Hello, Cine-File Readers:
This week we spotlight more films available for viewing online, recommended by our contributors. Among these are selections paying tribute to Chicago-born filmmaker Stuart Gordon, who recently passed away, and Chicago documentary film legend and Kartemquin Films co-founder Gordon Quinn, who is currently battling Covid-19 (though reportedly doing well last we heard).
Be Well and Stay Inside
NEW REVIEWS
Tomás Lunák’s ALOIS NEBEL (Czech Republic Animation)
Available to subscribers on Xfinity Stream and for rent or purchase on Amazon Prime Video (“free” if you have a Prime membership)
“Railway tracks can take you places: to Lisbon or to Auschwitz, to your own past or even to your doubts, the traces of what your parents, friends, and enemies have left behind.” The psychic landscape of individual and collective memory infuses writer Jaroslav Rudiš and illustrator Jaromír 99’s graphic novel trilogy Alois Nebel, based on stories about Rudiš’ grandfather Alois, who was a railway worker. The Czech Republic’s official entry for Best Foreign-Language Film in the 84th Academy Awards, ALOIS NEBEL is, appropriately, image-driven, with little dialogue and a subtly communicated plot. Its eponymous central character, played by Miroslav Krobot, works at the Bílý Potok train station in what was once the German Sudetenland, and it is his troubled memories from 1945, when Germans were expelled from the region, that provide the key to the drama underlying the film’s events. The film begins in 1989, before the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and Czechoslovakia, with a man on the run. Alois will encounter this man twice, once at Bílý Potok and later at a remote train station deep in the mountains. In between, he will lose his mind, his job, and a woman (Marie Ludvíková) he has started to court. The choice to use rotoscope animation was a compromise between the wishes of the graphic novel creators and director Lunák’s cinematic approach. The black-and-white animation emphasizes the grave, colorless world Alois inhabits. There are many elements of this film that are reminiscent of a horror movie, from recovered memories to crazed vengeance and ever-present water. The use of trains approaching us head-on from out of the screen is familiar, even clichéd, but one that is turned on its head as having nothing to do with the deportation of Jews, but rather the expulsion of Germans. All of the actors are riveting, no matter how small their roles. Yet, it is with a slow rhythm and the enigmatic magnetism of Alois that Krobot ensnares us. Krobot’s reticence and Lunák’s very sparing use of flashback maintain a mystery that is intriguing to follow. Krobot fends off the cinematic voyeur, reacting more than revealing, accepting without being submissive, creating an indelible character who has witnessed much and learned to channel his distress with the routine of his timetables. Bílý Potok is in the wettest part of the Czech Republic, and the film makes great use of a torrential rainstorm to bring its story to a dark and inevitable climax. When the film draws to a close, people are where they should be, with the trains back on schedule and the past finally put to rest. (2011, 84 min) MF
Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ BACURAU (Brazil)
Available to watch here
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s three features to date—NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (2012), AQUARIUS (2016), and now BACURAU (co-directed by Juliano Dornelles)—are all blatantly ambitious in their narratives and aesthetics, with complex plot structures and expansive widescreen imagery. But where his first two films (both novelistic in feel) suggested he was something of a Brazilian Arnaud Desplechin, the no-less-commanding BACURAU takes its cues from the American genre movies of George Romero and John Carpenter. The Carpenter influence is more overt, and not only in the powerful widescreen compositions; BACURAU employs Carpenter’s signature font for its credits, and it even uses a piece of music written by the horror master. But the film’s underlying concerns—namely, how societies are made and broken—are distinctly Romero-esque, and it’s this panoramic vision that makes the film feel epic even when the action and dialogue are stripped-down. It’s best not to reveal too much of the plot, as one of the chief pleasures of the film lies in how you gradually put together the fictional world that Mendonça Filho and Dornelles have imagined from the clues that they give you. Suffice it to say, though, the influence of genre cinema doesn’t become fully apparent until the second half of BACURAU; for almost the first hour, the film generally wades in the environment, introducing character after character and fleshing out what life might be like in an isolated, northern Brazilian village during a dystopian future “a few years from now.” These passages advance a bifocal vision, dramatizing individual lives and the collective spirit of the community with comparable pungency. (The rural setting notwithstanding, you may be reminded of the social portraiture of NEIGHBORING SOUNDS.) Sonia Braga, the star of AQUARIUS, returns as the town doctor, who’s a sweetheart when she’s sober and a terror when she’s drunk; her performance is the film’s showcase, but every community member gets a few distinctive moments apiece. Mendonça Filho and Dornelles also bring lots of flavor to their characterization of the North American visitors who start to arrive in the title village near the end of the first half of the movie. The malign presence of these characters can be read as a metaphor for the ravages of international capitalism on Brazil, but the film derives its raw power from the sheer dread of its violence. (2019, 131 min) BS
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Screening in partnership between the Music Box Theatre and Kino, with 50% of proceeds supporting the Music Box. $12 rental for five days.
Yang Mingming’s FEMALE DIRECTORS and GIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY (China)
Available to stream through OVID; get one month free with code 1MONTH
There’s a brazen self-reflexivity to Yang Mingming’s audacious featurette FEMALE DIRECTORS (2012, 43 min) that inspires comparisons with, superficially, the likes of Lena Dunham, and more accurately, the films of Hong Sang-soo and Eric Rohmer. Yang stars as Ah-Ming, a recent film school graduate making a movie about her life with her friend and fellow grad, Yueyue. (FEMALE DIRECTORS has been referred to as a documentary, but it’s obviously a work of fiction.) What starts off as playful documentation of the women’s’ day-to-day lives turns tense when they discover they’re both involved with the same older, married man. The conflict provides the impetus for considerations of sex, residency (both women yearn to reside permanently in Beijing), and filmmaking itself, the women’s endeavor to make a kind of film becoming the tenuous thread by which their friendship hangs. Past its thematic similarities to Hong Sang-soo’s films (film students, inadvisable relationships), the formal implications of Yang’s use of an HD camera recall those of Hong’s efforts with that technology. The frankness of the protagonists’ discussions brings to mind both Hong and Rohmer, though Yang injects something unique into the equation. It’s hard to say just what that is, but it’s what makes this film so enjoyable to watch. Yang’s debut feature GIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY (2018, 116 min) is more conventional than her previous effort but similarly fearless. Analogous to Greta Gerwig’s LADY BIRD—but, in my opinion, leaps and bounds more dauntless—Yang’s film, divided into four sections, each titled with the name of a different food, again stars its writer-director as a hapless young woman, this time an aspiring twenty-something writer rather than a filmmaker, who lives with her intractable mother (Li Nan, incredible) in a Beijing hutong. Yang’s Wu refuses to get a job outside of the art world and relies on her older director boyfriend for spending money, while her mother takes care of Wu’s paternal grandfather in hopes that he’ll leave them something in his will. Both women are incredibly unlikable: the mother pegs herself as a martyr, having sacrificed everything for her ungrateful daughter, while the latter wants to live only for herself, shirking expectations of marriage and taking care of her elders. Wu is, more or less, on track to becoming a “real” writer, but, in the film’s most affecting through-line, her mother also has an amateurish interest in the craft. What distinguishes GIRLS ALWAYS HAPPY from other films of its kind—the subject of mothers and daughters being a tried and true one—is Yang’s injection of her idiosyncratic oddity into the film, which serves both lead characters’ impetuosity. Intentionally making ones’ characters unlikeable is hardly new—consider the oeuvres of Harmony Korine and Alex Ross Perry, as well as TV shows like Girls and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (television apparently being the place where unlikeable characters crafted by women thrive)—but with Yang it seems less intended to draw attention to itself than to make the audience contend with it. There are tender moments, to be sure, but Yang doesn’t dare condescend to us. Rather, she evokes the inherent unevenness of living, of being a person, a woman, a mother, a daughter, an artist, and not. KS
Films by Sasha Waters Freyer (US Experimental)
Available for free on the artist’s Vimeo (links in text)
Sasha Waters Freyer is an exceptionally skillful filmmaker who works in the borderlands between documentary and personal poetic filmmaking. She's been making documentaries for over 25 years and recently had a solid arthouse and public television success with the feature doc GARRY WINOGRAND: ALL THINGS ARE PHOTOGRAPHABLE (2018), which is available to rent on Amazon. Her personal filmmaking often uses her documentary skills to create graceful found footage pieces and mixed-media essays—but most extraordinary in her body of work is a trio of 16mm examinations of her small town domestic life. OUR SUMMER MADE HER LIGHT ESCAPE (2012) is a blunt portrait of children and other fragile animals that takes on an eerie quality as the filmmaker explores the shock of her "maternal ambivalence"—reeling at how tender new life can be. BURN OUT THE DAY (2014) is a charred and hazy tumbling of images welded together with a cool acceptance of the inevitability of great loss, kitchen tables, life moving forward, and other "pleasures and terrors of rural domestic comfort." DRAGONS & SERAPHIM (2017) is an uncanny flattening of the natural world until all is considered and celebrated and damned in one. Gone are the filmmaker’s lofty and protective considerations of youth—the adolescents have asserted their power and are ready to move on with or without you. Freyer is becoming one of my favorite filmmakers. I was first simply drawn to her beautiful 16mm image making; but with every new film I enjoy the deepening of her overall project of fierce and sometimes discomforting domestic interrogation. To steal G. K. Chesterton's estimation of Emily Brontë; Freyer is "so warm and domestic like a house on fire." (2012-17, 23 min total) JBM
Keith Behrman’s GIANT LITTLE ONES (Canada)
Streams free on Kanopy and Hoopla through participating libraries with your library card
This one came and went with disappointingly meager notice after a 2018 bow at the Toronto International Film Festival. Don’t let the vacuous, YA-lite title deter you: once it moves beyond its standard-issue setup, GIANT LITTLE ONES becomes an uncommonly perceptive film about embracing sexual fluidity. It centers on Franky (Josh Wiggins), an athletic teen living on nonspeaking terms with his dad (Kyle MacLachlan, superb), whose decision to leave his wife for another man underlies the young man's antagonism. Franky’s life is otherwise routine: he’s got a best friend, fellow swimmer Ballas (Darren Mann), and is in the thick of navigating his burgeoning sexuality. But when Ballas makes a drunken move on Franky one night, and fears being outed because of it, he goes on the offense to convince the rest of the school that it’s Franky who’s gay, unraveling their relationship in the process. Both sharply forthright in its messaging and delicate in limning the nuances of desire, Behrman’s script consistently sidesteps clichés of queer coming-of-age narratives. The familiar persecution, internalized homophobia, and ostracization still make their appearances, but they are never the point or end-goal. Instead, the film emphasizes the alliances forged out of the tumult of adolescence, allowing its characters to figure themselves out without needing to foist reductive labels upon them. Rather than dwell in boilerplate moments of angst, GIANT LITTLE ONES excels by letting quiet contemplation and rapprochement take precedence, giving ample room to conversations between kindred spirits who understand something of what the other is going through. These involve the tender commiseration between Franky and Natasha (Taylor Hickson), Ballas’ maligned younger sister; the palliating-to-a-fault but refreshingly sweet friendship with the gender-nonconforming Mouse (Niamh Wilson); and most poignantly, the initially bitter but finally salubrious opening-up between Franky and his dad, played with equal parts rue and self-conviction by MacLachlan. In their talk, a candid heart-to-heart in which a queer father advises his possibly queer son about accepting the ambiguities of desire, one can feel the calcified repression of so many gay coming-of-age movies turn to mush. (2018, 93 min) JL
Gordon Quinn’s PRISONER OF HER PAST (US Documentary)
Streams on Amazon Prime Video with a Fandor subscription; available to Kartemquin Films
During the night of Feb. 15, 2001, a petite, elderly woman named Sonia Sys Reich bolted from her modest home in Skokie, Ill., and went screaming down the streets that someone had threatened to put a bullet in her head. The police picked her up and brought her to a hospital emergency room, from which her son, Chicago Tribune jazz critic Howard Reich, retrieved her and eventually had her admitted to a nursing facility. Mrs. Reich’s delusions mixed her lifelong paranoia with strange rituals and thought fragments that seemed purposeful. What could these actions and thoughts mean? It took about a year for Reich to receive a definitive diagnosis of what was afflicting his mother. Her psychiatrist, Dr. David Rosenberg, said Mrs. Reich was not suffering from dementia. Rosenberg, who has more than 40 years of experience with Holocaust survivors, said, “Your mother has late-onset PTSD with bells and whistles.” Posttraumatic stress disorder, of course! Both of Reich’s parents were Holocaust survivors. Reich put on his journalist’s cap to uncover exactly what had happened to his mother during World War II in hopes that the truth might help restore her to something of a normal life. Reich’s search takes him to New York to talk with an aunt he barely knew and to the town of Dubno, now in the Ukraine, where Sonia’s childhood home still stands. The Germans invaded Dubno when she was 10. Extrapolating from statements Sonia has made, she and her brother spent the next four years hiding and surviving as best they could, working on farms, carefully splitting whatever food they had. Based on one of her cryptic statements, Reich wondered whether Sonia was forced to prostitute herself. He probably will never know. A trip Quinn and Reich took to New Orleans to film children who survived Hurricane Katrina shows that delayed PTSD could be awaiting at least one girl if she does not receive treatment. PRISONER OF HER PAST presents a touching portrait of Sonia Reich, horribly victimized and horribly haunted. It’s a great place to start learning about PTSD and the need for healing in all the scarred regions of the world. (2010, 55 min) MF
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Cine-File wishes Gordon Quinn a speedy and complete recovery from COVID-19.
Gerald Potterton and Buster Keaton’s THE RAILRODDER / John Spotton’s BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN (Canadian Short / Documentary)
Both stream free at the National Film Board of Canada’s website
In 1965, one year before his death, film legend Buster Keaton appeared in THE RAILRODDER, one of eight films and TV shows he made that year, including Samuel Beckett’s FILM. In a dialogue-free, sound-effects-laden short that harkens back and pays homage to his greatest films of the 1920s, especially THE GENERAL (1926), Keaton’s unnamed character jumps off a bridge into the River Thames after reading “See Canada Now!” in his London newspaper. A mere edit later, he emerges from the ocean, umbrella in hand, in Nova Scotia. Keaton’s great films were always outsized, but they largely lived in the land of the possible. Not so THE RAILRODDER. Keaton is in full cartoon mode, pulling every imaginable object out of a small storage locker on a motorized train trolley he’s using to travel the breadth of Canada, from a rifle to shoot a snow goose to a tea set, complete with brewed tea, to warm him on a rainy day. It’s amazing to see his seemingly untarnished agility as he pratfalls and slips all over the trolley, his defiance of a full-size train ready to hit him head-on in a carefully set-up gag, and his razor-sharp instincts about how to make us laugh out loud with his perfect sense of the absurd. (1965, 24 min)
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BUSTER KEATON RIDES AGAIN is a documentary about the making of THE RAILRODDER that demonstrates Keaton’s finely honed skills in the art of comedy as he guides director Gerald Potterton as an uncredited co-director. Keaton defies attempts to keep him safe during a gag on a high train trestle because he knows his way is funnier—and proves he’s right. He tells juicy stories from his years in Hollywood, pantomiming Louis B. Mayer’s repertoire of postures when dealing with difficult stars, and offering interesting tidbits of film lore, such as how Laurel and Hardy could make a hilarious two-reeler out of a singularly simple premise. As was common in documentaries of the 1960s, Spotton inserts a short history of silent comedy and Keaton’s early life through the Depression using photos and film clips. His insertion of additional historical photos and clips late in the film is distracting, but watching Keaton at work is utterly engrossing and the kitschy maple leaf print on his trailer curtains is a gag all its own. (1965, 55 min) MF
Leilah Weinraub’s SHAKEDOWN (US Experimental Documentary)
Available to stream free on Pornhub through 3/31
The title of Leilah Weinraub’s superb 2018 documentary refers to a series of legendary underground strip-club shows held in a variety of locations in Los Angeles in the 1990s and early 2000s. The performers at these shows, the “Shakedown Angels,” were exclusively lesbians of color who catered to audiences comprised largely of the same demographic. Like Jennie Livingston did with New York City’s drag-ball scene in the landmark PARIS IS BURNING, Weinraub provides an invaluable and eye-opening social history of a subculture too-long marginalized, and many of the pleasures her film offers arise from a similarly skilled manner of documentary portraiture: The subjects come across as compelling, vividly drawn characters—from Ronnie-Ron, Shakedown’s charismatic “stud” impresario, to angels Mahogany (who gives a fascinating description of the difference between performing for women vs. men), Egypt (a formerly homophobic high-school cheerleader who discovered her sexual identity after being introduced to gay club-life by a friend) and the enigmatic Slim Goodie (whose clever costumes and aggressive, mesmerizing dance numbers rival the best of what came out of MGM’s famed Arthur Freed unit in the 1950s). Fittingly, men are almost nowhere to be seen, and the only appearance of white men pointedly occurs when undercover cops show up to arrest nude dancers for “soliciting,” precipitating the closure of Shakedown’s main venue in 2004 amidst a new era of gentrification in L.A. But Weinraub also knows that the most effective way to challenge the dominant ideology of American culture (i.e., patriarchy and heteronormativity) in cinema is not only through content but form, and so she rebels against the conventions of mainstream documentary filmmaking as well. What ultimately makes SHAKEDOWN a landmark work of radical queer art in its own right is its experimental edge: In little more than an hour, Weinraub confronts viewers with an exhilarating montage of footage (culled from 400+ hours she shot herself on standard-definition video in low-light conditions) that frequently takes on a rude, hallucinatory beauty, punctuated by a wealth of still photographs and promotional flyers characterized by a cheesy-but-amazing early-2000s Photoshop aesthetic. (2018, 66 min) MGS
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Pornhub and Weinraub will host a Q&A live chat on Saturday, March 28 from 12-1pm PST. The chat offers viewers the chance to “simulate the experience of watching the film together, even while alone.”
Stuart Gordon’s STUCK (US)
Streams on Shudder and UMC with a subscription; available for rent and purchase on Amazon Prime Video
In 2001, Chante Mallard, a woman in Fort Worth, Texas, was believed to be drunk when she struck Gregory Biggs, a homeless man, who became lodged in her car’s windshield. She drove home, locked the car in the garage, and left Biggs to die. This story intrigued Gordon, who said in an April 2007 interview, “…lately I’ve been thinking that what happens in real life is much more horrifying than anything you can dream up that exists within the supernatural world. So KING OF THE ANTS, EDMOND, and now STUCK is kind of a trilogy.” Stephen Rea plays Tom Bordo, an unemployed project manager who is thrown out of his SRO for nonpayment of rent, given the royal run-around at the state employment bureau, and is prodded awake from his spot on a park bench by a policeman who tells him to move along to a mission a very long walk away. Brandi (Mena Suvari), a nurse assistant, has been celebrating her imminent promotion with her friend and coworker Tanya (Rukiya Bernard), her boyfriend Rashid (Russell Hornsby), and the Ecstasy he drops on her protruding tongue. Rashid and Brandi have come in separate cars and agree to meet up at her place. She phones him on the way, but her cellphone signal dies and she punches at the keypad at the same moment that Tom is crossing the street. Gordon’s camera slows as her car strikes him, sending him halfway through the passenger side of her windshield. Failing to detach him from the window when she tries to drop him off at a hospital, she drives home and locks the car and Bordo in her garage. STUCK is a tightly suspenseful horror film that could have been played as a very black comedy. The wonderful Carolyn Purdy-Gordon does a brilliant job of playing Brandi’s vaguely menacing boss with the darkly comedic accents for which her husband’s films are known. Hornsby infuses Rashid with a false bravado that deliciously unspools as Brandi, who believes he has wasted dozens of guys, insists that he smother her “problem” with a pillow. Stephen Rea plays Tom with a pitiable sadness at the beginning and a desperation that is nothing short of compelling as he fights for his life. I’m not sure Gordon was striving for this more serious tone, but it works. When Tom and Brandi confront each other for the last time, they show what each of them is made of. Brandi tells him she doesn’t know why she wouldn’t help him, and that’s basically true. She’s not much different from him at this point in their lives; she’s near the bottom of the heap and trying to climb up. Her flaw is her oceanswide self-pity. Tom, on the other hand, has lived longer and known better things. He lives in a world of petty rules that he tries to reason against, but ultimately obeys. Only when his life is at stake can he rise to the challenge of defending himself. STUCK is a superior horror film that is all the more horrible because it’s true. (2007, 94 min) MF
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Also, Gordon’s first, and best-known, film, RE-ANIMATOR, is available on multiple platforms, including Showtime, Amazon, iTunes, and more.
Byron Haskin’s TOO LATE FOR TEARS (US)
Restored version available for rental or purchase at Flicker Alley; rather shabby public domain version available here
A couple’s life changes in a fateful moment on a nighttime highway in Byron Haskin’s diverting TOO LATE FOR TEARS—and isn’t that how a proper film noir should begin? High in the Hollywood hills, a passing car lobs something into their backseat: upon examination, it’s a satchelful of money. We see a glint in the eyes of the wife, Jane (Lizabeth Scott): she’s spotted her main chance. Her husband, Alan (Arthur Kennedy), wants to return the money—the sap. The loot begins driving them apart immediately; the story follows the lengths Jane will go to keep it. Other characters on hand include Kristine Miller as Kennedy’s good-girl sister and Dan DeFore as a man who may not be what he seems. The real treat for connoisseurs, though, is Dan Duryea as Danny Fuller, a would-be heavy in a bow tie and an oversized fedora, who finds he simply doesn’t have what it takes to be a criminal—not compared to the housewife he’s trying to intimidate. TOO LATE FOR TEARS has emerged from the shadows to be regarded as something of a class-conscious crime classic. It’s about money—the way out of every trap; the trap itself. Lizabeth Scott gives an unforgettable turn as a woman who’s utterly cold-blooded, but also very human, and whose vision of independence is inextricably, unapologetically (and murderously) tied to having all the cold cash of her fantasies. I delighted in the way she shifts power to her advantage, the way she knowingly subverts her role. (“Housewives can get awfully bored sometimes,” she says by way of explanation.) Observe the way she unnerves Danny with a hard kiss, after he steals one meant to be coercive. His voice gets more querulous and quavering the more she shatters his nerve. This is a well-turned twisty tale, yet fans of the genre know that film noir is about the imagery and atmosphere more than it is about the plot, per se—the alchemy that conjures a shadowy black-and-white world out of the everyday pulp fiction of TOO LATE FOR TEARS. (1949, 101 min) SP
Teena Webb’s VIVA LA CAUSA (US Documentary Short)
Available to rent from Kartemquin Films
Pilsen is one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in Chicago, due in large part to the breathtaking murals that appear on many of its surfaces. This local tradition dates back to the 1960s and 1970s, so it’s no wonder that Chicago’s Kartemquin Films had a hand in documenting it. Teena Webb’s VIVA LA CAUSA is tranquil and evocative; it’s a gratifying tour of some of the era’s most famous murals, including one on Casa Aztlan by renowned Chicago muralist Ray Patlán. It’s a new project of Patlán’s that comprises much of this short documentary, which he works on with a group of local children. There are no talking heads in the film; instead, unidentified speakers’ voices accompany footage of the existing murals and the creation of the new one. This disembodied effect puts the focus on the art, as it should be, and a freewheeling editing style mimics the natural finesse with which Patlán and his apprentices adorn their community. Also interesting is commentary from locals on what they think the mural represents—it’s a mix of positive reactions and tempered befuddlement, the filmmakers unafraid of showcasing art’s divisiveness. The finished work is beautiful, and the film more than makes up for this Northsider’s inability to go see Pilsen’s wonderful public art in person for the foreseeable future. Included with the film’s rental are two bonus downloads and two short videos, a particularly interesting one of which, called “Side by Side: Original Tape Transfers vs. Restored Files” (2 min), shows the difference between some Kartemquin films’ original ¾-inch U-matic tape transfers and the new 16mm preservation prints from 2013. (1974, 12 min) KS
RERUN REVIEWS FOR FILMS WITH SPECIAL AVAILABILITY
Michelle Memran’s THE REST I MAKE UP (New Documentary)
Memran has made the film available for free on Vimeo
Some writers live like the rest of us—that is, in a state of normalcy far removed from the epical nuances of the written word. Others live as they write, the things they do and say never far from that which they commit to the page. Acclaimed avant-garde playwright María Irene Fornés, who passed away in 2018, embodies the latter sort, as evidenced by Michelle Memran’s THE REST I MAKE UP, a heartbreaking and idiosyncratic documentary that spans Fornés' extraordinary life and career while focusing on her struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. Memran, a reporter based in New York City, is something of an accidental filmmaker, having met Fornés when she interviewed her in 1999; in 2003, using a Hi8 camcorder, she began filming Fornés while on an excursion to Brighton Beach. Interspersed between this footage, which covers the writer’s day-to-day life in New York and a trip back to Cuba (where Fornés lived until she was 15), are clips from performances of her plays and interviews with family, friends, and colleagues (among them playwrights Edward Albee and Paula Vogel, and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club founder Ellen Stewart). The film touches on Fornés’ sexual orientation, specifically her affair with Susan Sontag, whom she describes as the love of her life. Its real distinction, however, and the source of its intense emotional effect, is how it captures Fornés’ advancing dementia; though the film is never exploitative, it’s nonetheless unsettling to see her forget things that appeared onscreen just moments before. In this way, Memran uses the medium as a sort of warped memory play, documenting events that its subject is soon to forget. These moments are not exploitative precisely because of the relationship between the filmmaker and her subject. As a portrait of a great artist, it’s incredibly stirring; as a portrait of a friendship—namely one between two women, one young, the other gone too soon—it’s an astounding work. (2018, 79 min) KS
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 via the Gene Siskel Film Center (see immediately below) and the Music Box Theatre (see the review of BACURAU above), and Facets has its own streaming service (see below).
The Gene Siskel Film Center is one of a number of theaters around the country partnering with film distributors to offer new and recently restored films via streaming, with part of the rental cost going to the theaters. The Film Center from Your Sofa: Stay Connected and Stream with Us series features new titles each week through the end of April.
Facets has a subscription-based streaming service, FacetsEdge, that includes many exclusive titles.
COVID-19 UPDATES
All independent, alternative, arthouse, grassroots, DIY, and university-based venues and several festivals have suspended operations, closed, or cancelled/postponed events through the end of March at least. Here is the most recent information we have, which we will update as new information becomes available:
Asian Pop-Up Cinema – Spring series postponed till the fall
Beverly Arts Center – Closed through the end of March (tentative)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Spring calendar on hold with no definitive start date
Chicago Film Society – Remaining March and April screenings on their current calendar are postponed, with intentions to reschedule at future dates
Chicago Filmmakers – All screenings postponed until further notice, with the intention of rescheduling at future dates
Comfort Film (at Comfort Station) – Programming cancelled with no set start date
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) – Remaining programs cancelled, with plans to reschedule at future times
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Spring programming cancelled
Facets Cinémathèque – Closed through April 17 (tentative date)
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – No April screenings/events; May programming is wait and see
filmfront – Events postponed until further notice
Gene Siskel Film Center – Closed through April 10 (tentative date)
Music Box Theatre – Closed through April 3 (tentative date)
The Nightingale – March and April programs postponed
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series (at the Park Ridge Public Library) – Screenings cancelled through the end of March at least
Festivals:
The Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival (March 12-15) - Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Chicago Latino Film Festival (April 16-30) – 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
The Chicago Underground Film Festival (June 10-14) – Postponed (tentatively in September)
CINE-LIST: March 27 - April 2, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Marilyn Ferdinand, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, JB Mabe, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael Glover Smith