CRUCIAL VIEWING
Pedro Costa’s VITALINA VARELA (New Portuguese)
Film Row Cinema (1104 S. Wabash Ave., 8th Floor, Columbia College) — Wednesday, 6:30pm (Free Admission)
Though we are required to hold a review until the film has a theatrical run in town, we believe that the great Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa in person with a screening of his 2019 film VITALINA VARELA (124 min, DCP Digital) merits Crucial Viewing status.
Otto Preminger’s ANGEL FACE (American Revival)
Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) — Wednesday, 7:30pm
Dave Kehr’s Chicago Reader capsule is as good a place as any to begin a discussion of this strange and beautiful Otto Preminger noir: “The film is a disturbingly cool, rational investigation of the terrors of sexuality, much as Preminger's later masterpiece BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING is a detached appraisal of childhood horrors. The sets, characters, and actions are extremely stylized, yet Preminger's moving camera gives them a frightening unity and fluidity.” All this is true, and one can add to Kehr’s astute auteurist reading that the film’s “disturbingly cool, rational” perspective (a likely symptom of Preminger having been the son of a lawyer) finds its apotheosis in an extended courtroom subplot in which the main characters stand trial. Yet there are too many strong personalities behind ANGEL FACE to credit its success to Preminger alone. At least two great writers worked on the script: Frank S. Nugent (best known for his decades-long collaboration with John Ford) and an uncredited Ben Hecht (who worked for Selznick, Hawks, and Hitchcock, among many others). Howard Hughes, who produced the film, probably influenced its high perversity quotient, its negative depiction of Jean Simmons, and the key detail that Robert Mitchum’s character dreams of designing racecars. And then there’s the not insignificant contribution of Leon Ames, who delivers one of the great supporting performances in American movies as an amoral defense attorney. Ames will always be remembered as the stern but loving father in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, and in ANGEL FACE he turns that persona inside out, exposing how a skilled actor can feign moral virtue to win favor with others. It’s a little masterclass in the subjects of acting and deceit, and Preminger films Ames in long-take as often as possible to get the most out of his performance. The portion of the film leading up to the trial is one of the most twisted cinematic studies of erotic fascination, detailing how Simmons’ spoiled rich girl seduces Mitchum’s gruff paramedic into working for her dysfunctional family. Simmons is not-so-subtly jealous of her wealthy stepmother (Barbara O’Neil) for stealing the affections of her novelist father (Herbert Marshall); in her frustration, she sets her sights on Mitchum as a new person to toy with. Mitchum goes along with her machinations, drifting away from the good girl he’s been seeing (they’ve never established any terms of exclusivity—the film is quite ahead of its time in its depiction of open relationships—though she feels spurned all the same). Mitchum and Simmons end up trapped in a cycle of lust and domination, yet Preminger’s direction seems to stand outside it all, as if looking down on the characters and reminding us of how perverse they are. It feels like a big-budget version of the demented PRC melodramas Edgar G. Ulmer made in the 1940s (BLUEBEARD, STRANGE ILLUSION, DETOUR), which is to say it represents a triumph of cinematic craft and integrity over the most bizarre material. (1953, 91 min, 35mm) BS
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Preceded by Barry Duncan’s 1967 short SNIFFY ESCAPES POISONING (6 min, 16mm).
Jia Zhangke’s I WISH I KNEW (Chinese Documentary Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday and Saturday, 6pm and Wednesday, 7:45pm
I WISH I KNEW, a melancholy and meditative documentary portrait of Shanghai that received its world premiere in 2010 but is only now being released in the United States thanks to distributor Kino/Lorber, was originally commissioned to screen at the World Expo in Shanghai. It came in the middle of a seven-year break from narrative feature filmmaking for Jia Zhangke, a period in which the most important director of the Chinese film industry’s “sixth generation” made only documentaries and shorts, and was consequently treated as a minor work by most critics. Seen today, however, after a decade’s hindsight (i.e., after Jia went on to make a string of urgent and complex narrative movies about China’s rapid evolution towards a privatized economy and its leading role within 21st century global culture, films that critic Jonathan Rosenbaum might term “state-of-the-planet addresses”), I WISH I KNEW now looks like one of the key works in its director’s filmography. Confronting each new movie from Jia can be a bit of a bewildering experience, pushing even seasoned cinephiles like me out of typical patterns of response and judgment, which is perhaps one of the reasons why this vital 10-year-old work feels like it is somehow arriving on these shores right on time. I WISH I KNEW is a kind of city-symphony film for the modern age but one in which the city in question is revealed mainly through interviews with its citizens. Each interview subject—mostly middle-aged-to-elderly men and women—talks primarily about the experiences of their parents and grandparents in Shanghai; and thus the whole of this documentary, a deceptively simple accumulation of personal “oral histories” not unlike a filmic version of Studs Terkel’s interview books about Chicago, ends up being greater than the sum of its parts. Among the topics discussed are the establishment of Shanghai as a British treaty-port city in the mid-19th century, the Communist revolution, political executions, and the mass exodus of Shanghainese people to Hong Kong and Taiwan in the aftermath of World War II. While most of the interviewees are ordinary men and women, Jia does also feature some prominent Chinese filmmakers and actors including Wong Kar-Wai favorite Rebecca Pan (who weeps when reminiscing about her past and sings a beautiful song in Mandarin) and Taiwanese directing legend Hou Hsiao-Hsien (who knew little about Shanghai until he traveled there to research his 1998 masterpiece THE FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI). The final two interview subjects are the youngest, which is fitting in that they represent the city’s future, and their stories feel like they could serve as the basis for one of Jia’s narrative films: the first is a man who claims to have become absurdly rich overnight by speculating in securities and the second is a car-racing champion who moonlights as a best-selling novelist. Tying all of these disparate interviews together are wordless, lyrical sequences of a young woman (the great Zhao Tao, Jia’s long-time leading lady onscreen and off) traversing the city alone, from the Suzhou River to an empty movie theater to many building construction sites. This unnamed woman’s compelling presence seems to personify the spirit of Shanghai itself, a nexus of past and present, a place forever busy being born. (2010, 119 min, DCP Digital) MGS
Horace B. Jenkins’ CANE RIVER (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check Venue website for showtimes
When you hear about films that are or were previously thought lost, you typically think of films from way back when (for example, 24 of the BFI’s “75 Most Wanted” list are from the 1930s alone), rather than those from the near-distant past. Of course, more recently thought-to-be lost films do exist: there’s one from the 1980s on the BFI’s list, and another such example of a “lost” film that’s not yet 40 years old is writer-director Horace B. Jenkins’ CANE RIVER, which was believed to have been lost until a negative resurfaced several years ago. The longtime elusiveness of CANE RIVER is compounded by the fact that it was set to be released in New York, after having enjoyed a gala debut in New Orleans (where the film partly takes place), until Jenkins passed away unexpectedly in 1982; at one point, when Jenkins was still alive, the comedian Richard Pryor had even been interested in bringing it to Hollywood but was rebuffed by the film’s producers. Now, thanks to film preservation organization IndieCollect (which salvaged the 35mm negative from a defunct film lab and deposited it at the Academy Film Archive, which struck a new preservation print, which IndieCollect then used for a 4K restoration) and Oscilloscope Laboratories (who are giving it the theatrical distribution it never had), we can finally see Jenkins’ one and only feature film, a work made by a Black man about Black love amidst issues respective to Black life. Prior to making it, Jenkins was an Emmy-winning television producer and director, whose work ranged from segments of Sesame Street to a public television documentary called SUDAN PYRAMIDS: A ZANDI'S DREAM (which won two Oscar Micheaux Awards). Considering he spent much of his career in television, I was impressed by how cinematic CANE RIVER is—it’s imbued with a sense of weightiness, with references to offscreen developments, both present and past, that feels more at home in cinema than TV. The story follows Peter (Richard Romaine), a former college football star who rejected the pros to become a writer; he returns home to Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, where his family lives along Cane River. He meets Maria (Tommye Myrick) while on a tour of a local plantation that had been owned by his distant relatives. The two enter into a romance with Romeo and Juliet overtones: he’s from a prominent Creole family and she’s from a less affluent part of town. Jenkins explained in an interview that Peter’s family history was inspired by that of the real-life Marie Thérèse Coincoin, an African woman who liberated herself from slavery and went on to marry Frenchman Pierre Metoyer. Coincoin and Metoyer had ten children and owned the Melrose Plantation—and slaves, a point of contention between Peter and Maria. Jenkins also specified that Metoyer and Coincoin’s children “are considered to be the origin of the Creole culture in Louisiana,” lending a sense of history not made explicitly clear in the film. (When Peter and Maria meet, she’s reading Gary B. Mills’ The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color; I think it’s especially clever to have as its main historical signifier a book that viewers would need to seek out to fully understand the fraught cultural dynamic between the lovers.) That Jenkins is able to convey this history, along with several subplots, in a relatively compact film is telling of an artist whose existence as a Black man bore the burden of context: in this world, it’s not just boy meets girl, but light-skinned boy from a certain kind of family meeting a darker-skinned girl from the town over, the dynamics of which make the Montagues’ and the Capulets’ drama seem petty by comparison. Jenkins tempers the tension, both actualized and implied, with music by Leroy Glover and Phillip Manuel; the latter sings the songs that accompany many of the film’s illuminating montages. It’s unfortunate that Jenkins passed away at a relatively young age, but thankfully his work has been given new life in this handsome restoration. (1982, 104 min, DCP Digital) KS
Guru Dutt’s PYAASA (aka THIRST) (Indian Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) — Friday, 7pm (Free Admission)
PYAASA was my first exposure to the work of producer-director-actor Guru Dutt (1925-1964), but the film made me understand why he’s widely regarded as a master. The film’s expressionistic style seduces you with its confidence and imagination, while the bold emotional content deepens one’s involvement with the characters. It’s also an angry, energizing allegory about the relationship between art and commerce that sides passionately with the idealists of the world. Dutt stars as Vijay, a gifted poet who’s unable to publish any of his hundreds of poems. Rejected by literary agents and spurned by his family, Vijay is forced to live on the street not long after the movie begins. PYAASA depicts the poet’s humiliation in painful detail, though it also makes time for comic relief (in the form of a singing hair oil peddler) and moving songs (Vijay recites his poems by singing them, and his performances become the loci of stirring musical numbers). On his quest for artistic success, Vijay finds himself torn between two women: his college girlfriend Meena (Mala Sinha), who ditched him when she realized he’d wind up poor and married a rich publisher for stability, and Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman), a kindhearted sex worker who believes in Vijay’s literary talent. The movie proceeds according to stark contrasts—between love and money, fame and creative satisfaction, moral compromise and unwavering integrity—and this feels in keeping with the expressionistic visuals. Dutt originally wanted to film PYAASA on location in Kolkata, but after circumstances made that difficult, he recreated the city on studio sets; the manipulable conditions enabled him to execute exciting, non-natural lighting and camera effects. Throughout the film, Dutt employs ostentatious (and very entertaining) tracking shots that begin as medium shots and end as closeups, drawing viewers from an omniscient perspective to a subjective and personal one; these strengthen one’s identification with Vijay as much as any of the songs. They also create an atmosphere of intense emotion in which the melodramatic narrative developments make sense. In the last act of the film, Vijay gets into an accident and is presumed dead by society while he lies catatonic in a mental ward. The story of his tragic demise gets spread by the tabloids, and Vijay’s poems are published to great commercial success. As everyone who knew Vijay fight over the profits of his poems, a cynical dramatic irony emerges: the disgraced poet, who could barely find allies in life, garners too many once the world thinks he killed himself out of solitary despair. Vijay’s martyrdom (and subsequent reemergence-cum-resurrection) might seem overbearing if it were not for the nuanced characterizations of Meena and Gulabo, which counterbalance all the male suffering on screen; the filmmakers realize the women’s yearnings with the same intensity that they bring to Vijay’s. (1957, 140 min, DCP Digital) BS
Mati Diop’s ATLANTICS (New French/Senegalese/Belgian)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Saturday, 7 and 9:30pm and Sunday, 4pm
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Facets Cinémathèque — Check Venue website for showtimes
For her first feature film, French-Senegalese director Mati Diop has created a mystical, atmospheric love story set in Dakar, on the Atlantic coast of Senegal. The timeless, rolling ocean that figures prominently in this beautifully shot film mirrors the vast, restless love Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) and Souleiman (Traore) feel for each other. But when Souleiman and his coworkers are cheated out of four months’ wages, they feel they have no choice but to try to strike out across the ocean to seek a better life. Their fate and the fate of the women they left behind remain intertwined across time and space, with explosive results. Self-determination is a quiet theme running through ATLANTICS—not only that of Ada, whose engagement to a wealthy man offers her a tempting path away from her lover and female friends, but also that of Souleiman and the other workers who see more possibilities abroad than they do in their predictably stunted existence in Dakar. The mythic dimensions that I find so satisfying in African films, for example, Rungano Nyoni’s I AM NOT A WITCH (2017) and Alain Gomis’ TEY (2012), are used to similarly great effect in ATLANTICS. This film’s a knockout. (2019, 106 min, DCP Digital) MF
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Tsai Ming-liang's THE WAYWARD CLOUD (Taiwanese Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Friday, 7pm and Sunday, 1:30pm
When THE WAYWARD CLOUD first played here at the 2005 Chicago International Film Festival, I remember finding it dismal in spite of its sprightly musical numbers and ingenious mise-en-scene. It seemed like a greatest hits album of everything Tsai Ming-liang had made until then, bringing back the musical numbers and post-apocalyptic fantasy of THE HOLE, the sexual fixation of THE RIVER, the eroticized watermelon of VIVE L’AMOUR, the meditative long-takes of GOODBYE DRAGON INN, and the central couple of WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? Yet apart from the introduction of hardcore sex into Tsai’s work, the movie didn’t seem to break any new ground for the director; if anything, it marked a creative regression. Almost 15 years have passed since that festival screening, and I’m now more curious to revisit THE WAYWARD CLOUD than a good number of movies I saw in 2005 and liked. The current Tsai retrospective at Doc Films has reminded me of what a singular master he’s always been—even his lesser work contains qualities that are difficult to find elsewhere, especially since Tsai abandoned feature filmmaking for video installation art in the mid-2010s. In short, a greatest hits movie by Tsai is still a movie by Tsai, and any big-screen presentation of it is to be welcomed. Few other filmmakers consecrate the screening environment as he does, drawing out time so audiences can immerse themselves in the very essence of cinema (visual composition, sounds, gestures). One gets to consider a Tsai shot from different perspectives as he or she explores the often-static frames; what might at first appear to be simple actions or relationships develop resonances and become complex. This is particularly true of the unpleasant final moments of THE WAYWARD CLOUD, which present, in a couple of very long takes, an expression of love amidst the most debased behavior and which marks the culmination of the film’s themes of pornography, love, debasement, and death. Tsai would deliver a more profound—and less repellant—ending with the drawn-out final shots of STRAY DOGS, which build upon a similar formal experiment as the one he conducted here; perhaps THE WAYWARD CLOUD broke new ground after all. (2005, 112 min, 35mm) BS
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Preceded by Tsai Ming-liang's 2002 short THE SKYWALK IS GONE (25 min, DCP Digital).
Ali Jaberansari's TEHRAN: CITY OF LOVE (New Iranian/UK/Netherlands)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 8pm and Sunday, 3pm
Where does the undercutting of romcom clichés begin in writer-director Ali Jaberansari's drily comic, minor-key TEHRAN: CITY OF LOVE? I'd say with that title, which we soon realize is emblematic of the film's gently ironic tone. Set among the middle-class of Tehran, this enjoyable film weaves together the plaintive tales of three lonely lost souls who exist in what might better be called a city of unrequited romance. In one tale, a funereally gloomy man (Mehdi Saki), recently jilted, works as a dirge-singer at a local mosque. Moonlighting as a wedding singer, he falls for a photographer (Behnaz Jafari) with her own plans for changing her life. Meanwhile, an out-of-shape receptionist (Forough Ghajabagli) at a Botox clinic uses come-on phone-calls to lightly catfish the beefcakes who come through her doors. All the while, she holds out hope for true companionship. Lastly, a closeted former bodybuilding champion (the massive Amir Hessam Bakhtiari) auditions for a movie, but things get complicated when he develops a crush on a young guy he's training. This film is worth a look for its deadpan, humanistic pathos, which reminded me of Finland's Aki Kaurismaki. Jaberansari and his actors show us that loneliness looks, and feels, much the same under a theocracy as it does under the kakistocracy we have here—as does so much else that makes us human, regardless of the depredations of our respective regimes. I’m tempted to say TEHRAN: CITY OF LOVE is worth seeing to reinforce that notion alone. (If you see it, see if you notice a shot that seemed to me to be a direct homage to Kiarostami. The shot I'm thinking of is one of several where the characters use the camera as a mirror.) The bodybuilder’s homosexuality is treated elliptically, of course, but with the same compassion Jaberansari extends to all his other misfits. I won’t forget the quiet longing in Bakhtiari’s gaze, and all the actors offer memorable portrayals that add up to a funny, melancholy tapestry. I very much recall from my own life the feelings this film so perceptively evokes: the dashed hopes, then the realization that you've got to get yourself together first—to find a way to be fulfilled and happy on your own, while still keeping an optimistic eye out for the right one. (2018, 102 min, DCP Digital) SP
Khourosh Ataee and Azadeh Moussari’s FINDING FARIDEH (New Iranian/Netherlands Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 6pm and Sunday, 5pm
Who am I? Where do I belong? From the popularity of the PBS genealogy program Finding Your Roots to the violent clashes between tribes and cultures that occur all over the world, it seems as though identity is an all-consuming, universal concern. This certainly is the case for adopted children, who often express feelings of incompleteness or distance from their adoptive families. Eline Farideh Koning, the subject of Khourosh Ataee and Azadeh Moussari’s FINDING FARIDEH, is a woman of about 40 who was adopted from an orphanage in Tehran by a Dutch couple when she was around six months old. Unmarried and living a life of relative isolation brought on by a society burdened with an outmoded nuclear family structure, Farideh is deeply dissatisfied and searching for her “real” self. She has gone online to find any Iranian families that might have been searching for a baby given up for adoption in the time and circumstances of her abandonment. Her plea has yielded three families who think she could belong to them. Her return to Iran, a country she has not set foot in since she was adopted, and the DNA testing that will determine whether she will find a genetic match among the three clans she visits comprise the bulk of the film. The first half of the film is troubling because we never get a clear picture of the family who took her in and why she finds them so unsatisfactory. In Iran, however, each clan is fully fleshed and emotionally available to this stranger upon whom they have pinned so many hopes. It’s hard not to think that being attached to an expressive extended family of people who look like you is preferable to the literal and possibly figurative coldness of the Netherlands, but all we get to see in this film is the honeymoon phase of Farideh’s introduction to her Iranian side. What I found so intriguing about FINDING FARIDEH were the cultural dimensions of Mashhad, the city where Farideh was found abandoned in the shrine of Imam Reza, and the naked thoughts and feelings of the Iranians who could be elated or dealt a crushing blow by learning whether or not their DNA matches. The magic thinking that goes into these behaviors really never gets explored or challenged by directors Ataee and Moussari. I must admit to scratching my head at the persistence of a bond that seemingly was severed long ago and the willingness of utter strangers to love each other like they had been raised together all their lives. (2018, 88 min, DCP Digital) MF
Levan Akin’s AND THEN WE DANCED (New Georgian)
Music Box Theatre — Check Venue website for showtimes
Despite shifting cultural norms and advancements in modernity, dance remains to be an art form still heavily steeped in tradition. This is especially pertinent in Gregorian dance, according to Levan Akin’s third feature film AND THEN WE DANCED, which places strength and control above softness in order to capture both the essence of perfection and the spirit of the nation. Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani) has danced since he could walk and is used to this structure, but he finds himself stuck between two polarizing worlds after a new male dancer named Irakli (Bachi Valishvili) evolves from an object of competition to one of desire. In private, they grow closer—at odds both with the binary roles they perform on the dance floor as well as the permeating threat of homophobic violence in their homeland—and the public repression of their desire bubbles up inside of them until it explodes. While these threats are real and taken seriously, this is by no means a tragedy. At several points, AND THEN WE DANCED is effortlessly sun-kissed and optimistic, underscored by an ABBA- and Robyn-laced soundtrack that encapsulates the infectious innocence of being young, gay, and in love. It brims with hope even in its darkest moments, walking the tightrope between tradition and progression with expert precision. Gelbakhiani gives a performance of a lifetime both as an actor and as a striking dancer; it's almost impossible to take your eyes off of him. AND THEN WE DANCED doesn’t simply yearn for a world that is “accepting” or “tolerant” of queer people—it dares for the world to see us for everything we are regardless of the hatred and violence that is thrown at us, especially globally. That we are still standing, we will keep fighting, and we will keep dancing in spite of it all. (2019, 106 min, DCP Digital) CC
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The 1:30pm Saturday screening is followed by a panel discussion.
Haskell Wexler's MEDIUM COOL (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Monday, 7pm
How many times have you gone somewhere expecting a massive riot? And if you did go, did you also expect to come away with cinematic gold? That's pretty much what Chicago native Haskell Wexler did in 1968 when he decided to shoot footage of protesters outside the Democratic National Convention. Already an Oscar-winning cinematographer for his work on WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, he set a fictional film about the ethics of a TV news cameraman amongst the actual chaos in the city. In MEDIUM COOL he used what was essentially a documentary crew (operating the camera himself), and had the actors intermingle with real protesters and police as all hell broke loose in Chicago. Other documentary footage was repurposed and additional narrative scenes were shot to fill in the gaps of the superficial plot, and Wexler used these elements to walk the line between fact and fiction while addressing the political climate of the times. Perhaps more than any other filmmaker, Wexler is responsible for the shooting style used in films by directors like John Cassavetes, John Sayles, and Kelly Reichardt, who all seem to have taken his advice: "If your film can reflect areas of life where people feel passion, then it will have genuine drama." (1969, 111 min, 35mm) JH
Don Siegel’s PRIVATE HELL 36 (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Wednesday, 7 and 9pm
The title of PRIVATE HELL 36 makes sense only after the movie reaches its halfway point, when it switches from being a film about a police investigation to one about police corruption. Though the second half is the more suspenseful (and the narrative shift effectively surprising), the first is nothing to sneeze at—it’s a solid pulp yarn about two Los Angeles police detectives seeking a criminal who’d committed a murder in New York one year earlier. The film opens with the cold-blooded murder, which Don Siegel presents with characteristic brusque force (he surely made some of the most brutal films of the 1950s); the scene leaves a lasting impression, setting the stage (or so one might think) for a tale of justice being duly served. Yet the script, by Ida Lupino and Collier Young, goes off in an unexpected direction even before the big gear-shift moment. During their investigation, detectives Bruner (Steve Cochran) and Farnham (Howard Duff) find a lounge singer, Lilli Marlowe (Lupino), who received a big tip from a man they believe to be the New York murderer. Lili, whose past is so shady she prefers not to remember her real name, is suspicious of cops, and so she’s reluctant to give them any information. But romantic chemistry develops between her and Bruner, and soon she finds herself playing a major role in the investigation. Thanks to Siegel’s unsentimental direction, the blossoming romance between the cop and the disreputable woman becomes a vehicle for questions about moral compromise (the central relationship anticipates that of Robert Aldrich’s late masterpiece HUSTLE), and the understated cast shoulders these questions well. The moral questions get knottier and more urgent in the film’s second half, when Bruner reveals himself to be an even shadier character than the woman he’s infatuated with and his choices become harder to justify. Without giving away those choices, let’s just say that Siegel’s cynical worldview provides an ideal lens through which to view them. (1954, 81 min, 35mm) BS
Lina Wertmüller’s LOVE AND ANARCHY (Italian Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Sunday, 7pm
Of her four most popular films (the other three being THE SEDUCTION OF MIMI, SWEPT AWAY and SEVEN BEAUTIES, all of which, in the grand tradition of an auteur ensemble, star the Chaplinesque Giancarlo Giannini, three also starring the sublimely intense Mariangela Melato and two with Elena Fiore), LOVE AND ANARCHY is the most serious, sacrificing more obvious comedic opportunities for penetrative irony. Giannini stars as Tunin, a young man from the countryside who decides to assassinate Benito Mussolini after the original assassin, his friend, is murdered by police. He goes to Rome to meet Melato’s Salomè, a sex worker with strong political views who uses her sexuality to gain insight into Mussolini’s movements. While staying at her brothel, Tunin falls in love with another sex worker, Tripolina, and must choose between his infatuation and his ideals—not love and anarchy, but rather love or anarchy. Unlike SWEPT AWAY, which consociates politics with sexuality in a complicated and arguably problematic way, LOVE AND ANARCHY presents a clear picture of how the two intertwine—and interfere. Wertmüller, refusing the feminist label, is often criticized for her depiction of women, and a film in which all its female characters are sex workers would be no less disconcerting if it weren’t for how Wertmüller positions them; Salomè is pure anarchy, evading romantic entanglements to focus on the cause, while Tripolina is pure love, embodying a romantic ideal whose consequences are similarly devastating. Giannini’s characters in Wertmüller’s films often toe the line between love—be it for women or a metaphorical equivalent—and some form of anarchy, from lawlessness on a deserted island to the possibility of insurrection within a concentration camp. Wertmüller’s female characters, however, consistently maintain the courage of their convictions, depraved though they may be. The scenes that take place in the brothel are rapturous, a microcosm of a perverse social order; the setting, costumes and makeup evoke influences ranging from silent cinema to Caravaggio paintings, transcending these scenes from mere set pieces to full-on creative visions. (1973, 120 min, DCP Digital) KS
Kelly Reichardt's MEEK'S CUTOFF (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Tuesday, 9:30pm
The story goes that cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa had taken a very long time to set up the shot. He carefully framed the furrows of the road and the mountains and the sky just so, with plenty of clouds in the shot to lend added texture. It was gorgeous. Finally Luis Buñuel came on the set. He took a look through the viewfinder, then swung the camera around so it was pointing at just the road and an empty field of dirt. The point was that Buñuel was not interested in just creating pretty pictures for the actors to move through; to him, human beings were the most important things in any shot, and he wouldn't allow anything to distract from them. The importance of Reichardt's decision to shoot MEEK'S CUTOFF in the boxy Academy ratio instead of widescreen cannot be underestimated—it's a format that privileges the human face over the expansive scenery. As she explained during the Sundance screening's Q&A, "The square really helped keep me in the moment with them." For a perfect contrast, one would have to look to Raoul Walsh's 1930 film THE BIG TRAIL. In fact they even share a few sequences (crossing a river, lowering the wagons, etc.); but where Walsh favors jaw-dropping spectacle, Reichardt hones in on intimacy. It's only one way in which she and screenwriter Jon Raymond take a hackneyed genre and strip away the clichés. There are no gunfights, no saloons, no cowboys, and no whorehouses in this Western. Just ordinary folks trying to make a new life for themselves, at the mercy of an indifferent environment and their own doubts. (2010, 104 min, DCP Digital) RC
Chan-wook Park’s LADY VENGENANCE (South Korean Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday, 3:45pm and Tuesday, 6pm
Chan-wook Park’s LADY VENGEANCE is a response of sorts to Quentin Tarantino's KILL BILL cycle, this is a flamboyant tale of revenge centered on an iconic female lead—another scorned woman who must defeat an evil man before reuniting with her daughter. Park is one of the most entertaining filmmakers working today—Like Tarantino or the P.T. Anderson of BOOGIE NIGHTS and MAGNOLIA, each shot is a designed as an elaborate stylistic challenge—making this screening a must-see for the uninitiated. Overall, the film gets marred by the Hollywoodism that's come to define international blockbusters in recent years (Think of it as a blood-drenched AMELIE), but Park's subsequent work—I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OK and his entry in the omnibus film THREE... EXTREMES—marked a welcome return to the brazen weirdness of his earlier films. Still, there are enough movie-movie moments in LADY VEGEANCE to get drunk on. (2005, 112 min, 35mm) BS
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SAIC professor Jennifer Dorothy Lee lectures at the Tuesday screening.
Jacques Demy's THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday and Saturday, 2pm and Wednesday, 6pm
Jacques Demy is a cinematic alchemist. Ever present in his body of work is an uncanny ability to transform or combine standard, even banal, elements of various genres into 'gold'--or, rather, something so luminous and rarefied that it can only be Demy who's created it. THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is arguably the best of his films, and almost certainly the first film of his to so fully bend genre and style convention. Demy was both inspired by and considered to be a member of the French New Wave, and like several of his peers, he had an unabashed love for Hollywood studio musicals of the era. Demy's most 'New Wave-ish' films preceded THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG; LOLA (1960) and BAY OF ANGELS (1962) were shot in black and white, and dealt more straightforwardly with themes inherent to the movement. Both hinted at Demy's progression, but THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, when viewed in the context of his first three features, certainly stands out. (It's also his first film in color.) In an essay about the film for the Reader, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum admitted that he originally considered it to be a commercial sellout, comparing it to other "corny pretenders" allegedly borne of the New Wave but merely ascribing the label where it didn't belong. Demy's vision, especially in his later films, is understandably confounding, as he uses elements that, when mixed, shouldn't create gold. Virtually undefinable, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is neither just a musical nor entirely an opera. The film's narrative is completely conveyed through song, with a jazzy score by longtime Demy collaborator Michel Legrand providing the music against which the sung dialogue is set. It's about a young couple, Guy and Genevieve; she's the too-young daughter of an overbearing mother who owns an umbrella shop in Cherbourg, he's a mechanic who hasn't yet served his time with the French military. Their courtship is shown in the first part of the film, titled "Departure." Naturally, he's drafted to fight in the Algerian War and soon thereafter Genevieve learns she is pregnant. In this part, titled "Absence," Genevieve's mother compels her to consider the overtures of a well-to-do jeweler while Genevieve wonders if her and Guy's love is waning. (It was common among the New Wave filmmakers to reference other films in their work, and here Demy references himself. The jeweler, Roland Cassard, was a suitor of Lola's in LOLA, and Lola herself returns in Demy's 1969 film MODEL SHOP.) Genevieve soon gives in to Roland, who accepts that she is pregnant with another man's child. In the third and final part, "Return," Guy is back from the war and spiraling out of control, likely due to Genevieve's desertion. The ending is bittersweet and surprisingly cynical, two hallmarks of Demy's romantic pragmatism. It has this in common with his previous films, and somewhat separates it from his 1967 film THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, in which all is happy in the end despite Demy's overall tone of deceptively joyful endurance. This and THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT are noted for their use of color, but the schemes are distinct. In the latter, the fluffier of the two, sunny pastels and bright whites obscure any hint of grimy realism. In THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, which is more operatic in tone and structure, Demy utilizes bolder, more primary colors. This further allows for hints at the film's fateful bitterness. All that glitters is gold in Demy's world, but his is a gold that illuminates the screen while revealing its own artifice. (1964, 91 min, DCP Digital) KS
Michael Curtiz's CASABLANCA (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre — Sunday, 2pm
A strong candidate for the most entertaining movie ever made, CASABLANCA irresistibly weds the theme of self-sacrifice for a greater good to a love story set against the backdrop of wartime intrigue. Mix in Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman at their most iconic, deliciously witty dialogue, a cast of colorful supporting characters played by unforgettable character actors and the able craftsmanship of director Michael Curtiz and you have Exhibit A for anyone looking to understand the genius of Hollywood's old studio system. You must remember this: Bogie as Rick Blaine, the American nightclub owner living in Morocco, whose cynical exterior conceals a sentimental heart; Bergman as Ilsa Lund, the Norwegian woman he loved and lost in pre-World War II France, only to find again under less-than-ideal circumstances in the Vichy-controlled title city. Out of all the gin joints in the world, why did she have to walk into his?! Thank God for the sake of movie lovers that she did. They'll always have Paris—and we'll always have CASABLANCA. (1942, 102 min, 35mm) MGS
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Preceded by a Valentine's Day-themed sing-a-long.
Richard Linklater's BEFORE SUNRISE (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday, 6pm, Saturday, 4pm, and Thursday, 8:15pm
A French woman and an American man (Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke) spontaneously disembark from a train in Vienna and spend the afternoon, evening, and wee hours of the morning together—talking, walking, listening, flirting. Before this slender movie became the opening chapter of a trilogy, it was easy to dismiss its premise as flattering, post-collegiate wish fulfillment—a narcissistic ode to pitter-prattle interpersonal profundity that bears a striking proximity to resoundingly conventional male fantasies. Yes, but—viewing BEFORE SUNRISE in narrowly heterosexual terms or pigeonholing it as a precociously alt-Gen X love story would be enormous errors. More so than any screen romance I know, BEFORE SUNRISE exalts the pliability of gender roles and records a desperate, joyous urge to inhabit another person's consciousness. (By contrast, the deflationary exhaustion of BEFORE MIDNIGHT endorses a middle-aged imperative to live in one's own stubborn body and to ridicule and repudiate youthful idealism; but see below for an alternate opinion.) The closest direct antecedent to the radical vision of BEFORE SUNRISE is Jean Vigo's L'ATALANTE, but that film is about characters who can't talk to each other, who thrash about and dream of faraway cities and disembodied hands in jars. BEFORE SUNRISE, instead, is about the endlessly fecund possibility of connection. When Delpy sits in a restaurant, leans into her imaginary telephone, and belches, "Hey dude, what's up?," we're witnessing one of the most quietly utopian moments in movies. In another one of BEFORE SUNRISE's key moments, we watch Delpy and Hawke in a cramped record booth, listening to a Kath Bloom LP and trying so hard to conceal their mutual interest in one another: she cannot let him know that she's looking at him, just as surely as she must not know that he's looking at her. It's a scene that bedeviled Robin Wood's famously inexhaustible powers of analysis, perhaps because the content, form, and emotion are thoroughly irreducible and inseparable. In this movie, where people cannot help but reveal the totality of themselves to strangers, a single glance could prove fatal. Eschewing the concentrated intensity of its even finer follow-up, BEFORE SUNRISE manages to present a parade of deftly sketched supporting characters as well, none appearing for more than a minute or two but each suggesting an infinite expanse of possible feeling outside of Delpy and Hawke's bodies. A landmark of modern cinema. (1995, 101 min, DCP Digital) KAW
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Note that the previously announced 35mm print has been replaced by a DCP digital copy.
Baz Luhrmann’s ROMEO + JULIET (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre — Monday, 8pm
Just as films like EL TOPO and DEAD MAN were labeled acid Westerns because of their countercultural leanings, one might consider Baz Luhrmann's ROMEO + JULIET to be “acid Shakespeare,” not only because of its polychrome aesthetics but also it’s nonpareil interpretation of the timeless classic. The second film in his so-called ‘Red Curtain Trilogy’ (STRICTLY BALLROOM and MOULIN ROUGE being the first and third), ROMEO + JULIET takes the star-crossed lovers out of Verona proper and puts them in Verona Beach, hybridizing a decidedly 90s beach bum vibe with a kinetic, Tarantino-esque alacrity. Twenty years later, the film, like the play itself, hasn’t aged a day; despite the overabundance of bleach-blonde tips, the nostalgia that wells up when one first sees Leo’s soulful eyes and hears the first pangs of the its indelible soundtrack is untiring—a feeling that never really went away. Even if it is a shallow admiration, it would be all the more appropriate considering the nature of Shakespeare’s adolescent romance. Advanced as though the language may seem to our 21st century ears, this story of more woe is actually a puerile reverie of superficial attraction. (Had Romeo and Juliet not killed themselves—sorry, spoilers!—one wonders how long their marriage would have lasted. Paul Rudd’s Paris may have begun to seem like the better option when Leo’s Romeo started hitting on super models and embarrassing himself at Coachella.) Luhrmann doesn’t betray that point, instead using the impetuous romance to highlight the play’s more radical elements. Much like WEST SIDE STORY, his film imagines the Montagues and Capulets largely as rival gangs, replacing knives and swords with a various array of pithily named guns. The gang violence in Luhrmann’s adaptation, however, is a more urgent depiction of a violence respective to the time in which it was made; often criticized as being shot in an “MTV style,” which is unfairly reductive of both, it does borrow the exigency of the era’s socially conscious music videos. Though from the standpoint of teeny-bopper and proto-hipster propensity, one can more fully appreciate the casting of both Leo and Claire Danes (the latter of whom was recommended to Luhrmann by fellow Aussie director Jane Campion, who had seen her on My So-Called Life), as well as the now-classic soundtrack with songs from the Cardigans, Butthole Surfers, and Radiohead. Another interesting casting choice and subsequent character execution is Harold Perrineau as a gender-bending Mercutio. Indeed, Luhrmann’s depiction of Mercutio as being a queer black man who’s clearly in love with Romeo is perhaps the most audacious aspect of his interpretation, which he claims is how he thought Shakespeare would have done it had the play been a film. Reading Mercutio as having feelings for Romeo isn’t especially subversive, but the whole of Luhrmann’s characterization reflects a sympathy that wasn’t so widespread in 1996. In an interview with Creative Screenwriting magazine, he said that he didn’t “believe that there really are modern characters,” just that they have a “modern image” in the film. This embodies Luhrmann’s enduring vision—at its core, it’s a faithful rendition made modern by image rather than intent. The film begins and ends with a newscaster reporting the famous prologue and final monologue in remarkable deadpan, signaling both a seriousness and a self-awareness that don’t often co-mingle in contemporary interpretations of the Bard. (1996, 120 min, DCP Digital) KS
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Showing as part of the “Manic Movie Mondays” queer-themed series that includes live and “immersive” elements.
Judith Helfand’s COOKED: SURVIVAL BY ZIP CODE (New Documentary)
Chicago Cultural Center — Saturday, 2pm (Free Admission)
As much as we’d like to think that we become unified—"one nation, under god"—when disaster strikes, it would seem, as evidenced by Judith Helfand’s insightful documentary, the Kartemquin-produced COOKED: SURVIVAL BY ZIP CODE, that we can’t even agree on what constitutes a disaster. The film puts into perspective, and ultimately contradicts, the seemingly undivided approach we take with regards to calamities, the responses to which, for better or worse (probably worse), have come to characterize our nation. Drawing inspiration from Eric Klineberg’s book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, Helfand uses her family’s experience during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 to consider the 1995 Chicago heat wave, when over 700 people, largely older minorities, died. She doesn’t pull her punches—that’s to say, she addresses the situation head-on, explaining the real reasons why so many people died during this little-recognized disaster, chief among them segregation and poverty. (Many of those affected didn’t have air conditioning or even windows, or, if they did have windows, were afraid to open them because of crime.) Far and above this disaster, Helfand examines how we as a nation address these events—including ‘disasters’ which are generally excluded from the definition, specifically those, such as segregation and poverty, that primarily affect non-white populations. Much like documentary-provocateur Michael Moore (but more humbly so), Helfand investigates the inanity surrounding the emergency management industry, one that makes millions, if not billions, of dollars catering to people for whom disaster is merely a hypothetical scenario, but who have the resources to prepare themselves against speculation. Also guilty of this is our own government, which likewise spends significant amounts of taxpayer money preparing for the most random disasters. Case in point: a painfully detailed training exercise Helfand stumbles across here in Chicago, testing out capabilities in preparation against… tornadoes. In and around Chicago—which, the film elucidates, kill on average one person per year. Meanwhile, federal and local governments continue to disinvest from rectifying or even preventing disasters affecting vulnerable populations. Helfand maps out—literally—how the most pervasive disasters, things like gun violence, school closures, and heart disease, affect certain areas, and how something as insubstantial as one’s zip code can be a matter of life or death. “If black people in Chicago had the same death rates as white people, 3,200 fewer black people, in just one year, would have died,” Steve Whitman, former Director of Epidemiology for the City of Chicago from 1990 to 2000 (and who quit because of said inequality), tells a group of people at a public health teach-in. “What number is 3,200?,” he asks. “A very prominent number, in currency, in this country.” Upon someone in the audience understanding his train of thought, he confirms: “The number of people who died on 9/11. Now just think about our response to 9/11. Literally billions, even trillions of dollars spent, and yet here’s 3,000 deaths in just one [year]. Ten years, that’s 32,000 deaths. Just from racism in the city of Chicago.” Whitman is one among several erudite interviewees who speak passionately about their respective area of expertise. Contrast any of them with Brigadier General John W. Heltzel, Deputy Commander of the Kentucky National Guard, who, after launching a full-scale earthquake emergency response exercise (and using the “bootstraps” adage without irony), says, perhaps insincerely, “Now, if you change the laws, and we get people to agree that we want to change the world we live in, kind of the holy grail, right? Go for it. I’m right behind you.” (Can a camera roll its eyes?) Helfand, having previously won a Peabody Award for her film A HEALTHY BABY GIRL, as well as being nominated for a host of other awards, organizes all the information expertly, with her own curiosity and fervor on display. Hers become an almost philosophical investigation into the concept of disaster, suggesting that those that affect us the most aren’t always natural, but rather man-made, disasters of our own making. (2018, 82 min, Video Projection) KS
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Followed by a discussion.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Cinema Borealis (1550 N. Milwaukee Ave., 4th Floor) hosts Our Lab, Our Labour: Recent Films from Artist Film Workshop, Australia on Sunday at 7pm, with program curator and Melbourne-based filmmaker and scholar Giles Fielke in person. Screening are: TIANGONG-1 (Paddy Hay and Louis Marlo, 2018, 8 min), VYV AND BEAT (Audrey Lam, 2018, 3 min), SODA (Hanna Chetwin, 2017, 6 min), SHOPLIFTING (Lucas Haynes, 2017, 7 min), PHARMACY (Giles Fielke, 2019, 10 min), CHINA NOT CHINA (Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie, 2018, 14 min), TOMATO DAY (Madeleine Martiniello, 2017, 6 min), LANDING (Sabina Maselli, 2018, 8 min), VOLCANO (Callum Thompson, 2018, 6 min), and INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL OBJECTS (Giles Fielke, 2017, 7 min). All 16mm. Free admission.
The Chicago Film Society and the Music Box Theatre (at the Music Box) screen Erle C. Kenton’s 1928 silent film BARE KNEES (60 min, 35mm archival print) on Saturday at 11:30am. Preceded by Charles Lamont’s 1929 short GINGER SNAPS (20 min, 16mm). Live accompaniment by Dennis Scott.
The Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) presents We Tell: Wages of Work on Thursday at 7pm. Screening are: FINALLY GOT THE NEWS (League of Revolutionary Black Workers, 1970, 56 min), THE UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA 1970: A HOUSE DIVIDED (Appalshop, 1971, 14 min), LOS TRABAJADORES (El Comite de Apoyo a Los Trabajadores Agricolas, 2002, 19 min), and I’M NOT ON THE MENUE (Labor Beat, 2018, 11 min). With series co-curator Patricia Zimmerman (Ithaca College), filmmaker Andrew Friend, and Salomé Aguilar Skvirsky (Univ. of Chicago) in person. Free admission.
The Conversations at the Edge series (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) presents Avant-Noir on Thursday at 6pm, with program curator Greg de Cuir, Jr. and artist Edgar Arceneaux in person. Screening are: ZOMBIES (Baloji, 2019), A IS FOR ARTIST (Ayo Akingbade, 2019), A QUALITY OF LIGHT (Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, 2019), and UNTIL, UNTIL, UNTIL… (Edgar Arceneaux, 2017–18).
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week: Hamed Yousefi and Ali Mirsepassi’s 2015 documentary THE FABULOUS LIFE AND THOUGHT OF AHMAD FARDID (85 min, Digital Projection) is on Thursday at 6pm, with co-director Yousefi in person, who will participate in a post-screening panel discussion. Free admission.
South Side Projections and the DuSable Museum (at the DuSable) present Ella Baker and Angela Davis: Two Films on Wednesday at 7pm. Screening are: FUNDI: THE STORY OF ELLA BAKER (Joanne Grant, 1981, 63 min, Digital Projection) and the 16mm documentation ANGELA DAVIS AT MALCOLM X COLLEGE (Unknown, 1972, 32 min, Digital Projection). Free admission.
Chicago Filmmakers (5720 N. Ridge Ave.) presents Transgressive: Films Exploring the Boundaries of the Body on Saturday at 7pm. Screening are: Carole Cassier's 2018 Australian documentary THE QUIET REBEL (48 min), Martina Scarpelli's 2018 French experimental animation EGG (12 min), and LA VIANDE Justine Oïley's 2019 French experimental short LA VIANDE (7 min). All Digital Projection.
The MCA Chicago presents Odd Pleasures: A Queer Valentine’s Day Event on Friday at 7pm. The event, hosted by Aunty Chan, includes live ASMR, drag, comedy, youth-designed artist interactions and two short videos: Mika Rottenberg's NO NOSE KNOWS (2015, 21 min) and series creators Kyra Jones and Juli Del Prete and director Justin Casselle's webseries THE RIGHT SWIPE.
The Rebuild Foundation at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) screens Joseph Sargent’s 2004 made-for-television film SOMETHING THE LORD MADE (110 min, Video Projection) on Sunday at 2pm. Free admission.
The Beverly Arts Center screens Joe Angio's 2013 documentary REVENGE OF THE MEKONS (95 min, Digital Projection) is on Wednesday at 7:30pm, with Mekons member singer/songwriter Sally Timms in person.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Richard Wong's 2019 film COME AS YOU ARE (106 min, DCP Digital) plays for a week; and Lai Meng-Jie's 2019 Taiwanese film STAND BY ME (103 min, DCP Digital) is on Monday at 7:45pm, with Lai Meng-Jie in person. Co-presented by Asian Pop-Up Cinema.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Errol Morris’ 1988 documentary THE THIN BLUE LINE (101 min, Digital Projection) is on Tuesday at 7pm; Hal Ashby’s 1979 film BEING THERE (130 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 7pm; and J.A. Bayona’s 2007 Spanish film THE ORPHANAGE (105 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 9:30pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Jan Komasa’s 2019 Polish film CORPUS CHRISTI (115 min, DCP Digital) opens; Haruka Fujita’s 2019 animated Japanese film VIOLET EVERGARDEN: ETERNITY AND THE AUTO MEMORY DOLL (90 min, DCP Digital; Subtitled Japanese-language version) is on Wednesday at 7:15pm; Richard Stanley’s 2019 film COLOR OUT OF SPACE (110 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight; and Roses Are Dead Volume 2 (75 min, DCP Digital), a program of recent short horror films, is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.
Also at the Chicago Cultural Center this week: the CCC hosts the Chicago Latino Film Festival screening of Diego Rougier's 2017 Chilean film LOOKING FOR A BOYFRIEND…FOR MY WIFE (99 min, Video Projection) on Wednesday at 6:30pm. Free admission.
MUSEUM AND GALLERY SHOWS/EXHIBITIONS
The School of the Art Institute’s Sullivan Galleries (33 S. State St., 7th Floor) presents We Don't Want Your MTV through this Saturday. The show includes videos drawn from Video Data Bank’s collection, and includes work by Max Almy, Glenn Belverio, Sadie Benning, Ximena Cuevas, Jenny Holzer, Miranda July, Sterling Ruby, Martine Syms, and others.
CINE-LIST: February 14 - February 20, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Rob Christopher, Cody Corrall, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jason Halprin, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael Glover Smith