Check out our blog to see “End of 2017” film (and other things!) lists by many of our contributors.
CRUCIAL VIEWING
Elaine May’s THE HEARTBREAK KID (American Revival)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm
To have the last laugh is to have “the satisfaction of ultimate triumph or success especially after being scorned or regarded as a failure.” A most pure realization of this is evident in Elaine May’s ingeniously nebulous comedies, specifically A NEW LEAF, THE HEARTBREAK KID, and ISHTAR; MIKEY AND NICKY, the third of her four feature-length films, may end too bleakly to be considered a triumph or success, even if there is some vindication to be felt through its caustic schadenfreude. THE HEARTBREAK KID, her second directorial effort following A NEW LEAF, and the first and only of her own films that she didn’t write herself (Neil Simon adapted the script from the short story “A Change of Plan” by Bruce Jay Friedman), is somewhat of an inversion on this adage, any satisfaction there is to extract from its ending felt only by the audience upon the protagonist’s resulting discontent owing to assuredly contemptuous aims. Lenny, a young, Jewish sports equipment salesman played with obdurate integrity by Charles Grodin—his nebbishness so convincing that he’s had to routinely defend himself against assumptions made about his own character after playing such a vexatious figure—is a quintessential schlemiel who rushes into marriage with Lila, a young, Jewish woman whose greatest fault is not being equal parts comely and insipid. (She’s played by Jeannie Berlin, May’s daughter, two and two that weren’t put together by much of the cast and crew until just before filming began. Simon reportedly thought Berlin wasn’t pretty enough—flames, flames on the side of my face—but she went on to not only deliver a fantastic performance—something altogether irrespective of her looks—but also to receive Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for it.) Their already tenuous union, hinging on Lila’s reluctance to have sex before marriage, begins to disintegrate on their honeymoon trip to Miami Beach, where Lenny meets shiksa-goddess Kelly, played perspicaciously by Cybill Shepherd, a classic fair-haired beauty who punishes men for their affection while simultaneously lavishing in it. To borrow an observation from Dave Kehr in his review of MIKEY AND NICKY, THE HEARTBREAK KID “takes the form’s mechanics—its dramatic conventions and tricks of structure—and turns them upside down, exposing just those elements that the form was meant to hide.” But where A NEW LEAF found light in the dark, THE HEARTBREAK KID finds darkness in the ostensibly lighthearted genre that is the rom-com. (Calling it an anti-romantic comedy is too simple, if not incorrect. It embodies all the tenets of traditional romantic comedies up to and including its “ironic” ending. To incorporate Kehr’s point, it doesn’t oppose these elements of the rom-com—it reveals them, which is all the more grim.) The most common dynamic in May's films is that of the pair, which makes for a prime jumping-off point from which to develop them as individual characters. If I had to apply, or in this case, make up, a narrative genre to the film, I’d label it a comedy of proportion. Each element, be it a character or a scene, fits perfectly—but not equally—within the whole. Such a sensibility is part of what accounts for May’s distinct brand of New York Jewish humor, a temperament that balances equitably divided self-loathing with genuine affection for all its targets. THE HEARTBREAK KID has been likened to Mike Nichols’ THE GRADUATE, a comparison which, on the surface, makes sense considering both Nichols and May’s longtime comedic partnership (May even had a bit part in the latter film) and the superficial commonalities in plot. Still, THE GRADUATE is perhaps too romantic, Benjamin Braddock’s banausic attitude presented as depth of character rather than what it really is: disaffected entitlement. About Braddock, Pauline Kael wrote that “[i]f he said anything or had any ideas, the audience would probably hate him....Nichols’ 'gift' is that he lets the audience direct him." May, on the other hand, leaves nothing unsaid in THE HEARTBREAK KID, culminating in a brilliantly vacuous monologue about honest vegetables and glib small talk about anything and everything at, of all places, Lenny and Kelly’s wedding. (Indeed, Simon wrote the script, but May’s signature improvisation comes through in these bits especially.) May is pragmatic, not romantic, in a tonal sense, a testament likely owed to her gender rather than her ethnic background. Lenny doesn’t know he’s a schmuck, but she does, and so do we—thus it’s we who have the last laugh. THE HEARTBREAK KID was May’s most critically and commercially successful film; MIKEY AND NICKY was virtually ignored upon its initial release, and we all know what happened with ISHTAR. Still, May hasn't been altogether foresaken: she received a National Medal of Arts in 2012 and is now the object of much veneration amongst cinephiles, young and old alike, who recognize her as a singular talent from one of American cinema’s most idiosyncratic eras. Whatever the reasons for May’s lack of broader success in the decades prior, she’s certainly having the last laugh now. Preceded by Shevard Goldstein’s 1974 film KRASNER, NORMAN: BELOVED HUSBAND OF IRMA (6 min, 16mm). Introduced by local filmmaker Joe Swanberg. (1972, 106 min, 35mm Archival Print) KS
Aki Kaurismäki’s THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE (New Finnish)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
Building on the themes of immigration and refugees explored in 2011’s LE HAVRE, THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE finds Finnish director, Aki Kaurismäki, tackling the refugee and humanitarian crisis caused by the Syrian Civil War. After stowing-away aboard a Polish coal frigate that lands in Helsinki, Khaled (Sherwan Haji) seeks asylum in Finland with the hopes of finding his sister, whom he lost as they fled Syria. Similarly, traveling shirt salesman Waldemar (Sakari Kuosmanen) flees his old way of life and wife after it is implied he can no longer tolerate the monotony of his current existence. After Khaled’s request for asylum is denied, he flees the immigration center in order to avoid being sent back to Syria and soon crosses paths with Waldemar who now owns a middling restaurant that employs a trio of colorful characters. THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE has a very distinct aesthetic. Its unique set design has an understated blandness that intentionally juxtaposes the bleakness shown in Aleppo after a series of bombings that make Helsinki seem like a paradise by comparison. Kaurismäki combines this aspect with masterful uses of space, especially his overabundance of physical separation of set pieces as an analogy for Finland’s remoteness in relation to the humanitarian crisis occurring in Africa and the Middle East. Kaurismäki’s film has a deadpan, dry wit to it that draws humor from the awkwardness of everyday situations. During one sequence in which Khaled is having identity papers forged for him, he exclaims, “I don’t understand humor” which serves as a reminder that sometimes its difficult to find the laughter in life when a person is too close to a situation. THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE’s unique panache and grounded story make for a delicate and delightful showcase for one of the modern world’s most pressing issues. (2017, 100 min, 35mm – except for the Monday, January 8 screenings, which will be DCP Digital) KC
Nicolas Roeg’s DON’T LOOK NOW (British Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Friday, 7 and 9:30pm
Nicolas Roeg may have achieved fame as a cinematographer (shooting, among other films, François Truffaut’s FAHRENHEIT 451 and Richard Lester’s PETULIA), but his most important contribution to cinema may be as an editor. Roeg’s fragmented, non-chronological narratives, while clearly influenced by the work of Alain Resnais, achieve a strange allure all their own. Resnais was influenced by the workings of memory and spontaneous thought; Roeg was interested in the plasticity of cinema itself, how the medium could distort reality and create patterns out of experience. DON’T LOOK NOW, one of Roeg’s most successful films, uses fragmentary editing to conjure feelings of disorientation and dread—it merits its reputation as one of the masterpieces of the horror genre. The dread engendered by the film isn’t just supernatural; the film considers a marriage in jeopardy, and watching the film, you’re always afraid that the protagonists’ union will come apart. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play the couple; they travel from England to Venice after the accidental death of their young daughter, hoping to forget about their recent tragedy. In little time, however, they’re plunged into a supernatural mystery that involves an old psychic and paranormal sightings. Roeg makes brilliant use of Venice’s architecture and design, rendering the city a fantastic, maze-like world. (The eerie, mood-enhancing score is by Pino Donaggio, who would go on to be Brian De Palma’s regular composer.) The leads are superb, playing off each other brilliantly and sexily; the film’s centerpiece is a complexly edited sex scene that aroused no small controversy upon first release. (1973, 110 min, 35mm) BS
Luchino Visconti's ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (Italian Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Wednesday, 7pm
Even if he claimed to be a lifelong Communist, Count Luchino Visconti di Modrone remains cinema's definitive aristocrat. He co-invented neo-realism but abandoned it for the filmic equivalent of neoclassicism. His films about the poor are decorated with a baroque poverty (see: LE NOTTI BIANCHI): the attention to detail of someone trying to depict a culture they can't quite understand. Visconti's merits are the same as his flaws; these very tendencies could bring out the best and worst (DEATH IN VENICE) in him. What tended to do him in was tastefulness, and thankfully ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS is tasteless and the better—and freer—for it; it has neither the tastefulness of being short (it's almost three hours long), nor the tastefulness of being melancholic (its "ugly" unsentimentality is more aching than DEATH IN VENICE's longing), nor even the tastefulness to restrain Visconti's decadent fetishization of impoverished toughness. Cine-File contributor Ben Sachs once said that showing people at work was one of the most subversive things a film could do. Visconti's approach to indicating that his characters are poor is to show their threadbare clothes and harsh living conditions; he never understood that the worst thing about being working class isn't having few possessions, but the working itself. Still, what he sets out to do in ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS is subversive in its odd, aristocratic way: to create a beggar's opera. (1960, 177 min, 35mm) IV
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (Italian-American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Sunday, 7pm
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is a grand, summative mosaic of western-movie imagery and themes—it’s the western to end all westerns. Not for nothing did Sergio Leone shoot the film in Monument Valley, the location for many John Ford westerns; ONCE UPON A TIME harkens back to numerous films in the genre (not just Ford’s, but also SHANE, JOHNNY GUITAR, and DUEL IN THE SUN), suggesting that the film takes place not in the actual American past but in the fictional past created by the movies. (It goes without saying that the film is a major influence on Quentin Tarantino.) Leone, who wrote the story with Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, sets the film in the last days of the Wild West, when progress (represented here by the construction of a railroad) completed its conquest of the untamed region. This temporal setting gives the film an elegiac air, while the dynamic, monumental imagery gives the film a palpable vivacity. Bolstering the theme of conclusions, the central drama hinges on the impending final showdown between an aging assassin and a younger bandit-cum-avenging angel in the Leone tradition. Playing the assassin, Henry Fonda delivers an atypical performance that also happens to be one of his greatest. Leone inverts the actor’s true-blue honesty to suggest something like pure evil, and Fonda dives into the role with scarifying precision. The specificity of his acting counterbalances Leone’s epic imagery, and it makes up part of a quartet of fascinating lead performances. Jason Robards, Charles Bronson and Claudia Cardinale deliver the other three; each one acts so differently from the others that they practically seem to inhabit different movies, yet the combination works, adding to the film’s mosaic-like form. (1968, 164 min, DCP Digital) BS
Agnès Varda and JR's FACES PLACE (New Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Venue website for showtimes
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
Julie Dash's DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm
The narrator of Julie Dash's DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is more than just a character in the story—she’s a symbolic representation of the film itself. The unborn child who tells the tale of the Peazant family in their last days before migrating north is as much a reflection of the past as she is of the future; all that has come before her is as intrinsic as the blood in her relative’s veins, and it's that history which propels them along trying and changing times. The Peazant family are inhabitants of the southern Sea Islands and members of its Gullah culture, having preserved the identity of their African heritage in spite of institutional slavery and post-war oppression. Before the move, the matriarch of the Peazant family contemplates her native beliefs while the family's younger members overcome their personal struggles. Rape and prostitution afflict several of them, and the scorn from both society and their own clan presents the unique obstacle of African-American women within an already disparaged race. Dash also brilliantly uses magical realism as a filmmaking device that’s reflective of the characters' ethereal culture. It was the first feature-length film by an African-American woman to receive theatrical release, and its historical context and female-oriented storyline set it apart from other films of the time and other films put out by fellow members of the L.A. Rebellion. (1991, 112 min, DCP Digital) KS
Julia Ducournau’s RAW (New French)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm
In Julia Ducournau’s RAW, sixteen year old Justine (Garance Marillier) is the last of her vegetarian family of four to enroll in veterinarian school. This particular school has a rite of passage wherein the older students (including Justine’s sister, Alexia) haze the incoming students by dumping buckets of blood on them and forcing them to consume a raw rabbit kidney while taking a shot of liquor. This latter rite awakens a deep and primal hunger within Justine that not only acts as a catalyst in her coming of age but also triggers more predatory instincts. RAW is as visceral as they come. It takes bold chances with its script and subject matter that pay dividends to the viewer, but be warned this is not a film for those with a weak constitution. Much of the action centers on the sisterhood of Justine and Alexia. Their dynamic plays out as rebellious thanks to their implied strict upbringing, and the two share increasingly shocking moments as the film progresses. Ducournau draws influence from older body-focused horror films such as EYES WITHOUT A FACE as well as more modern stylized features including the works of Nicolas Winding Refn and Jeremy Saulnier. The driving, Europop score adds a frantic layer that attempts to simultaneously sharpen the horror and dull the viewer’s empathy. Haunting and unforgettable, RAW provokes strong reactions, mental, and for some, physical. Like a pack of lions on the prowl, it strikes at the most vulnerable of our senses. (2016, 99 min, DCP Digital) KC
Seijun Suzuki's TOKYO DRIFTER (Japanese Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 7pm
Two shapes diverge on a snowy plain. One, a shadow cast at an almost 90-degree angle. The other, a curvilinear trail of footprints. The titular character stumbles along the latter, away from the rigid darkness. This scene in TOKYO DRIFTER embodies Seijun Suzuki's last years at Nikkatsu, Japan’s oldest major movie studio, where he both shirked convention and exploited it, making films that are at once singular and familiar, all their own but still owing to a wide range of studio auteurs whose paths he was following. Something of a send-up of the "giri-ninjo" conflict, which pits duty against emotion, TOKYO DRIFTER could be as much about Suzuki as it is Tetsuya, the powder-blue-suit-clad former yakuza whose displaced loyalty proves deadly. It's debatable as to whether or not Suzuki felt any sense of obligation to Nikkatsu, but it's inarguable that he was among their most talented (and most underappreciated, at least internally) directors, just as Tetsu is regarded as the most uniquely skilled and thus most threatening yakuza. Having recently gone straight along with his father-figure boss, Tetsu finds himself back in the midst of gang warfare when another yakuza boss comes after them for some valuable real estate. Like the rest of Suzuki's films leading up to his being fired from Nikkatsu, TOKYO DRIFTER doesn't follow a linear trajectory; it often jumps ahead inexplicably, thus mimicking the attention span of someone passively engaging seemingly disposable entertainment. (Though this is a hallmark of his style, one can't help but wonder what happened on those train tracks!) This effect doesn't take away from the story so much as it adds to the general absurdity of Suzuki's quasi-surrealist landscape, which is enveloped in exaggerated genre convention. It's a veritable pop-art extravaganza, complete with James Bond flare, Vincente Minnelli-esque musical numbers, a Western-inspired saloon straight out of Pioneertown, and mordant product placement...for hair dryers. The contention between Suzuki and Nikkatsu came to a head after his 1967 film BRANDED TO KILL, which he was forced by the studio to make in black and white. Suzuki's emotive aesthetic certainly seems to outweigh whatever obligation he had to Nikkatsu, as even his monochrome films are 'colorful' in their distinction. But TOKYO DRIFTER is representative of Suzuki's individualism in all its vibrant glory, and perhaps most personally so. (1966, 83 min, DCP Digital) KS
Billy Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 7pm
Nobody's perfect. But it still might come as a surprise to some that this famous final line from SOME LIKE IT HOT was originally intended as a placeholder while co-writers Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond thought of something better before shooting the film's last scene. "Neither of us could come up with anything...so we shot that line, still not entirely satisfied," Wilder told The Paris Review in 1996. "But we just hadn't trusted it when we wrote it; we just didn't see it. The line had come too easily, just popped out." Equally prolific as both a screenwriter and director, it's certainly no surprise that Wilder could be as effortless with his words as he was with his direction. SOME LIKE IT HOT is the embodiment of screwball-comedy excellence, with a plot that works just fine and a cast against whose comedic timing you could set a watch. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play struggling musicians who accidentally take part in the infamous Saint Valentine's Day massacre and escape mob retaliation by acquiring jobs as players with Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators. This entails a bit more than just musical know-how, as Curtis and Lemmon don makeup and high heels, inventing themselves as Josephine and Daphne in order to fit in with the all-female troupe. Aboard a train to Florida they meet Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a down-on-her-luck, aptly-named beauty who walks like "Jell-O on springs" and is preoccupied with both ends of the lollipop. Monroe is often symbolized by the upskirt scene from Wilder's THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, but her performance as the sexy-goofy cynic certainly feels more true to life. Curtis and Lemmon marvel at the seeming easiness of female sexuality, and Monroe is surely the best representative of its actual complexity. Gender is certainly fluid in Wilder's farce, with norms and mores being challenged throughout. The film begins amidst pure machismo, and ends with the above declaration of acceptance that could just as easily apply to Wilder as to the characters themselves. The laughs come easy and complex issues of gender and sexuality pop out between mob chases and musical numbers. Showing as part of critic Mark Caro’s “Is It Still Funny?” series. (1959, 120 min, DCP Digital) KS
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Chicago Film Society and the Music Box Theatre screen Irvin V. Willat’s 1919 silent film BEHIND THE DOOR (70 min, 35mm Restored Archival Print) on Saturday at Noon (at the Music Box). Preceded by Winsor McCay’s 1918 silent animated short THE SINKING OF THE ‘LUSITANIA’ (12 min, 16mm). Live accompaniment by Dennis Scott.
The Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) screens Roy Del Ruth’s 1933 film EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE (75 min, 35mm Archival Print) on Wednesday at 7:30pm. Preceded by Chuck Jones’ 1946 cartoon HARE CONDITIONED (8 min, 16mm).
Black Cinema House (at the Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative, 1456 E. 70th St.) screens Robert Townsend’s 1987 film HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE (81 min, Video Projection) on Friday at 7pm. Free admission.
South Side Projections at the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.) presents Visions of Peace, a program of animated shorts, for the Logan Center’s Family Saturday event. It’s on Saturday at 3pm. Screening are YO! YES? (Michael Sporn, 2000, 7 min), ISLAND OF THE SKOG Don Duga and Irra Verbitsky, 1999, 16 min), and ABUELA GRILLO (GRANDMA GRASSHOPPER) (Denis Chapon, 2009, 13 min). Digital Projection. Free admission.
The Pride Arts Center (4139 N. Broadway St.) presents the January edition of the Pride Film Festival (83 min total, Video Projection) on Tuesday at 7:30pm. Screening is a program of international shorts by Raj Rishi More, Alex Di Cuffa, Joao Inacio, Katie Ennis and Gary S. Jaffe, Rolando Nieves, Carlos Ocho, and Giovanni Coda.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's 2017 UK/Polish animated film LOVING VINCENT (94 min, DCP Digital) and Deepak Rauniyar’s 2016 Nepalese film WHITE SUN (89 min, DCP Digital) both play for a week; Dome Karukoski’s 2017 Finnish/Swedish biopic TOM OF FINLAND (115 min, DCP Digital) begins a two-week run; Karen Weinberg’s 2017 documentary KEEP TALKING (80 min, DCP Digital), is on Friday and Thursday at 8:15pm, with director Weinberg and other guests in person; and Elvira Lind’s 2017 Danish/Swedish/Israeli documentary BOBBI JENE (95 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 6:30pm and Tuesday at 8:15pm.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Denis Villenueve’s 2017 film BLADE RUNNER: 2049 (164 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 3pm; and Mitchell Lichtenstein’s 2007 film TEETH (94 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 7pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Klaus Härö’s 2015 Estonian film THE FENCER (99 min, DCP Digital) opens; Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 film THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) is on Friday at Midnight; Jim Sharman’s 1975 film THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at Midnight; and Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film PHANTOM THREAD (115 min, 70mm) has a 7:30pm screening on Thursday, before its official run begins on January 12.
Facets Cinémathèque plays Noël Wells’ 2016 film MR. ROOSEVELT (90 min, Video Projection) and Lauren Wolkstein and Christopher Radcliff’s 2017 film THE STRANGE ONES (82 min, Video Projection) for week-long runs.
At the Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) this week: J. Lee Thompson’s 1961 film THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (158 min, DCP Digital) is on Wednesday at 1 and 7pm. Free admission. www.northbrook.info/events/film
The DuSable Museum screens Tracy Heather Strain’s 2017 documentary LORRAINE HANSBERRY: SIGHTED EYES/FEELING HEART (118 min, Digital Projection) on Thursday at 6pm, with Strain in person. She will participate in a pre-screening conversation with local filmmaker Yvonne Welbon.
Sinema Obscura at Logan Bar (2230 N. California Ave.) presents TV Party (S2 E1) "Pilot Night" on Monday at 7pm. The event features pilot episodes of locally-made webseries.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
Currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago: Elizabeth Price’s 2015 video installation K (7 min loop) in Gallery 186; Frances Stark’s 2010 video installation NOTHING IS ENOUGH (14 min loop) in Gallery 295C; and Nam June Paik’s 1986 video sculpture FAMILY OF ROBOT: BABY in Gallery 288.
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.
CINE-LIST: January 5 - January 11, 2018
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // KKyle Cubr, Scott Pfeiffer, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky