CRUCIAL VIEWING
Masahiro Shinoda’s PALE FLOWER (Japanese Revival)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm
The Japanese New Wave classic PALE FLOWER is a noir tragedy wrapped up in some of the most dynamic filmmaking of that cinematic movement, with incredible framing, punchy editing, and supercool performances. The black-and-white widescreen cinematography is alone worth the price of admission; Masahiro Shinoda and director of photography Masao Kosugi use the format brilliantly, rendering nighttime Tokyo a world to get lost in and punctuating the drama with purposely disorienting close-ups. The narrative comprises a seductive dive into futility and loss. Muraki is a middle-aged gangster newly released from prison after serving three years for killing a man. He returns to his old haunts, assuming his place in the yakuza clan for which he served time. Yet the crime world leaves him cold; a sense of impassive despair prevents him from taking pleasure in his associations with his fellow yakuza and his old girlfriend. Little fazes him, even the attempts on his life made by members of a rival clan. (This is one of the most existential crime movies this side of Jean-Luc Godard’s BREATHLESS.) He finds satisfaction in gambling, however, spending his nights in low-lit dens and risking increasingly large sums over card games. In this world, he meets a fellow obsessive, a young woman named Saeko who finds as much of a thrill in gambling as he does. They enter into a chaste relationship, and this provides the emotional heart of the film. “While roundly acclaimed a masterpiece in retrospect, PALE FLOWER didn’t originally turn out quite to the pleasure of all involved,” Chuck Stephens wrote for the Criterion Collection in 2011. “[Screenwriter Ataru] Baba especially was incensed at the ways he felt Shinoda’s dazzling technique and dizzying cutting obscured the script he had labored over and overemphasized its implicit nihilism... Forever conflating visions of liberation and confinement, PALE FLOWER (whose Japanese title, Kawaita hana, translates more literally as ‘dry’ or ‘withered’ flower, clearly indicating that death, more than simple pallor is what’s most clearly at stake) begins with an image of freedom—sculptor Fumio Asakura’s Degas-like depiction of a woman with arms spread wide to the sky, Tsubasa-no-zo (Statue of Wings), a long-familiar landmark at Tokyo’s Ueno Station—and closes with the enormous, tomblike doors of a prison yard clanging shut. The infernal banging of heavy industry, unseen but overheard from sources somewhere far off-screen, recurrently fills the air, and hearses seem forever on patrol in the city’s streets. A mysterious junkie hit man prowls the shadows, flinging scalpels at Muraki as he navigates the night, searching for a single burning flame in the urban purgatory the aging gangster has already long since recognized as overrun with half-living citizens, their daily commute a zombie march, their new Japan a Land of the Rising Dead.” Preceded by René Jodoin’s 1961 Canadian animated film DANCE SQUARED [Danse carrée] (3 min, 16mm). (1964, 96 min, 35mm) BS
Black Radical Imagination (New Experimental/Oppositional Viewing)
Art Institute of Chicago (Fullerton Hall), Thursday, 6pm (Free with museum admission—which is free on Thursdays for Illinois residents, though a ticket is required)
The fifth iteration of Black Radical Imagination, the annual touring program of Afrofuturist and other films of the African Diaspora curated by Chicago-based filmmaker Amir George and LA-based curator Erin Christovale, expands on the restless exploration of previous BRI shows and remains one of the must-see film events of the year. Jamilah Sabur’s PLAYING POSSUM is the revelation of the program, a sort of Maya Deren-influenced take on iconic images of the moon landing, but supplanting the all-white-male moon landers with high-contrast footage of a Black woman dancer. Like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planting the American flag on the moon and symbolically claiming the satellite for the US, Sabur seizes that flag, a haunting claim on the past and the future. Suné Woods’s FALLING TO GET HERE obliquely examines relations between Black women and men using seemingly unrelated video—a woman writhes/dances alone in bed, a couple embraces or struggles with each other while spinning underwater, a woman questions a half-asleep man about love of self and of others, and so on—along with poems by Fred Moten that sometimes intersect with but sometimes play against the images. Woods talks about the mathematical concept of the asymptote (in lay terms, a line and a curve that get infinitely closer to each other without ever touching) in her program notes, which also worked as a fitting metaphor for my reception of the film, which I feel like I can’t completely understand, even though I might get close. Christopher Harris’ 2004 found-footage masterpiece RECKLESS EYEBALLING (16mm) juxtaposes footage of Pam Grier and images of Angela Davis with images of men looking at them drawn most notably from Blaxploitation films and D.W. Griffith’s BIRTH OF A NATION, digging into the fraught subject of the (mostly white) male gaze and the very real historical and present-day dangers of looking and being looked at for Black people in the United States. Harris’ HALIMUHFACK and Woods’s A FEELING LIKE CHAOS also screen as part of the program. Post-screening Q&A with Christovale, George, and Woods. (Various Dates, approx. 48 min total, Digital Video and 16mm) MWP
Ernst Lubitsch's CLUNY BROWN (American Revival)
Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm
The ending of Ernst Lubitsch's CLUNY BROWN—his last completed film before his death in 1947—is a bittersweet one. It's hard to watch it and not recall the famous anecdote in which Billy Wilder, at Lubitsch's funeral, mournfully said, "No more Lubitsch," to which William Wyler responded, "Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures." The film follows a Czech anti-Nazi refugee, Adam Belinski (Charles Boyer), and a young housemaid, the eponymous Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones), after an apropos meet-cute. Belinski is a much-lauded public intellectual whose denunciation of the Nazis provides a stark contrast to the largely apathetic British society in which the story takes place. (It's a true comedy of manners, but the political subtext adds an edge that makes the satire more penetrating than humorous.) Cluny is a young working-class woman who becomes a parlor maid after it's discovered that she has an affinity for plumbing. They meet again when Cluny is assigned to serve the household at which Belinski is staying. Romance ensues, though not necessarily for Cluny and Belinski—at least, not just yet. It's an intriguing combination of the best elements of Lubitsch's earlier and later films; Belinski's sage playfulness is reminiscent of Maurice Chevalier and Herbert Marshall's Lubitsch characters, and the chemist whom Cluny initially falls in love with reminds one of Lubitsch regular Edward Everett Horton. It also features the most fully realized lower-class characters of any Lubitsch film, a trend the director introduced in NINOTCHKA (1939) and expanded upo in THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940). It's not a perfect culmination, but, even as a circumstantial one (Lubitsch had been working on THAT LADY IN ERMINE when he died), it encapsulates much of what made his films so unparagoned. Preceded by Dave Fleischer’s 1938 Popeye cartoon PLUMBING IS A ‘PIPE’ (8 min, 16mm). (1946, 100 min, 35mm) KS
Ken Loach’s I, DANIEL BLAKE (New British)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
It’s been slightly over a year since Ken Loach won his second Palme d’Or at Cannes for I, DANIEL BLAKE (he won his first in 2006 for THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY), where he joined an exclusive list of just seven others that have shared such distinction. Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) is 59-year old carpenter out on disability due to a recent heart attack and living in Newcastle, but his disability payments are threatened when the bureaucratic entity that pays them out deems him fit for work despite his doctor telling him otherwise. He forms an unlikely bond with Katie (Hayley Squires), a single mother of two kids, whose aid he comes to when he feels she’s also being treated unfairly by the same people. At its core, I, DANIEL BLAKE is a moving drama with dark humor elements about fighting the system and standing up for what one believes in. Daniel is painted as the ‘everyman’ trying to take on a broken system in a display of fierce individualism as well as trying to contribute the greater good of his community. On the matter of subtext, tinges of Brexit bleed from every corner as Loach’s film is unabashedly political and the ideology of ‘taking back control’ sold as the purpose for leaving the European Union aligns with Daniel’s quest. Much of the film deals with the ‘System’s’ failure to properly care for those that need its help most. Rife with social commentary on the current British political situation, I, DANIEL BLAKE is heartfelt and honest. The hyper-realism that Loach strives for makes it feel as though the situation is happening to a close family member, and the audience cannot help but empathize with Daniel’s plight. (2016, 100 min, DCP Digital) KC
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Jean-Pierre Melville's LEON MORIN, PRIEST (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 5:15pm and Thursday, 6pm
France, the Occupation, black and white, a town like a rocky outcropping onto which the ocean washes up those with either the resolve or the luck not to drown. In a back room women plot to baptize their half-Jewish children like long-time crooks planning a heist. Part of what we love about crime films is that, in a sense, society turns us all into petty criminals of some kind; if not by laws, then by customs. Especially women. Emmanuelle Riva, atheist, decides to have a laugh at the expense of a poor abbé by confronting him at confession. But on the other side of the lattice is Leon Morin, a country priest with no use for a diary. They end up talking. "The presbytery is opposite the cinema," he tells her. He's giving directions, but we know what it means. The ultimate subject of movies is light, and for that reason filmmakers are so often attracted to darkness; the ultimate milieu of movies is the world, and for that reason filmmakers are so often attracted by the idea of church. LEON MORIN, PRIEST features a standout performance by iconic actor Jean-Paul Belmondo: no other of his performances is quite like it. It's he who plays Morin, with his usual cocky swagger transformed into an anarchic, absolute confidence. In Melville's body of work, out of all of those characters struggling to free themselves, he is the only one who's completely free, and it's because he is bound to a duty. (1961, 130 min, 35mm) IV
Harold Ramis' CADDYSHACK (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Tuesday, 7:30pm
There's no reason this movie should work. The protagonist is the film's least interesting character. The gags are scattershot. The performances (to put it mildly) vary wildly in tone. The cinematography is indifferent. And the badly mixed soundtrack does no favors to Kenny Loggins. Yet CADDYSHACK is some kind of comedy masterpiece, as well as one of the '80s most quotable movies. Freud got himself hopelessly tangled up in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious by trying to explain what's funny and what isn't, but he excels at explaining the why: "Though as children we are still endowed with a powerful inherited disposition to hostility, we are later taught by a higher personal civilization that it is an unworthy thing to use abusive language; and even where fighting has in itself remained permissible, the number of things which may not be employed as methods of fighting has extraordinarily increased...The prevention of invective or of insulting rejoinders by external circumstances is such a common case that tendentious jokes are especially favoured in order to make aggressiveness or criticism possible against persons in exalted positions who claim to exercise authority. The joke then represents a rebellion against that authority, a liberation from its pressure. The charm of caricatures lies in this same factor: we laugh at them even if they are unsuccessful simply because we count rebellion against authority as a merit." In other words, about 75 years in advance, Freud predicted not only the occurrence of a Rodney Dangerfield/Ted Knight faceoff, but that it would take place on a golf course. Screening as part of critic Mark Caro’s “Is It Still Funny?” series. (1980, 98 min, 35mm) RC
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's HOUSE (HAUSU) (Japanese Revival/Cult)
Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight
It's a film like HOUSE, a film so manic, so bewildering and so singular, that makes one become obsessed with its genesis. The film's abrupt stylistic shifts and bizarre visual effects fill one's mind with but one question: "who the hell made this movie?" It would surprise no one then to learn that Nobuhiko Ôbayashi was an experimental filmmaker--nor would it surprise anyone that he made TV ads--previous to HOUSE. What is surprising is that his forays into experimental films were that of the lyrical psychodrama, more akin to Gregory Markopoulos than, say, Pat O'Neill. CONFESSION (1968) is Obayashi's most visually complex experimental work, and even that only uses creative editing between shots and the occasional unorthodox camera angle. HOUSE's genius lies in its veritable catalogue of optical effects, displaying a virtuosity previously unseen from its maker. And yet, the film is more than just a sum of its traveling matte parts. True, its paper-thin plot does serve only to move from one novel death to the next, but this is the essence of all horror films. Like some giddy, crazed, superior version of THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES (1971), HOUSE provides a fat-trimmed index of inventive ways to die, all with tongue placed firmly in cheek. (1977, 88 min, 35mm) DM
Brett Story’s THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES (New Experimental/Documentary/Oppositional Viewing)
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (800 S. Halsted St.) – Monday, 6pm (Free Admission)
To borrow a time-tested contrivance from my lazier college days, a landscape is defined by the dictionary as being both “the landforms of a region in the aggregate” and “a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place.” In her documentary THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES, director Brett Story examines the prison-industrial complex in the context of both definitions. It tells a holistic story through twelve vignettes that likewise demand individual consideration, rejecting a more conventional episodic structure in lieu of something more suitable to its subject matter. While the topic of prisons as industry, privatized or not, is a hot-button issue, Story instead focuses on the industries in, around, and related to prisons rather than the prison industry itself. In an interview with writer and filmmaker Astra Taylor for Filmmaker magazine, Story says that “[t]he political impact of [most films about prison and those in it] is then tethered to the sympathy that they might or might not generate from an audience.” Her film boldly abandons the dichotomy so inherent to the genre, instead using her art to convey facts and create connections that might otherwise go overlooked. My favorite vignettes encapsulate this rather strategic approach: one goes inside the Quicken Loans headquarters in Detroit, and the other is about a man who’s made a business out of selling prison-approved items to people looking to send goods to their incarcerated friends and family members. The former is inherently exploitative regardless of its tenuous connection to prisons, while the latter is an arguably mercenary industry born of circumstance and ingenuity. In another vignette, Story exposes how many rural areas rely on prisons as a source of jobs for its economically distressed occupants. With a PhD in geography and a background in journalism, on top of impressive filmmaking chops, it’s no wonder that Story is able to objectively merge facts and images in such an artful way. We need films like this more than ever. We have the stories and the feelings they arise, but we must also have the facts, and Story combines these seemingly antithetical entities into a cohesive work that has as much power to sway as it does to awe. Followed by a discussion with Jess Heaney from Critical Resistance. (2016, 87 min, Digital Projection) KS
Ana Lily Amirpour's A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (Contemporary American)
Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight
Distributor Kino/Lorber cannily but misleadingly marketed A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT as the "first Iranian vampire western." The film's writer/director, Ana Lily Amirpour, was born in London to Iranian parents and raised in America; it was shot in Bakersfield, California (standing in for a fictional Iranian ghost town named "Bad City"); the cast consists almost entirely of Persian-American actors speaking Farsi; and, aside from a stray spaghetti-western-inflected song or two on the diegetic-heavy soundtrack, the movie bears almost no relationship whatsoever to the western genre. It would be more accurate to describe this stylishly crafted, auspicious debut feature as an adult version of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN--a poignant love story about the coming together of two lonely souls, one of whom just happens to be a vampire. The fact that the titular bloodsucker is a hijab-wearing young woman (the excellent Sheila Vand) who only preys on "bad men" has drawn both political and feminist allegorical readings from critics, although this is arguably giving too much credit to a film whose substance is primarily to be found in its surface pleasures. Still, what a surface. Amirpour and director of photography Lyle Vincent weave a potent alchemical magic with their high-contrast black-and-white cinematography--Amirpour's almost exclusive focus on nighttime exteriors in weird industrial locations (i.e., Bakersfield's oil refineries, factories, and railroad yards) recalls the nightmarish atmosphere of her hero David Lynch's ERASERHEAD but, combined with her impeccable taste in pop-music cues, creates a dreamy/druggy vibe that is both entrancing and wholly her own. It's probably too early to tell whether the movie's weaker second half is the result of Amirpour's failure to build narrative momentum or a byproduct of the fact that her true talents may lie outside the realm of traditional storytelling altogether; A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT's single best moment is a non-sequitur involving a drag-queen dancing with a balloon. In this startling non-narrative sequence, the charm of the choreography between performer and balloon is almost perfectly matched by the charm of the choreography between camera and performer. (2014, 99 min, DCP Digital) MGS
Terence Davies’ A QUIET PASSION (New British)
Music Box Theatre – Check Venue website for showtimes
Substance aside, I remember three things from my early literary education: One, that William Shakespeare may not have written the classic plays attributed to him, and that other persons ranging from Christopher Marlowe to Queen Elizabeth could have in fact been the “real” Bard; two, that Charles Dickens allegedly wrote such long novels because he was paid by the word; and three, that noted poet Emily Dickinson was a notorious recluse who rarely left her home. To a young mind yearning to discover that fact is indeed stranger than fiction, these claims, now largely demystified, inspired as much interest as their subjects’ venerated oeuvres. Dickinson’s circumstances, however, beguiled me more than the others. Sure, a clandestine literary scandal and felicitous business acumen are intriguing, but her self-imposed sequestration resonated with my pre-teen self (“The Soul selects her own Society —/Then — shuts the Door —/To her divine Majority —/” she writes in Poem 303). And though the idiosyncrasies of her confinement are better understood thanks in part to a myriad of click-bait listicles with headlines like “Most Exaggerated/Bizarre/Just Plain Stupid Myths About Writers with Brown Hair” or whatever, critics still made a point of decrying Dickinson’s life as being inherently uncinematic when writing about Terence Davies’ A QUIET PASSION. On the contrary, her life is ripe for filmic rendering, and Davies succeeds in evoking the richness of an oft-ignored subject—a woman’s byzantine interior, wontedly suppressed beneath a slavish exterior. (Dickinson laments in Poem 764: “My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - /In Corners - till a Day /The Owner passed - identified -/And carried Me away -.”) A biopic is an interesting choice for a director celebrated for his fiercely personal fixations, though all of his films since THE LONG DAY CLOSES (1992) with the exception of one (OF TIME AND THE CITY in 2008, his only documentary) have dealt with broader themes, having as their source an array of books (THE NEON BIBLE, THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, and SUNSET SONG) as well as a play (THE DEEP BLUE SEA). Still, it’s clear that Davies chooses sources close to his personal interests; in addition to possessing a fervent love of poetry, Davies presents Dickinson, who’s played brilliantly by Cynthia Nixon in yet another of the director's’ perfect, albeit surprising, casting choices (Emma Bell as the teenaged Emily is also amazing), as a feminist hero who rallied—sometimes with her voice, sometimes with her pen—against various forms of oppression. Two interludes in particular emblazon the film with his auteurist stamp: the first, the literal aging of the central characters, bridging the gap between Dickinson’s religiously rebellious childhood (another personal theme) and her later years initially spent in the company of family and friends, then finally alone in her house before she died at the age of 55 (the myth of her seclusion rooted in some legitimacy), and the second, an auspiciously disparate, documentary-style interlude about the Civil War, complete with music, colorized photographs and jarring death tolls. The former effect—and yes, it is quite an effect—is representative of Davies’ preoccupation with the passing of time, while the latter allows him to include an experience near to his own life—war. Dickinson lived during the Civil War—in fact, it was her most fruitful period, as she wrote almost half her poems over those years—but none of her work references it (in her foreword for The Essential Emily Dickinson, Joyce Carol Oates uses this fact to distinguish Dickinson from Walt Whitman, another 19th century poet, but one for whom the war was material rather than immaterial). This segment, then, serves to divide the film just as Dickinson’s life was seemingly divided between an earlier, more well-adjusted period, during which she had a relatively active social life, and her famed reclusiveness; the concept of life and self before and after war is present in most of Davies’ films, the ultimate human conflict an apt metaphor for any number of internal struggles. Striking widescreen cinematography further illuminates this conflict, but not without a hint of irony—does such a large frame befit a secluded life? Perhaps not, but it does befit a grand mind. Davies’ script complements Dickinson’s poetry, which is either read in voiceover or cleverly integrated into a scene (she reads Poem 260, of “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” fame, to her baby nephew upon meeting him for the first time), though it’s the witty banter, mostly invented by Davies with the writer’s letters as inspiration, that steals the show, revealing Dickinson as the furtive revolutionary she was. He handles her descent into reclusion and her eventual death as tactfully as her more vivacious years were depicted mirthfully; when she dies, we cry with her family, lamenting the loss not only of a great poet, but also a new friend. “And then – the size of this ‘small’ life –/The Sages – call it small –/Swelled – like Horizons – in my vest –/And I sneered – softly – ‘small’!” (Poem 271). (2016, 126 min, DCP Digital) KS
MORE OPPOSITIONAL VIEWING
The Leather Archives & Museum (6418 N. Greenview Ave.) presents Amy Oden’s 2016 documentary EXOTIC (63 min, Video Projection) on Sunday at 2pm, with Oden in person. Co-presented by Sex Worker Outreach Project – Chicago.
Black Cinema House (at the Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Blvd.) presents The Petty Biennial Film Program on Friday at 7pm. Screening are three works from the Open TV online platform, programmed by Aymar Jean Christian: TRIGGERS (Kai Green, 2017), AMBIVERT (Ester Alegria, 2017), and UNTITLED (Derrick Woods-Morrow, 2017); and a block of four works under the program title “Another Spelling of Her Name,” programmed by Anna Martine Whitehead: I WANT TO SEE MY SKIRT (Cauleen Smith, 2006), FALLING TO GET HERE (Suné Woods, 2017), A PORTRAID OF TRUE RED (Danielle Dean, 2016), and REALITY IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH (Rashayla Marie Brown, 2017). Followed by a discussion with the filmmakers and programmers. Free admission.
The Chicago Cultural Center presents Shaleece Haas’ 2016 documentary REAL BOY (72 min, Video Projection), about a mother’s evolving acceptance of her transgender child, on Saturday at 2pm, followed by a discussion. Free admission.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens Jeffrey Blitz’s 2017 film TABLE 19 (87 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 2 and 7:30pm; and Robert Aldrich’s 1964 film HUSH…HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (133 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday at 1 and 7:30pm.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Lone Scherfig’s 2017 UK film THEIR FINEST (117 min, DCP Digital), Avi Nesher’s 2016 Israeli/Polish film PAST LIFE (109 min, DCP Digital), and Danièle Thompson’s 2016 French film CÉZANNE ET MOI (117 min, DCP Digital) all play for a week; and Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1962 French film LE DOULOS (108 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 3pm and Tuesday at 6pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: a program of Laurel and Hardy Shorts is on Saturday at 11:30am, with live accompaniment by Dennis Scott. Screening are archival 35mm prints of TWO TARS (James Parrott, 1928), WRONG AGAIN (Leo McCarey, 1929), BIG BUSINESS (James W. Horne and Leo McCarey, 1929), and SHOULD MARRIED MEN GO HOME? (Leo McCarey and James Parrott, 1928); and an Edgar Wright retrospective, which includes his films A FISTFUL OF FINGERS (1995, 78 min, DCP Digital), SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004, 109 min, 35mm), HOT FUZZ (2007, 121 min, 35mm), SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (2010, 112 min, 35mm), and THE WORLD’S END (2013, 109 min, 35mm). Check the Music Box website for showtimes.
Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) presents the final screening in its NU Docs, a series of works from Northwestern’s MFA in Documentary Media program, on Friday at 7pm. The program, Dreamland, includes work by Timothy Fryett, Hasan Demirtas, and Mina Fitzpatrick Free admission.
Facets Cinémathèque hosts The 15th Annual African Diaspora International Film Festival—Chicago this week. Full schedule at www.facets.org.
Also at the Chicago Cultural Center this week: Cinema/Chicago presents a screening of Maciej Zak’s 2008 Polish film MIDNIGHT TALKS (91 min, Video Projection) on Wednesday at 6:30pm. Free admission.
Sinema Obscura at Township (2200 N. California Ave.) presents TV Party 6 “Crime and Punishment” on Monday at 7pm. The program includes short films by Vincent Zambrano & Jose Patino, Jaysen Buterin, Jason Tostevin, Anya Solotaire & Aaron Eischeid, Sean Richard Budde, Colin Clarke, and others. Free admission.
Instituto Cervantes (31 W. Ohio St.) screens Manuel H. Martín’s 2012 Spanish documentary 30 AÑOS DE OSCURIDAD (85 min, DVD Projection) on Tuesday at 6pm. Free admission.
The Italian Cultural Institute (500 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1450) screens Marco Ponti’s 2015 Italian film LOVING ONLY YOU (96 min, Video Projection) on Tuesday at 6pm. Introduced by Alessia Defraia (Loyola University). Free admission.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
The Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Zhang Peili: Record. Repeat is on view through July 9. The artist’s first US exhibition features over 50 channels of video from 1989-2007. It is on view in Modern Wing galleries 186 and 289.
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: June 9 - June 15, 2017
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Rob Christopher, Kyle Cubr, Doug McLaren, Michael W. Phillips Jr., Michael G. Smith, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky