CRUCIAL VIEWING
Kenji Mizoguchi’s SANSHO THE BAILIFF (Japanese Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Thursday, 7pm
One of the greatest Japanese films, SANSHO THE BAILIFF also marks (along with UGETSU, THE LIFE OF OHARU, and THE STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUMS) the pinnacle of Kenji Mizoguchi’s art. The elegant long takes, which many have likened to traditional Japanese scroll paintings, are the most overtly impressive element of the director’s style, charting complex actions and shifting emotional states through subtle camera movements. But there are countless other details to admire, like the boldly emotional performances (which have roots in Kabuki theater), the supple gradations of Kazuo Miyagawa’s cinematography, and the intricate mise-en-scene, which immerses you in the world of the story. Indeed, few films render the medieval world so palpably alive. That world, an early title card informs us, belongs to a time before human beings discovered their humanity; slavery is still practiced, and people are captured at random and sold into servitude. Adapting a centuries-old folk tale, Mizoguchi and screenwriters Fuji Yahiro and Yoshikata Yoda focus on one family torn apart by the slave trade. A deposed feudal governor sends his wife and two children away from home to escape persecution, but they get captured regardless, the mother sold into prostitution and the children sold into slave labor. The latter characters find themselves working under Sansho the Bailiff, whose cruelty towards his subjects represents the most inhumane behavior in Mizoguchi’s filmography (which contains plenty of it). The children’s suffering can be difficult to watch, but Mizoguchi constantly reminds viewers of the virtuous behavior of which people are capable, with small acts of kindness that register as shelters in a storm. “A man is not a human being without mercy” goes a crucial refrain, and the film teaches this universal moral with the utmost artistry. (1954, 124 min, 35mm) BS
The Films of Ana Mendieta (Experimental Revival)
Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm
The work of the late Cuban-born American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-85) has been receiving renewed and expanding attention over the last several years, fueled in part by the fairly recent availability of her films (made between 1971 and the early 1980s), which were extensions of and integral to her larger artistic practice. Mendieta worked in photography, sculpture, painting, and performance, and her films evidence all of these media in varying ways. Most of the films that I was able to preview (I had an opportunity to see 45 of them, including the dozen that are part of this screening) hover between documentation and discrete works—they feature the artist’s impermanent creations (painting on walls, earthen or other sculptural forms, conceptual and performative actions), leaving open the question of whether these works were made for the camera or if the act of creating is central and would have occurred with or without being filmed. In either case, the simplicity of Mendieta’s artistic gestures has a cumulative power; those familiar with her work in other media will connect right away, others will find a growing resonance as the program builds. Her work as a whole, and as seen in her films, is concerned with a set of fundamental subjects—blood, water, earth, fire—that are engaged with through the artist’s body, or stand-ins for her body—tracings, outlines, silhouettes, impressions in the ground. Through these subjects and the actions taken upon them, her films achieve a mythic quality; they become about death, life, re-birth, destruction, sacrifice—themes that are problematized as they are worked upon a female body, the artist’s own body. In SWEATING BLOOD (1973), Mendieta uses stop-motion to slowly accumulate a spray of blood on her brow. In BODY TRACKS (1974), she creates a minimalist outline of her body as she trails her blood-soaked hands down a white wall. CREEK (1974) has Mendieta lying unmoving in a shallow flowing creek, while BURIAL PYRAMID (1974) has her slowly unearthing herself from a rock-covered burial mound. LABERINTH BLOOD IMPRINT (1974) is the most explicit in its evocation of myth and ritual sacrifice, as the camera wends its way through a maze-like stone structure, finally landing on a bloody stain, vaguely human-shaped. Three of the films scheduled to be shown (UNTITLED: SILUETA SERIES, 1979; SILUETA DE ARENA, 1978; FIREWORKS PIECE, 1976) are from Mendieta’s “Silueta” (Silhouette) series, in which the artist creates stand-in “silhouettes” of her body, which are then destroyed or consumed, usually through fire (burning, fireworks, gunpowder). These works speak profoundly to the image of women in society (then and now)—consumable, disposable, fragile—and to the place that Mendieta inhabited and tried to find space in: a male-centric world of artists. These Silueta films and others in the program are unsettling and moving in light of her own tragic death, and, sadly, still all-too-timely today. Also scheduled to be shown are UNTITLED (1973) or PARACHUTE (1973), ENERGY CHARGE (1975), BUTTERFLY (1975), and RUPESTRIAN SCULPTURES (1981). Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, film archivist for the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, will screen and discuss the works, and the program will be followed by a discussion with Mendieta and scholar Rachel Weiss, moderated by SAIC instructor and CATE programmer Amy Beste. (1973-81, approx. 45 min total, Digital Projection) PF
George Stevens' THE MORE THE MERRIER (American Revival)
Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) – Wednesday, 1 and 7:30pm (Free Admission)
This superior example of the "genius of the Hollywood studio system" may not be as well known as screwball comedy classics like THE AWFUL TRUTH, BRINGING UP BABY, or THE LADY EVE but is every bit their equal as a battle-of-the-sexes masterpiece. Connie Milligan (the glorious Jean Arthur) is a single, working-woman living in Washington D.C. who ends up with two male roommates due to a World War II housing shortage. She finds herself bickering relentlessly with Joe Carter (Joel McCrea), the younger of the men, which, as any screwball fan knows, is a sure sign of romantic chemistry. The other man, the much older Mr. Dingle (Charles Coburn, who deservedly won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance), consequently finds himself playing cupid to his new roommates in what amounts to an enormously entertaining, extremely witty and perfectly paced 104 minutes. The thing that really makes THE MORE THE MERRIER stand out when viewed today though is its unabashed eroticism. A scene where Carter walks Milligan home late at night, temporarily forgetting that he’s also going to his own home, is almost unbelievably sensual in the way the characters flirt with each other and, more importantly, interact physically; while sitting next to one another on a stoop, McCrea, one of Hollywood’s most reserved and laconic actors, creatively paws at Arthur (who, at 42 years old, never looked sexier), seductively encircling her waist and neck with his hands as she half-heartedly feigns disinterest. THE MORE THE MERRIER was very well received in its time but is probably less known today only because George Stevens, the solid craftsman who directed it, is not an auteurist-approved figure. This is unfortunate because if a more erotic film was made in Hollywood in the 1940s I have yet to see it. (1943, 104 min, 35mm) MGS
Pietro Germi’s DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE (Italian Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm
Billy Wilder reportedly thought of Pietro Germi as his Italian counterpart, a consideration that’s perhaps most obvious in the latter’s hit comedy, DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE. The ever-charming Marcello Mastroianni stars as a baron who decides to kill his wife so that he’s free to marry his 16-year-old cousin, the impetus being an archaic Italian law that allows for leniency for crimes of passion. (Similarly archaic is the fact that divorce was illegal in Italy until 1970; the correlation of the two laws, one seemingly more “modern” than the other, provides the steady foundation on which the rest of this towering farce is based.) In order for it to be as such, Mastroianni’s Baron Fernando Cefalù must trick his wife, a needy, whiny woman his own age (the horror!), into committing adultery. Often considered an overlooked master of Italian filmmaking, Germi’s oeuvre reflects a variety of styles and influences, from his neorealist roots to his passion for Hollywood movies, an amalgamation of which accounts for the nimble contradiction that is DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE. It’s this and the narrative’s perverse logic that recalls Wilder’s own refractory capriciousness, both subtly challenging societal norms while simultaneously enervating the very people who distrust them and those who appear to overlook the resulting suppression. In short, depiction is not necessarily condonation. Just as frustrating—and entertaining—as the very mores it’s satirizing is its maddening trajectory towards a most fatuous conclusion. That is, until the other shoe finally drops in the film’s final moments, a sign of an auteur wholly committed to the farce. Enough can’t be said of Mastroianni’s performance; in one scene, the town rushes to a public screening of Federico Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA, Fernando narrating the excitement with a cool irony that only the star of both films could accomplish. This scene is similarly apropos of Germi, whose films were a commercial success (DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE was nominated for three Academy Awards and won one for Best Original Screenplay) in spite of his being eclipsed by the arthouse ambitions of contemporaries Fellini and Antonioni. He was a true man of the moment—that upon further examination his films accomplish the very thematic breadth they were thought to have sacrificed in lieu of entertainment value is emblematic of his indistinct artistry. (1961, 108 min, 35mm) KS
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's WORLD ON A WIRE (German Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Sunday, 7pm
Billy Wilder reportedly thought of Pietro Germi as his Italian counterpart, a consideration that’s perhaps most obvious in the latter’s hit comedy, DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE. The ever-charming Marcello Mastroianni stars as a baron who decides to kill his wife so that he’s free to marry his 16-year-old cousin, the impetus being an archaic Italian law that allows for leniency for crimes of passion. (Similarly archaic is the fact that divorce was illegal in Italy until 1970; the correlation of the two laws, one seemingly more “modern” than the other, provides the steady foundation on which the rest of this towering farce is based.) In order for it to be as such, Mastroianni’s Baron Fernando Cefalù must trick his wife, a needy, whiny woman his own age (the horror!), into committing adultery. Often considered an overlooked master of Italian filmmaking, Germi’s oeuvre reflects a variety of styles and influences, from his neorealist roots to his passion for Hollywood movies, an amalgamation of which accounts for the nimble contradiction that is DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE. It’s this and the narrative’s perverse logic that recalls Wilder’s own refractory capriciousness, both subtly challenging societal norms while simultaneously enervating the very people who distrust them and those who appear to overlook the resulting suppression. In short, depiction is not necessarily condonation. Just as frustrating—and entertaining—as the very mores it’s satirizing is its maddening trajectory towards a most fatuous conclusion. That is, until the other shoe finally drops in the film’s final moments, a sign of an auteur wholly committed to the farce. Enough can’t be said of Mastroianni’s performance; in one scene, the town rushes to a public screening of Federico Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA, Fernando narrating the excitement with a cool irony that only the star of both films could accomplish. This scene is similarly apropos of Germi, whose films were a commercial success (DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE was nominated for three Academy Awards and won one for Best Original Screenplay) in spite of his being eclipsed by the arthouse ambitions of contemporaries Fellini and Antonioni. He was a true man of the moment—that upon further examination his films accomplish the very thematic breadth they were thought to have sacrificed in lieu of entertainment value is emblematic of his indistinct artistry. (1961, 108 min, 35mm) KS
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Frank Perry's THE SWIMMER (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Friday, 7 and 9pm, and Sunday, 1:30pm
In this glaringly underrated sixties classic, Frank Perry reimagines John Cheever's twelve page story as a modern American epic, a cross between The Odyssey and King Lear. Burt Lancaster plays Ned Merrill, an earnest and libidinous man who wakes up one day and decides to swim all the pools in his posh Connecticut suburb in a quixotic attempt to "swim home." Lancaster is spot on as the "suburban stud" with an "inexplicable contempt for men who don't hurl themselves into pools." Though it has always had its fans (both Roger Ebert and Lancaster himself considered it to be the actor's best performance), the film has never found a wider audience, perhaps because it is so coy about revealing its true intentions. Stylistically, the script, performances, and camerawork are mannered to the point of parody, but we are not always sure when we are supposed to be laughing. And we are equally unsure of what to think of Merrill and his quest. One moment we are fully immersed in his magical thinking, and the next moment we have an ironic distance from it. It is this stylistic and ideological ambiguity that enables THE SWIMMER to manage a rare feat: to be a savage satire both of bourgeois conformity and anti-bourgeois romanticism at the same time. (1968, 95 min, 35mm) ML
Lizzie Borden's BORN IN FLAMES (American Revival)
Cinema 53 at the Harper Theater (5238 S. Harper) – Thursday, 7pm (Free Admission)
Lizzie Borden’s 1983 film has a concept, style, and politics that are still radical and relevant. Railing against the patriarchal and racist structures that remained in even the most progressive corners of American Society after the '60s and '70s, we are thrust into a feature length narrative of critique. Borden is able to place her ideology front and center, but also let the story sneak up around it. Embracing the gritty look of both 16mm film and the more battered parts of New York City in the early '80s, and combining them with an objective camera, she uses her low-budget as a storytelling asset. The world in which the anarchist movement dubbed the Women's Army carries out its counterrevolutionary campaign of pirate radio and direct action is rendered complete through a skillful combination of narrative and documentary modes. Artificial news clips about the progress of the current Socialist government and covert operations of the Women's Army's are mixed with observational shots of unemployed men and women on the streets, and we are constantly reminded of the veiled nature of the allegory. Other fictional scenes feel like we're watching the unedited negotiations between rival factions in a civil war as shot by an embedded cameraperson. When the pirate radio DJ—who acts as the film's voiceover—declares that the true nature of socialism is constant revolution, it seems a natural reinforcement of the film's message, rather than a didactic add-on. Managing to tow the line between preaching and pandering is not an easy task when taking on the very fiber of our society, and rarely has a film done it with such ease. Followed by a conversation with critic B. Ruby Rich, author Ytasha Womack, and University of Chicago professor Jacqueline Stewart. (1983, 90 min, Video Projection) JH
Agnès Varda and JR's FACES PLACES (New Documentary)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:15am
I love this sportive, altogether magical film—it's light and simple and funny, and all the more profound for it. FACES PLACES is a buddy/road trip comedy about a deepening cross-generational friendship; it's also an insightful documentary, a mutual portrait of two unique artists whose visions harmonize. Agnès Varda, who was 88 at the time of shooting, is of course the legendary French New Wave pioneer (before even Chabrol's LE BEAU SERGE, there was Varda's LA POINTE COURTE, in 1955). JR, 33, is a street artist known for making giant, collaborative outdoor image installations. Together, they drive around the French countryside in JR's photo-booth van, which spits out large-format pictures of the people they meet at beaches, ports, factories, and villages, blowing the locals up into massive figures which they paste onto community landmarks. These "framing" structures, whether homes or stacks of cargo containers, nod to personal stories and struggles, and honor unsung people as heroes—dockworkers' wives, a postman, a woman from a mining family who refuses to let her home be demolished. The subjects get to talk back, and to see them interact with their magnified selves, the happiness on their faces, the wonder, or even the bemused ambivalence, is a beautiful thing. Mounting the portraits is a collective, social event in which the subjects themselves participate, creating spectacles as rich and full of humanity as Hollywood's are empty and dehumanized. They paste an image of Varda's late friend, the photographer Guy Bourdin, to the side of a German WWII bunker that's fallen onto a beach. In the image he's very young, almost a boy, and the bunker seems to cradle him. When they come back the next day, the image has been washed away by the tide. How fleeting is memory, how fleeting are the years. How fragile, finally, is life. That's why there's a certain urgency to their work: as JR says, we must get as many images as we can, before it's too late. Varda is happy, even as she finds her vision growing dim and her memory fading. She feels herself winding down, but her curiosity about other people remains undimmed. The two laugh a lot, teasing each other. He is irreverent with her in a somehow deeply respectful manner—which is to say, he's never patronizing. (You are good to old people, she tells him at one point, as they visit his grandmother, who's pushing 100). Their friendship is a real dialogue, and as it deepens, we sense he'd do anything for her. Well, almost anything: he lives behind dark glasses, and a running joke in the film has Varda trying to coax him out of them, just as she was once able to do with the young Jean-Luc Godard. Speaking of Godard, I mustn't reveal too much of a final surprise involving their pilgrimage to reconnect with him. (As a factory worker, admiring the group portrait of his co-workers, points out, art is meant to surprise us.) I'll only say the scene finds just the right strain of wistfulness on which to end, evoking, cryptically but movingly, happy days with Varda's late husband, the great Jacques Demy. FACES PLACES is about history and memory and the power of imagination. It is about art and life—the ways they mirror each other, and what's important in both: love and creativity and travel and leaping at chances, and seeing things that make you dream. It is about the life force—as, at its best, was the French New Wave. At one point Varda and JR recreate Godard's famous race through the Louvre, and I actually bounced in my seat and clapped. In the end, they photograph faces because faces are beautiful, and every face tells a story. It is as simple—and as profound—as that. (2017, 89 min, DCP Digital) SP
Amat Escalante’s THE UNTAMED (New Mexican/Danish)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7 and 9pm, and Sunday, 3:30pm
[Note: spoilers!] Fiercely original in subject matter, THE UNTAMED is an exploration into primal instinct and urges. Alejandra and Ángel’s marriage has grown distant, thanks in large part to Ángel secretly cheating on his wife with her brother, Fabián, who is a doctor. Meanwhile, Verónica has recently become friends with Fabián after she’s been admitted to the hospital for bite wounds she suffered from an obscure creature featured during the film’s opening. It is discovered that this creature is actually an alien that arrived on Earth via a meteorite and that causes both humans and animals to succumb to their most immediate and primal urges, primarily sex (including acts performed with the alien itself). While capable of instilling great pleasure, the alien has a more sadistic side that doles out pain to those that it grows tired of. This interweaving of carnal yearnings and forbidden love triangles is what makes THE UNTAMED so distinct. Amat Escalante creates a shroud of mystery over the film, as only slivers of backstory are revealed, in piecemeal. Striving for a sense of realism in sci-fi can be ham-fisted at times, but Escalante combats this by sticking the viewer right in the action through his use of natural lightning and diegetic sound. His dual use of light to create a sense of warmth when things are good and the void that is left when these features are not employed leave the viewer in a sort of moral purgatory as the characters are left to traverse their emotional landscapes. THE UNTAMED is a hypersexual mystery about the innate desires of mankind and how those notions can all shift when an enlightening figure forces introspection. (2016, 100 min, DCP Digital) KC
Kogonada's COLUMBUS (New American)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Venue website for showtimes
I cherish Kogonada's COLUMBUS for what it values, and questions, in architecture and cinema both. At the same time, it's a thoughtful, moving story of a budding friendship that becomes a form of love, and a middle-aged man contemplating a parent's mortality. Kogonada is a justly celebrated video essayist; I highly recommend you visit his site, kogonada.com, and check out his beautiful, exhilarating video essays on the likes of Ozu, Godard, Bresson, Bergman, Malick, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, and Kore-eda. He wrote, directed and edited this dramatic feature debut, and he's filled it with compositional homages: Kubrick's one-point perspective, Ozu's passageways, Bergman's mirrors. It's about a pensive, melancholy middle-aged man (John Cho) who arrives in Columbus, Indiana, from Seoul, after his estranged father, a noted professor of architecture, falls into a coma. Columbus is a small, rural midwestern town that also happens to be a kind of open-air museum, where some of the greatest figures in Mid-Century Modern architecture created masterpieces of the form. (Just for starters, there's First Christian Church by Eliel Saarinen, North Christian Church by his son Eero, and Michael Van Valkenburgh's beautiful Mill Race Park, with its covered bridge and lookout tower.) While waiting on the fate of his father, Cho forms a friendship with a bright, young working-class woman (Haley Lu Richardson), an "architecture nerd" who's stayed in town a year after high school because she's essentially a mother for her own mother, a recovered meth addict (Michelle Forbes). He also gets reacquainted with his father's protégé (Parker Posey), who's just a couple years older than he. We only see his father, truly, at the beginning: from a distance, standing with his back to us in the gardens of Eero Saarinen's famous Miller House. (Watch for, and think about, how this sequence is mirrored later in the film.) Yet his father's absence is seen and felt throughout, as Cho moves through the man's vacated rooms at the historic Inn at Irwin Gardens: in a game of Chinese checkers with the absent man, in his hat on a chair. (Kogonada frequently deploys still-life views, absent of the people who were present before, or will be later.) The movie features beautifully-played interaction by the actors, as they circle and discover one another and make, or miss, connections. (As in Bresson, Kogonada's characters express feelings beyond words with hands: a squeeze, a caress.) Previously known for comedy, Cho gives a fine dramatic performance. Richardson is amused by other people, and I enjoyed watching that amusement break over her face, as well as the wonder when she engages the buildings, tracing their contours with her hand. She's also good at showing the wrenching burden for a young person of carrying the world on her shoulders. At the local library, designed by I.M. Pei, she shelves books alongside her co-worker, a thoughtful grad student who's not quite her boyfriend (Rory Culkin, who tickled me, as he does her, with the earnest way he engages ideas.) At the Republic newspaper offices, a historic building designed by Myron Goldsmith, Richardson applies for a newsroom job; this also happens to be where her mother cleans at night. This gets to the crux of Kogonada's concerns. What is the effect of these buildings, if any, on contemporary everyday life? What is the legacy for modern human beings of the modernists' promise that architecture could change the world? That, as Polshek believed, architecture is the healing art, the one that has the power to restore? If the buildings are just the unnoticed, almost unseen, places where people live and work, whose failure is it, if anyone's? As shot by Elisha Christian, Columbus is a magical place, but there's something forlorn about it, as well, as if the buildings are telling their own story about the way their spirit has been abandoned. For her part, Richardson likes to park her car in the middle of the night and sit in front of Deborah Berke's Irwin Union Bank, glowing ghostly in the darkness. She tells Cho the story of how she'd probably seen it a thousand times, until the day, near her darkest hour, when she finally saw it. Suddenly, the place she'd lived her whole life felt different. There is a vision here, of art as comfort, and maybe even life-saver, that at least begins to answer some of the questions the film’s asking. (2017, 104 min, DCP Digital) SP
Sergei Eisenstein's OCTOBER: TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (Soviet Revival)
Facets Cinémathèque – Monday, 6:30pm (Free Admission)
Eisenstein's retelling of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 is a breathtaking piece of silent filmmaking. A swift and sweeping treatment of the struggle between the bourgeois provisional government and the Lenin-led Bolsheviks, OCTOBER recreates events with such ambition that they appear documentary in style. Conversely, the film benefits from the maturation of Eisenstein's theories of the montage— moving from one of locations in STRIKE to one of "intellect" and metaphor. From Senses of Cinema: "The power-mad dandy Kerenskii is intercut with a mechanical peacock and, through multiple exposures, a tank smashes a statue of Napoleon on Kerenskii's desk." Today, these visualizations of metaphor and symbol are so ingrained in the language of film, it is curious to read of Eisenstein's sanctioning by the Party Conference on Cinema for his "bourgeois formalism." Despite this, OCTOBER connects with audiences through its celebratory narrative. Eisenstein evokes a passion in his propaganda held over from the heady time his film depicts. Volunteers massed at the revolution's landmarks—many still standing in renamed Leningrad—to film key battles and events, and this awe adds to the film's intensity. Still raising heart rates decades later, OCTOBER is a landmark in its own right. Followed by a discussion led by University of Chicago professor Yuri Tsivian. (1928, 110 min, Video Projection) BW
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) screens Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki’s 2017 US/Mexican documentary EL MAR LA MAR (94 min, DCP Digital) on Thursday at 7pm, with Sniadecki in person. Free admission.
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Lost Landscapes: A Night with Rick Prelinger on Friday at 7:30pm, with film archivist Prelinger in person. Prelinger will be screening selections from his compilation film LOST LANDSCAPES OF SAN FRANCISCO; and on Wednesday at 8pm, it’s Christian Gridelli’s 2015 independent film THE ORIGINS OF WIT AND HUMOR (92 min, Video Projection). Free admission.
South Side Projections and the DuSable Museum (740 E. 56th Pl.) screen Jennifer Abod’s 2002 documentary THE EDGE OF EACH OTHER’S BATTLES: THE VISION OF AUDRE LORDE (59 min, DVD Projection) on Tuesday at 7pm. Free admission.
South Side Projections and the Smart Museum of Art presents Almudena Carracedo’s 2007 documentary MADE IN L.A. (70 min, DVD Projection) on Wednesday at 7pm at Casa Michoacán (1638 S. Blue Island Ave.). Followed by a panel discussion. Free admission.
The Cinepocalypse festival continues at the Music Box Theatre Friday-Thursday, with a slate of new horror and genre films, retrospective films (many on 35mm), and related documentaries. Guests include: director Larry Cohen, screenwriter Joe Carnahan, actor Antonio Fargas, actor Eric Roberts, screenwriter Simon Barrett, actress Barbara Crampton, and actress Jessica Harper. Visit the Music Box website for a complete lineup.
The Mostra Brazilian Film Series begins on Friday and continues through November 12 at various locations. Full schedule at www.mostrafilmseries.org.
The Blue Fish Japanese Environmental Documentary Film Festival presents three episodes from Junko Kajino and Ed M. Koziarski’s in-progress documentary series UNCANNY TERRAIN (Unconfirmed Running Time, Digital Projection) on Sunday at 6:30pm at the Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.), with the directors in person.
The Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema continues through Sunday at various locations in Chicago, Glenview, and Skokie. Full schedule at http://israelifilmchi.org.
Asian Pop Up Cinema presents Akira Nagai’s 2017 Japanese film TEIICHI – BATTLE OF SUPREME HIGH (118 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 7pm at AMC River East 21 (322 E. Illinois St.) www.asianpopupcinema.org
The Chicago International Movies and Music Festival (CIMMFest) opens on Thursday and continues through November 12. Full schedule at http://cimmfest.org.
The Chicago International Children's Film Festival Sunday at Facets Cinémathèque and other locations. Visit www.facets.org for a full schedule.
The Midwest Independent Film Festival presents Advertising Community Shorts Night on Tuesday at 6pm at the Landmark's Century Centre Cinema (2828 N. Clark St.). There’s a reception at 6pm, a producers panel at 6:30, and the screening at 7:30pm. http://www.midwestfilm.com
Black Cinema House (at the Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) screens Lauren Lazin’s 2003 documentary TUPAC: RESURRECTION (112 min, Video Projection) on Friday at 7pm. Free admission.
Also 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 7:30pm. Free admission. www.northbrook.info/events/film
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Bong Joon-ho’s 2017 South Korean/US film OKJA (118 min, DCP Digital) screens on Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 3pm, Wednesday at 6pm, and Thursday at 8:15pm; Jean Stéphane Bron’s 2017 documentary THE PARIS OPERA (110 min, DCP Digital) and local filmmaker Stephen Cone’s 2017 film PRINCESS CYD (96 min, DCP Digital; check the Siskel website for in-person guests) both play for a week; Sylvain Chomet’s 2010 French animated film THE ILLUSIONIST (80 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 5:15pm and Tuesday at 6pm, with a lecture by film scholar Donald Crafton at the Tuesday show; and Oscar Bucher’s 2017 documentary/stage performance film NELSON ALGREN LIVE (77 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 5pm, with author/actor Barry Gifford and publisher/producer Dan Simon in discussion with local critic (and Cine-File contributor) Rob Christopher moderating.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Ryszard Bugajski’s 1982 Polish film INTERROGATION (118 min, 35mm) is on Tuesday at 7pm; and Francis Ford Coppola’s 1990 film THE GODFATHER, PART III (170 min, 35mm) is on Wednesday at 7pm; and Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film BLACK SWAN (108 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 9:30pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Ai Weiwei’s 2017 documentary HUMAN FLOW (140 min, DCP Digital) opens, with limited showtimes; Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman’s 2017 UK/Polish animated film LOVING VINCENT (94 min, DCP Digital) continues with 4:30pm only screenings daily; and Michael Roberts' 2017 documentary MANOLO: THE BOY WHO MADE SHOES FOR LIZARDS (89 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 10am.
Also at Facets Cinémathèque this week: Morten Traavik and Ugis Olte’s 2016 Norwegian/Latvian documentary LIBERATION DAY (100 min, Video Projection) screens from Monday-Thursday (with two additional shows on November 11).
Sinema Obscura screens David A. Holcombe’s 2013 film CITY OF LUST [aka YELLOW] (77 min, Video Projection) on Monday at 7:30pm at Township (2200 N. California Ave.).
Instituto Cervantes (31 W. Ohio St.) screens Eduardo de la Serna, Lucas Marcheggiano, and Adriana Yurcovich’s 2009 Argentinean documentary THE PEDDLER [EL AMBULANTE] (84 min, DVD Projection) on Tuesday at 6pm. Free admission.
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: November 3 - November 9, 2017
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Kyle Cubr, Jason Halperin, Mojo Lorwin, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael G. Smith, Brian Welesko