CRUCIAL LISTENING
On episode #6 of the Cine-Cast, Cine-File associate editor Ben Sachs and contributor Scott Pfeiffer talk about the upcoming Black Harvest Film Festival and the ongoing Ingmar Bergman series at the Gene Siskel Film Center (Scott's a particularly devoted Bergman fan); contributor Mike Metzger and Julian Antos, erstwhile Cine-File contributor and executive director of the Chicago Film Society, discuss the film society's new 35mm print of Andrew Bujalski's 2013 film COMPUTER CHESS; contributors Metzger, Tien-Tien Jong, and JB Mabe chat about what's sure to be a legendary weekend at Doc Films (August 9-11), during which Hollis Frampton's ZORN'S LEMMA, Stan Brakhage's SCENES FROM UNDERCHILDHOOD, and Jonas Mekas's LOST, LOST, LOST will all grace the big screen on 16mm; and associate editor Kathleen Sachs interviews local filmmaker Casey Puccini, whose second feature-length film I DON'T CARE will screen at Chicago Filmmakers on August 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Listen here. As always, special thanks to our producer, Andy Miles, of Transistor Chicago.
CRUCIAL VIEWING
Mitchell Leisen's LADY IN THE DARK (New American)
Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave — Wednesday, 7:30pm
Dreams: insufferable when recounted in real life; bearable, even welcome, when rendered on the big screen. Though not available to preview, Mitchell Leisen’s LADY IN THE DARK sounds like another entry in a long line of great films about these insensate chimeras and their analysis—be they abstract (e.g. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s UN CHIEN ANDALOU) or more overt (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND, made the year after Leisen’s film, which David Bordwell claims was responsible for “[launching] the therapeutic cycle”)—but this time as a Technicolor musical. An adaptation of Moss Hart’s eponymous Broadway show, which featured music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, LADY IN THE DARK follows a fashion-magazine editor, Liza (Ginger Rogers), as she undergoes psychoanalysis to choose from three disparate love interests. According to a review in Time Out London, its “three dream sequences… are superb, with the first two coolly designed, respectively in shades of blue and gold, the third—the circus sequence in which Jenny finds herself on trial for emotional delinquency—bursting into full colour.” What it lacks in the show’s original music (only a few numbers seem to have made the cut), it makes up for in elaborate costumery; the reddish-pink, mink-and-sequin dress that Rogers wears in ‘The Saga of Jenny’ sequence was the most expensive costume ever produced in Hollywood. Edith Head, the film’s costume designer, said “[i]t cost about thirty-five thousand dollars to make in those days and couldn’t be made today without a limitless wardrobe budget.” Taking into account inflation, that’s the equivalent of over half-a-million dollars in 2018. This was likely to Leisen’s satisfaction, as the underestimated auteur started his Hollywood career in the art and costume departments. Perhaps more earnestly fabulous than vigorously Freudian, this rare gem nevertheless sounds like a literal dream. Preceded by Robert Clampett’s 1945 cartoon BOOK REVUE (7 min, 16mm). (1944, 100 min, 35mm) KS
Casey Puccini's I DON'T CARE (New American)
Chicago Filmmakers (5720 N. Ridge Ave.) — Saturday, 7:30pm
Casey Puccini is pretty damn good as Casey Puccini in Chicago filmmaker Casey Puccini’s new feature, I DON’T CARE, a film in which self-indulgence becomes a vehicle for self-interrogation. Though he shares a biography (and filmography) with the actual Puccini, Casey is clearly a fully-realized comic creation—a hapless would-be filmmaker whose charming platitudes and vague pretensions ensnare local actors Sasha Gioppo, Bryn Packard, and Kevin Stangler in a rudderless microbudget indie production. The film unfolds over a series of increasingly uncomfortable shoots, staged in small apartments with less-than-enthusiastic skeleton crews; as the director grows increasingly inarticulate and hostile, the crews dwindle, and a sense of antagonism and paranoia begins to mount. An immediate point of comparison would be William Greaves’ SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM TAKE 1 (1968), another meta-movie mise en abyme in which the director casts himself as a buffoon, brazenly collapsing distinctions between truth and fiction, performance and authenticity. Similarly, one of the pleasures of I DON’T CARE comes in trying to establish where Puccini’s slovenly, uninspired onscreen avatar converges with the sharp-witted creative mind at work behind the camera: can a line be drawn between them? More inventive in his methods for consuming pot than in making films, Puccini’s fictional persona is preoccupied with garish, played-out stylistic exercises. (In one of several finely drawn caricatures of tastelessness, the director squanders an afternoon trying to replicate a trick shot from REQUIEM FOR A DREAM by aggressively flashing a lamp in his leading lady’s face). But as a director, Puccini’s overriding interest is clearly in performance—again, as in SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM, reflexivity affords actors a freedom to play between naturalism and explicit artifice. The rewards of this approach are best measured in Sasha Gioppo's exceptional turn as Puccini’s beleaguered muse. The audience’s growing exasperation with Casey is directly tied to Sasha’s: without her keen ability to balance disillusionment, scorn, humor, and genuine creative investment in the project, the film’s explosive payoff would undoubtedly fall flat. Similarly, in crafting a character who grows more obnoxious from scene to scene, the narrative cohesion of I DON’T CARE depends on Puccini’s own strength as a performer, testing his ability to preserve a goofy charisma even as he reveals himself to be a petty tyrant. I found that challenge compounded by our present moment; it’s hard to be charitable towards characters who so thoroughly embody the grotesque mixture of white male entitlement, incompetence, indifference, and malevolence that dominates American landscapes of politics and entertainment alike. We’ve seen more extreme versions of this figure in recent years—Rick Alversen’s THE COMEDY (2012) and the Safdie Brothers’ GOOD TIME (2017) come to mind—but none so conflicted as Casey in I DON’T CARE. In its (often hilarious) man-in-the-mirror confrontations and its escalating sense of subjective distress, it’s clear that Puccini sees much of himself in this character—but, perhaps even more strongly, he also wants to see the shit kicked out of him. In the recent Cine-File podcast, Puccini calls the film “a cautionary tale to myself,” but, like most fictions, it’s also a form of wish fulfillment. If that sounds self-indulgent, well, maybe it is—but just because Casey is high on his own supply, that doesn’t mean we can’t get a contact buzz. Puccini in person. (2018, 107 min, DCP Digital) MM
Jacques Tourneur's OUT OF THE PAST (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Friday, 7 and 9:30pm
OUT OF THE PAST, likely Jacques Tourneur's most famous film, is an atypically delicate film noir. "This is no expressionist thunderstorm of guilt and fate," wrote Dave Kehr in his original Reader capsule, "but a film of small, finely textured effects, centered on subtle grades of morality." Much of the sense of nuance comes from the unconventional casting: Robert Mitchum, a born heavy, plays the hero, a New York private eye who winds up running a gas station in California under an alias; Kirk Douglas, who would come to deploy his macho anguish in the service of conflicted heroes, plays the crime boss villain. The film also benefits from a complicated flashback structure—every bit the equal of Robert Siodmak's THE KILLERS—and from some fine shadowplay from the great RKO cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca. But what makes this linger in the memory is the psychological depth of the characters, a mystery even to them. To quote Roger Ebert in his "Great Movies" review: "Mitchum and Douglas think the story involves a contest of wills between them, when in fact, they're both the instruments of corrupt women. [Central heroine] Kathie betrays both men more than once, and there is also Meta Carson, the sultry "secretary" of Eels the accountant. What's fascinating is the way Jeff, the Mitchum character, goes ahead, despite knowing what's being done to him. How he gets involved once again with Sterling and Kathie, despite all their history together, and how he agrees when Meta suggests a meeting with Eels, even though he knows and even says 'I think I'm in a frame.'" (1947, 97 min, 35mm Archival Print) BS
Pam Sporn’s DETROIT 48202: CONVERSATIONS ALONG A POSTAL ROUTE (New Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday, 3:45pm and Sunday, 3pm
Do you know your mail carrier? I, sadly, do not, but after watching Pam Sporn’s illuminating documentary DETROIT 48202: CONVERSATIONS ALONG A POSTAL ROUTE, I’d sure like to. Per Sporn’s ingenious narrative construction, a mail carrier is at once a civil servant and a community’s innominate historian, constantly observing and cataloging its changes over the duration of his or her career. So it goes with Detroit mailman Wendell Watkins, the subject of Sporn’s documentary, a congenial middle-aged black man who’d been a postal worker for over 25 years (he’s shown retiring in the film). Both he and Sporn use his postal route to examine the inner workings of a magnificently complex city, each street and neighborhood acting as a microcosm of the thing as a whole; the film looks at Detroit’s long and varied racial history in connection with issues like neighborhood blight and the struggling automative industry. Interspersed between Watkins’ scenes are interviews with other community members and expertly curated archival photos of the city—what typically feels like filler in other documentaries is here smartly used to illuminate a rich and complicated history. It’s a distinctly personal film, but for its subjects rather than its maker; Sporn lets the city and its people speak for themselves. Even its animated motif, that of a map showing Watkins’ truck making its way along its route, feels essential. It’s not just a whimsical representation of the truck’s trajectory, but also a visual representation of the way in which communities—sometimes far apart in either distance or time—function as a whole. As its focus, Watkins is a likable figure whose insights are enlightening; rather than a smug talking head annoyingly aware of its presence in A Movie, Watkins performs for the camera insomuch as anybody performs for those with whom they wish to connect. After watching DETROIT 48202, I realized that I hadn’t just been taking my mail carrier for granted (who are you, my good person?), but that I’d also underestimated the power of the documentary to make me feel that way. Sporn in person at both shows. (2018, 99 min, DCP Digital) KS
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Richard Donner’s LETHAL WEAPON (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre — Friday and Saturday, Midnight
I grew up in an environment of deep-seated yet quiet oppression, in a state with stunning racial homogeneity and without the slightest awareness of my own whiteness and befuddled by the complex constructedness of my sexuality and gender. It was never made explicit, of course, but I was trained by my community in sexism and white supremacy, ingraining them inside me so deeply that I’ll never be able fully to undo their pernicious influence. Deeply unpopular, awkward, and introverted as a child, much of my pre-college years were spent in the basement watching movies on cable television. They trained me as well, in many of the same ideas and prejudices, and watching some of the same movies today with an eye on sharing them with my son has brought me a lot of joy, but much more sadness as I’ve forced myself to recognize moments of racist, homophobic, and sexist myth-making and bigotry in them, moments that in my shame I digested as a child without a second thought and that I would never want my child to digest similarly. I remember watching LETHAL WEAPON as a teenager, falling in love with its witty, creative characterizations and the effortless rapport between the two leads, Danny Glover and Mel Gibson. The scene, so chilling when I watch it now, of Glover and Gibson interrogating a group of Black children who are terrified they’ll be locked up or shot simply because they’re Black and might be witnesses to a crime struck me as especially funny. The character of Endo, a torturer working for evil drug smugglers, seemed just a cool, super badass guy who could safely be killed without moral consequence. I missed the connection to the repeated discussions of the Vietnam War and strong implication that Endo is a North Vietnamese captive, abducted and enslaved by ex-CIA mercenaries. The threat of rape and forced prostitution that Glover’s character’s daughter endures went entirely unnoticed. These elements are unmistakably in the film, and now that those are things I can see, they enrich and deepen it at the same time as they show it to be a film in deep tension with itself, a movie that, to use Robin Wood’s phrase, is an incoherent text. The screenplay by Shane Black is taut, sad, conscious and careful of its portrayals of all its characters, and, juvenile though it undoubtedly is, takes seriously its setting in a Los Angeles on the brink of a racial uprising. Richard Donner’s direction seems blissfully unaware of all of that, blandly delivering the appropriate shocks and laughs at the appropriate intervals and in general just staying out of the way of its actors. (Black, it is worth noting, went on to distinguish himself as one of the greatest screenwriters alive while Donner would make three increasingly awful sequels to this and the beyond-dreadful MAVERICK.) LETHAL WEAPON is far from a great film. Donner’s by-the-book direction renders it quite visually bland, but the electricity sparking from its script and the wealth of hints of the movie that it could have become make it a film that is almost alive with possibility. Perhaps this is merely turning the proverbial sow’s ear into a silk purse, but there is a political frankness and life to LETHAL WEAPON that was rarely seen in the Hollywood 1980s. It is a textbook case of knowing what it’s doing while doing everything wrong, of not flinching away from showing the terrors of bigotry while casually reinforcing racial and gender stereotypes at every turn, and that alone is enough to fascinate me. (1987, 110 min., 35mm) KB
David Gordon Green's GEORGE WASHINGTON (American Revival)
Black Cinema House at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) — Friday, 7:30pm (Free Admission)
There is something both unique and familiar about GEORGE WASHINGTON, David Gordon Green's first feature film. Though clearly influenced by Charles Burnett's KILLER OF SHEEP and Terrence Malick's DAYS OF HEAVEN, GEORGE WASHINGTON carves out its own cinematic space and mythos within the first few minutes of the film. The dreamlike tone is set by the poetic and intimate narration by Nasia, an adolescent girl who has just dumped her boyfriend, Buddy, for George Richardson, the protagonist. Loyal to his friend Buddy, George won't reciprocate her affections, but is always nobly taciturn and polite in their interactions. George is a fragile, quiet boy whose fontanelle never fully fused, so he can't get his head wet and has to wear a protective helmet at all times. This does not stop him from committing small acts of heroism and recognizing that, despite being a poor black kid from a rusted-over railroad town in North Carolina, he too can be destined for greatness. Though George is the semi-titular protagonist, GEORGE WASHINGTON shares casual, quiet, intimate moments with many of the people whose lives intersect his, from affectionate bickering between the rail yard workers and confessional storytelling between Nasia and her friends in a cozy living room. These many casual and sometimes heartbreaking moments of almost documentary-like realism recall André Bazin's admiration for De Sica's defiance of narrative ellipsis in UMBERTO D. Bazin's love for the scene that details the maid's morning routine also speaks to the value realism holds in GEORGE WASHINGTON. From What Is Cinema, Vol. II: "Let us make no mistake about the meaning and the value realism has here. De Sica and Zavattini are concerned to make cinema the asymptote of reality—but in order that it should ultimately be life itself that becomes spectacle, in order that life might in this perfect mirror be visible poetry, be the self into which film finally changes it." The lives of the impoverished children (black and white) in GEORGE WASHINGTON are hard: food insecurity, loneliness, trauma, random tragedy, incarcerated parents leading to fragmented families, and lack of opportunity shape their existence. Yet the film focuses as much on personal myth-building and dreamspace as the painful reality, through Tim Orr's graceful, glowing cinematography, which transforms rusted-out heaps and trash-strewn abandoned buildings into heroic stages and romantic frames, as well as through the enunciations of the characters themselves. George, though soft-spoken and taciturn, articulates his dreams and heroes as he becomes one himself, as does Nasia, who wants him to live forever and sees in him something that the narrator saw in the indomitable protagonist of My Ántonia. Though a heartbreaking, meaningless tragedy occurs in the middle of the film, that tragedy occurs like everything else in the film, and is rendered both meaningless and incredibly meaningful as the characters grapple with it for the remainder of GEORGE WASHINGTON. There is much more that could be praised about this beautifully crafted film, from the incredible performances by non-professional child actors (Green found most of them at a local youth center) to the aspirational vision of race relations presented in this place that seems to exist slightly apart from the America we live in, while at the same time being so wholly immersed in the gritty reality of it. Even though it is a shame that it isn't being screened on 35mm (and if it screens on 35mm, you must see it on the big screen!), this is a movie not to miss in any format. Followed by a discussion. (2000, 89 min, Video Projection) AE
Ingmar Bergman’s HOUR OF THE WOLF (Swedish Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday, 2pm, Saturday, 3:30pm, and Wednesday, 6pm
Perhaps Ingmar Bergman’s trippiest and most surreal film, HOUR OF THE WOLF explores the internal torments and mental breakdown of artist/painter Johan (Max Von Sydow) and the effects it has on the relationship with his pregnant wife, Alma (Liv Ullmann in her second film working with Bergman), while on vacation on an isolated island. The story recounted by Alma (who stared directly into the camera and addresses the viewers) in the present and in flashbacks through excerpts of Johan’s diaries. It is a film operating in to distinct modes: one grounded in reality and the other in surrealism. Bergman slowly dips the film’s toes into madness by creating a sense of isolation and creeping paranoia through the use of only diegetic sound, static camera movement, and patient editing. At one point Alma exclaims, “I hope we get so old we think each other’s thoughts,” which at first feels endearing, but begins to take on a more sinister inflection as the film’s tone shifts. As she seeks to better understand her husband through his diaries, she instead finds a man she understands less and less; his internalized paranoia escalates, becoming more pronounced after they attend a perverted RULES OF THE GAME-esque dinner party. The film’s more unhinged second half completely flips the script with its frantic, dizzying camera movements, discordant sounds, and horrifying imagery. Are these images real or just paranoid delusions of Johan’s subconscious? As with Johan himself, HOUR OF THE WOLF is a film teetering on the edge of madness. (1968, 90 min, DCP Digital) KC
Ingmar Bergman's THE DEVIL'S EYE (Swedish Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 5:30pm and Monday, 6pm
Contrary to his dark, heavy reputation, Ingmar Bergman actually had quite a nice comic touch. (Think of SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, SECRETS OF WOMEN, THE MAGIC FLUTE.) THE DEVIL'S EYE is one of the comedies, and it's a delight—a light, lively sex farce. A relatively impersonal lark from 1960, this isn't major Bergman. But it is an unsung gem, a charming, whimsical fantasy. With a glint in his eye, Gunnar Björnstrand introduces a rather fantastic tale, jumping off from the Irish proverb, "a woman's chastity is a sty in the Devil's eye." The setting: hell, replete with licking flames. We join Satan (Stig Järrel), who indeed suffers a pain in his eye, for something alarming has happened on earth: the vicar's daughter (Bibi Andersson), though engaged, is about to reach marriage with her "innocence" intact. Satan must deploy his greatest weapon: Don Juan (Jarl Kulle), who languishes alongside his loyal servant, Pablo (Sture Lagerwall). Satan offers Don, along with Pablo, a trip to earth for one stormy night, "to rob this young woman of her virginity, her purity, her faith in love." To keep an eye on them, he also sends along a little devil who, often taking the form of a cat, does his best to sow discord. These three ingratiate themselves into the family of the vicar (a very amusing Nils Poppe), whose innocence and childish simplicity is, we come to see, to some degree a choice. ("I'm not the most intelligent," he cheerfully avers, "but I have a good heart and I'm gullible," so it all balances out.) Meanwhile, Pablo woos the vicar's neglected wife, Renata (Gertrud Fridh). This trifle won't change anyone's life, as Bergman's great films can, and have, starting with my own. However, I would hold it out as proof positive that he had a sense of humor about himself. I was tickled by the film's contention that, as Björnstrand puts it, the notion that God is silent is all very well for tragedy, but in comedy there must be a hell below, a heaven above, and earth in between. The joke here is always on the seducers. For one thing, the women are agents, not just objects, of desire, a possibility not dreamed of in Satan's rather Victorian conception of female sexuality. Note how Don Juan kisses Andersson rather chastely, and then she gives him a real kiss, a lusty one, which leaves him pale and trembling. In short, the film is fun, though you won't quite get away without a dose of existential despair. (It's still Bergman, after all.) It would make a pleasurable double feature with Jean Renoir's contemporaneous PICNIC ON THE GRASS (1959), another movie where mythical mischief-makers, taking the form of a tempest, make erotic sport of humans' libidos and capricious hearts. You could even think of it as WINGS OF DESIRE as farce, only with the polarities reversed. In both, immortals fall in love with mortal women, and get to taste, again, the joys and sufferings of life. Who'd have thought it, but paradise was right here on earth. (1960, 84 min, DCP Digital) SP
Robert Altman's CALIFORNIA SPLIT (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Saturday, 7 and 9:30pm
CALIFORNIA SPLIT is ostensibly a movie about two guys getting loaded on booze and gambling, moving from bender to bender, racetrack to casino. However, over the course of the film CALIFORNIA SPLIT reveals itself to be a tale of personal sadness coupled with the longing to be accepted and liked by another human, any human who will welcome them as they are. Altman's trademark cross-dialogue denseness, captured using multiple boom mics, achieves beautifully dizzying heights, as massive blocks of dialogue are rendered barely discernible. But whatever is made ambiguous by this audio jumble is given full clarity when the characters’ veneers drop off, leaving nothing but their emotional center. In one of the movie's most remarkable scenes two prostitutes, played by Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles, sit in a bed together after one of them has had their sexual advances rebuffed by leading man George Segal. Her friend consoles her by stroking her hair and promising that she has a great client for her to entertain instead, softly promising another, better man who will treat her kindly. The dialogue is delivered very matter-of-factly, with not a lot of conviction behind it, but it foregrounds a dream of companionship, if even for a few hours, which is the soul of this underrated film. The aforementioned scene is a wonderful representation of the film as a whole, which on paper seems like just another buddy-heist-comedy. Altman, being a wonderful subverter of genre stereotypes, delivers less of a kooky comedy of errors, and more of a Cassavetes-influenced genre hybrid, very similar to another of its miraculous ilk, Elaine May's flat-out masterful MIKEY & NICKY. (1974, 108 min, 35mm) JD
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Andrew Bujalski’s 2018 film SUPPORT THE GIRLS (94 min, Digital Projection) is barely sneaking into the Chicago area, opening Friday at the Harper Theatre and the Studio Movie Grill at Chatham 14 on the south side and at the Landmark Renaissance Place Cinema in Highland Park.
The Art Institute of Chicago screens Charles Bryant’s 1923 silent film SALOMÉ (72 min, Unconfirmed Format), starring Alla Nazimova, on Friday at 8pm in Fullerton Hall. Accompanied by a live score by Haley Fohr, of experimental folk project Circuit des Yeux.
Agitator Gallery (1112 N. Ashland Ave.) and Sinema Obscura presents Animation: Moving Images Intended to Confound and Delight, a program of work by local animators, on Friday at 7pm.
Reggies (2105 S. State St.) hosts Doug Robert Brown’s 2018 documentary SLAVE TO THE GRIND (100 min, Video Projection) on Wednesday at 7pm. Followed by sets by Minimum Wage Assassins and XAbruptX. Co-presented by the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Dot to Dot Management.
Local filmmaker Kyle Henry's 2017 film ROGERS PARK (87 min, Digital Projection) screens on Friday at 7pm at The Recyclery (7628 N. Paulina St.), with Henry in person. Free admission.
Instituto Cervantes (31 W. Ohio St.) screens Diego Rougier’s 2017 Chilean film LOOKING FOR A BOYFRIEND…FOR MY WIFE (99 min, DVD Projection) on Tuesday at 6pm. Free admission.
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens Robert Rossen’s 1949 film ALL THE KING’S MEN (109 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday at 1 and 7pm. Free admission.
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) screens Bozidar D. Benedikt’s 1987 film BEYOND THE SEVENTH DOOR (83 min, VHS Projection) on Wednesday at 7:30pm in their “Released and Abandoned: Forgotten Oddities of the Home Video Era” series. Free admission.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Laura Collado and Jim Loomis’ 2017 Spanish documentary CONSTRUCTING ALBERT (82 min, DCP Digital) and Emmanuel Finkiel’s 2017 French film MEMOIR OF WAR (126 min, DCP Digital) both play for a week; and the Black Harvest Film Festival continues with: Pam Sporn’s 2018 documentary DETROIT 48202: CONVERSATIONS ALONG A POSTAL ROUTE (see review above); Meleisha J. Edwards and Mary McCallum’s 2018 mockumentary SINGLEVILLE (68 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 6:30pm and Saturday at 8:30pm, with the filmmakers in person; Lawrence Lee Wallace’s 2017 film PIECES OF DAVID (118 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday and Tuesday at 8:30pm, with Wallace in person; Darien Sills-Evans’ 2018 film ONE BEDROOM (83 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 5:30pm and Monday at 8pm, with Sills-Evans in person; and the shorts program Women of Color is on Tuesday at 6pm and Wednesday at 8pm; the Closing Night film is Rusty Cundieff’s 1998 film FEAR OF A BLACK HAT (88 min, 35mm) on Thursday at 6:30pm, with Cundieff in person.
At the Music Box Theatre this week: Crystal Moselle’s 2018 film SKATE KITCHEN (106 min, DCP Digital) and Xavier Legrand’s 2017 French film CUSTODY (93 min, DCP Digital) both open; Matt Tyrnauer’s 2017 documentary SCOTTY AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD (97 min, DCP Digital) continues; Tim Wardle’s 2017 documentary THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (96 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday and Sunday at Noon only; George Lucas' 1973 film AMERICAN GRAFFITI (110 min, 35mm) is on Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am; Wes Anderson's 2017 animated film ISLE OF DOGS (101, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 4:30pm; Tetsuya Wakano’s 2018 Japanese animated film LAUGHING UNDER THE CLOUDS: GAIDEN PART 1 & 2 (120 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday at 7pm; and François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell’s 2018 Canadian/US horror film SUMMER OF 84 (105 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.
Facets Cinémathèque screens Hadi Hajaig’s 2017 UK film BLUE IGUANA (105 min, Video Projection) for a week-long run.
The Chicago Cultural Center hosts the Cinema/Chicago screening of Jacek Borcuch’s 2009 Polish film ALL THAT I LOVE (95 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 6:30pm. Free admission.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
Currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago: Rosalind Nashashibi's VIVIAN’S GARDEN (2017, 30 min, 16mm on HD Video) is in the Donna and Howard Stone Gallery, through December 2; Dara Birnbaum’s KISS THE GIRLS: MAKE THEM CRY (1979, 6 min loop, two-channel video) is in the second floor corridor; and John Miller's 2016 PowerPoint work RECONSTRUCTING A PUBLIC SPACE is in Gallery 295A.
CINE-LIST: August 24 - August 30, 2018
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Alexandra Ensign, Michael Metzger, Scott Pfeiffer