CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL – WEEK ONE
The Chicago International Film Festival begins its first full week, with screenings at the AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois St.). The festival runs through October 26. For more information and a complete schedule visit www.chicagofilmfestival.com. The festival runs through October 26.
Philippe Garrel’s LOVER FOR A DAY (New French)
Sunday and Monday, 5:45pm
There’s a casual mastery to latter-day Philippe Garrel that reveals a filmmaker who knows his craft inside and out and knows how to achieve the maximum effect with the simplest means. Even a shot of three characters sitting around a kitchen table (of which there are quite a few here) becomes a rich study in human interaction under Garrel’s gaze; and as for the closeups, they are, as usual, painterly, probing, and mesmerizing. The plot of LOVER FOR A DAY is nothing new, even for Garrel: a college student (played by Garrel’s daughter Esther) returns home after a messy break-up to find that her professor father is living with a young woman her own age. The characters love, comfort, and betray one another, yet they always have their reasons for doing so—one of the film’s many splendors is its even-handed sympathy that privileges no one character over another. (2017, 76 min) BS
Raymond Depardon's 12 DAYS (New Documentary)
Saturday, 6:15pm and Monday, 12:30pm
In France, psychiatrists have the power to hospitalize people without their consent; within 12 days, these patients must meet with a judge who decides their fate. This deeply compassionate, complex, unflinching film by Raymond Depardon, the august French documentarian, records these hearings with a staunchly objective camera, conjuring a kind of purgatory, but to call it "Kafkaesque" would be to render a judgment the film refuses to make. Instead, it asks only that we bear witness to the stories of these troubled, broken human beings. Treating the mentally ill as a threat sounds unsavory, yet even while we're reflecting on a society that segregates the "insane" away from public view, we're also considering that in the U.S., they'd likely be on the streets. (2017, 87 min) SP
Sion Sono’s TOKYO VAMPIRE HOTEL (New Japanese)
Saturday, 10:30pm, Monday, 1:30pm, and Saturday, October 21, 9pm
Compiled from pieces of a nine-episode TV series, the theatrical version of TOKYO VAMPIRE HOTEL is a disorganized mess, yet that very chaotic quality adds to its power as a waking nightmare. The first half-hour in particular is among the most terrifying passages in Sion Sono’s filmography, a non-stop bloodbath that conveys the breakdown of social (and narrative) order. From there, the film spins a semi-coherent tale about feuding vampire clans who hole up in the title location as an unspecified apocalyptic event wipes out most of humanity. The cinematic references range from THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT to De Palma’s SCARFACE; the cacophonous soundtrack includes everything from Bach to death metal. The constant factor is the gruesome violence, which never loses its intensity over the two-hour-plus run time. (2017, 142 min) BS
François Jacob's A MOON OF NICKEL AND ICE (New Documentary)
Sunday, 5:15pm and Monday, 3pm
In Norilsk, a remote Siberian mining town constructed by Gulag prisoners, a towering electronic display reads “Norilsk Nickel: A World of Opportunities!” To the residents of the industrial town, however, Norilsk is little more than a prison of snow, concrete buildings, and factories serving as a monument to a suppressed history of slave labor under the Soviet regime. Director François Jacob finds some hope in the town's young population—a 17-year-old with several novels to her name declares her dream of being a writer—but the deadening effect attributed to Norilsk makes Ethan Frome's Starkfield look like Disney World. The doc's austere portrayal of mining conditions shows an industry not far removed from its haunting depiction in Barbara Kopple’s HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A., and the cast of characters (including an employee of Norilsk Nickel and a theater director) thoughtfully reflect on both their anger and their eventual resignation to late-capitalist despair. (2017, 110 min) EF
Joã oreir alles' IN THE NTENSE OW (New Documentary)
Thursday, 8:15pm and Friday, October 20, 12:15pm
The unexpectedly touching, original IN THE INTENSE NOW is about those intense 1960s moments, from Paris in May '68 to the Prague Spring, when revolution seemed both desirable and possible, summed up in the slogan, "Under the paving stones, the beach!" Documentarian Salles narrates a montage of archival footage, including home movies of his mother's trip to China at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution. Since what followed '68 was not joyful liberation but cowed defeat, Salles ends up elegiacally, almost sentimentally, evoking the year's lost souls and spirit—those somehow innocent days of total commitment and BS and, yes, joy—while also offering a rigorous photographic analysis and a cautionary tale for today's resisters: it's dangerous to get stuck in a moment. (2017, 127 min) SP
CRUCIAL VIEWING
Ernst Lubitsch’s MONTE CARLO (Silent American Revival)
The Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm
I had the opportunity to view a silent version of Ernst Lubitsch’s MONTE CARLO while attempting to rewatch the sound version; as fate would have it, I was alone, and the convoluted sound system attached to my less-than-deserving television was hooked up to the record player, something I had no idea how to adjust. Thus I watched the last 40 minutes in silence with the subtitles turned on, frustrated with my home theater set-up but amused by the irony of the situation. Irony on irony: MONTE CARLO was Lubitsch’s second sound film—and a musical at that, a genre he helped pioneer—yet a silent version was produced both for foreign distribution and theaters not yet ready for the talkie takeover. This was common practice at the time, but screenings of these wordless iterations are rare; it’s especially exciting to view one of a film heralded for its innovative use of the new technology (see, for example, its first song, “Beyond the Blue Horizon,” which, as Dave Kehr described it in his review for the Chicago Reader, is “begun by the wheels of a train, picked up by [Jeanette MacDonald], and carried by the peasants in every field the train passes through”), made by a man whose purposeful silents are regarded as some of the best of the era. MacDonald stars as a countess-cum-runaway bride who flees to Monte Carlo after leaving her dopey prince fiancé at the altar. She’s rich in newfound independence, but poor in...well, in money, so she plans to regain her fortune by gambling what little she has left. She soon meets a count (Jack Buchanan), who then presents himself as a hairdresser to get closer to her. The silent version, which is likely a mix of the sound version and newly shot silent footage, is said to follow the plot of the sound version minus the songs, though I don’t know for sure—no one does, except maybe those who saw it at the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus Theater screening in 2015. Rare indeed, and infinitely better than a muted DVD. Preceded by the pilot episode of Jay Ward Productions’ television show Fractured Flickers (1961, 24 min, 16mm). (1930, 71 min, Restored 35mm Print) KS
Louis Malle’s ATLANTIC CITY (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Friday, 7 and 9:15pm and Sunday, 1:30pm
To date, the great playwright John Guare (The House of Blue Leaves, Landscape of the Body, Six Degrees of Separation) has written just one original screenplay, ATLANTIC CITY. (He also contributed to the script of Milos Forman’s TAKING OFF, but given that since several others worked on it as well, it can’t be considered a Guare work proper.) Among other things, the film is a showcase for his brilliant dialogue, which isn’t as stylized as Tennessee Williams’ but just as eloquent; it also conveys his unique narrative sensibility, which borders on magical realism but is grounded by a worldly sense of pathos. Burt Lancaster stars as Lou, an elderly numbers runner in the title city who claims to have known all the big gangsters in the heyday of Las Vegas; Susan Sarandon plays a young waitress with criminal connections who falls under Lou’s wing, arouses his sympathy, and gets him into trouble. (Both received Oscar nominations for their work, as did Guare and director Louis Malle.) “There is something tender and subtle going on [between Lou and Sally],” wrote Roger Ebert in his Great Movies review. “Neither was born yesterday. Both have dreams. Both have lived with disappointment. Even though they could be lovers, they have no future together, and maybe no future separately. They don’t need to say this to each other. When he helps her, it is because she needs help, and equally because he needs to help. His payoff is not living happily ever after, but in having an eyewitness who knows that at least once during his descent into obscurity he stepped up to the plate and acted as he thinks a man should act.” Malle’s laid-back direction gives the actors plenty of room to work wonders with Guare’s dialogue, and he elucidates the melancholy themes without overstating them. It’s easily the best of Malle's American films. (1980, 104 min, 35mm) BS
Martin Gabel’s THE LOST MOMENT and John Reinhardt’s OPEN SECRET (American Revivals)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 2pm and Saturday, 3pm (Moment) and Saturday, 4:45pm and Monday, 6pm (Secret)
In much the same way that it can be thrilling to discover a well-made, albeit lesser-appreciated, film that’s lingering in multiplexes, realizing an affinity for the more obscure fare in the annual UCLA Festival of Preservation is similarly rewarding—plus, it’s all on film. This weekend’s films—Martin Gabel’s THE LOST MOMENT (1947, 89 min, Restored 35mm Print) and John Reinhardt’s OPEN SECRET (1948, 68 min, Restored 35mm Print; preceded by Slavko Vorkapich and John Hoffman’s 1941 experimental short MOODS OF THE SEA (10 min, Restored 35mm Print))—pleasantly surprised me as both relics of their era and genuinely entertaining products of the proliferant studio system. The first and most widely known film adaptation of Henry James’ classic novella The Aspern Papers, THE LOST MOMENT is also the first and only film directed by Gabel, whose professional associations as an actor include Orson Welles (Gabel was an original member at the Mercury Theatre), Alfred Hitchcock, and Frank Sinatra. Alas, despite having worked with Welles, his debut feature isn’t a prodigious masterpiece, but it’s competently directed and fun to watch. Both the films fall under the noir umbrella—one that lets the rain in rather than keeps it out—THE LOST MOMENT looking to the past to evoke its Gothic ambience while OPEN SECRET uses then-contemporary issues to ground its otherwise potboiler sensibilities. The former follows Robert Cummings’ Lewis Venable, a publisher who travels from New York to Venice in order to persuade a late poet’s lover to give him their famed love letters (think Abelard and Héloïse, John Keats and Fanny Brawne). There he meets the elderly woman, Juliana Bordereau (played by an unrecognizable Agnes Moorehead), and her niece, Tina (Susan Hayward), who, while in a fugue state, believes herself to also be the deceased’s poet lover, thus imbuing the text with the Freudian-esque slant that raises both James’ work and that which it influences. According to adaptation studies expert Laurence Raw in his book Adapting Henry James to the Screen, THE LOST MOMENT “became a cult film from 1970 onwards; this was chiefly due to the fact that a clip from it was included in Michael Sarne’s notorious adaptation of Gore Vidal’s MYRA BRECKINRIDGE.” Also notable about the film is Hayward’s performance, appurtenant to the film yet worthy of Hitchcock—dare I say she bests even Kim Novak as a woman plagued by vertiginous ideation. OPEN SECRET boasts no such performance; rather, its nuanced plot distinguishes it. Called a “poor-man’s CROSSFIRE”— referring to Edward Dmytryk’s 1947 film, which, along with Elia Kazan’s Academy Award-winning film from the same year, GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, tackled issues of anti-Semitism—it’s nonetheless an intriguing B-movie that warrants consideration as a byproduct of its time and an example of the ways in which social issues trickled down from public consciousness to the likes of Poverty Row (it was distributed by Eagle-Lion Films). Newlyweds Paul and Nancy (played by John Ireland and Jane Randolph) look forward to staying with Paul’s army buddy, Ed, but their honeymoon plans are quickly curtailed when he disappears. Such a plotline could go any which way, but it’s soon revealed that Ed had dealings with a local white nationalist group. The couple investigates, and along the way they encounter a basket of deplorables—inerudite bigots motivated by cowardice; the film’s story nimbly weaves the narrative threads into something altogether laconic and discrete in spite of its lofty pretenses. Both films, existing in a limbo between indelible masterpieces and superfluous entertainment, are certainly worth seeing, and definitely preferable to much of the middling multiplex fare nowadays. KS
Sam Raimi's EVIL DEAD II: DEAD BY DAWN (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre- Friday and Saturday, Midnight
Sam Raimi's THE EVIL DEAD broke astonishing ground in its cinematic inventiveness and willingness to go for broke in terrifying its audience. It was brutal, coarse, grimy, and fabulously scary: his preternaturally mobile camera implied--and often inhabited—overwhelming forces of evil rushing past and at his characters at all times, unseen and terrible, possessing and destroying at their whim and pleasure. EVIL DEAD II: DEAD BY DAWN finds Raimi operating in a much more complicated mode, melding the horror of the first film with an increasing interest in slapstick and gross-out comedy. Neither evincing the relentless stream of malevolence that is the first EVIL DEAD film nor the good-natured silliness of ARMY OF DARKNESS, for many viewers, this second entry in the series is the best, finding the perfect balance between stupid and startling, between eerie and icky. Less a sequel than a loose remake of the first, EVIL DEAD II brings back Bruce Campbell's Ash, the knuckle-headed zombie-slayer of uncertain destiny, now stronger, more resourceful, and more idiotic than ever. In many ways, the film resembles the tail-end entries in Universal's classic cycle, only reflecting Raimi's peculiar influences, as if it were MOE HOWARD MEETS THE LEGIONS OF THE DAMNED. In his precarious dance between absurd and terrifying, Raimi conjures a vision of the uncanny in which the line separating the living is less a heart-beat than a gasp, and for which the of the world is but the set-up to a punchline just about to be uttered. (1987, 84 min, 35mm) KB
Alfred Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
Grace Kelly was never lovelier, "the right girl for any man with half a brain who can get one eye open." Thus spoke Thelma Ritter to Jimmy Stewart's sardonic photographer. The three function as a superb trio, as jazzy as Franz Waxman's score; equally matched and indivisible, perhaps the only such formation in any Hitchcock film. Through an alchemy yet to be duplicated, Hitchcock and writer John Michael Hayes got together and somehow fashioned the most perfect screenplay ever created. The characters' dialogue as written and performed meshes seamlessly with Hitchcock's own monologue, one that brilliantly uses camera, editing table, and sound design. Especially the latter. Its diegetic soundscape remains thrillingly unique. And its pacing is flawless; it's tightly conceived and executed yet never seems to be in a hurry. No matter how many times you've seen it, this is one movie that never stops offering up new pleasures. (1954, 112 min, 35mm) RC
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s THE AMERICAN SOLDIER (German Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Sunday, 7pm
The final shot of THE AMERICAN SOLDIER is one of the most memorable of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s career: In a static long-take running several minutes, two criminals get shot down by police and die in slow motion; as one of the criminals falls to the ground, his brother (who’s just appeared on the scene) attempts to embrace him, but fumbles the act, resulting in an awkward, even humorous tangle of bodies. A song, co-written by Fassbinder and titled “So Much Tenderness,” plays over the action and adds a layer of irony to the proceedings. There was little tenderness on display in the film up to this point, and what there is to behold here seems like too little, too late. The shot is another reminder from the director that love is colder than death, a source of humiliation that mocks at individuals as it pretends to bring them into contact with others. As for the first 75 minutes of THE AMERICAN SOLDIER, they comprise another of Fassbinder’s personal takes on crime movies and spiritual anomie, following the title character as he navigates Munich’s criminal underworld after returning from a tour of Vietnam. He commits a few contract killings and engages in a few sexual dalliances, displaying little emotion in any of them. Indeed, THE AMERICAN SOLDIER is one of Fassbinder’s most emotionally withholding films; it has the air of a technical exercise, with actors going through the motions of gangster movies but refusing to commit to them. There are hints, though, of the emotionally engaged cinema that Fassbinder would soon move on to, such as a monologue delivered by one character (in another unbroken long-take) that anticipates certain narrative elements of ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL. But for the most part, this is cold, brackish stuff, appropriately described by Dave Kehr as “a real punk movie.” (1970, 80 min, 35mm) BS
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (Contemporary Thai)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday, 8pm and Sunday, 5pm
A hushed and floating aureole of a film, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE captivates and holds us firm in some timeless stupor. The northern Thai jungle throbs patiently—with past lives and past events, monkey ghosts and ethereality—while Boonmee comes full circle, or doesn't. The film centers on an elderly Thai farmer, Uncle Boonmee, who is dying of kidney disease. Fading in his farm home, his son and wife appear as spirits (in easily one of the most affecting family dinner scenes on film) to ease Boonmee into non-being. As in SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY and TROPICAL MALADY, Weerasethakul's Buddhism informs the fluidity of time and body, though here he forgoes the formal duality of those films for something like a drifting continuum. Boonmee laments his karma, having killed in the past either too many communists or bugs on his tamarind farm, and later dreams of a stunted future where images of one's past are projected until they arrive. Are we some Baudrillard-like copy of a copy, reborn and born again—or perhaps a continual permutation of events and memories? As in his past work, Weerasethakul lets us linger just long enough in dense but controlled compositions. The distance of his subjects in the frame methodically draws us deeper into his hypnotic world where the sound of our breathing heightens anticipation. It amplifies the pulse and hum of the darkened, textured jungle on screen. But the frame here is also Weerasethakul's most purposeful one, leading us gently into fabled recollection, and cunningly deep inside a haunting cave-womb. History and spirit have a composite curiosity that envelops both Boonmee and the viewer. It offers as much as one is willing to ask. (2010, 114 min, 35mm) BW
Ari Folman's WALTZ WITH BASHIR (Contemporary Animation)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 6:30pm and Tuesday, 6pm
WALTZ WITH BASHIR is a movie that doesn't need to be live action because it doesn't set out, like so many others, to impress us with how movies can make war look real and scary, or as in THE THIN RED LINE, beautifully and disorientingly unreal. It's a movie that uses animation to bring us into characters' memories, to bring us back to places that may never have been real to begin with, and that would never have been recreated accurately in live action anyway. It wants us to consider the human element of war rather than the strategies, the numbers, the visceralness, the characters that it can create. Director/writer Ari Folman (writer of HBO's therapy show IN TREATMENT) stars as himself, an Israeli survivor of the Lebanon War in the early 80s trying to remember what he experienced by talking with his friends and fellow survivors. Through this form of therapy he learns of memories he can't remember, but that he can imagine; he learns that memories are living things that change as we change. He is haunted by one memory that no one else seems to remember and we are reminded how everyone copes differently with traumatic experiences. Some suppress it, others replace it, and, most notably, that from a human's perspective, war is never how it objectively looks on camera. Film scholar Donald Crafton lectures at the Tuesday screening. (2008, 90 min, 35mm) KH
Sidney Lumet's SERPICO (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Wednesday, 7 and 9:30pm
Sidney Lumet addressed institutional corruption within the NYPD at several points in his career—in PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981), Q & A (1990), and NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN (1997)—but never did the results make a bigger splash than they did with SERPICO, one of his best-known movies overall. Much of its enduring success can be credited to Al Pacino's performance as the title character, a real-life NY police officer who became a pariah in the force by refusing to accept bribes. Pacino conveys both Frank Serpico's sense of duty and his iconoclastic streak, creating a quintessential hero for the Vietnam era (though, being Al Pacino, he delivers all the best lines as though shouting them from a rooftop). And Lumet grounds the story with so much hard-won local detail—as IMDB notes, this was shot at 104 New York City locations—that the film can be appreciated simply as a documentary of the city at this time. It may lack the complex Brechtian structure of PRINCE or the procedural precision of NIGHT FALLS, but it's still dyed-in-the-wool Lumet, perceptive and cynical in equal measure. (1973, 130 min, 35mm) BS
Agnès Varda's THE GLEANERS AND I (Documentary/Experimental Revival)
Alliance Française (54 W. Chicago Ave.) – Wednesday, 6:30pm
Agnès Varda, arguably the first filmmaker of the French New Wave, builds an easy rambling and revelatory road movie in THE GLEANERS AND I, an essay film about the historical French custom of gleaning, the act of collecting crops left to waste after the harvest. Varda takes to the motorways with her digital camera and captures gleaning as it is in contemporary French life. She interviews potato farmers, crust punks, gypsies, grocers, justices, vintners, and artists, illuminating lots of sympathetic thematic tensions along the way. Varda doesn't linger in interviews; she brings us only snippets of the people she speaks with, capturing their charm in a few juicy clips. Varda uses GLEANERS to consider her own aging, revolving technology, the ethics of waste, and, the sliding economic realities that brought gleaning back as a common practice. Preceded by Justin Jones’ 2016 short film THE FARM ON RICE LAKE ROAD (10 min). Introduced by novelist Aleksandar Hemon. (2000, 79 min, Video Projection) CL
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ENDLESS POETRY (New Chilean)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7 and 9:30pm and Sunday, 4pm; and Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
After examining his very early life in THE DANCE OF REALITY, Alejandro Jodorowsky turns the camera around on himself again to focus on his creative beginnings in ENDLESS POETRY. Jodorowsky examines his artistic roots as a youth in Chile where he decides to become a poet (much to the chagrin of his parents). The youIf the role of the public intellectual is to speak truth to power, then James Baldwin was one of the greatest America ever produced. A searing and compassionate social critic, he was equally penetrating when he turned his novelist's gaze toward film, as this galvanizing, heartbreaking essay/documentary by Raoul Peck demonstrates. Its voiceover is in Baldwin's own words, the beautiful music of his language measured out by Samuel L. Jackson in an intimate spoken-word performance. In televised interviews and debates from the 1960s, Baldwin is pensive and incendiary, and the film cuts between his embattled times and our own. Baldwin investigated the mystery of the fathomless hatred of white Americans for blacks, and while his analysis was economic, it also involved a kind of psychoanalysis of the American psyche. This film's jumping-off point is Remember This House, his unfinished manuscript about the intertwining lives, and violent deaths, of his friends/foils Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers. Soon it turns to The Devil Finds Work, his earthy, shattering essay about growing up a child of the movies. Baldwin understood cinema as "the American looking glass," and he wrote with such lucidity, and such painful honesty, about what he saw reflected there, about himself, race, and his country. "To encounter oneself is to encounter the other," he wrote, "and this is love. If I know that my soul trembles, I know that yours does, too: and, if I can respect this, both of us can live." Viewer identification is complex: as a youngster whose heroes were white, who rooted for Gary Cooper, it came as a huge shock for him to realize "the Indians were you"—and these heroes aimed to kill you off, too. Peck has called his film an essay on images, a "musical and visual kaleidoscope" of fiery blues, lobotomized mass media, classic Hollywood, TV news, reality TV, and advertisements. He causes a government propaganda film from 1960 about U.S. life, all baseball games and amusement parks, to collide with the Watts uprising; a Doris Day movie meets lynched bodies. The point is not even that one is reality and the other is not. It's that these two realities were never forced to confront each other—and they must, because one comes at the other's expense. When Baldwin speaks of the "death of the heart," of our privileged apathy, of an infantile America, an unthinking and cruel place, he could be speaking of the Trump era. He feared for the future of a country increasingly unable to distinguish between illusion, dream, and reality. "Neither of us, truly, can live without the other," he wrote. "For, I have seen the devil...[I]t is that moment when no other human being is real for you, nor are you real for yourself." Let this movie inspire today's young dissenters, and let James Baldwin be our model of oppositional, critical thinking as we raise our angry voices against Donald Trump and everything he stands for. Peck in person. (2016, 95 min, DCP Digital) SP
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week: two films by experimental animator Lawrence Jordan screening on Friday at 7pm. Showing are OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE (1969, 9 min, 35mm) and THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER (1977, 16mm, 42 min). Free admission.
The Conversations at the Edge series at the Gene Siskel Film Center presents The Real Fake (2006–17, approx. 80 min total, Digital Projection) on Thursday at 6pm. Curated by Claudia Hart, Rachel Clarke, and Pat Reynolds, the program features work by “23 artists working with 3D simulation tools to produce a new aesthetic and ethic of the fake.” With co-curators Hart and Clarke and artist LaTurbo Avedon in person.
The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) and the Chicago Cinema Society present filmmaker and author Andrew Leavold in person, who will be presenting a 90-minute edited compilation of three 1980’s features by diminutive Filipino action star Weng Weng and signing copies of his new book about his search for the disappeared actor and his films. It’s on Tuesday at 7:30pm.
The Collected Voices Film Festival began on Thursday and continues through Sunday, with screenings at various locations. Full schedule at http://www.collectedvoicesfilmfest.com.
Filmfront (1740 W. 18th St.) presents its second of three marathon screenings in the series The Lips, The Teeth, The Tip of the Tongue: Trauma and Memory in the Context of Horror on Sunday. The film titles will be announced on Friday. Screenings at 2, 4, 6:30, and 8:30pm.
Ivan Dixon’s 1973 film THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR (102 min, Video Projection) and William Greaves’ 1968 documentary THE FIRST WORLD FESTIVAL OF NEGRO ARTS (40 min, Video Projection) screen as part of the Black Arts International: Temporalities & Territories conference on Sunday at 2pm at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6720 S. Stony Island Ave.). More info at http://bai.northwestern.edu/black-arts-international-temporalities-territories. Free admission.
The Massacre, a 24-hour marathon screening of horror, fantasy, and science fiction films, takes place from Noon Saturday to Noon Sunday at the Patio Theater (6008 W. Irving Park Rd.). Guests include director John D. Hancock (LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH) and actress Felissa Rose (SLEEPAWAY CAMP). All Digital Projection. Details at www.facebook.com/The-Massacre-113071528784239.
Aya Hanabusa’s 2010 documentary HOLY ISLAND (105 min, Video Projection) screens as part of the Blue Fish Japanese Environmental Documentary Film Festival on Sunday at 7pm at The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.). www.artunionhumanscape.net
John Anderson’s 2017 documentary HORN FROM THE HEART: THE PAUL BUTTERFIELD STORY (104 min, Video Projection) is on Sunday at 4pm at the Logan Center for the Arts (Performance Hall, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago), as part of the Logan Center Bluesfest. Followed by a performance and discussion. Free admission.
Asian Pop Up Cinema presents a week-long run of Ann Hui’s 2017 Hong Kong film OUR TIME WILL COME (130 min, Video Projection) at the Wilmette Theatre (1122 Central Ave., Wilmette) this week; and presents a free community engagement screening of Ramona S. Diaz’s 2017 Filipino film MOTHERLAND (90 min, Video Projection) on Friday at 10:15am at 2641 S. Calumet Ave. www.asianpopupcinema.org
Black Cinema House at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) screens Anisia Uzeyman’s 2016 film DREAMSTATES (74 min, Video Projection) on Friday at 7pm. Free admission.
The Italian Cultural Institute (500 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1450) presents a talk by scholar Rebecca West entitled Tonino Guerra: Italian Cinema's National Treasure, about the noted Italian screenwriter, on Monday at 6pm; and a talk/presentation by Dario D'Incerti entitled Italian Goes to the Movies on Tuesday at 6pm. Free admission for both.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Mickey Lemle’s 2016 documentary THE LAST DALAI LAMA? (82 min, DCP Digital) and Johnny O’Reilly’s 2015 Russian/Irish film MOSCOW NEVER SLEEPS (100 min, DCP Digital) both play for a week.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Pietro Germi’s 1964 Italian film SEDUCED AND ABANDONED (118 min, 35mm) is on Monday at 7pm; Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 Italian film THE CONFORMIST (111 min, 35mm) is on Monday at 9:30pm; Wojciech Jerzy Has’ 1965 Polish film THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (182 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday at 7pm; Satyajit Ray’s 1956 Indian film APARAJITO (110 min, DCP Digital) is on Thursday at 7pm; and Darren Aronofsky’s 2000 film REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (102 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 9:15pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman’s 2017 UK/Polish animated film LOVING VINCENT (94 min, DCP Digital) opens; John Carroll Lynch’s 2017 film LUCKY (88 min, DCP Digital) continues; Brian A. Metcalf’s 2017 film THE LOST TREE (88 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 9:30pm, with actor Thomas Ian Nicholas in person; Daniel Cohen’s 2012 French film LE CHEF (84 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 7pm, preceded by a reception and followed by a conversation with local chefs; Brian Donovan’s 2015 documentary KELLY’S HOLLYWOOD (82 min, DCP Digital) is on Monday at 7pm; and Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi’s 2017 Mexican documentary CHAVELA (93 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday at 7pm, with co-director Gund in person.
At Facets Cinémathèque this week: Julia Halperin and Jason Cortlund’s 2017 film LA BARRACUDA (100 min), Samir Oliveros’ 2017 Columbian film BAD LUCKY GOAT (76 min), and Nathalie Leite’s 2017 film M.F.A. (95 min) all play for week-long runs; and Spike Lee’s 1992 film MALCOLM X (202 min) is on Monday at 6pm, with a discussion led by Laith Al-Saud, Professor of Islamic World Studies at De Paul University. All Video Projection.
At the Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) this week: Patty Jenkins’ 2017 film WONDER WOMAN (141 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 2 and 7:30pm; the 2017 documentary LIGHT TO THE WORLD (51 min, Video Projection) is on Tuesday at 7pm; and Richard Donner’s 1976 film THE OMEN (111 min, DCP Digital) is on Wednesday at 1 and 7:30pm. www.northbrook.info/events/film
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Anders Palm’s 1989 horror film UNMASKED: PART 25 (85 min, VHS Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm in the “Released and Abandoned: Forgotten Oddities of the Home Video Era” series. Free admission.
Sinema Obscura at Township (2200 N. California Ave.) Dylan Mars Greenberg’s 2017 film REAGITATOR: REVENGE OF THE PARODY (120 min, Video Projection) on Monday at 7:30pm.
The Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest (400 E. Illinois Rd., Lake Forest) screens Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film THE SHINING (146 min, Digital Projection) on Saturday at 7pm; and Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury’s 1996 documentary HALVING THE BONES (70 min, Digital Projection) on Thursday at 7pm. Free admission for BONES.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
The SAIC Sullivan Galleries (33 S. State St., 7th Floor) presents Apichatpong Weerasethakul: The Serenity of Madness through December 8. The show features many short films and video installations by the SAIC graduate, along with a selection of photography, sketches, and archival materials.
The Graham Foundation presents David Hartt’s installation in the forest through January 6 at the Madlener House (4 W. Burton Place). The show features photography, sculpture, and a newly commissioned film.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Modern Wing Galleries) has Dara Birnbaum’s 1979 two-channel video KISS THE GIRLS: MAKE THEM CRY (6 min) currently on view.
CINE-LIST: October 13 - October 19, 2017
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Rob Christopher, Kyle Cubr, Eric Fuerst, Kalvin Henley, Christy LeMaster, Scott Pfeiffer, Brian Welesko