CRUCIAL LISTENING
Special Cine-Cast mini episode. Contributor Harrison Sherrod interviews local filmmaker Brian Ashby, editor and producer of THE AREA (David Schalliol, 2018), which has a two-week engagement at the Gene Siskel Film Center starting Friday, September 14.
Listen here.
CRUCIAL VIEWING
Art Worlds of the South Side (Documentary and Home Movie Revivals)
South Side Projections at the DuSable Museum (740 E. 56th Pl.) — Saturday, 3pm (Free Admission)
The first program in South Side Projections’ The Black Arts Movement in Film series (this one co-presented by the DuSable Museum of African American History and the South Side Home Movie Project), “Art Worlds of the South Side” is a penetrating exploration into those resplendent milieus as they existed in the past. Just as art itself hinges on discovery, all the short films in the program have been “recently discovered or rediscovered,” according to the South Side Projections website, and come from the co-presenters' collections. The program is in large part a tribute to the esteemed Dr. Margaret Burroughs, who co-founded what is now the DuSable Museum; the shorts EBONY MUSEUM (1963, 6 min) and DUSABLE MUSEUM (1971, 8 min), both silent (though there will be musical accompaniment), were shot by Burroughs in early iterations of the museum, formerly known as the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art and born in the living room of Burroughs’ Bronzeville residence. (The museum moved to its current location in 1973.) The intimacy is astounding—it’s not often that one sees such a place like this, more like an inviting home than a hallowed institution. It’s featured again in a clip from the WGN documentary BLACK PRIDE (1968, 8 min), along with the Zambezi Artists Guild in South Shore. BLACK PRIDE was written by Organization of Black American Culture founder Hoyt Fuller, with Chicago filmmaker Ron Pitts and OBAC members Edward Christmas and Roy Lewis as camera operators. It’s a refreshingly direct response to the need for better inclusion in media—there’s no tiptoeing around the matter; instead it’s a direct exclamation of pride in one’s race. Burroughs also founded the Lake Meadows Art Fair, which is featured in NAACP MARCH (1963, 28 min), the title referencing the NAACP March in Memorial for Medgar Evers; other footage in the film is from the Bud Billiken Parade, the 1963 Chicago Public School Boycott, and Halloween at Rosenwald Apartments. It’s an apt ‘year in the life’ kind of segment, the quotidian interspersed with the monumental. The whole program exemplifies this conflict between daily life and an increasingly tumultuous political landscape. The figures represented in this program—particularly Burroughs—understood that more than most, and it’s a farsighted reminder of the role that the art world plays in the real world. Followed by a discussion with Skyla Hearn, archivist at the DuSable Museum, and Candace Ming, archivist at the South Side Home Movie Project. KS
Ingmar Bergman’s FANNY AND ALEXANDER (Swedish Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 1:30pm (TV Version) and Wednesday, 6:30pm (Theatrical Version)
Although Ingmar Bergman was one of the towering figures of 20th-century cinema, his biggest influences—playwrights Henrik Ibsen and August Strinberg—belong to the late 19th century, when theatrical realism as we now understand it was first coming into its own. With his magnum opus, FANNY AND ALEXANDER, Bergman drew also on the major literature of that era; many have compared the film to the novels of Charles Dickens and Émile Zola, along with such turn-of-the-century early-modernism as Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. The five-and-a-half-hour TV version (1982, 320 min, DCP Digital) feels especially like an epic novel, often digressing from the title characters and their immediate family to consider the children’s uncles, who emerge as complex characters in their own right. The three-hour theatrical version (1982, 188 min, 35mm) retains this epic feel mainly during its first hour, which depicts the extended Ekdahl family celebrating Christmas Eve in the early 20th century. The section of FANNY AND ALEXANDER exudes a warmth that Bergman hadn’t exhibited since his films of the 1950s; moreover, the large ensemble represents a turn away from the chamber drama that had defined much of the previous two decades of his career. There are intimations of darkness in this hour of the film, with foreboding suggestions that the familial happiness onscreen cannot be maintained for much longer, yet on the whole it may be the most joyous cinema that Bergman ever committed to film. When FANNY AND ALEXANDER turns dark, it turns very dark, with depictions of domestic abuse that are particularly scary because they unfold from a child’s point-of-view. The abuser is a cold-hearted pastor and unwelcome father figure; his character—mirthless, tyrannical, spiteful—marks the culmination of all of Bergman’s skeptical portraits of religion. Counteracting this portrait of cruelty is the film’s odic depiction of childhood imagination. Nurtured by their theater-director father, Fanny and Alexander learn the value of dreaming from the start of the film; as the story progresses, imagination provides a form of escape from misery. The longer version of the film features more digressions into fantasy, with numerous appearances by ghosts, yet the shorter one still offers a rich consideration of the dream life. Many have commented on the autobiographical nature of FANNY AND ALEXANDER; given how rapturous is its depiction of storytelling, one might regard it as Bergman’s explanation for his entire career. BS
Noel Black’s PRETTY POISON (American Revival)
Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Tuesday, 7:30pm
In the first scene of this truly bizarre and disjointed lovers’ crime spree/black comedy/cautionary tale, a disturbed young man (Anthony Perkins, typecast, but making the best of it) is counseled by his fatherly parole officer (played by the great character actor John Randolph) to stop living in a fantasy world upon his release back into society after years in a mental institution. The rest of the film is a series of non-sequiturs stitched together to illustrate the consequences of not heeding the older man’s advice. A badly miscast and often openly baffled Tuesday Weld plays Bonnie to Perkins’ Clyde and their complete lack of romantic chemistry—or connection of any kind—only adds to the oddity of the proceedings. I can’t say that this is a good movie by any metric, but the sheer strangeness of how one scene leads to the next makes for a unique viewing experience. There were moments watching it when I wondered whether first-time director Noel Black had ever seen any other films or observed any human interactions before turning on the cameras. No one in the world behaves the way people do here. By the time it is revealed that the young girl may actually be the crazy one, I felt so unmoored I was ready to accept anything Black threw up on the screen at face value. Preceded by Noel Black’s 1966 short SKATERDATER (17 min, Restored 35mm Archival Print). (1968, 89 min, 35mm) DS
70MM FILM FESTIVAL (Week One)
Music Box Theatre – Friday – September 27
The Music Box’s 70mm Film Festival returns with two weeks of bigger than big. Week one includes our two reviewed films (below) along with Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise’s 1961 musical WEST SIDE STORY (152 min), Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1970 war film PATTON (172 min), and Michael Cimino’s 1985 crime film YEAR OF THE DRAGON (134 min). Check the Music Box website for showtimes.
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John Carpenter’s THE THING (American Revival)
Friday, 11:30pm, Saturday, Midnight, and Wednesday, 7:30pm
More faithful to its source material, John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, than Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby’s 1951 adaptation THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, John Carpenter’s THE THING is a practical effects masterwork. At a research outpost in Antarctica, a group of American scientists come across an alien life form with the ability to absorb and assume the form of any living creature. What makes Carpenter’s film so effective is his ability to juxtapose extreme isolation and paranoia. The remote setting removes any sort of notion that outside help is coming, and the compartmentalized nature of the base and its rooms creates even further separation. As the crewmembers become more and more suspicious of each other (who is or isn’t the ‘Thing’?), the audience is left to their own devices to determine the validity of the characters’ motives and justifiability of their actions. In addition, the film’s nihilistic tone bears its Cold War influences on its sleeve through the characters’ apprehensions. The film’s practical effects are the true star here. Rob Bottin, who had previously worked with Carpenter on THE FOG, creates a myriad of grotesque forms that the ‘Thing’ metamorphoses into, be it human or animal. In addition, sequences in which the creature burrows under the ground or when the blood test is performed are equally as impressive. Another aspect that adds to the film’s ominous tone is its synth driven score. Although Carpenter is well known for scoring many of his works, Ennio Morricone was tasked with creating the ambient music, as the director wanted a more foreign sound to the music than his own stylings could accomplish. Although a box office bomb upon its initial release, THE THING has stood the test of time to become one of the most revered works in Carpenter’s oeuvre and chilling piece of paranoid horror. (1982, 109 min, 70mm) KC
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David Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (British Revival)
Saturday, 7pm, Sunday, 12:30pm, Tuesday, 7pm, Wednesday and Thursday, 2pm
If there is a single sequence in the history of film that tells you what watching a movie on a big screen really means, and how that larger-than-life way of experiencing a movie can be so important, it's in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. A breathtaking long-shot of the desert. A view extending to the horizon. At first we see nothing more than a shimmer. A mirage. Then a speck. Then, finally, a rider on a horse. Trotting towards us at a deliberate pace. All at once an Arab in the foreground rushes to his own horse, pulls out a gun -- and is shot. His corpse falls to the ground, a streak of blood across his black robe. It lies on the sand. Peter O'Toole looks down at it. After a time, the rider sidles right up to him and undoes his veil. Omar Sharif. They exchange words. The Pinteresque intimacy of their dialog is startlingly paired with the infinite vastness of the desert. It's only one of countless great moments in this truly great film. And when the ten-minute intermission occurs, I dare you not to go to the concession stand and buy yourself a drink. (1962, 216 min, 70mm) RC
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s GOOD MANNERS (AS BOAS MANEIRAS) (New Brazilian)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check Venue website for showtimes
An ambitious and mostly successful coming-of-age fable with gorgeous cinematography and a sometimes-puzzling lesbian subplot, GOOD MANNERS is a satisfying upending of a typical werewolf film, although it is a tad too long at 135 minutes. Despite the lugubrious editing, Isabél Zuaa, who plays Clara, the protagonist, carries the film with quiet intensity. Clara is a dark-skinned woman from the favelas of São Paulo who talks her way into a nannying job with Ana, a wealthy (pregnant) daughter of a plantation owner from the country. Ana slowly reveals details of her story, as suspense thickens with lush cinematography that clearly references Douglas Sirk as much as it does classic horror and film noir. Ana was impregnated by a priest who seems to be a werewolf, a story revealed in dream-like still images to Clara before the couple consummate their (admittedly, not-quite-convincing) sexual chemistry. Shortly thereafter, Ana suffers from a more brutal film reference, as her werewolf fetus tears himself from her womb. (Don't worry—I'm only giving away the first hour of the plot!) Clara cannot resist rescuing and raising Ana's baby, with quite the expected consequences of raising a werewolf baby. Now comes the real task: forget the plot. As with most of the best Brazilian films I've seen over the years, plot is a peripheral matter. Atmosphere, character, racial and class tension, existential dread, and the ominous, threatening, yet still mesmerizingly beautiful presence of the mega-metropolis of São Paulo (often shown clearly in matte paintings, a delightful homage!) play a much larger role than mere plot in this rambling movie. There were moments when I was stunned by the cinematography, and though I was not stunned by the social commentary, I appreciated the effort these ambitious filmmakers made to do something interesting with a tired genre. (2017, 135 min, DCP Digital) AE
David Byrne's TRUE STORIES (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday, 2pm and Tuesday, 6pm
Among other things, David Byrne's film is simultaneously a satire of television and a celebration of television. Two musical numbers specifically appropriate TV. "Wild Wild Life" has various characters lip synching to the song in front of a giant bank of video monitors, which all show a seemingly endless mélange of stock footage. "Love For Sale" is even more direct, featuring Byrne's band Talking Heads interacting with actual 80's era TV commercials before eventually transforming into chocolate-coated, foil-wrapped treats. Byrne's obsession with capturing striking environmental details is perfectly matched with Ed Lachman's cinematography. Visually, TRUE STORIES evokes the shiny pre-fab face of Texas, where money from oil and microelectronics makes everything look new, as well as the dusty, weird Texas, a result of its funky ethnic mix. Yet, at least according to the film's distributor, it was framed for the 1.37:1 aspect ratio. Perfect for TV. (1986, 90 min, 35mm) RC
David Schalliol’s THE AREA (New Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check Venue website for showtimes
David Schalliol’s THE AREA follows community matriarch-cum-activist Deborah Payne as she crusades to save her neighborhood from mass demolition at the hands of the Norfolk Southern Railway corporation. The title refers to an 85-acre residential pocket of Englewood surrounding Payne’s home near 57th and Normal that’s scheduled to be bulldozed for the purposes of an intermodal freight hub, i.e. a glorified parking lot for shipping containers. Schalliol, a photographer and sociologist by trade who possesses a canny eye for architectural portraiture, is careful to eschew the ruin porn aesthetic in which dilapidated structures are treated as pure spectacle devoid of any contextual information about the socioeconomic forces that led to their demise. In one of the film’s most poetic shots, two houses are juxtaposed side by side: one in sound condition, the other abandoned, shuttered, and in the midst of dismantlement. It’s a stark contrast that symbolizes the conflicting perceptions of Englewood itself—there’s the nightly news caricature of Englewood, reducible to poverty and gun violence, and there’s the actual Englewood that’s home to a community of people. Indeed, THE AREA is deeply rooted in a sense of place, so much so that we’re often told the precise intersection or address where a scene is unfolding, and, like THE INTERRUPTERS and 70 ACRES IN CHICAGO before it, this is an urgent and compelling documentary about a dimension of city that’s rarely seen on the big screen. Though the scope here is hyperlocal, the themes of political apathy, corporate avarice, and the disenfranchisement of a minority community extend well beyond the parameters of the Area. Faced with the encroachment of the railroad company, some residents enthusiastically take buyouts; others want to stay, but aren’t given much of a choice. In order to execute their land grab, Norfolk Southern employs dubious tactics like enacting eminent domain, which allows the government to acquire private property and transfer it to a third party, and persuading at least one homeowner not to pay her mortgage in order to facilitate a “short sale.” Moreover, as a result of the entire neighborhood getting razed, residents are exposed to a slew of environmental hazards, including increased diesel emissions and gas leaks, bringing to mind Chicago’s recent pet coke scandal, the Flint, MI, water crisis, and countless other instances of environmental racism. At a town hall meeting, a Norfolk Southern representative argues that, “What we have to do is we have to balance the business imperative with our desire for the environmental need,” unaware or indifferent to the fact that these are diametrically opposed agendas. What bothers Payne most isn’t the inevitable railroad takeover, but the lack of respect for the families being displaced. Despite the efforts of a collective bargaining coalition and help from community organizations, homes inside the Area, which total around 400 at the outset, continue to dwindle until the film reaches its tragic conclusion. What’s missing, perhaps, is an in-depth interview with Norfolk Southern or 20th Ward alderman Willie Cochran, who endorses the sale of land in an about-face, in which they are taken to task for the fallout from their actions; the documentary, however, is less concerned with hard-hitting investigative journalism and more with chronicling Payne’s personal struggle. On its surface, THE AREA might seem like a tale of defeat, but this is ultimately a story about resistance, resilience, and collectivism. As Payne reflects near the end, “I feel good that we stood up to people who thought they could do anything…I think that it made me a better person.” Schalliol and Payne in person along with other guests; check the Siskel website for details. (2018, 93 min, DCP Digital) HS
Henri-Georges Clouzot's THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check Venue website for showtimes
If you've ever been remotely transfixed by a 4am rerun of Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting, and non-ironically considered that the representation of art-in-action (even that of the most hackneyed wet-on-wet American landscapes possible) has perhaps more to express and teach than even the most studious Art Institute rubbernecking: well, here's like the unforgettably hypnotic highbrow apotheosis of that. For someone who doesn't have a problem understanding the homebrewed polygon-interpolating software behind, e.g., Linklater's WAKING LIFE, figuring out just how director Clouzot pulls this off remains the real mystery: with a perfectly white "canvas" background, the camera somehow can watch, in real-time, the result of every stroke from reverse (i.e. without looking over Picasso's shoulder). When Clouzot's reels run out, the drawing or painting is "completed." Later, Picasso says he's feeling a little constrained by this technique, so we watch some more traditional longer-term compositions in melty time-lapse. It's legitimately not necessary for the viewer to buy into any concomitant hagiographic genius mythology (although you gotta sell tickets to a movie like this somehow), and there are times when you want to shout "Picasso! No!" as he casually obliterates something awesome; but any artist of any medium, amateur or professional, will find it hard to miss the message: looking at paintings in a museum is like watching the footprints on a theater stage after all the actors have gone home. (1956, 75 min, DCP Digital) MC
Josephine Decker's MADELINE'S MADELINE (New American)
Music Box Theatre — Check venue websites for showtimes
Imagine participating in one of those intense acting workshops. You've stripped yourself to the bone, taking that truth inside you that can’t be said, and finding a way to say it. Then, you discover you've put yourself in the hands of a director who's gradually trying to colonize your story. Going down this black hole of betrayal is essentially what happens to the teenage girl in Josephine Decker's MADELINE'S MADELINE, a playful, daring, occasionally annoying, extremely personal piece of work, and certainly one of the most knowing self-critiques a director has served up. Decker is a conceptual artist, musician, and actress, as well as the director of the dark, stream-of-consciousness features BUTTER ON THE LATCH and THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY. Currently, she has the potential to bring experimental film into the mainstream like no one since Terrence Malick. The movie gives us a fractured vision of New York City, reflecting the subjective impressions of young, gifted Madeline, who has an unspecified mental illness, and who's played by the remarkable 15-year-old newcomer Helena Howard. She finds her joy with a local theater troupe, role-playing a cat, for instance, and Decker seems to conceive of the process of acting as therapy—but also as play, which strikes me as a healthy vision. Miranda July is well-cast as Madeline's game if overprotective mother. Molly Parker, spot-on, plays Evangeline, the troupe's patronizing director. Evangeline isn't necessarily malignant. Rather, she walks a line I imagine all directors tread, especially directors like Decker who presumably wish, at least on some level, to shake the audience up. Evangeline may err on the side of exploitation, but it's a continuum, and one that's perhaps only truly being scrutinized today. She must be everything Decker fears she might be, or become, and so Evangeline's occasional self-indulgence and puerile pronouncements play like self-parody. As for Decker's cinematic language, anyone who's taken an Intro to Underground Film class won't find it all that disorienting, and the blurring of boundaries between characters and actors has been around long enough to merit its own adjective, Pirandellian. Decker taps into an insight that also occurred to Ingmar Bergman, who saw that, in David Thomson's words, "the basic human predicament had a marvelous metaphor in the way that an artist treated his subject and his collaborators... that everyone was not a solid identity but an actor trying to play the self." On the level of rhythm and movement, as an almost dance film, this picture really shines. "Moving in unison is one of the most connecting things that people can do, and our culture has lost that," Decker has said. The movie is exhilarating, and occasionally wearying, as an immersive, intimate sensory experience, a claustrophobic barrage. Martín Hernández’s layered sound design is jarring and abrasive. Ashley Connor, the excellent cinematographer, is both documentarian and poet in her use of focus, shadow, and texture. Decker co-edits her own footage; she's described her breakthrough, when she broke with straight editing in order to find her voice, which is "fluid, more dream-like and nightmarish." At heart the movie is a showcase for the talent of fierce, funny Helena Howard, who shows a remarkable amount of trust in both herself and her director. Unlike the film's Madeline, Howard has put her good faith in good hands. For all its imperfections, this film is alive. (2018, 90 min, DCP Digital) SP
Spike Lee’s CROOKLYN (American Revival)
Black Cinema House (at the Rebuild Foundation, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave) — Friday, 7:30pm (Free Admission)
CROOKLYN is Spike Lee’s contribution to a rich cinematic subgenre, the autobiographical memory film. Like Tarkovsky’s THE MIRROR, Fellini’s AMARCORD, and Davies’ DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES, the film is based on the director’s childhood, and, like them, it’s designed to feel less like a story than a series of memories. It takes place in Brooklyn over the spring and summer of 1973, and for the first half-hour or so, Lee (who collaborated with siblings Cinqué and Joie Lee on the script) just rejoices in recreating this time and place. The weather is nice, kids play in the street, the music on the radio is killer, and people of all races more or less get along (the white neighbor played memorably by David Patrick Kelly is at worst an uptight weirdo). Lee’s filmmaking is as exuberant here as it was in SCHOOL DAZE, with the director trying out all sorts of cinematic devices as though he were a kid first discovering the medium. At the same time, CROOKLYN is as vivid a depiction of poverty as you’ll find in mainstream American cinema of the 1990s—one memorable episode revolves around the main character (a nine-year-old girl presumably based on Joie) experiencing embarrassment over having to pay for groceries with food stamps. Alfre Woodard and Delroy Lindo play the parents of five children, and they do a good job of playing parents as children see them—their performances are warm and a little larger than life. Critics writing about this are all but forced to mention that Lee shot one scene in widescreen without anamorphically adjusting the image to create a disorienting effect. Used to convey the young heroine’s feelings of disorientation when she visits her religious, socially aspirational cousins in suburban Virginia, the device is—at least from this writer’s perspective—one of the more successful formal experiments in the director’s accomplished body of work. (1995, 115 min, Digital Projection) BS
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Conversations at the Edge series (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) presents Camilo Restrepo: Ghosts and Songs (2011-17, 70 min total, DCP Digital) on Thursday at 6pm, with Paris-based Columbian filmmaker Restrepo in person. Screening are: TROPIC POCKET (20111), LA IMPRESIÓN DE UNA GUERRA (2015), CILAOS (2016), and LA BOUCHE (2017).
Chicago Filmmakers (5720 N. Ridge Ave.) hosts an Open Screening on Saturday at 7:30pm. Attendees can go just to watch or bring up to 20 minutes of work to screen (Digital File, Blu-Ray, DVD only; no explicit content). Free admission.
Asian Pop-Up Cinema screens Raya Martin’s 2017 Filipino film SMALLER AND SMALLER CIRCLES (111 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 7pm at the AMC River East 21, with director Raya Martin in person.
The Museum of Contemporary Art presents new media artists Nick Briz and Anna Russett’s new performative lecture When I grow up I want to be a YouTuber on Friday at 7pm. Free with museum admission.
The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Nina Barnett and Jeremy Bolen’s 2018 experimental film THE BEAM (27 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. The program is rounded out with: SECOND LAW: S LEH ST. (Mike Gibisser, 2010, 14 min), 20HZ (Semiconductor, 2011, 5 min), and THESE BLAZEING STARRS! (Deborah Stratman, 2011, 14 min).
Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, presented by Chicago Filmmakers, opens on Thursday with Sonia Sebastian’s locally-made 2018 film FREELANCERS ANONYMOUS (81 min, DCP Digital) at 7pm at the Davis Theater, with Sebastian and additional cast and crew in person. The festival continues through September 30. More info at www.reelingfilmfestival.org.
The Instituto Cervantes (31 W. Ohio St.) screens Cesc Cay’s 2015 Spanish film TRUMAN (108 min, DVD Projection) on Tuesday at 7pm. Free admission.
At the Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) this week: a Lois Weber Program is on Wednesday at 1 and 7pm, featuring her 1913 short SUSPENSE (10 min, DCP Digital Projection) and her seminal 1921 film THE BLOT (91 min, DCP Digital Projection). Live piano accompaniment by David Drazin. Free admission.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Mariam Khatchvani’s 2017 Georgian film DEDE (97 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 6pm, Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Panos Cosmatos’ 2018 film MANDY (121 min, DCP Digital) opens; Tim Wardle’s 2017 documentary THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (96 min, DCP Digital) continues; Xavier Giannoli’s 2018 French film THE APPARITION (144 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday and Sunday at 11:15am; and Brian Darwas’ 2017 film GET MY GUN (90 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.
Facets Cinémathèque plays Michael Tully’s 2018 film DON’T LEAVE HOME (86 min, Digital Projection) for a week-long run.
The Chicago Cultural Center screens the new WTTW documentary GLOBAL GENERATION (Unconfirmed Running Time, Video Projection) on Saturday at 2pm, followed by a discussion with WTTW’s inCommon host, journalist Mike Leonard; and hosts the Cinema/Chicago screening of Alejandro Sugich’s 2016 Mexican film HELENA (89 min, Video Projection) on Wednesday at 6:30pm. Free admission.
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) screens Donald W. Thompson’s 1980 film IMAGE OF THE BEAST (93 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 7:30pm. Free admission.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
Stan VanDerBeek opens at Document Gallery (1709 W. Chicago Ave.) on Saturday (opening reception is Friday from 5-8pm) and runs through October 27. The show features a 16mm installation of VanDerBeek’s 1967-68 film POEMFIELD NO. 7, a digital projection of his 1972 film SYMMETRICKS, and a selection of works on paper.
Currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago: Martine Syms' SHE MAD: LAUGHING GAS (2018, 7 min, four-channel digital video installation with sound, wall painting, laser-cut acrylic, artist’s clothes); 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.
CINE-LIST: September 14 - September 20, 2018
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Castelle, Rob Christopher, Kyle Cubr, Alexandra Ensign, Scott Pfeiffer, Dmitry Samarov, Harrison Sherrod