CINE-FILE SELECTS: FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO
In partnership with film distributor Cinema Guild, Cine-File is presenting a virtual screening of independent/experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ 2020 documentary feature FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO. The film is available to rent at the link below for $12, with half the proceeds going to Cine-File (funds will be used for general expenses, future programming, and to provide honoraria to our contributors). The film is also available via our friends at Facets Cinémathèque.
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Lynne Sachs’ FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here and through Cine-File here
In his Odes, Horace wrote, "For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer." It’s hardly an esoteric dictum, but nevertheless it’s duly reflected in experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ wholehearted documentary portrait of her father, Ira Sachs Sr. Something of a longstanding work-in-progress, the film draws from decades of footage shot by Sachs, her father, and her filmmaker brother, Ira Sachs Jr. (whose own 2005 film FORTY SHADES OF BLUE was inspired by the same so-called “Hugh Hefner of Park City”), plus others, documenting not just the sybaritic “hippie-businessman” patriarch, but also his numerous descendants. Sachs’ knotty chronicle reveals that her father has a total of nine children with several different women, two of whom the other siblings found out about only a few years back. (The film opens with Sachs brushing her elderly father’s hair, working out a particularly unpleasant snarl. “Sorry, dad,” she says. “There’s just one part that’s very tangly.” The irony is faint and benevolent, but present even so.) Sachs considers the enveloping imbroglio from her own perspective, but also takes into account the viewpoints of her eight siblings, her father’s ex-wives (including her own mother) and girlfriends, plus Ira’s mother, a gracefully cantankerous old woman in a certain amount of denial over her son’s wanton predilections and the role she played in his dysfunction. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO—the title an homage to Yvonne Rainer's FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO...—is comprised of footage recorded between 1965 and 2019 and shot on 8mm, 16mm, VHS, Hi8, Mini DV, and digital; the fusion of all this material (by editor Rebecca Shapass) ranks among the most astounding use of personal archives that I’ve ever seen. It all exists in a state between documentary and home-movie footage, a paradigm that aptly reflects the conflict between reality and perspective, and the uncomfortable middle-ground that bisects the two. Sachs’ work often features her family, but this feels like an apotheosis of her autobiographical predisposition, likewise a question—why do the sins of the father linger?—and an answer. Among the most affecting scenes are roundtable discussions between the siblings where they consider revelations about their father and the implications of his actions. These scenes are heartrending not for their sadness, but rather for their naked honesty; it’s not just a film about a father who, but also a film about a love that defines a family. Sachs’ filmography is centered on infinite poetic quandaries (in voice over, she explores some of them here, such as when she muses on her father’s profession as a developer in Utah: “What happens when you own a horizon?”) and this feels like a logical conclusion to a lifetime of such profound impasses, though I’ve no doubt she’ll continue to probe life and its enigmas in a similarly masterful fashion. For all the suffering on display, Sachs has created an indelible work that, like those within it, perseveres by way of honesty and love. (2020, 74 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Fernanda Valadez’s IDENTIFYING FEATURES (Mexico/Spain)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Watching Fernanda Valadez’s auspicious debut feature, I was struck by how a film about something so ugly—the ugliness of pain, of an exodus spurred and eventually terminated by a too-cruel world—could also be so beautiful, each shot wringed for a certain visual ecstasy at odds with the disquieting subject matter. Claudia Becerril Bulos’ cinematography is extraordinary, but the true achievement is how the aesthetic sublimity complements the story of a middle-aged mother in Mexico seeking her teenage son, Jesus (Juan Jesús Varela), who’s left their small town for the southern U.S. border. The film begins as Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández, outstanding) recounts in voiceover the circumstances of her son’s departure while the memory is realized onscreen. Valadez then cuts to Magdalena and her friend, the mother of another boy with whom Jesus left for the border, in a sterile office, attempting to locate their children after months without contact. The friend discovers that her son was found dead, while Jesus is still missing. This begins what Valadez describes as a road movie, with Magdalena traversing the countryside to discover the whereabouts of her child. At a facility where she’s nearly coerced into having her son declared dead (on the basis of authorities having found just his duffle bag), she meets another mother in a similar situation; she encourages Magdalena to continue searching. Along her journey to find a man who’d allegedly been on the same bus as her son, she meets a young man, Miguel (David Illescas), himself a migrant who had been compelled to self-deport from the U.S. back to Mexico. The film is deliberately ambiguous, though it’s clear that the ongoing presence of Mexican drug cartels is to blame for the lingering violence and chaos; the threat of disappearance and senseless murder, especially among the migrant population, looms large. Valadez and cowriter Astrid Rondero aren’t explicit in their indictment of this culture. Instead they consider the phenomenon on a metaphorical level, with Magdalena representing all those impacted by the brutality, her journey a modern-day odyssey as regrettable as it is epic. Some elements of the film are disturbing—early on, we see someone cutting into an eyeball, and, later, rotting animal corpses and people being murdered by what appears to be the devil incarnate—and others are thriller-adjacent, but in general it’s breathtakingly beautiful. The filmmakers render transcendent such mundane images as a makeshift office formed out of plastic and the crack in a windshield, to say nothing of the verdurous landscapes that the protagonists tread. The beauty serves to lay bare the ugliness that causes Magdalena and those like her to suffer. Other techniques (such as not subtitling the dialogue over a pivotal flashback and a recurring motif of people speaking to the protagonists not shown in full) convey a sensation of uncertainty that plagues not just the characters, but a society in crisis. (2020, 95 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
Robin Lutz’s M.C. ESCHER: JOURNEY TO INFINITY (Netherlands/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
This documentary about M.C. Escher hangs on a clever conceit: all the narration comes from Escher’s letters and diaries, so the film proceeds as if the great Dutch artist is telling his own life story. Recited with delicious hamminess by Stephen Fry, the narration allows for a more intimate portrait than one usually gets from contemporary biographical docs; you come away from the movie having learned not just about Escher, but how Escher saw himself. One of the more interesting insights is that Escher didn’t see himself as an artist, but rather as a mathematician who worked in visual design to realize various logical puzzles. Apparently, Escher described the whole creative project of his mature period as one of depicting infinity within defined spaces—a paradox to describe a series of paradoxes! He also claimed to have less interest in achieving beauty with his work than a sense of wonder, which reveals his creative intentions as well as his modesty. Much of the personal information presented in JOURNEY TO INFINITY supports the film’s characterization of Escher as self-effacing: he maintained a low profile, spent much of his adulthood caring for his mentally ill wife, and gently disparaged the individualist youth counterculture that popularized his designs in the 1960s. The movie really sings when it gets into the designs themselves, often deploying animation to illustrate Escher’s lucid explanations of his work. (2018, 81 min) [Ben Sachs]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Thomas Vinterberg’s ANOTHER ROUND (Denmark)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Reuniting with leading man Mads Mikkelsen, Danish writer and director Thomas Vinterberg’s (THE HUNT) newest film, ANOTHER ROUND, reaches for a full bottle of vodka and lands in a drunken state of elation, depression, and mid-life difficulty. Denmark’s submission to the 2021 Oscars for Best International Feature Film, ANOTHER ROUND finds Mikkelsen in an acting showcase, surrounded by other steady and solid counterparts in Magnus Millang, Thomas Bo Larsen, and Lars Ranthe, playing four high school teachers that enter into an odd experiment: keeping themselves at a blood alcohol content of .05 at all times. Vinterberg directs the film like a drunken night on the town, from the joy of dancing on tables with great friends to waking up disoriented, broken, and desperate to either never see alcohol again or grab the nearest bottle and take a swig. ANOTHER ROUND’s tonal shifts work, mostly with ease, due to Mikkelsen’s performance, one in which every look, smirk, and curling of his lips is measured and intentional. It’s not a film filled with speeches or fights that last longer than a couple of minutes. ANOTHER ROUND becomes a snapshot into life at its most middling, in which characters reexamine their place in the world, and the oft overwhelming dreams they feel they haven’t accomplished. Though the structure of the film, especially its third act, falters in finishing this wild idea (and experiment), ANOTHER ROUND should satisfy one’s thirst for high-quality acting, careful and considerate storytelling, and a chance to remember, forget, or attempt to capture the supposed “good ole days.” (2020, 117 min) [Michael Frank]
Valentyn Vasyanovych's ATLANTIS (Ukraine)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
Every now and again a film appears that gets compared to Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic STALKER. More often than not the comparisons are facile at best, using only the basic plot points as comparison—think 2018’s ANNIHILATION. But Valentyn Vasyanovych’s ATLANTIS falls so precisely into that slow cinema sci-fi micro-genre that it feels like it could be taking place in the same universe at STALKER. ATLANTIS is set in a near future Ukraine of 2025, where, after a prolonged war with Russia, the country, and its people, have been devastated. Serhiy is a former soldier with PTSD who loses his job as a smelter when the local works is closed due to automation. The world he once knew is so far in the past that it’s almost unrecognizable. Water now has to be shipped in. A giant wall is being built along the border. As he tries to cope with this new normal, Serhiy takes on a job exhuming corpses. Here he meets Katya, one of the rare individuals who can see past the immediate. Serhiy’s world in ATLANTIS has the same kind of meditative expanse as Tarkovsky’s STALKER and Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES. It’s a sci-fi film only in that it presumes a near future; it could very well be in a contemporary setting—I can think of at least one American city that has lost its metalwork economy and requires bused-in drinking water. ATLANTIS has a poetic ugliness to it that is an absolute joy to revel in. The psychic devastation of a post-war society, resigned into submission of duty, is rendered nearly physical as we watch the quietly mundane pace of people’s lives. With nearly nothing left, the past literally becomes the future: the exhuming and examining of the dead has become one of the only reliable means of employment. Filmed with nearly all wide-angle stationary shots, the film immerses us as voyeurs in this world. We have no choice but to examine everything, including ourselves. Vasyanovych’s framing both creates a sense of claustrophobia with its tight borders and a pronounced sense of agoraphobia, from an inescapable emptiness that threatens to go on forever. Despite its darkness, ATLANTIS is a gorgeous film, and a must see for anyone interested in slow cinema, speculative sci-fi, or explorations of existentialism. As the official Ukrainian entry for the 2021 Academy Awards, I very much hope this becomes Ukraine’s first ever film nominated for Best International Feature Film. (2019, 106 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Andrei Konchalovsky’s DEAR COMRADES! (Russia)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at this year’s Venice International Film Festival, DEAR COMRADES! is writer-director Andrei Konchalovsky’s fraught depiction of the Novocherkassk massacre that occurred June 2, 1962, in Soviet Russia. We follow the labor strike leading to the massacre, the pandemonium of the massacre itself, and the chaos and uncertainty of its aftermath. Yuliya Vysotskay, is Lyudmila, a committed Communist still reeling from the death of Stalin. When her daughter disappears in the anarchy of the massacre, she frantically has to search for her, threatening not only her own safety, but that of those around her. She begins to question not only the methods of the Party but the idea of faith itself. DEAR COMRADES! is filmed in black and white, giving it a gorgeous patina of false historicity that allows us to fall deep inside of it, forgetting that this is a period drama, confusing it for a film of the time. Konchalovsky plays with the perception of the Soviet government quite cleverly through Lyudmila and her family. While she openly laments Stalin’s death, her nameless father gets drunk and wears his pre-Soviet military garb and expresses his wish that JFK would just nuke them all. Lyudmila’s daughter is a product of the era of de-Stalinization and is willing to go against the Party and participate in the strike and demonstrations that lead to the massacre. Konchalovsky pulls off the feat that so many filmmakers attempt and rarely, if ever, achieve, successfully taking a single moment or event and turning it into a true microcosm of the greater political zeitgeist. While I wouldn’t be so brash as to say he thoroughly dissects the entirety of Soviet Russia through this single film, Konchalovsky does manage to leave his fingerprints across it in a way that shows a deft handling. All this, through a story of desperation and mystery; a mother searching for her missing daughter, in the face of the government she has worked her whole life for. DEAR COMRADES! is a dramatic political thriller of the most personal nature. Where faith in government, self, others, God, and oneself all come into question. Films reflect the times in which they are made. Right now, across the globe, we’re seeing a rise of a type of politics that feeds on unquestioning faith, DEAR COMRADES! utilizes the framework of history to unfold today, and warn us about tomorrow. (2020, 120 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
David Osit’s MAYOR (US/UK/Documentary)
Available to rent at Facets Cinémathèque here
Many people might disagree with me, but I think that MAYOR, a well-made documentary about Ramallah Mayor Musa Hadid, is a perfect movie for Christmas. True, the film contains scenes of the mayor fielding complaints about sewage runoff from Israeli settlements that are contaminating grazing fields, fires set to protest the 2018 move of the U.S. embassy headquarters in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and Israeli soldiers blasting teargas right in front of city hall and beating someone in a nearby restaurant with the situationally ironic name of Café de la Paix. Nevertheless, spending time with Musa, as he is known familiarly by the many residents of Ramallah who greet him warmly as he walks and drives through the streets, is to be bathed in the light of goodness. Musa is the kind of public servant the humble and powerless need to have in their corner. We see him in a school apparently painted with Pepto-Bismol inspecting its physical condition and promising to replace its broken doors. In another school, he objects to a window design that makes the school look like a prison. He travels to the United States and England to press for more support for Palestine’s nationhood. A Christian who plans spectacular Christmas celebrations for the entire city, he nonetheless rejects U.S. Vice President Pence’s promise to make Palestine safe for Christians by responding that it should be safe for everyone. He’s a loving husband and father who enjoys spending time at home but can’t stop thinking about the problems Ramallah faces. He simply wants the resources, and more importantly, the right to provide Ramallah’s citizens with the things they need to thrive—a right Israel will not grant. Finally, in a conversation he has with a German delegation trying to broker some kind of détente between Palestinians and Israelis, Musa makes his simplest and most profound statement—a Christmas message, if you will—about every person’s right to be treated as a full human with dignity before any understanding can begin. Watching this important and empathetic film would be a great gift for anyone who hopes that the new year will be the start of a more peaceful, just era for our country and our world. (2020, 89 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Stéphanie Chuat’s and Véronique Reymond’s MY LITTLE SISTER (Germany)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Through and through, Stéphanie Chuat’s and Véronique Reymond’s MY LITTLE SISTER is about the twin pairing of Lisa (Nina Hoss) and Sven (Lars Eidinger). Born two minutes prior, Sven is battling a brutal bout of leukemia, though the majority of the film exists to service Lisa’s journey. More often than not, the writer-director duo focus on this younger sister, mom of two, and dutiful wife to her private-school-running husband. Once a playwright, Lisa serves others throughout this German drama, showing her willingness to compromise, to care, and, finally, to drop everything to live solely for her dying brother and her family’s well-being. MY LITTLE SISTER hits a familiar rhythm in its depiction of cancer within the family, complete with marital fights, relapses, and one wild night in which Sven is able to let loose, despite the obvious repercussions. Still, the film strikes a chord, as Hoss gives a gut-wrenching, full-body performance, causing the emotion to well up inside of you, even if you know it might not be wholly warranted. MY LITTLE SISTER remains compelling due to the strength of its performances and the sheer emotional punch it has the ability to produce, especially if, as many of us do, you have seen the pained depths that cancer can instill into a once-healthy person. (2020, 99 min) [Michael Frank]
Gianfranco Rosi's’s NOTTURNO (Italy/France/Germany)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
The latest work from FIRE AT SEA director Gianfranco Rosi extends that documentary’s poetic approach and humanitarian concern to look at the scarred Middle East that many refugees have fled. Rosi’s never narrates or editorializes, trusting the grief and strength of civilians—as well as his haunting, sumptuous, carefully-composed imagery—to speak for themselves. Children traumatized by unspeakable ISIS atrocities engage in art therapy; mothers visit cells where the regime killed their sons; a mother plays voicemails from her kidnapped daughter; a Ramadan drummer wanders deserted streets, singing; a boy ekes out a living acting as a spotter for hunters; patients at a psychiatric institute stage a play about their fractured homeland. Though his film ranges across Iraq, Kurdistan, Lebanon, and Syria, Rosi says he wants it to chronicle a “psycho-geographical, not physical” place—a state of mind. He embedded himself for three years along colonially-carved borders, achieving a remarkable intimacy. This is a hushed, disorienting cinematic experience to remember, a heartbreaking vision of hell and resilience. (2020, 100 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
Lili Horvát's PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME (Hungary)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Feeling middle age encroaching, brilliant neurosurgeon Dr. Marta Vizy (Natasa Stork) returns to her native Budapest after 20 years of practicing in America. Dr. Janos Drexler (Viktor Bodo), a visionary in her field, is the man she met a month earlier at a conference in New Jersey; as she recalls, they arranged a rendezvous at her favorite bridge back home. Yet at their next encounter Janos claims not to know her, and Marta begins to wonder if she wanted love so badly she dreamed up the whole thing. Lili Horvát wrote and directed this intriguing, poignant story about loneliness and tricks of perception. Her well-made film is worth a look for its sensitively handled treatment of love’s dark, obsessive, potentially destructive side. Horvát keeps Marta framed closely as she glides through the city in cabs and trams, and Stork gives her a shaky self-possession, a secretive expression encompassing Marta’s angst and hope. (2020, 95 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
Graham Kolbeins’ QUEER JAPAN (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
Made over the course of four years, QUEER JAPAN is a joyous, neon trip through various subcultures in Japan’s LGBTQ community. Taking less of a historical, essayist approach at filmmaking, director Graham Kolbeins instead puts us in the hands of individuals who then take us through their personal life, and the micro-community they inhabit. From drag queens, to trans activists, to women’s only events, to post-gender performance artists, to beefcake bear erotic manga artists, QUEER JAPAN stitches together a gorgeous patchwork of hyper-specific scenes, shows their unique beauty, and presents them as a unit more beautiful together than apart. Each guide has their own world, and we’re invited in. It’s a lovely impressionistic view of Japanese queer culture that I would love to see in documentaries of other countries’ queer communities. I’m of the age where as a little questioning queer boy in nowhere suburbia I would grab at anything queer I could put my hands on, from Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For, to Pansy Division records, to HIGH ART, to Windy City Times and clutch it hard against my chest—it was all the same to me as a ‘90s teen. Queer. Nowadays there seems to be so much digital infighting in queer circles, with identity politics not so much as salvation but as a cudgel—so a film like QUEER JAPAN is a mainline injection of elated delight. Seeing how the film’s chosen queer subjects come together and discuss their community’s differences in theory, praxis, and (very importantly) partying makes me remember when you basically saw everyone in the American queer ecosystem with a Silence = Death patch. Queers being queer together because queers need to support queers. Full stop. Maybe this makes me sound cranky-old-man-yells-at-clouds, but my reply to that is simply, watch QUEER JAPAN. Differences can, and do, exist even in queer circles—but that doesn’t mean they should be the sole means of self-definition and identity. QUEER JAPAN is a jubilant reminder as to how multi-faceted, and global, queer culture is. Enjoy it and celebrate it. (2019, 99 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Philippe Garrel’s THE SALT OF TEARS (France)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
THE SALT OF TEARS is distinctive among Philippe Garrel’s narrative films in that it doesn’t center on intellectuals or creative types; as such, it feels less immediately autobiographical than much of the great French director’s other work. Yet this distance between the author and his subjects doesn’t result in a sense of coldness or impersonality. Rather, Garrel (writing, again, with the venerable Arlette Langmann and Jean-Claude Carrière) seems downright rejuvenated, more curious about people than he has in years. The life lessons of his post-REGULAR LOVERS work open onto universal wisdom here, reflecting the callousness and impetuousness of young people everywhere. The protagonist is a 20-ish carpenter named Luc, who arrives in Paris at the start of the film to take an admissions exam at an elite woodworking school; before the test, he crosses paths with Djemila, a young working-class woman about his age. The two fall in love, but Luc returns home before things can get serious. Back in his home town, Luc chances upon his first love, Geneviève, for the first time in several years. They enter into a hot and heavy romance, and Luc begins to neglect Djemila when she calls or texts from Paris. This chain of events repeats several months later when Luc, accepted into the woodworking school, goes back to Paris, takes up with a nurse named Betsy, and gives Geneviève the cold shoulder. Only too late does he learn how wrong he was to reject women who cared for him deeply. As usual, Garrel is less interested in generating suspense than he is in capturing delicate states of being (erotic fascination, romantic yearning, regret) and finding endless nuance in the physicality of his performers and the textures of black-and-white 35mm widescreen. There is, however, a compelling spikiness beneath the movie’s gentle surfaces, and it becomes especially prominent once you realize that Garrel and his co-writers have placed a villain in a position normally occupied by the hero of a story. Luc doesn’t see himself as a villain (but, then, who does?) because he doesn’t open up to the people around him and thus doesn’t get close enough to people to really hurt them. He may successfully lie to himself, but as the film’s abrupt, devastating conclusion reminds us, one can succeed on this front for only so long. (2020, 100 min) [Ben Sachs]
Lance Oppenheim’s SOME KIND OF HEAVEN (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here, and Facets Cinémathèque here
I’m not sure when I first heard about The Villages, but my curiosity about this vast Disneyland for retirees in South Florida clearly was shared by director Lance Oppenheim, himself a South Floridian. Designed for faux nostalgia built around a faux history complete with a bronze statue of its founder, land speculator Harold Schwartz, The Villages has become a haven for its almost entirely white residents who want to retreat from the world into the country’s most elaborate summer camp, where custom golf carts are the vehicles of choice. Oppenheim emphasizes the pursuit of conformity at The Villages in the opening scene, which features a synchronized golf cart team, a rowing team, and a synchronized swimming team. But we learn all is not fun and games once Oppenheim introduces us to four people in this bubble—married couple Reggie and Anne Kincer, recent widow Barbara Lochiatto, and Dennis Dean, who lives in his van and is not an official resident of The Villages. None of them looks particularly happy, and we learn why as Oppenheim unfolds their stories. Reggie seems like an old hippie, indulging in polydrug abuse and yoga to find enlightenment, much to the unhappiness of his neglected wife. Barbara works in The Villages’ healthcare system, yearning to return to her native Boston but unable to because her savings are gone after 11 years on the property. Dennis is on the run from a California warrant related to a DUI conviction; he’s a restless man whose credo is to live fast, love hard, and die poor. All four of them face their troubles and different varieties of loneliness in ways that seem to demonstrate that our essential character remains relatively fixed throughout our lives. David Bolen’s gorgeous cinematography and ability to capture facial emotions in unguarded moments contrast the heaven of the South Florida landscape with the frenetic activity of the seniors who are determined, as the song goes, to live till they die. It’s tempting to think Oppenheim cherry-picked outliers from this community to feature, but nothing is as idyllic as it seems at first glance, nor is enduring one’s hardships as hopeless at it sometimes seems. Exposing these truths in such an affecting way does all of us—and especially the residents of The Villages—a service we all need. (2020, 81 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Gwendolen Cates’ WE ARE UNARMED (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
The recent January 6th domestic terrorist attacks on the U.S. Capitol sharply contrasts with the Indigenous-led resistance of the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock and other such peaceful protests that were met with violence from law enforcement, highlighting the government’s tolerance of white supremacy and the systemic racism in its policies. Gwendolen Cates’ WE ARE UNARMED is an emotionally powerful and extremely timely look at the DAPL protests through the lens of the current political climate. The film also places significance on framing the present moment through an understanding of the historical context; as Kelly Morgan, a Standing Rock Lakota and Tribal Archaeologist states, “there is so much to tell and so few who know the true history of the United States.” Morgan and two other Lakota women are featured as noteworthy and eloquent figures of the movement, including a longtime activist, Phyllis Young, and a camp leader, Holy Elk Lafferty. WE ARE UNARMED follows the stand they took against the treaty violations of the DAPL from the beginning of the protests in September 2016 to a forced evacuation which occurred the following February. The inspiring struggle to protect culture and land, including water rights, is juxtaposed against the unjust and violent—both current and historical—treatment of Indigenous peoples. Cates’ camera lingers on flags and signs and sounds of prayer, music, and song are featured throughout, creating a collage of visual and aural symbols that emphasize the power in collective words and voices—as one sign reads, “no spiritual surrender.” Morgan profoundly observes, “Every day that we breathe as Native people—that is a political act.” WE ARE UNARMED will always be an essential watch, but right now, it is critical. (2020, 77 min) [Megan Fariello]
Juan José Campanella’s THE WEASELS’ TALE (Argentina)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
From Oscar-winning director Juan José Campanella, THE WEASELS’ TALE is a biting meta-homage to film in general, but particularly mid-century Argentine cinema in its casting of well-known stars—it is also a remake of José A. Martínez Suárez’s YESTERDAY’S GUYS USED NO ARSENIC from 1976. The film immediately brings to mind SUNSET BOULEVARD, opening with actress Mara Ordaz, herself played by famous Argentine star Graciela Borges, wistfully watching films from the heyday of her career. She lives in a country mansion with her husband, Pedro (Luis Brandoni), another former actor, and their two friends, director Norberto (Oscar Martínez) and screenwriter Martín (Marcos Mundstock). The four collaborated on projects together in their youth though are now prone to bickering and resentful about the past, with the men especially exhausted by Mara’s unwavering star persona. Their living situation is threatened, however, by a scheming young couple (Clara Lago and Nicholás Francella) who convince Mara it’s time to get back to her career and sell the house. The couple think they’ve found easy targets, but the seniors are more than capable of keeping up, constructing a real-life cinematic thriller on their own terms. Watching Martínez and Mundstock as Norberto and Martín humorously plot using their directing and writing backgrounds is great fun, though Borges as Mara is the undisputed stand-out; adorned with furs and turbans—the costuming is wonderful throughout—she carries her Norma Desmond-esque performance with equal parts comedy and melancholy. THE WEASELS’ TALE’s long run-time encumbers the twisting plot at points, but the colorful and detailed production design—especially of the mansion—keeps things visually interesting; this dark comedy is at its best in its self-referential moments, focusing the convergence of the main characters’ past cinematic careers and the current real-life crime thriller in which they’ve found themselves. (2019, 129 min) [Megan Fariello]
Tom Noonan’s WHAT HAPPENED WAS… (US)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
Filmmakers had drawn on stage plays for inspiration for as long as movies have existed, but the success of films like HOUSE OF GAMES and SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA (both 1987) signaled the rise of a particular kind of theatrical cinema that would remain in vogue in the U.S. for at least a decade. In their 1990s work, writer-directors Whit Stillman, Hal Hartley, and Neil LaBute (to name some of the most popular of this trend) foregrounded language over mise-en-scene—or, more appropriately, they made language part of the mise-en-scene, with the visual style and even the arrangement of physical space seeming to grow out of how the characters talked. WHAT HAPPENED WAS…, the first feature written and directed by character actor Tom Noonan (who adapted his own stage play), certainly belongs to this wave of American indie cinema; at the same time, its most likely theatrical reference points—the quasi-absurdist dramas of Harold Pinter and Edward Albee—come from three or four decades earlier. Like certain Pinter and Albee plays, WHAT HAPPENED WAS… teeters at the edge of realism; the film is exacting in its depiction of some things (middle-class banality, certain ways of speech), but eerily vague in other areas. It’s often unclear whether the characters are lying or telling the truth; to further complicate matters, it’s often unclear if the characters know the difference themselves. The film unfolds more or less in real time as two single, middle-aged co-workers, Michael (Noonan) and Jackie (Karen Sillas), have dinner at the latter’s apartment. What begins as a portrait of urban lonelyhearts mutates into something richer and stranger, as the characters get lost in the stories they tell to each other and themselves. WHAT HAPPENED WAS… displays a lot of visual invention for a movie that takes place in a single apartment; Noonan executes deft camera movements, stark lighting, and a snappy montage that respects the rhythm of the dialogue. Still, it’s the film’s tone that leaves the most lasting impression. Noonan has always been a distinctive onscreen presence (as anyone who’s seen MANHUNTER can attest), his soft voice and lanky gait suggesting a looming force that’s too close for comfort. WHAT HAPPENED WAS… advances a worldview in keeping with that presence. (1994, 91 min) [Ben Sachs]
Amjad Abu Alala’s YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY (Sudan)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Stunning from its opening shot, YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY is a fully realized, flowing visual examination of faith and mourning life before it’s fully lived. Set in a small Sudanese village on the Nile, the film was the winner of Lion of the Future Award at the Venice Film Festival and is Sudan’s first-ever Oscar submission. After being told by a Sheikh that her newborn son will die before he reaches age twenty, Sakina (Islam Mubarak) shelters the boy throughout his life, protecting what little time he has left—his father (Talal Afifi), takes off immediately, unable to cope with the anticipation of death. Muzamil (Mustafa Shehata), grows up fully aware of his predicted fate and, like his mother, is preoccupied by the knowledge that he’ll die young. As he reaches closer to twenty, however, Muzamil begins to question both his belief in the prophecy and his faith in general, prompted by those in his life who are unconvinced, including his frustrated childhood sweetheart (Bunna Khalid) and a local (Mahmoud Maysara Elsarraj) who’s back from spending years travelling abroad. Individual shots are strikingly composed, as director Amjad Abu Alala contrasts the beige, rocky, static spaces of the village with mindful, colorful movement of life, including people, wind, and water; in addition, sounds of life—breath, heartbeat, and even the recurrence of a buzzing fly—all work subtly yet effectively to reflect Muzamil’s strange position as a young person expecting death. The remarkable and sometimes dreamlike visuals are complimented by a series of earnest performances, particularly by Mubarak as a mother mourning her son his whole life. The film does miss some opportunities in its more grounded moments to directly speak to suggested themes surrounding the political backdrop and even sexual abuse—a few scenes stand out as completely unaddressed, but particularly unsettling is one towards the end between Muzamil and an older woman. Overall, however, YOU WILL DIE AT TWENTY artistically threads its themes on life and death through both its gorgeous visuals and thoughtful performances. (2019, 102 min) [Megan Fariello]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
Conversations at the Edge
SAIC’s Conversations at the Edge series presents two screenings of work by and a conversation with video artist Wendy Clarke. The event “Wendy Clarke in Conversation with Bruce Jenkins and Maria Gaspar” is on Thursday at 7pm. And Clarke’s two videos are available as follows: ONE ON ONE: KEN AND LOUISE (1994, 79 min) streams from Monday through February 14; and ONE ON ONE: ARNOLD AND AHNEVA (1991, 47 min) streams from Thursday through February 17. Additional info and links here.
Video Data Bank
The Video Data Bank presents Zach Blas’ 2016 experimental short CONTRA-INTERNET INVERSION PRACTICE #3: MODELING PARANODAL SPACE (3 min). No ending date listed. Viewable here.
Facets Cinémathèque
Check the Facets website for hold-over titles.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Rodney Ascher’s 2020 documentary A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX (108 min) is available for tent beginning this week. Check the Siskel website for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Dzintars Dreibergs’ 2019 Latvian film BLIZZARD OF SOULS (123 min) and Naomi Kawase’s 2020 Japanese film TRUE MOTHERS (140 min) are all available for rent beginning this week.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Criterion Channel Shorts
Streaming for free (with subscription) on The Criterion Channel.
Zeinabu irene Davis’ CYCLES (US/Short)
A singular expression of the African American woman’s experience, Zeinabu irene Davis’ narratively driven yet experimental CYCLES is a cinematic poem. Shot in black and white 16mm film, the short features actress Stephanie Ingram as a woman wondering if she might be pregnant while she waits to get her period. She ritualistically cleans—making the bed, scrubbing the toilet, taking a bath—as sounds like the clock ticking and wind blowing mark the passage of time and emphasize uneasiness as the refrain of “progress is being made” is repeated throughout. Still shots of her cleaning are animated to create a kind of dance—which recurs with actual dancing later in film and rhythmically connects work with play and the domestic space with the world outside it. Multiple women’s voices are heard as narrators of this story of anticipation, creating a sense of shared understanding and generational connection; the voiceovers heard over the credits are of women lightheartedly discussing which specific foods they crave around their period. A variety of objects and symbols and, most vividly, different music of the African diaspora are also featured throughout. CYCLES is at once contemplative and joyful, and Davis meaningfully articulates both universal emotions and the specificity of Black women’s experiences. (1989, 17 min) [Megan Fariello]
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*Included as part of the “Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis” series
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Roberta Cantow’s CLOTHESLINES (US/Short)
Roberta Cantow’s extraordinary CLOTHESLINES takes a repetitive and mundane task and creates a simple yet enlightening study of women’s relationships to the archetypal household chore. Shot on 16mm, mostly in New York City, the film features multiple women speaking about their individual experiences in voiceover over a montage of both moving and still images—all featuring laundry. There is both cacophony and harmony in the voices as the collective ambivalence about doing laundry is very clear; Cantow includes sounds of laughing, gossiping, whispering, and even crying as the discussion uncovers deep emotions for these women beyond the task itself, all about their personal identities: as mothers, daughters, friends, neighbors, and, perhaps most emphatically, wives. The imagery is expressive accompaniment to the voiceovers, featuring clothes blowing in the breeze and rays of sunlight, demonstrating the liminality of domestic space. Of course, included too, is footage of women doing the chore itself, tying together each anecdote as well bringing a larger context to this historically gendered task. Cantow’s beautiful and revelatory mediation about women’s experiences through the most routine of chores is a short film wonder. (1981, 32 min) [Megan Fariello]
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*Included as part of the “Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories” series
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Jennifer Reeder’s A MILLION MILES AWAY (US/Short)
We’re currently culturally inundated by 80s ephemera, their neon colors evident in television, movies, and fashion. Jennifer Reeder’s A MILLION MILES AWAY leans heavily into the imagery and sound of the 80s, twisting it from appeasing nostalgia and instead wielding it like volatile magic. The short film follows a group of teenage girls as they struggle through family life, friendship, boys, and school—cutting from different girls as they each express their individual frustrations. Surrounded by their important objects—vinyl records, VHS tapes, and colorful accessories—their inner lives are conveyed not only through dialogue, but text messages, letters, monologue, and whispers, suggesting an almost secret language. Most significantly, however, is song, which is evident throughout, but specifically in a choir rehearsal at school, led by a substitute teacher, herself on the verge of a breakdown that the girls immediately pick up on. Culminating in an imposing acapella performance of Judas Priest’s “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’,” A MILLION MILES AWAY vividly and unapologetically presents a fraught, yet compassionate, inner world of teenage girls. (2014, 28 min) [Megan Fariello]
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*Featured short in the “Short Films by Jennifer Reeder” series
Marco Ferreri’s LA GRANDE BOUFFE (France/Italy)
Available to stream for free on Tubi
They may be interrupted by occasional commercial breaks, but the movies available on the free streaming site Tubi are almost always uncut. Even the recently added LA GRANDE BOUFFE, Marco Ferreri’s classic of shock cinema, exists on Tubi in its NC-17 version. But like a number of films in their catalogue, Tubi’s copy of LA GRANDE BOUFFE is still distinctly marred; for more than half of the running time, the English subtitles are about two seconds out of sync with the French-language audio. The upside of this problem is that lets viewers imagine they’re watching LA GRANDE BOUFFE not at home, but at a misfortunate repertory screening that got a bad print of the film. Speaking for myself, I cherish such mistakes, as I cemented my cinephilia at many such accident-plagued revivals where the film was faded or out of focus, the subtitles were illegible, or the sound was too soft or too loud. Screenings like these force you to work for your cinematic art, to strain your eyes or ears to extract whatever it is that makes the movie special. A subtitle error like the one that’s befallen Tubi’s version of LA GRANDE BOUFFE might make you concentrate harder on the images to gain clues about what you’re not getting from the dialogue—though Ferreri’s deliberately appalling images would command attention regardless. The film’s premise is well-known: Four well-to-do middle-aged Frenchmen lock themselves away in a villa on the Paris outskirts with hordes of gourmet food and proceed to eat themselves to death. Accompanied by a few prostitutes and a surprisingly accommodating schoolteacher, the men engage in some sexual hijinks as well, the gastronomic and libidinous pleasure merging in a whirlwind of gluttonous excess. Ferreri presents this comedy of annihilation in a straightforward, somewhat delicate manner that makes it all seem weirdly inevitable; in this way (as well as in its cloistered setting) LA GRANDE BOUFFE anticipates Pier Paolo Pasolini’s apocalyptic SALÒ, made two years later. But where Pasolini created a Sadean nightmare about fascism, Ferreri’s film is a grotesque satire about liberal democracy that imagines the French bourgeoisie literally dying on its privileges. The sustained attack on the bourgeoisie comprises lots of bad-taste jokes on subjects historically considered too delicate for polite conversation: messy eating, bodily functions, sex, prostitution, and ultimately death. Heightening the shock of so many shattered taboos are the fully committed performances by a quartet of actors then considered among the most distinguished in European cinema. Ugo Tognazzi, Michel Piccoli, Marcello Mastroianni, and Philippe Noiret bring relaxed, debonair charm to their roles, and their imperturbability, like Ferreri’s refined filmmaking, renders the gross-out humor all the more shocking. (1973, 130 min) [Ben Sachs]
SUPPORT LOCAL THEATERS AND SERIES
As we wait for conditions to improve to allow theaters to reopen, consider various ways that you can help support independent film exhibitors in Chicago weather this difficult time. Memberships, gift cards, and/or merchandise are available from the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Music Box Theatre, and Facets. Donations can be made to non-profit venues and organizations like Chicago Filmmakers, the Chicago Film Society, South Side Projections, and many of the film festivals. Online streaming partnerships with distributors are making films available through the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Music Box Theatre, and Facets; and Facets also has a subscription-based streaming service, FacetsEdge, that includes many exclusive titles.
COVID-19 UPDATES
Most independent, alternative, arthouse, grassroots, DIY, and university-based venues and several festivals continue to have suspended operations, are closed, or have cancelled/postponed events until further notice. Below is the most recent information we have, which we will update as new information becomes available.
Note that venues/series marked with an asterisk (*) are currently presenting or plan to do regular or occasional “virtual” online screenings.
CLOSED/POSTPONED/HIATUS:
Beverly Arts Center – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Closed until further notice
Chicago Film Society – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice*
Chicago Filmmakers – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice*
Comfort Film (at Comfort Station) – Programming cancelled until further notice
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) – The Spring 2021 season will take place online
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Screenings cancelled until further notice
Facets Cinémathèque – Closed until further notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)*
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – Closed until further notice
filmfront – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Gallery 400 (UIC)*
Gene Siskel Film Center – Closed until further notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)*
Music Box Theatre – The Music Box has again suspended in-person screenings; it continues to present online-only screenings*
The Nightingale – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series (at the Park Ridge Public Library) – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
FESTIVALS:
Postponed with no announced plans yet:
The Cinepocalypse film festival (June) – Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Windy City Horrorama festival (April 24 - 26) – Cancelled; will possibly be rescheduled or reconfigured at a future date
The Chicago Critics Film Festival (May 1 - 7) – Postponed until further notice
CINE-LIST: February 5 - February 11, 2021
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITOR // Ben Sachs, Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Raphael Jose Martinez, Scott Pfeiffer