CRUCIAL VIEWING
Nathaniel Dorsky’s THE ARBORETUM CYCLE (New Experimental)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Friday, 7pm (Free Admission)
Nathaniel Dorsky’s reputation has deservedly grown over the past decade—going from a deeply respected but lesser-known filmmaker whose work was exceptionally hard to see to a sort-of sage/doyen/grandfather of the experimental film world. This growth in reputation is in part due to changes in film technology. Previously Dorsky’s films were direct prints of reversal film, which made for a gorgeous viewing experience, but made the prints very expensive to replace. So any rental of his films came with dire and ominous warnings from the distributor about the cost of replacement. But stocks used to make reversal prints have all but disappeared, so Dorsky had to re-learn his techniques as a master chronicler of light and shadow in urban settings on negative film, which made the films no less beautiful but maybe a little less frightening to projectionists and programmers. His reputation also grew due to the publication of his slim book Devotional Cinema, which entranced people with its reverence for the cinematic art and shared viewing experience. Perhaps it espoused some pretty commonly held views among cinephiles, but rarely had those views been written about so humbly and gratefully. It touched a chord. Since then his films have been travelling around a lot more, and it’s a blessing for all film lovers. THE ARBORETUM CYCLE is oddly both minor and monumental. Monumental in that it runs well over 2 hours and contains 7 movements shot over the course of a year, yet minor-key in setting and tone as the films document a small area in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park Arboretum. Dorsky’s ability to mine such grace and blooming elegance from the light captured in his neighborhood park is an amazing feat and should not be missed. (2017-18, 137 min., 16mm) JBM
Works by Shadi Habib Allah & Želimir Žilnik (Experimental Documentary Revival)
Film Studies Center at University of Chicago (Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60 St.) — Thursday, 7pm (Free Admission)
In conjunction with the Renaissance Society’s current exhibition Shadi Habib Allah: Put to Rights, the Film Studies Center will present one of the Jerusalem-born artist’s documentaries along with two short docs by a filmmaker who inspired him, Serbian lawyer-turned-director Želimir Žilnik. The Habib Allah work on the program, THE KING AND THE JESTER (2010, 27 min, Digital Projection), is a funky and distinctive look at an auto body shop in Miami, with short scenes that depict mechanics and their friends as they shoot the shit and bluster about. Solveig Øvstebø, who curated the Renaissance Society exhibition, notes that what “unit[es] Habib Allah’s practice is a distinctively ambiguous approach to his subject matter, tempering a deliberate and critical distance with a sympathetic, almost intimate tone. His projects are not documentary, per se—he takes an artist’s license in combining scripted and observational moments, and in non-linear edits—but offer sensitive and robust portraits of people and places that are often invisible or hidden from the mainstream.” In THE KING AND THE JESTER, one can see the fruits of this practice. The men at the body shop seem less like documentary subjects than fictional characters; the social insights come at random between quirky bits of behavior. Entertaining as the film is, it’s nowhere as shocking as the two Žilnik works in the program. LITTLE PIONEERS (1968, 12 min, Digital Projection) and BLACK FILM (1971, 15 min, Digital Projection) take an unaccountably cheery view of juvenile delinquents and the homeless, respectively, the director generating dark humor from this frisson between tone and subject matter. While PIONEERS is more impressive in its editing and its concentrated wealth of content, BLACK FILM may be the more memorable of these two selections. It begins with Žilnik, playing the naïf, saying he’d like to do something about his city’s homeless population (which, under communist Yugoslavia, technically shouldn’t exist); on a whim, he decides to let six bums stay in his apartment. The homeless men bother Žilnik’s children and the director himself can’t tolerate their smell. His social experiment ends as quickly as it begins, but not before the filmmaker gets a few state officials to admit on camera that they have no idea what to do with the city’s homeless people either. Angry and funny, BLACK FILM might make you wish for more Žilnik revivals to come this way. Introduced by critic, curator, and film scholar Leo Goldsmith. BS
Steffani Jemison: Sensus Plenior (New Experimental)
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) — Thursday, 6pm
In an oft-cited 1959 essay on “The Roots of Jazz,” the musician and critic Ernest Borneman proposed an African tradition of circumlocution, a mode of communication characterized by “the veiling of all contents in ever-changing paraphrases.” He observed “the same tendency toward obliquity and ellipsis” in African-American music: “no note is attacked straight; the voice or instrument always approaches it from above or below, plays around the implied pitch [so that] the timbre is veiled and paraphrased by constantly changing vibrato, tremolo and overtone effects.” It’s right to distrust the sweeping categorizations of European critics, but the observation at least rings true for the work of Steffani Jemison, a contemporary artist who pushes at the boundaries of visual, musical and linguistic signification. Take the structural use of vibrato in RECITATIF (SO MUCH THINGS TO SAY), a 2017 musical performance excerpted in Thursday’s Conversations at the Edge program. Jemison and singer Harleighblu exchange lilting call-and-response phrases composed in Solresol, “a utopian language expressed through musical notes.” Responding to Jemison’s keyboard, Harleighblu adds a flourish of vibrato at the end of each melody, her voice swelling with meanings that exceed even this wordless dialect. Jemison’s compositions play cannily with timbre, suggesting the inexhaustible ways that inflection can invest notation with emotional, critical and conceptual significance. The title of the major video work in the program, SENSUS PLENIOR (2017, 35 min), also announces this concern: Jemison explains that the phrase refers to interpretations of the bible that “read the word beyond simply the text.” That’s what Rev. Susan Webb, the subject of SENSUS PLENIOR, brings to scripture through the practice of Gospel Mime, a traditionally African-American form of worship in which performers physically interpret bible stories and gospel songs: her performances paraphrase the divine word through gesture, expression and movement. The video is divided between preparation and performance. At first, Webb is seen practicing without makeup in her home, and in a candid backstage scene as she applies white face-paint while talking to an off-screen figure. But this is no behind-the-scenes doc: by eliding the original audio and scoring her stunning black-and-white compositions to dissonant solo improvisations for violin (Mazz Swift) and upright bass (Brendan Lopez), Jemison pointedly obscures as much as she and reveals. Indeed, the tour-de-force second half of the piece initially seems like a simple performance document, filming Webb straight-on as she practices her art before the Church pulpit. But again Jemison intervenes on the soundtrack, adding reverb and an underlying drone to the dancer’s original musical accompaniment, so that we can no longer correlate her transfixing gestures and expressions with specific lyrical cues. Denied all textual signposts, we instead begin to perceive the emotional, and perhaps political overtones of the work. Suddenly, the video shifts to slow motion, and the soundtrack becomes a pure smear of ambience; for the next fifteen minutes, Jemison’s extreme dilation of time opens up polyphonies of history and ritual in Webb’s movements, allowing us to linger on their implications of grace and violence. One imagines abstract tragedies in her contortions, discovers farcical interludes of imitation and irony between her gloved hands. Through subtle digital effects, Jemison adds a touch of vibrato to the image, returning us to the veil of mediation through which we encounter this performance. If Modernism despaired that everything was a text, then SENSUS PLENIOR, like all of Jemison’s works in this program, brilliantly paraphrases this anxiety as an affirmation of Black traditions of communication, seeking ever-changing ways of reading, inflecting, and rewriting that text. Jemison in person. (2008-18, 60 min total, Various Formats) MM
Raymundo Gleyzer’s MEXICO: THE FROZEN REVOLUTION (Documentary Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Thursday, 7pm (Free Admission)
Argentinean director Raymundo Gleyzer was a committed Marxist and revolutionary filmmaker in the 1960s and 70s, producing a small but potent body of work that was an angry cry and call for action against the corruption of his country’s government and the political realities that did not advance social and economic equality. His 1973 documentary MEXICO: THE FROZEN REVOLUTION extended his critiques to the larger Latin American region, with an examination of how the promise of self-determination and democratic reforms sought by the leaders of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 were subverted from the start by entrenched business, military, and political leaders. It was a revolution that produced reforms at the margins but left the power structures of the privileged intact and increased the disparity between rich and poor. Peasants were freed from their slave-like servitude on plantations, given land (not much, and not really) but provided no resources to benefit from it. In one segment, Gleyzer focuses on the growing of sisal to produce hemp fiber in the Yucatan. It’s the only cash crop viable in the arid region, but an increasingly unprofitable one: corporations found cheaper substitutes in manufactured fibers or transplanted the crop to African nations, where they could pay even less. The peasant farmers were trapped in a downward spiral of poverty. Gleyzer moves back and forth between verité-like segments documenting the contemporary plights of farmers, peasants, and indigenous peoples; amazing archival material of the revolution, including footage of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata; and pointedly ironic shots of the current presidential election (with a party candidate assured of victory) in which politicians continue to leverage the rhetoric and legend of the revolution, making empty promises to crowds of the poor (who are required to attend these rallies) in the name of Villa and Zapata. Gleyzer’s filmmaking is not subtle; he saw film as a tool for revolutionary action, not as a medium of artistic expression. Despite its directness of message, though, there is often suppleness and grace in the style. There is power in his images: in the expressiveness of faces, in the muted colors and arid light, in the attention to detail. Gleyzer’s editing, too, works to build his message, through counterpoints created in crosscutting, but again, the editing is also frequently attuned to rhythm and movement. Revolutionary in message, yes; propagandistic in intent, yes; but still demonstrating an artistry despite his claims that film is just a tool (“When we say cinema is an instrument, we mean that the camera is not a military weapon, but a counter-information tool, that is the value of this type of cinema.”). Gleyzer was not the only one in Argentina who saw the value of the camera as a “counter-information” tool—three years after making MEXICO, he was “disappeared” by governmental forces. Showing with Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina’s 2003 documentary about Gleyzer, RAYMUNDO (52 min, Digital Projection). (1973, 65 min, 16mm) With Juana Sapire, Gleyzer’s collaborator and biographer, in person. PF
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Chantal Akerman’s HOTEL MONTEREY and NEWS FROM HOME (French/Belgian/US Revivals)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 7pm (double feature)
You know how when you say a word over and over again, it starts to lose its meaning? (The phenomenon is known as semantic satiation—how lovely.) Certain aspects of its sound stand out, while others succumb to whichever vowel or consonant has staked its claim, though such a paradigm can just as easily shift in other utterances. This concept is at the heart of Chantal Akerman’s HOTEL MONTEREY (1972, 62 min, DCP Digital), a structuralist work in the vein of Michael Snow and Hollis Frampton. Filmed at the Hotel Monterey, an old-school, cheapo hotel in Manhattan that’s now a Days Inn, it examines the location’s inner workings, Akerman’s stylistic monotony mimicking what’s going on inside. There’s not much more to it than that—except there’s so much more to it than that, each seemingly simple shot a cavern of representation. “When you look at a picture, if you look just one second you get the information, ‘that’s a corridor,’” she said about the film. “But after a while you forget it’s a corridor, you just see that it’s yellow, red, lines: and then it comes back as a corridor.” Though its focus is largely on place, specifically the points where walls, doors, windows, and other such architectural elements intersect and overlap, people do sometimes appear, either bustling about or sitting intentionally in a sort-of portrait mode; though technically a documentary, it’s more a document of itself, conveying little about the Hotel Monterey but inviting endless perlustration into HOTEL MONTEREY. Shot by Babette Mangolte, who also did the cinematography for Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, the film is deceptively simple. There are a few scenes that, after you’ve contemplated their meaning—or lack thereof—for several moments, you’ll find yourself wondering how she and Akerman even accomplished them (including what appear to be dolly shots that would make Spike Lee proud). To echo Akerman’s aforementioned sentiment, you’ll mull over this until it’s lost all meaning and then regained it again. NEWS FROM HOME (1976, 88 min, DCP Digital), also shot by Mangolte, has similar formal concerns, namely that of random scenes in New York City, Akerman’s home away from home. Laid on top of these images is Akerman in voiceover reading letters from her mother in Belgium. Anyone familiar with Akerman’s biography and her last film, NO HOME MOVIE (released after she passed away in 2015), knows her relationship with her mother was closer than most people’s—something that seems almost unusual for an artist whose work is so lacking in sentimentality. Such a paradox is at the heart of NEWS FROM HOME, rife with aesthetic inscrutability and expressive narrative content—one gets a sense from her mother’s letters that their relationship is strained, perhaps for the first time ever, due to distance and Akerman’s newfound freedom (or displacement, depending on how you look at it). Both HOTEL MONTEREY and NEWS FROM HOME are sometimes referred to as documentaries about New York City, but they could take place anywhere, at least anywhere that has visually compelling interiors and streetscapes. Their 16mm cinematography, however, is crucial, even if chosen out of necessity, the pulsing grain evoking a sense of cohesion (all those dots, like atoms or a Seurat painting, come together to form people, places, and things), but also an aesthetic cacophony that makes those very things appear to be constantly shifting entities. Many of Akerman’s films are definable in that their intentions are either transparent or stated outright by Akerman herself—which isn’t a bad thing; art need not be entirely oblique to be masterful—but these films, two of her earliest, are so forthright as to elude critique. Like words whose meanings are set but whose actualities are flexible, to be disassembled and put back together, HOTEL MONTEREY and NEWS FROM HOME elude demarcation. It’s enough just to revel in their being—a filmic satiation of sorts. KS
Lasse Hallström’s MY LIFE AS A DOG (Swedish Revival)
Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) — Wednesday, 7:30pm
A favorite of both Kurt Vonnegut and Michael Jackson, Lasse Hallström’s international breakthrough takes a sensitive and ingratiating approach to the subject of early adolescence. The protagonist, Ingemar, is a boy of 12 or so, growing up in small-town Sweden in the late 1950s. Hallström and his co-writers, adapting a book by Reidar Jönsson, define the boy by his curiosity—he’s interested in space exploration, hiding out in the local network of tunnels, and seeing girls naked. Though not mean-spirited, Ingemar is nevertheless a born troublemaker; he’s always getting into fights with his older brother and going too far in his exploits with friends. Hallström suggests that Ingemar acts out, in part, because he lacks for proper parental guidance, and this sense of absence gives the film a needed melancholy tinge. Ingemar’s sailor father is never around, and his mother is bedridden with a terminal illness. The film doesn’t overemphasize the pathos, however; sticking close to Ingemar’s perspective (but without trying to emulate it—the film’s affectionate near-distance from its subject is the main source of its charm), MY LIFE AS A DOG focuses on the happy moments of childhood, with death and disease representing unfortunate distractions from a life of discovery. Jörgen Persson’s cinematography is fittingly warm and bright—the world looks edenic and just waiting to be played in. Persson even makes the Swedish winter seem inviting, as opposed to so many Scandinavian films that render the season funereal. The film maintains its upbeat tone even in the wintertime passages (which are not without an attendant mourning), with scenes of year-end celebration that may remind you of that other Swedish art house smash of the 1980s, Ingmar Bergman’s FANNY AND ALEXANDER. Hallström rode out the success of MY LIFE AS A DOG to a successful career in Hollywood, though he never recaptured the delicate sweetness that made this film so endearing. Preceded by Tex Avery’s 1954 animated short CRAZY MIXED-UP PUP (16mm, 7 min). (1985, 102 min, 35mm) BS
Ivan Dixon’s THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR (American Revival)
South Side Projections at Chicago State University Library, (9501 S. King Dr.) — Saturday, 6pm (Free Admission)
THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR, based on the book by native Chicagoan and committed Marxist Sam Greenlee, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, chronicles the activities of the portentously named Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook). Freeman is one of a cohort of all-male black applicants to a CIA affirmative action program foisted upon the agency by U.S. senators who are more worried about approval ratings than equality. The cohort of hopefuls doesn’t realize that their white trainers will use every opportunity to eliminate them from contention. In the end, only Freeman has made the grade. He is appointed section chief of reproduction services, aka photocopying, and remains with the agency for five years before returning to his native Chicago. Then the real purpose of his CIA stint becomes clear—to use the skills he acquired to recruit and train guerrilla freedom fighters in all the major urban centers in the country to battle Whitey to a standstill and force the Establishment to grant black Americans freedom in exchange for safe and peaceful streets. Greenlee provides a graphic depiction of the lumpenproletariat rising up against their bourgeois oppressors. After first establishing Freeman as a charismatic leader who can win respect with his muscles as well as his brains, the film shows him recruiting his former gang, the Cobras, to be his first platoon of revolutionaries. Ivan Dixon, perhaps best known as one of the POWs on the TV series Hogan’s Heroes (1965–1971), had a full career as an actor and TV director. His only two feature film assignments, TROUBLE MAN (1972) and SPOOK, came during the short window of opportunity for independently produced “Blaxploitation” films, and both films balance intelligence and aspiration with the more common elements of sex and violence. Dixon shoots parallel scenes and dialogue of Freeman training his men as he was trained at The Farm, a still-relevant example of American forces opportunistically training people who just as opportunistically will turn on them some day. The film has no real place for women as active fighters, but Dahomey Queen (Paula Kelly), a black prostitute with whom Freeman hooks up during his CIA training, becomes an invaluable informer. In 2012, SPOOK was added to the National Film Registry as a “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” American film. Faced with the violence against the black community that we know is absolutely real from recent events, Freeman’s desperate actions “to be free,” as he puts it, are likely to be met with a good deal of sympathy from a large portion of today’s audiences. The screening is followed by a panel discussion with David Lemieux (poet, activist, and actor in the film), Jamilah Lemieux (cultural critic and author), and Sandra Jackson-Opoku (poet, novelist, screenwriter, and journalist). (1973, 102 min, Digital Projection) MF
Patrick Yau’s (or Johnnie To’s) EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED (Hong Kong Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Tuesday, 7pm
Johnnie To cofounded the production company Milkyway Image in 1996, but it seems the real watershed moment in his career came a couple years later, when he produced and/or directed several films that established his mature style. Just look at the incredible run of releases with which To was involved between 1998 and 1999: THE LONGEST NITE, EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED, A HERO NEVER DIES, WHERE A GOOD MAN GOES, RUNNING OUT OF TIME, SEALED WITH A KISS, and THE MISSION. Doc Films will be showing four of these titles in their ten-film To retrospective this fall, which showcases the tremendous range of Milkyway Image’s output. The series features comedies and romances in addition to the balletic action films on which To built his international reputation, though EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED, which kicks off the series, falls squarely in the genre for which the producer-director is most beloved. The film might be considered a standard-bearer Milkyway production, with glorious action sequences (staged, filmed, and edited to feel like musical numbers); a rousing mix of comedy and dark suspense; and a winning cast featuring many of the company’s regular players, among them Simon Yam, Lam Suet, Ching Wan Lau, and Hui Shiu Hung; and an intoxicatingly romantic depiction of the Hong Kong cityscape. These elements provide such entertainment value that the plot feels almost secondary, though the deft script is way above-average for cops-and-robbers fare. The movie weaves between three groups of characters: an inept band of criminals, some more accomplished (and brutal) crooks, and the tactical police team tracking them all. One recurring theme of To’s action films is the interconnectedness of criminals and cops (and, by implication, the unity of all things), and this film lays it out impressively, setting the stage for To’s 2004 masterpiece BREAKING NEWS. There’s been much contention over the years as to whether the film was directed by Patrick Yau or To himself (who takes a producer credit along with Wai Ka-Fai), as both have claimed to be the movie’s true auteur. The film certainly looks and feels like numerous others signed by To, but given the collaborative nature of most Milkyway productions, it’s not implausible that Yau contributed a good deal to the film as well. (1998, 86 min, 35mm) BS
Rungano Nyoni’s I AM NOT A WITCH (New British/Zambian)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check Venue website for showtimes
In first-world Western countries, the formerly dreaded figure of the witch has been mainstreamed as a spiritual practice of choice or fodder for the entertainment industry. Screenwriter and first-time director Rungano Nyoni, too, has made an entertaining film about witches in I AM NOT A WITCH, but one with a razor-sharp edge. In rural Zambia, a young girl (Maggie Mulubwa), probably an orphan, is accused of witchcraft for staring at a woman who falls while carrying a jug of water. Other outlandish claims are made against her, but because the girl does not deny that she is a witch—indeed, she doesn’t talk at all—she is shipped off to a camp for witches. The older women in the camp name her Shula and initiate her into the rigors of the life—tethered to a long spool of ribbon to prevent her from flying away, forced to work on area farms as a slave, displayed for tourists, and given the responsibility for bringing rain and judging criminal trials. Those accustomed to viewing other cultures through the noble images of National Geographic will be confronted with petty corruption, unreasonable tribal queens, blatant prejudice, and superstitious ignorance in this farcical drama. They will also be surprisingly moved by the plight of Shula, a blank slate who had no voice to utter the words that form the title of this fascinating film, but who enables other women to find theirs. The poetic final image of the film is not to be missed. (2017, 93 min, DCP Digital) MF
Jake Meginsky and Neil Young’s MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS (New Documentary)
Facets Cinemathèque — Check Venue website for showtimes
Using one medium to describe another usually lays bare the impossibility of bridging gaps between disparate forms of expression, but Meginsky and Young have done all they can to present out-there percussionist Milford Graves with utmost dignity and in his own idiosyncratic terms. This is not a creative person who is ever content to stay in one lane. Rather than a straightforward chronology or an array of talking heads, the filmmakers have assembled a crazy quilt of archival and contemporary footage of an ever-experimental musician on stages all over the world as well as at his home in Queens, NY. The wild garden Graves has cultivated and the endless variety of art he has collected illustrates his approach to his work. Taking inspiration from everything from martial arts to the movements of insects to the variance of the human heartbeat, Graves is an omnivorous sonic explorer and an original thinker who fully deserves to be known beyond the rarified and remote free jazz circles in which he’s a mainstay. A sequence filmed at a Japanese school for autistic children in 1981 potently illustrates the way Graves engages others and compels them to come along on his journey. At first, all the kids are seated respectfully on a gym floor, watching the drummer do his thing, but by the end half of them are wildly dancing all over the room. I’ve seen few better documentaries about how artists create their art. (2018, 98 min, Video Projection) DS
Matt Tyrnauer’s STUDIO 54 (New Documentary)
Chicago Filmmakers (5720 N. Ridge Ave.) — Sunday, 5pm (film only) and 7:30pm (film plus party)
Though not especially great filmmaking, STUDIO 54—directed by Matt Tyrnauer, a Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair who’s made several popular documentaries (among them VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR and, more recently, the salacious SCOTTY AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD)—is nevertheless a compelling investigation into the history of the legendary midtown discotheque. Founded by Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell in 1977 and lasting in its original iteration for only 33 months, the club is presented as not just an infamous late-70s hot spot, but as a touchstone that helped shape various aspects of American culture, from our obsession with celebrity to, more positively, LBGTQ+ inclusion. Perhaps overshadowing this aspect of the film is Tyrnauer’s focus on Schrager and Rubell’s legal troubles, interesting content that adds another layer to their storied legacy. Also in the mix are juicy details about the club’s celebrity clientele (I found it amusing to learn that while Mick and Keith got in for free, other members of the Rolling Stones had to pay) and fascinating details about its ever-changing structural and interior design. Despite the superficial concerns, a lot of heart comes through as former employees and club goers talk about the impact of the AIDS crisis on the club’s community, specifically Rubell, who died of complications from the disease in 1989 after having been closeted for most of his life. The camaraderie between Schrager and Rubell (who met in college), as well as that of their staff, is touching—so much so that it’s not hard to feel vindicated by the conclusive title cards. It’s a nice reminder of the power of community, especially one operating outside societal norms. KS
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Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, presented by Chicago Filmmakers, continues through Sunday at Chicago Filmmakers. The festival’s final weekend includes nine shorts programs and the Closing Night film, reviewed above.
Tod Browning's DRACULA (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre — Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
In DRACULA, Tod Browning, the greatest horror director of the silent period, famously inaugurated Universal's long cycle of scary movies. Browning's Dracula, played with astounding charisma by Béla Lugosi, is a handsome, collected, and hyper-civilized monster whose lust for blood and power plays out not in fangs, hairy palms, and vivid, animalistic transformations (as in Bram Stoker's novel) but in the pregnant look, the deliberate pause, and the contorted, barely controlled fury threatening to boil over in every gesture. Lugosi's performance as the titular count was a radical departure from the rat-like portrait drawn in the novel, but has become the gold standard in stately and erotic menace, haunting the nightmares of the susceptible for three-quarters of a century now. The product of a deep collaboration with Karl Freund, perhaps the greatest cinematographer ever to live, DRACULA is a beautiful and disturbing film, one of the great financial successes in Universal's history, and a high-point in any consideration of the genre. The film's oneiric pacing and logic defy summary: nothing makes any sense at all, and yet feels so utterly and terrifyingly inevitable. For years, critics were fond of dismissing DRACULA as a shallow and sloppy exercise that contrasted poorly to James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN, arriving later the same year. But in the roughness of DRACULA's style, its stagy performances, its incoherent plotline, its strange, stuttery dramaturgy, they missed the ways all of these ostensive faults only enhanced the film's true power. Dracula is a demonic, supernatural force of evil that, repeatedly, is equated in power and malice, to cinema itself. His hypnotic gaze penetrates into our eyes as much as into those of the innocent flower-vendor he murders upon his arrival in England, and that gaze is symbolically and visually linked to that of his exact opposite, the mysterious foreigner Van Helsing, whose glasses have the unearthly power to reflect the lights of artifice itself. (1931, 75 min, 35mm) KB
Marcel Camus’ BLACK ORPHEUS (Brazilian Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Monday, 7pm
Adapted for the screen from Vinicius de Moraes Orfeu da Conseição, which itself is an adaptation of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek mythology, BLACK ORPHEUS is a vibrant film teeming with palpable energy. Set in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval, Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) comes to the city to stay with her cousin and to get away from a man wanting to kill her. She meets Orfeu (Breno Mello in a phenomenal role as a first time actor) who instantly takes a liking to her despite being engaged. As the celebration of Carnaval commences, Eurydice’s worst fear is realized as her pursuer, a man dressed as Death in a skeleton costume, has followed her to Rio. Orfeu must now juggle his jealous fiancée with protecting Eurydice. What makes Marcel Camus’ film so intoxicating is its combination of memorable music, lavish costumes, and gorgeous Technicolor. It is a film that succeeds at transporting its viewers into the luscious setting so that it becomes practically tactile. It’s hard not to want to dance along to the film’s near-constant, upbeat samba/bossa nova music. The wonderful chaos that unfolds onscreen juxtaposes well against the film’s more somber, mythological roots. The clever modernization of elements such as Orfeu descending a darkened spiral staircase to symbolize Orpheus’ travels into the Underworld or the more straightforward takes on Hermes and Cerberus help to bring the classic story to a wider audience. BLACK ORPHEUS is a feast for all senses and a film that’s hard to forget. (1959, 107 min, 35mm) KC
Jean Renoir’s TONI + Charles Burnett’s KILLER OF SHEEP Double Feature
Filmfront (1740 W. 18th St.) – Friday, 7pm
Jean Renoir’s TONI (French Revival)
This story of an Italian immigrant looking for love and a living in the South of France has the feel of a parable or folktale but is told through resolutely realist means. Toni is a restless fellow who can’t settle down with either one woman or one job, but is always looking enviously upon the lives of others. Accompanied at key moments by a wandering guitarist singing of the hero’s woes, this is a droll yet often touching film which anticipates a lot of later French New Wave cinema in its use of untrained actors and real locations. The casual mingling of languages and races among the cast portraying quarry workers, woodsmen, and other working class types also seems ahead of its time. These people look like they could’ve walked straight out of a Cezanne painting but talk and act like they could be in a Cassavetes film. This doesn’t have the narrative dexterity of Renoir’s THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939) but shows his affection for and amusement at the fallibility of his fellow humans just as well. Few other directors could poke fun at and empathize with the plight of his subjects quite like Renoir. (1935, 90 min, Digital Projection) DS
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Charles Burnett’s KILLER OF SHEEP (American Revival)
Critic J. Hoberman proposed two types of film debuts that can perhaps unfairly overshadow a director’s entire career: First, debuts that are radically new and arrive seemingly fully-formed—think CITIZEN KANE and BREATHLESS—and second, works that have an innocence and rawness born of circumstances that can never be replicated, for which he cites Satyajit Ray’s PATHER PANCHALI, Jack Smith’s FLAMING CREATURES, and Charles Burnett’s 1978 masterpiece KILLER OF SHEEP. In Burnett’s case those lightning-in-a-bottle circumstances involved a shoestring budget and weekend-only shooting with mostly non-professional actors over the course of several years beginning in 1972, all in service of what was to be the young director’s MFA thesis at UCLA. Because Burnett initially had academic, not theatrical, aspirations for the work he never secured the rights to the 22 classic R&B, jazz, and soul songs on the soundtrack. For this reason the film never saw a wide release until 2007. The film takes place in post-riot Watts, Los Angeles and involves the day-to-day lives of families in the neighborhood. The main protagonist is Stan, an amiable slaughterhouse worker who toils mightily to support his wife and two children while maintaining his integrity. The rhyming of Stan’s lot in life—a powerless man conveyed from scene to scene by an overwhelming sense of inevitability—with his own methodical killing and processing at the slaughterhouse transcends the political. The depiction of black family life solely for the purposes of overt polemic is the type of cliché Burnett fought throughout his career. Ultimately, the film is too warm to be scathing. Instead, much like Stan, KILLER OF SHEEP feels innocent and unassuming. It’s a sincere statement by a young director that earns its comparisons to the classics of Italian neorealism. And like those classics, Burnett’s sense of realism is universal: The characters’ victories and defeats are all small—a stroke of the knee and a smirk, a flat tire, a scraped elbow—but feel earth shattering in the moment. We sense out of narrative habit redemption is coming in the end, but when art imitates life and it doesn’t we accept it like fate. Dinah Washington’s “The Bitter Earth,” which is played multiple times to increasingly devastating effect, perfectly encapsulates KILLER OF SHEEP. At once beautiful, fatalistic, despairing, in the end it leaves us only with hope: “I’m sure someone may answer my call, and this bitter earth may not be so bitter after all.” (1978, 81 min, Digital Projection) JS
Dennis Hopper's THE LAST MOVIE (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 2pm, Sunday, 5pm, Wednesday, 8pm, and Thursday, 6pm
Hot off the unexpected success of EASY RIDER, Dennis Hopper was give complete creative control and a considerable amount of studio funding to make this quasi-fable about a stuntman (Hopper) who gets roped into a movie cargo cult in the jungles of Peru. Shot on location with a cast seemingly composed of whoever Hopper felt like hanging out with at the time—including Sam Fuller, Kris Kristofferson, Michelle Phillips, Peter Fonda, Sylvia Miles and Dean Stockwell—and edited over the course of a year at Hopper's remote, gun-and-groupie-filled compound, it's a jumbled, intentionally-fragmentary mess—but also a singular and serious (albeit coked-up) artistic statement by a man attempting to make an anti-Hollywood movie on Hollywood's dime. Hopper might've not accomplished everything he set out to do, but the result is still unpredictable and one-of-a-kind. (1971, 108 min, DCP Digital) IV
Orson Welles' THE TRIAL (International Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Thursday, 9:30pm
Casting a glib and voluble Anthony Perkins in the role of Josef K., a man compelled to court by a nebulous governmental authority who is ignorant of any crime, provides for a decidedly strange and personal adaptation of Kafka's unfinished story. At times a confounding film, Orson Welles' loose adaptation offers an unsettling and haunting expression of the modern experience. By putting K—and by extension the audience—into byzantine governmental systems, nightmarish and anonymous spaces, and contact with people sometimes better described as moving bodies, Welles "confronts the corruptions and self-deceptions of the contemporary world." Iconic images abound through Welles' aesthetic mastery, using sets and later (when the money ran out) abandoned locales in Paris, Zagreb, and Rome; the scale of an office floor the size of an airplane hangar is astonishing. Welles himself—also appearing as K's lawyer—is monumental in scale as well, looming over the picture in all his anxiety and discontent. (1962, 118 min, DCP Digital) BW
Julie Dash's DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 3pm and Tuesday, 6pm
Casting a glib and voluble Anthony Perkins in the role of Josef K., a man compelled to court by a nebulous governmental authority who is ignorant of any crime, provides for a decidedly strange and personal adaptation of Kafka's unfinished story. At times a confounding film, Orson Welles' loose adaptation offers an unsettling and haunting expression of the modern experience. By putting K—and by extension the audience—into byzantine governmental systems, nightmarish and anonymous spaces, and contact with people sometimes better described as moving bodies, Welles "confronts the corruptions and self-deceptions of the contemporary world." Iconic images abound through Welles' aesthetic mastery, using sets and later (when the money ran out) abandoned locales in Paris, Zagreb, and Rome; the scale of an office floor the size of an airplane hangar is astonishing. Welles himself—also appearing as K's lawyer—is monumental in scale as well, looming over the picture in all his anxiety and discontent. (1962, 118 min, DCP Digital) BW
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Also presented by South Side Projections this week: two episodes from the 1972-73 WTTW series Earthkeeping (“Greenbacks” and “Sodbusters”; 55 min total, Digital Projection) screen on Wednesday at 7pm at Experimental Station (6100 S. Blackstone Ave.). Followed by a discussion led by Sean Cusick of Second City. Free admission.
Asian Pop-Up Cinema screens Hye-won Jee’s 2016 South Korean/Indian documentary SINGING WITH ANGRY BIRD (88 min, Video Projection) on Friday at 6pm at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Wishnick Hall, 3255 S. Dearborn). Free admission, but RSVP required at www.asianpopupcinema.org; Fung Chih-chiang’s 2018 Hong Kong film CONCERTO OF THE BULLY (96 min, Digital Projection) is on Tuesday at 7pm at the AMC River East 21, with Fung Chih-chiang in person; and Benny Lau’s 2017 Hong Kong film WHEN SUN MEETS MOON (95 min, Digital Projection) is on Wednesday at 7pm, also at River East.
Also at Filmfront (1740 W. 18th St.) this week: Jorge Fons’ 1989 Mexican film RED DAWN [ROJO AMANECER] (99 min, Digital Projection) is on Tuesday at 7pm; and the shorts program Cincuenta años, y ¿qué ha cambiado? [Fifty years, and what has changed?] is on Thursday at 7pm, with works by Lorena Barrera Enciso, Tamara Becerra Valdez, Ximena Cuevas, Daniel Haddad, Noé Martínez, Giselle Mira-Diaz, Nancy D. Sánchez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and María Sosa.
The Midwest Independent Film Festival (at the Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema) screens Lisa Madalinski’s 2017 film TWO IN THE BUSH: A LOVE STORY (97 min, Digital Projection) on Tuesday at 7:30pm, with Madalinski in person. The screening is preceded by a 6pm reception and a 6:30pm producers panel.
Black Cinema House (at Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) screens Berry Gordy’s 1975 film MAHOGANY (109 min, Video Projection) on Friday at 7pm. Free admission.
The Italian Cultural Institute (500 N. Michigan Ave.) screens Enrica Viola’s 2016 Italian film BORSALINO CITY (78 min, Video Projection) on Thursday at 6pm. Free admission.
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens Mark Sandrich’s 1935 film TOP HAT (101 min, 35mm) on Wednesday at 1 and 7pm. Free admission.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Jean-Luc Godard’s 1986 French film THE RISE AND FALL OF A SMALL FILM COMPANY (92 min, DCP Digital) plays for a week; Ingmar Bergman’s 1978 Swedish film AUTUMN SONATA (94 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 2pm, Saturday at 3:15pm, and Monday at 8pm; and his 2003 Swedish film SARABAND (107 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 5:15pm and Wednesday at 6pm; Valerio Jalongo’s 2017 Italian/Swiss documentary THE SENSE OF BEAUTY (75 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 6pm, with Jalongo in person; Sean Hartofilis’ 2017 film COVADONGA (71 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 8:15pm, with Hartofilis in person; Mark O’Connor’s 2017 Irish film CARDBOARD GANGSTERS (92 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 8pm, with O’Connor in person; and Fergus O’Brien’s 2018 UK film MOTHER’S DAY (90 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 5pm, with O’Brien in person.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Dana Nachman and Don Hardy’s 2018 documentary PICK OF THE LITTER (81 min, DCP Digital) opens; Panos Cosmatos’ 2018 film MANDY (121 min, DCP Digital) continues; Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's 2018 French film LET THE CORPSES TAN (92 min, DCP Digital) returns; Kenji Nagasaki’s 2018 Japanese animated film MY HERO ACADEMIA: TWO HEROES (95 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 3:30pm and Tuesday at 7:30pm; Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 film THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) is on Friday at Midnight; and Jim Sharman’s 1975 film THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at Midnight.
Also at Facets Cinémathèque this week: Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler, and Jeff Springer’s 2018 documentary RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE (71 min, Video Projection) plays for a week-long run.
The Chicago Cultural Center hosts the Cinema/Chicago screening of Per Fly’s 2013 Swedish film WALTZ FOR MONICA (111 min, Video Projection) on Wednesday at 6:30pm. Free admission.
The DuSable Museum hosts the International Social Change “ChangeFest” Film Festival Friday-Sunday. More info at https://socialchange.site/filmfestival.
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) screens Charles Philip Moore’s 1990 film DEMON WIND (96 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
Elastic Arts (3429 W. Diversey Ave., 2nd Floor) presents Intellectual Property: A solo exhibition of work by Julia Dratel though November 17 (open most evenings during public events, or by appointment through the artist—contact via her website: http://juliadratel.com/intellectualproperty. The exhibition includes photographs (digital and film), poetry, and two single-channel video/sound works: rehearsal 1.29 (2017-18, 2 min loop) and battery park city (excerpts: "a loyalty to the objects you know") (2009/2018, 6 min loop).
The Graham Foundation (Madlener House, 4 W. Burton Place) continues Martine Syms: Incense Sweaters & Ice through January 12.
The Renaissance Society (University of Chicago) presents Shadi Habib Allah: Put to Rights through November 4. In addition to video installation works, the show includes photographic and sculptural works.
Stan VanDerBeek is on view at Document Gallery (1709 W. Chicago Ave.) 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 28 - October 4, 2018
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Kyle Cubr, Marilyn Ferdinand, JB Mabe, Michael Metzger, Dmitry Samarov, James Stroble, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Brian Welesko