-determined by images of the past, and the rules of production that govern the making of such images and environments. PORTO (2010) recalls Tarkovsky's cinematography with a single tracking shot through an empty communal housing complex in Porto. This long tracking shot effectively layers the image with the weight the past and the passage of time, while inviting the viewer to admire the clean, elegant modernism of the architecture. Just as the film seems to move towards a quiet climax, the filmmaker receives a call from the architect who designed the building, which reveals the violent conflict that belies the placid built landscape and which led to the complex not being completed until several decades after construction was initiated. CACHEU (2012) explores the materiality and decontextualization of statues of historical colonizers, and foregrounds the political illusion of permanence and legacy of colonialism through the structure of the film. CACHEU is another single 16mm reel that tracks a lecture performed by Joana Barrios, delivered over a digital projection of footage of the statues at the ruins of Fort Cacheu in Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony that won independence in 1974. In a clear continuation of the theme and formal structure of CACHEU, CONAKRY (2013) contrasts a single 16mm reel personal essay and on-screen reflections by Portuguese writer Grada Kilomba (intercut with narration and reflections by radio activist Diana McCarty) with silent, digitized footage of an exhibition at the Palais du Peuple in 1972 in Conakry, Guinea. Like Barrios, Kilomba stands in the projected image of the historical footage as she reflects on how her self-perception would have been different if she had seen this footage earlier and learned a more complete history of Guinea-Bissau than was taught in her history classes. Through these reflections, CONAKRY reveals the many layers of impact, from the personal to political, that preservation and digitization of historical film archives can have, especially on those who were harmed by racism and othering in post-colonial societies. Though always quiet and reflective, the program achieves an even deeper emotional resonance with the viewer through SUNSTONE (2018), co-directed with Louis Henderson. Self-described by the filmmakers as an "archaeology of optics," SUNSTONE narrates the problematic history of lighthouses and optical lens production through the eyes and voice of a lighthouse keeper at Roca, the westernmost edge of Europe. César and Henderson thread this optical technology through a historical narrative of piracy, colonialism, op art, and militarism, leading to present-day satellite communications and navigation, with archival footage, desktop screenshots, and CGI animations. The emotional resonance of SUNSTONE creeps up on the viewer, who rarely sees the face of the lighthouse keeper, reminding one that in the course of this history, there are many individuals grappling with racism and othering in postcolonial narratives, and each has a story to tell through a unique lens. César in person. (2010-18, 66 min total, Digital Projection) AE
Michael Mann's THIEF (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre — Tuesday, 7pm (sold out) and 9:45pm*
Is Michael Mann the greatest working American director? It's true that Frederick Wiseman has a greater influence over world cinema on the whole and Clint Eastwood is more nationally valuable for his ongoing critique of the American character. Yet Mann inspires greater reverence than either of them due to the sheer beauty of his approach. An artist with an acute sense of the fleeting moment, the unnatural pace of time in contemporary life, and myriad variations of artificial light (He's likened himself to a photorealist painter), Mann is simply our greatest living image-maker. Shot primarily in Chicago, THIEF builds its atmosphere around the city's proletarian feistiness; it's certainly the native Southsider's most autobiographical work. In the first of many idiosyncratic takes on realism, Mann cast actual Chicago cops to play criminals and actual former criminals as cops. In doing so, he made first steps toward the great theme of his work: the uncanny leveling of human behavior under modern professionalism. James Caan plays a successful life-long thief who wants to get married and settle down. He discovers his own humanity too late (There's always One Last Score), but there are great realizations on the way to failure. Caan considers this his best performance, and he's probably right: Several of the most important scenes are two-person conversations that reach Bergman-esque levels of intimacy and recrimination. These moments of heightened self-doubt alternate with bloody gun fights and meticulously observed crimes; unlike Howard Hawks or Anthony Mann—two of his thematic forbearers—Mann seems deeply ambivalent about the macho attitudes that tend to accompany these subjects. In lives increasingly defined by professional obligation, Mann regards the decline of traditional gender roles with serious curiosity and surprising nostalgia. (In this sense, his films have affinities with those of Tsai Ming-liang.) THIEF is the first of Mann's elegies for professional masculinity, and it's sharpened greatly by the film's harsh night photography. (1981, 122 min, 35mm) BS
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The screenings are a fundraiser for Odd Obsession Movies, and is hosted by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (A.V. Club) and Cine-File contributor John Dickson.
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*As of our deadline, the 7pm show is sold out but there were still tickets available for the 9:45pm show (note that the film is screening in the smaller theater).
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS (Italian Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Friday, 7pm and Sunday, 1:30pm
The Taviani brothers took obvious influence from the Italian neorealist movement, but their uniqueness, even greatness, stems from how they subverted cinematic neorealism. In THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS, one of their best films, the Tavianis followed in the neorealist tradition by casting nonprofessional actors, shooting on location (in a small town not far from where the directors grew up), and turning a fine eye to the details of working-poor life. Yet the movie is also concerned with capturing a child’s perspective, and the Tavianis pepper the narrative with fantasy sequences and infuse the whole story with an air of wonderment. SHOOTING STARS takes place in the final days of World War II; the loose narrative centers on a group of citizens who become convinced that the Nazis are going to bomb their village. Some of the townspeople hide in the church while others flee to the countryside, and the Tavianis alternate between their stories to create not just a group portrait, but the feeling of taking in a collective memory. Indeed the film is framed as the memories of a woman who lived through the events of the story as a little girl, though there is little adult editorializing on what we see. Everything seems at once simple and larger than life—the Tavianis are asking us to imagine how a world-historical event might appear to someone just on the cusp of understanding it. As is often the case in their work, the directors create images that thrive on the big screen (few filmmakers get more out of wide shots than the Tavianis), advancing a sense of epic storytelling despite the intimacy with which they commune with a child’s point of view. (1982, 107 min, DCP Digital) BS
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Sidney Lumet’s DANIEL (American Revival)
Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm
Derided by critics upon its release for being too ambiguous with regards to its ancillary protagonists, Sidney Lumet’s DANIEL is, when viewed from a less historical, less politically charged perspective, exemplary of cinema’s ability to convey nuances of human emotion. Loosely adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s 1971 novel The Book of Daniel (Doctorow also wrote the script), the film tells the story of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson (Mandy Patinkin and Lindsay Crouse)—stand-ins for infamous Communists and alleged spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—and their kids, Daniel (Timothy Hutton) and Susan (Amanda Plummer), who we see both as children in the 1940s and 1950s—before, leading up to, and after their parents’ deaths—and as adults in the 1960s, working through their trauma. The narrative begins with adult Daniel and Susan meeting with their adoptive parents to discuss their trust; it’s evident from the start that Daniel is more cynical and withdrawn than Susan, but that Susan’s apparent idealism—she’s eager to start a foundation with the money—is the result of something more perilous, which has driven her to seek meaning in everything from sex and drugs to the type of fervent, widespread political activism for which the era has become a symbol, activism that, unlike that of their parents’ time, operated more aboveground than below. As his sister descends further into mental illness, with her ending up in a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide, Daniel, a graduate student who’s married (to the beautiful but beleaguered Phyllis, played by Ellen Barkin) with a young child, decides to search for the truth surrounding his parents’ arrest, trial, and eventual execution. The contemporary narrative is intercut with flashbacks to when Daniel and Susan were children and even before; we see how Paul and Rochelle met, as young, Marx-reading City College students, to the young family when they lived in the Bronx, selling radios out of a humble storefront. Mom and dad’s alleged treasonous activities—if they ever actually occurred—are only inconspicuously alluded to, pushed aside to instead focus on the family. After their parents’ arrest, a kindly lawyer, Jacob Ascher (Ed Asner), helps the kids, first taking them to live with Paul’s baleful sister, and then, after she kicks them out, to a shelter; later, Ascher’s widow tells an adult Daniel that, even though they were fond of the kids, the trial ruined his health, that his parents’ supposed affiliations were misguided and even selfish. Mrs. Ascher’s complex feelings mirror those of several characters in the film, including Daniel and a variety of others, from their adoptive parents to the daughter of their family dentist, a fellow radical who it’s presumed betrayed them. At the beginning and then at various intervals throughout, adult Daniel is featured as a talking head against a black backdrop, reading definitions of various forms of execution, starting with electrocution (the means by which the fictional Isaacsons and real Rosenbergs were executed) and devolving into more primitive methods, including drawing and quartering, knouting, and burning at the stake, all of which were methods deployed against the lower-class when accused of crimes, the connection being not just that capital punishment is unethical but also inequitable, a punishment reserved for the lower and middle class and thus used as a means of suppressing them. In that sense, it’s not so ambiguous—the assertion that capital punishment is wrong largely for those reasons is an unambiguous viewpoint—but Lumet and Doctorow refrain from persuading us of the Isaacsons’ guilt one way or the other. Rather, as in many of his films, ranging from 12 ANGRY MEN to NETWORK, Lumet skirts around the straightforward issues at play and instead focuses on the very ambiguity that makes up our personal and collective consciences. That it’s inconclusive and even capricious at times is the point; through these seemingly out-of-sync elements, from what the characters or their real-life counterparts did or did not do, to their family and friends’ reactions all those years later, the film asks us not to wonder what actually happened—did the commies really give the Russians atomic secrets?—but, very simply, how you’d feel if it were your parents, your family, your friends, or even you who were put to death for doing, or being accused of doing, something that aligned with what you believed to be right. Preceded by Warren Murray’s 1941 Soundie short COMES THE REVOLUTION (3 min, 16mm). Showing in collaboration with Hothouse’s “On Whose Shoulders” series. (1983, 129 min, 35mm) KS
Robert Florey’s THE CROOKED WAY (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 5:15pm and Monday, 6pm
Right from the start, screenwriter Richard H. Landau and director Robert Florey put a stake through the heart of the amnesia plot by showing an x-ray of a skull with a large piece of shrapnel embedded deep in its interior. One might wonder how anyone could have survived such an injury, but such are the exigencies of plot that we must accept—not only that WWII veteran Eddie Rice (John Payne) will live, but that all memory of his life before his injury will be lost for good. Thus, when he decides to take what little information he has about himself and try to reconnect with his past, we know he won’t suddenly remember what he did before the war and take precautions if the going gets rough—and, boy, does it ever! It is this built-in suspense and the improvisatory nature of Eddie’s actions that enliven a B scenario that mixes gangster, melodrama, police procedural, and even verité elements. Nonetheless, the film would feel a bit plodding as it tackles all these complications if not for the mind-boggling cinematography by ace noir lenser John Alton; I gasped at the majesty of his shot inside a bail bondsman’s office. He was fully encouraged by the French-born Florey, who worked with Louis Feuillade and spent a short time at UFA drinking in the atmospheres of fantasy and expressionism before establishing his career in Hollywood and on television. By 1949, Payne had lost his boyish good looks and could naturally embody the confused, weary affect of a man in search of himself. Sonny Tufts, as his vengeful former partner in crime, is scarily effective, and Ellen Drew, as a woman scorned and toughened by hardship, turns in an interesting performance. Veteran character actor Percy Helton tosses off one of his patented mouselike performances—indeed, the film is peppered with colorful bits by virtually unknown actors—and the location shooting in Los Angeles makes THE CROOKED WAY an immersive experience. (1949, 90 min, DCP Digital) MF
Preston Sturges’ UNFAITHFULLY YOURS (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 7 and 9:30pm
Preston Sturges’ films are noteworthy for their razor-sharp, quick dialogue and fast pacing. His selection of classical music to drive a joke is meritorious too, as seen in THE PALM BEACH STORY with his use of the William Tell Overture. Few of his musical cues pay off as mightily and humorously as they do in UNFAITHFULLY YOURS. Sir Alfred de Carter (Rex Harrison) is a renowned symphony conductor who has recently returned from a trip to England. While he was away, he entrusted his brother-in-law to watch over his younger wife, Daphne (Linda Darnell). Much to Alfred’s surprise, his brother-in-law woefully misinterpreted his simple request and hired a private investigator to tail Daphne, with the investigator eventually leading Alfred to believe that Daphne may have cheated on him with his secretary, who is closer to her age. Ever the professional, Alfred must conduct a concert that night and mentally envisions three plans of revenge that sync up to the musical selections being performed. These fantasy-plots range from the rage-filled to the understanding, but damn if they aren’t all funny in their own way. Sturges’ camerawork in this sequence moves from medium shots to extreme close-ups to take the audience directly into Alfred’s mind. Alfred decides to go through with his revenge but in typical screwball fashion, pratfalls lie around every corner. Harrison’s performance is refined and reserved but also displays his considerable comedic timing. UNFAITHFULLY YOURS is perhaps Sturges’ darkest comedy; revenge fantasies really shouldn’t be this much fun. (1948, 105 min, DCP Digital) KC
Sally Potter's ORLANDO (British Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Friday, 2 and 6:15pm and Thursday, 8:15pm
Sally Potter's ORLANDO is not so much an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel as it is an interpretation respective to the nuances of its medium. "It would have been a disservice to Woolf to remain slavish to the letter of the book," Potter wrote. "For just as she was always a writer who engaged with writing and the form of the novel, similarly the film needed to engage with the energy of cinema." And it does, with such finesse that at times it's rather slow and mundane, just as life is often slow and mundane. Roger Ebert so eloquently wrote in his review of the film that "it is not about a story or a plot, but about a vision of human existence. What does it mean to be born as a woman, or a man? To be born at one time instead of another?" Potter doesn't attempt to answer these questions but instead relishes in their very existence. In addition to such existential ruminations, themes of gender, art, and conformity are also confronted, just as in the book. Titled Orlando: A Biography, Woolf's novel was meant to be something of a spoof inspired by her lovers' turbulent family history. (The lover in question was fellow writer Vita Sackville-West.) Both are about a young Elizabethan nobleman who mysteriously turns into a woman. In the book it's never explained, but in the film, eternal youth is granted to the teenaged Orlando by Elizabeth I, who's played to perfection by gay icon Quentin Crisp. It's fitting, then, for this and other obvious reasons, that Tilda Swinton was first able to explore her own conspicuous androgyny in the title role. For those all too familiar with her now archetypal aesthetic, ORLANDO will breathe new life into one's appreciation of her as both an actress and an icon. Potter's talents are no less extraordinary; a penchant for transformation is evident in most of her films, though it's realized more explicitly in this one. Director Jane Campion best spoke to its metamorphic capabilities: "When my son died, on the third day, I was devastated, I didn't know what to do with myself. I went to see ORLANDO. It was so beautiful. This earth can be transformed. There are moments of extreme wonder...and that's all worth living for." (1993, 93 min, 35mm) KS
Tarsem Singh’s THE FALL (US/Indian Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 7pm
Set in 1915 Los Angeles, Tarsem Singh’s THE FALL opens with a gorgeous duotone, slow-motion sequence, that shows us a confusing scene involving two men splashing in water below a train trestle, a handsome couple in a rowboat, and a crane on top of the trestle. After a few moments, the crane lifts a horse from the river below and moves it across the frame. Soon we are in a hospital, where 6-year-old Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), her right arm wrapped in a cast and suspended straight out from her body, moves restlessly through the children’s ward. By happenstance, she meets Roy (Lee Pace), a Hollywood stuntman. After their introductions, Roy asks, “You were named for Alexander the Great?” The girl says yes without really seeming to know what he’s talking about and leaves. Alexandria seeks Roy out day after day, keeping him company as he entices her back by weaving a fantastic tale that director Singh intertwines with the real-life misfortunes that have befallen the pair. Roy is, in fact, suicidal and withholds parts of the story until Alexandria fetches him some morphine pills from the dispensary that he can use to end his life. The screenplay is very loosely based on YO HO HO, a 1981 Bulgarian film directed by Zako Heskiya that explores the idea of upended fairy tales. In a Q&A with Singh I attended, he said that fairy tales as we know them proceed in predictable ways toward happy endings, and he wanted to make a serious film in which “Santa Claus gets cancer.” He mentioned Jacques Doillon’s PONETTE (1996) as an inspiration for his use of a child in the film. Among the topics he discussed were the visual splendor of the film made possible by location shooting and the dazzling costumes created by Oscar winner Eiko Ishioka. The film was shot in at least 24 countries, and none of the visual effects were computer-generated. An image I was sure was computer-generated was of troops running down a series of zigzag staircases. In fact, these staircases are disused wells located all over India that were built with several horizontal lines to mark the water level, an indication of how much to tax the wells’ users. Singh hired extras to play the troops because it’s cheaper in India to use extras than to create images digitally. The film builds in intensity, as Roy’s despair ratchets up even as Alexandria grows ever closer to him. In an attempt to destroy her feelings for him, the fairy tale goes very poorly for its heroes. “Why are you killing everyone?” Alexandria cries. “It’s my story,” says Roy. “It’s my story, too,” Alexandria says angrily. This central truth—that audiences make stories every bit as much as their tellers—underlies Singh’s motivation for making this movie. His emotional catharsis becomes ours as well as he allows us to end the story the way we want to. (2006, 117 min, 35mm) MF
Lucrecia Martel's THE HOLY GIRL (Argentinean Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday, 4pm and Tuesday, 6pm
Martel’s second feature, THE HOLY GIRL, builds on numerous themes from her first (LA CIÉNAGA) and is in some ways even better. It’s centered on a family that owns and lives in a hotel, again in Salta. Amalia, the teenage daughter of one of the owners, attends Catholic education classes and seems to take her lessons seriously, but she also possesses a natural curiosity about sex. When she’s rubbed against by a middle-aged doctor who’s staying at the family hotel for a medical convention, Amalia makes it her mission to save the man’s soul, even if it means ruining his life in the process. Meanwhile Amalia’s single mother (who still acts like a child when she’s around her brother) develops a crush on the poor doctor as well. Martel mixes notion of religion and perversity with a probing wit worthy of Buñuel (the film is often wryly funny), while her meticulous visual compositions and vivid sound design recall the work of Robert Bresson. Yet the warm characterizations, which transcend the sharp humor, are unmistakably Martel’s. THE HOLY GIRL preserves one of the greatest strengths of LA CIÉNAGA, which is the director’s ability to convey, through touching and other signs of physical intimacy, the complex, unspoken relationships that exist between family members and people who have known each other for a long time. The scenes between Amalia’s mother and uncle or those between Amalia and her best friend display a disarming knowingness about human interaction. No matter how many times you see THE HOLY GIRL (and you should see it as many times as you can), these moments lose none of their power to surprise. Critic and artist Fred Camper lectures at the Tuesday screening. (2004, 106 min, 35mm) BS
Delmer Daves' THE RED HOUSE (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 3:15pm and Wednesday, 6pm
Delmer Daves is an under-appreciated director from the classic era of Hollywood. Like many studio directors of the period, Daves' career went through periods dominated by certain genres, most notably his bleak 1950s Westerns and the vastly underrated teen romances he made in the late '50s and early 1960s. The 1940s, his first decade as a director, following a career as a screenwriter that began with Erich von Stroheim's QUEEN KELLY and included work for Frank Borzage and Leo McCarey (on LOVE AFFAIR, no less!), were more unpredictable. THE RED HOUSE is located somewhere at the intersection of Lovers' Lane and Horror Alley, an area that resembles certain stretches of Film Noir Drive. Edward G. Robinson is the father with the wooden leg, whose stumbling gait forces him to bound forward unexpectedly instead of restricting his movement; he's a walking shock. There is, of course, the house in the woods and the two teenagers who are foolish enough to go there when it's dark and the peopled stillness of the American countryside. There's also a menace, but it's not the house—it's the camera, which, when it's still, seems to be lurking, and when it moves, leaps out like a panther. (1947, 100 min, 35mm restored archival print) IV
Andy Warhol's CAMP and POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL (Experimental Revivals)
Chicago Athletic Association (12 S. Michigan Ave., Madison Ballroom) – Thursday, 5:30pm (Free Admission*)
RSVP at https://chicagoathleticevents.com/tc-events/screening-warhol-film.
Andy Warhol pared his films down to the bare elements of cinema and then built back up to create enduring works of genius. Warhol's silents were extended provocations and formal explorations of the nature of time in film, but were not as austere as descriptions would lead one to believe. His sound films continued this formal exploration, but they also operated at the extremes of cinematic inarticulateness, and yet managed to say more about the nature of film than most of the heralded new generation of filmmakers of the 1960's. Despite his pretenses to the contrary, Warhol's anti-style was deliberate and knowing. In CAMP, he has his usual fun with the New York intelligentsia, providing a fascinating and lively show to contrast the dry tell of Susan Sontag's then-new essay on the subject. (1965, 67 min, 16mm) PF
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One of Warhol's best films, POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL is a profoundly moving portrait by accident: while filming his subject, the mesmerizing Edie Sedgwick, Warhol did not realize that the entire 33 minutes of footage he shot was out of focus. When he saw the result, he "reshot" the film of Edie lounging in her hotel room, talking on the phone, eating, and dressing. Then, in what is a great moment of cinematic inspiration, he decided to combine the two reels—the out of focus one followed by the "corrected" one. Sedgwick's manic qualities, her compulsive talking, her scattered thinking, and her charm all seem to be magnified by the visual obscurity. When we do finally get to see her properly, we are also "seeing" her in a new light, informed and transformed by our inability to see her in the first half. (1965, 66 min, 16mm) PF
Andrei Tarkovsky's THE SACRIFICE (Swedish Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Sunday, 7pm
Critic Wesley Morris observed of our collective cultural habits, "I think everybody might have a handful of books or movies that they happily return to because they honestly don't remember the plot—they just remember the mood or the experience." Similarly, I think everyone has movies they return to solely for a particular moment or scene. These moments can be so singular that everything around them fades slightly into the background. This isn't to make a virtue of flawed memory, but rather to highlight those directors with the rare gift to sculpt a mood or moment that hovers above a film. Andrei Tarkovsky's cinema is rife with these exalted moments: Capt. Kholin's acrobatic embrace of Masha over a trench and her limp surrender in IVAN'S CHILDHOOD; a floating candelabrum and a chandelier's subtle jangle in SOLARIS. Tilda Swinton encapsulated this phenomenon in a speech referencing STALKER: "I saw an image of a dream that I have been visited by all my life made real ... A bird flying towards the camera dips its wing into the sand that fills a room. Did I imagine this? I haven't seen the film for years. Can somebody tell me?" Released in 1986 and garnering Tarkovsky his second Grand Prix at Cannes (Roland Joffé's THE MISSION took home the Palme d'Or—a banner year for Christendom) THE SACRIFICE is considered by some to be a challenging, ancillary work by the Russian master. With time though the debates over 'slow cinema' and the film's relationship to Tarkovsky's legacy have faded, and what remain are some of the most haunting moments of the director's career: The sudden and uncanny desaturation of the film's image—courtesy of master cinematographer Sven Nykvist—as Erland Josephson roams his estate in a nuclear daze; the flickering TV test pattern reflected on the family in tableau; the film's breathtaking denouement, which never ceases to terrify me. These are the images I return to again and again, echoing Swinton's disbelief: Did I imagine this? (1986, 142 min, 35mm) JS
Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s THE GREEN FOG (Contemporary American)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 5:30pm
Although many of his films have featured significant influences from German Expressionism and silent film styles more generally, Guy Maddin (and his co-directors, Brothers Johnson) takes a totally different approach in THE GREEN FOG, a creative retelling of VERTIGO using clips from nearly 100 different films (and a few TV shows) that take place in or near San Francisco. This condensed homage is broken into three sections: a prologue featuring a green fog rolling into the city and two chapters that are marked by some shifts in their respective editing styles. Much of the film is devoid of dialogue and intentionally edits conversation out of its source sequences to only show the characters’ inhalation or exhalation before or after their lines would have been spoken. Instead, Maddin’s narrative utilizes visual elements to recall VERTIGO’s plot points, such as the music video for NSYNC’s “This I Promise You” which takes place in the Redwood National Forest or Mel Brooks falling in HIGH ANXIETY. The film quickly becomes a game of ‘I Spy’ for the viewer as one mentally runs VERTIGO’s story in one’s mind and try to align the original with the scenes happening on screen. Maddin’s trademark avant-garde style blends well with this film’s intriguing concept and its editing is truly clever. Prior knowledge of Hitchcock’s masterpiece is not required to appreciate the artistry here, as it is a film that feels like it’s made for those who love movies of all eras. At times pure cinema and at others a montage on steroids, THE GREEN FOG showcases Guy Maddin as one of the finest working in experimental cinema. Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum in person. (2017, 63 min, DCP Digital) KC
Quentin Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Tuesday, 9:30pm
You can take PULP FICTION and KILL BILL, but please leave Christoph Waltz talking to the French dairy farmer, the guessing games at La Louisiane, Daniel Brühl’s awkward courtship of Mélanie Laurent. That is, leave INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. It’s juvenile, wrongheaded, self-aggrandizing, stupid, completely spot-on, probably Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece, maybe the only moral film anyone has made about “the war” since THE BIG RED ONE. A great big caricature of a movie, gentle in tone and abrasive in structure. Here’s a so-called war film with war nowhere to be found: just people sitting and speaking the most beautiful dialogue Quentin Tarantino has ever written. Apparently, when you strip his characters of recognizable pop culture references, they become human beings (references abound, but to a popular culture most audience members won’t be familiar with, and more so in the mise-en-scene than the dialogue). They cry, they whimper, they become tense, they act stupidly. They’re set up as gags (the multi-lingual “Jew hunter,” the film-critic-turned-officer, the intrusive SS officer), but they feel real, all of them, except maybe Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine: chin and chest puffed out like Desperate Dan, he carries himself like Robin Williams’ Popeye. He’s the punchline to the film; the issue is that film itself isn't a joke. In fact, it’s dead serious: maybe you need a full and rowdy theater to catch it, but the Nazi audience at the film premiere sounds the same as the audience cheering the rare violence in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Tarantino knows this. (2009, 153 min, 35mm) IV
Brian De Palma's BODY DOUBLE (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Monday, 9:30pm
The 80s were a heady time: Apple released the Macintosh, Eli Lilly brought you Prozac, and Brian De Palma was constantly inventing new and exciting ways to fail the Bechdel test. BODY DOUBLE (1984) had the unenviable task of following up the director's DRESSED TO KILL (1980), BLOW OUT (1981), and SCARFACE (1983). Say what you will about those films--I think the horse is still breathing--but in the waning days of New Hollywood they occupied a certain place in its pantheon. Caine, Travolta, Pacino. Add to that mononymous list: Wasson. "Nobody's perfect" is the De Palma mantra though, and BODY DOUBLE manages to transcend its flaws en route to realizing its unique vision of Reagan-era Los Angeles. Craig Wasson plays Jake Scully, underemployed actor and amateur claustrophobic. When we meet Scully he's just suffered a series of unfortunate setbacks: he has a fit on the job, he catches his wife cheating on him, and is thus booted from their home. Temporarily adrift, an acting acquaintance offers him a plush housesitting gig high, high in the Hollywood Hills. From this lofty vantage point Scully makes a habit of spying on exhibitionist neighbor, Gloria, and under the flimsy pretense of chivalry the practice eventually evolves into outright stalking. No points for catching the Hitchcock nods; De Palma's allusions to (or outright theft of) works like REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO are so overt as to signal jumping off points rather than ends in themselves. In a surreal segue toward the end of the film, a lip-synching Holly Johnson of the band Frankie Goes to Hollywood leads Scully, suddenly decked out in thick-rimmed glasses and argyle, onto a porno set to the tune of "Relax." The sequence functions as a movie-within-a-movie; it's De Palma's "Broadway Melody Ballet," if you will, except Gene Kelly didn't find Cyd Charisse behind a door labeled 'SLUTS.' The "Relax" scene marks a tonal crossroads in BODY DOUBLE. Soon after, the proceedings begin to accelerate at an almost nightmarish rate and the tightly plotted thriller De Palma fashioned in the film's first half starts to unravel as the limits of internal plausibility are pushed to the extreme. If you're on De Palma's wavelength though it's a worthy tradeoff, as tension gives way to near mania. When the film was released, Roger Ebert characterized BODY DOUBLE as having De Palma's "most airtight plot" yet—an assertion it's hard to imagine Ebert leveling without cracking a slight smile. The virtue and, dare I say, greatness of BODY DOUBLE come not from bulletproof narrative or even rudimentary character development, but instead from a messier place. De Palma synthesizes a multitude of disparate references into a scathing critique of nice-guy chauvinism, critical Puritanism, and countless other -isms, all under the guise mindless genre fare. (1984, 114 min, DCP Digital) JS
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
Dennis Hopper's THE LAST MOVIE (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Sunday, 5pm and Monday, 8pm
Hot off the unexpected success of EASY RIDER, Dennis Hopper was give complete creative control and a considerable amount of studio funding to make this quasi-fable about a stuntman (Hopper) who gets roped into a movie cargo cult in the jungles of Peru. Shot on location with a cast seemingly composed of whoever Hopper felt like hanging out with at the time—including Sam Fuller, Kris Kristofferson, Michelle Phillips, Peter Fonda, Sylvia Miles and Dean Stockwell—and edited over the course of a year at Hopper's remote, gun-and-groupie-filled compound, it's a jumbled, intentionally-fragmentary mess—but also a singular and serious (albeit coked-up) artistic statement by a man attempting to make an anti-Hollywood movie on Hollywood's dime. Hopper might've not accomplished everything he set out to do, but the result is still unpredictable and one-of-a-kind. (1971, 108 min, DCP Digital) IV
Tomas Alfredson’s LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Swedish Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 9:30pm
Vampire mythology has a rich history that’s been explored in a myriad of different fashions throughout film history. From horror to comedy and more, it’s a subject that’s proved to be quite malleable in cinema. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is centered on a twelve-year-old boy named Oskar who’s constantly picked on by his classmates and who fantasizes about getting revenge on them. One day, some new neighbors move in next door to his apartment, including the seemingly twelve-year-old girl Eli, who is actually a vampire. Set during the 1980’s in a sleepy town in the suburbs of Stockholm, Oskar and Eli strike up an unlikely friendship that grows to be mutually beneficial to the two socially isolated preteens. It’s is a beautifully crafted film. The cinematography features large swathes of snowy white that becomes marred with crimson red when Eli has to feed. The sound design is relatively music-free outside of a few diegetic pieces and instead forces the viewer to focus on the visceral. Its dark tone harmonizes the awkwardness of not fitting in at school, dealing with single parent households, and the permanent reality Eli faces of having to stay twelve for the rest of her life. The romance that blooms between Oskar and Eli is innocent, sweet, and endearing, as the two become one another’s protectors at various times. Hauntingly beautiful, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is one of the finest vampire films ever made, one that soars thanks to its leads’ excellent performances, its striking imagery, and poignant undertones. (2008, 115 min, 35mm) KC
Charles Burnett’s KILLER OF SHEEP (American Revival)
Rebuild Foundation at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) – Saturday, 4pm (Free Admission)
Critic J. Hoberman proposed two types of film debuts that can perhaps unfairly overshadow a director’s entire career: First, debuts that are radically new and arrive seemingly fully-formed—think CITIZEN KANE and BREATHLESS—and second, works that have an innocence and rawness born of circumstances that can never be replicated, for which he cites Satyajit Ray’s PATHER PANCHALI, Jack Smith’s FLAMING CREATURES, and Charles Burnett’s 1978 masterpiece KILLER OF SHEEP. In Burnett’s case those lightning-in-a-bottle circumstances involved a shoestring budget and weekend-only shooting with mostly non-professional actors over the course of several years beginning in 1972, all in service of what was to be the young director’s MFA thesis at UCLA. Because Burnett initially had academic, not theatrical, aspirations for the work he never secured the rights to the 22 classic R&B, jazz, and soul songs on the soundtrack. For this reason the film never saw a wide release until 2007. The film takes place in post-riot Watts, Los Angeles and involves the day-to-day lives of families in the neighborhood. The main protagonist is Stan, an amiable slaughterhouse worker who toils mightily to support his wife and two children while maintaining his integrity. The rhyming of Stan’s lot in life—a powerless man conveyed from scene to scene by an overwhelming sense of inevitability—with his own methodical killing and processing at the slaughterhouse transcends the political. The depiction of black family life solely for the purposes of overt polemic is the type of cliché Burnett fought throughout his career. Ultimately, the film is too warm to be scathing. Instead, much like Stan, KILLER OF SHEEP feels innocent and unassuming. It’s a sincere statement by a young director that earns its comparisons to the classics of Italian neorealism. And like those classics, Burnett’s sense of realism is universal: The characters’ victories and defeats are all small—a stroke of the knee and a smirk, a flat tire, a scraped elbow—but feel earth shattering in the moment. We sense out of narrative habit redemption is coming in the end, but when art imitates life and it doesn’t we accept it like fate. Dinah Washington’s “The Bitter Earth,” which is played multiple times to increasingly devastating effect, perfectly encapsulates KILLER OF SHEEP. At once beautiful, fatalistic, despairing, in the end it leaves us only with hope: “I’m sure someone may answer my call, and this bitter earth may not be so bitter after all.” Co-presented with Hothouse’s “On Whose Shoulders” series. (1978, 81 min, Digital Projection) JS
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Chicago Cinema and Media Conference presents a one-day tribute to the Chicago Film Seminar on Friday, November 22 from 9:30am to 6pm (note that we are listing this a week early given the early morning start) at the Institute for the Humanities (UIC, 701 S. Morgan St., Lower Level, Stevenson Hall). The event includes talks by a number of area film scholars and a roundtable discussion by several founders and early members of the CFS. Free admission.
The Chicago Polish Film Festival in America 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 Mostra Brazilian Film Festival Chicago continues through November 15 at multiple Chicagoland venues. More info and complete schedule at https://mostrafilmfestival.org.
The Conversations at the Edge series (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) presents Image Employment (2012-19, approx. 75 min total, Various Formats) on Thursday at 6pm. The screening, curated by Aily Nash and Andrew Norman Wilson, is in conjunction with the exhibition Re:Working Labor currently on view at SAIC's Sullivan Gallery. Included are Harun Farocki's A NEW PRODUCT (2012), Stephanie Comilang's COME TO ME PARADISE (2016), and Jenn Nkiru’s BLACK TO TECHNO (2019). Co-curator Aily Nash and Re:Working Labor curators Daniel Eisenberg and Ellen Rothenberg in person.
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) screens Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis’ 2017 documentary WHOSE STREETS? (100 min, DCP Digital) on Friday at 7pm, with co-director Folayan in person; and presents Amazements: Videos by Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby on Thursday at 7pm, with experimental video artists Duke and Battersby in person. Screening are: BEING FUCKED UP (2000, 10 min), BEAUTY PLUS PITY (2009, 15 min), and YOU WERE AN AMAZEMENT ON THE DAY YOU WERE BORN (2019, 33 min). All Digital Projection. Free admission.
ACRE (1345 W 19th St, Chicago, IL) presents Urban Harmonies/Dissonant Cities, the final local screening in the touring Ism, Ism, Ism series of Latin American experimental film and video, on Saturday at 7pm. Screening are: HABANA SOLO (Juan Carlos Alom, 2000, 15 min, Cuba), INUTIL PAISAGEM (Louise Botkay, 2010, 6 min, Brazil), MACHINERY NO. 1 (Luis Soldevilla, 2011, 3 min, Peru), CONSTITUTION (Melisa Aller, 2013, 4 min, Argentina), DESPEDIDA (Alexandra Cuesta, 2013, 10 min, Ecuador/US), LA POUBELLE (Felipe Ehrenberg, 1970, 16 min, Mexico), AT YOUR HEELS (Azucena Losana, 2017, 3 min, Argentina/Czech Republic), and CALI DE PELICULA (Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo, 1973, 13 min, Colombia). All Digital Projection. Co-presented by Block Cinema. Free admission.
The Film Studies Center co-presents Indigenous Futurisms in VR (2017, 22 min total, 360-Degree VR) on Friday 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.
Chicago Filmmakers (5720 N. Ridge Ave.) screens Ryan Blake’s 2018 documentary JOHN AND THE PAHLAVAN (67 min, Digital Projection; Free Admission) on Friday at 6pm; and local filmmaker Jeff Spitz’s 2000 documentary THE RETURN OF NAVAJO BOY (56 min, Digital Projection; showing with a 2008 epilogue) on Saturday at 7pm. Followed by a panel discussion with Spitz and subjects John Wayne Cly and Elsie Mae Begay.
South Side Projections and Columbia College’s Hip-Hop Studies Minor and Hip-Hop Club present Stan Lathan’s 1984 film BEAT STREET (106 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 Goethe-Institut Chicago (150 N. Michigan Ave., Ste. 200) presents Short Export: Made in Germany (approx. 95 min total, Video Projection) on Thursday at 6pm. The program features a selected of short Germany films from the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. Free admission.
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Chicagoland Shorts Vol. 5 (2017-19, approx. 78 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. The curated program of local work includes films by Jennifer Boles, Jiayi Chen and Cameron Worden, Lonnie Edwards, Meredith Leich, Sebastián Pinzón Silva, Ashley Thompson, and Marisa Tolomeo. Free admission.
Instituto Cervantes (31 W. Ohio St.) screens Fran Araújo and Ernesto de Nova's 2013 Portuguese/Spanish/Moroccan film LIGHTNING [aka HASSAN'S WAY] (EL RAYO) (86 min, DVD Projection) on Wednesday at 7pm. Free admission.
The Beverly Arts Center screens John Hughes’ 1987 film PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES (93 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 7:30pm.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Lauren Greenfield's US/Danish documentary THE KINGMAKER (101 min, DCP Digital) plays for a week; Nick Ebeling's 2016 documentary ALONG FOR THE RIDE (100 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 8:15pm, with Ebeling and executive producer J.C. Gabel in person. Showing with Michael Almereyda's 1985 short film A HERO OF OUR TIME (27 min, DCP Digital); and New Breed Film Showcase: A Creative Cypher Collaboration (2018, approx. 51 min, Digital Projection) is on Wednesday at 8:15pm (preceded by a DJ Mixer at 7:15pm). Screening are works by Briana Clearly, Curtis Matzke, Asha Flowers, David Saunders, and Patrick Wimp, with Clearly, Matzke, Saunders, and Wimp in person.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Richard Linklater's 2019 film WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE (130 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 7 and 9:30pm and Sunday at 4pm; Raja Amari's 2002 French/Tunisian film SATIN ROUGE [RED SATIN] (100 min, Digital Projection; Free Admission) is on Monday at 7pm; and Danny Boyle's 1996 UK film TRAINSPOTTING (93 min, Digital Projection) is on Thursday at 7pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Noah Baumbach’s 2019 film MARRIAGE STORY (136 min, 35mm) opens; Robert Eggers’ 2019 film THE LIGHTHOUSE (109 min, DCP Digital) continues. Preceded by Jonathan Glazer’s 2019 short THE FALL (7 min); John Hughes' 1987 film PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES (93 min, 35mm) is on Wednesday at 7pm, with James Hughes, son of director John Hughes, and editor Paul Hirsch in person. Co-presented by the Harold Ramis Film School; and Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s 1993 animated Japanese film NINJA SCROLL (94 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.
Also at Facets Cinémathèque this week: Yang Mingming’s 2018 Chinese film GIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY (117 min, Video Projection) plays for a week-long run.
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. Warhol’s 1966 double-projection film OUTER AND INNER SPACE (33 min), is on view daily through Sunday, November 17; and Warhol’s 1963 film HAIRCUT NO. 1 (27 min, 16mm) is on view November 19-December 8, The films 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. Among the moving image works 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 15 - November 21, 2019
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Kyle Cubr, Alexandra Ensign, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jamie Stroble, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
