Cine-File continues to cover streaming and other online offerings during this time of covidity. We will list/highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that have reopened, and list streaming/online screenings below. Cine-File takes no position on whether theaters should be reopening, nor on whether individuals should be attending in-person. Check the venues’ websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place.
🔊 CINE-CAST: The Cine-File Podcast
Episode #14
Episode #14 of the Cine-Cast is all about the Chicago Latino Film Festival! To start, Associate Editor Ben Sachs speaks with contributors Megan Fariello and Marilyn Ferdinand about this year's line-up, with each participant recommending some of their favorite films on the slate, before reflecting on the festival as a whole. Then, Ben and fellow Associate Editor Kathleen Sachs interview CLFF founder and executive director Pepe Vargas about the history of the festival, the programmers' criteria for selecting films, and what viewers can learn from the festival about Latino culture.
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The introductory theme is by local film composer Ben Van Vlissingen. Find out more about his work here.
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Listen here!
📽️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS
Jasmila Žbanić’s QUO VADIS, AIDA? (New Bosnian and Herzegovinian)
Music Box Theatre – Friday-Thursday, 4:45pm
How does one depict real-world atrocity, convey the scope and gravity of events that largely defy representation? One narrative approach is to center the experiences of a single character, through whose intimate perspective we can even begin to comprehend the human-scale toll of the unconscionable. This is the strategy of Jasmila Žbanić’s QUO VADIS, AIDA?, a wrenching, almost real-time procedural-style account of events leading up to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which over 8,000 Bosniak Muslim boys and men were murdered by Bosnian Serb soldiers. The film focuses on the titular Aida (Jasna Đuričić), a former grade school teacher and a translator for the UN in the designated “safe area” of Srebrenica. When the Army of Republika Srpska invades the town in July of 1995, thousands of Bosnians make their way to a UN base run by a Dutch Protection Force unit; many are allowed inside, but most are forced to stay behind the gates, sweltering in the sun. Although Aida is able to use her credentials to get her husband and two young adult sons inside, their security is increasingly precarious. Soon, after negotiations are made on the basis that the Army of Republika Srpska will peacefully transfer the refugees, Bosnian Serb soldiers begin loading people onto buses. Women, men, and children are separated. Aida, leveraging her insider position, unleashes her ferocious mama bear to do her damndest to make sure her boys are not taken. Amidst the roiling chaos (the huge crowd shots are orchestrated by Žbanić and cinematographer Christine A. Maier with a lucid sense of movement and scale), a recurring image is of Aida, with her blue jacket and laminated tag, racing indefatigably through the halls, trying to stop both military terrorists and the alleged allies of UN bureaucracy from enabling genocide. QUO VADIS, AIDA? is blunt in its condemnation of the deadly inaction (and explicitly deadly action) of the UN, whose ineffectual Dutchbat guards all but handed over Srebrenica to the Bosnian Serb forces. In the face of this heinous institutional and moral failure, Đuričić turns Aida from a harried but steadfast pragmatist into an apoplectic supernova; one can palpably feel her exasperation and fierce maternal instinct enlarge her diminutive figure, taking it to the verge of explosion. In her fury, sorrow, and hard-bitten resilience, she provides an unforgettable face to an unfathomable historical chapter. (2020, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Also available virtually here.
Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart’s WOLFWALKERS (New Irish/International Animation)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 1:30pm; Tuesday, 4:45pm; and Wednesday, 7:30pm
I am always happy for the release of a Tomm Moore animated film, ever since his stunning feature debut, THE SECRET OF KELLS (co-directed with Nora Twomey) and his heartrending sophomore film, SONG OF THE SEA. WOLFWALKERS—co-directed with Ross Stewart, the art director for Moore’s previous films—is likewise an emotionally poignant and beautifully animated coming-of-age family film inspired by Irish folklore. In the 17th century, Robyn (Honor Kneafsey) has relocated from England to the Irish village of Kilkenny with her father, Bill Goodfellowe (Sean Bean), a hunter who’s been hired by the cruel Lord Protector (Simon McBurney) to rid the area of wolves. Overly eager to help her father in his task, Robyn ventures into the woods and meets a Wolfwalker, Mebh (Eva Whittaker)—a magical girl with healing powers who transforms into a wolf while sleeping. Her infectiously playful nature charms the English girl, and they quickly become friends. Her encounter with the Wolfwalkers, however, has a profound effect on Robyn—not only in a change of heart, but a supernatural one—and complicates her father’s precarious position. The animation captures a dreamlike magic, with softly lit earth tones that made me gasp at times at the expressiveness and intricacy of the imagery. The scenes of Robyn and Mebh spiritedly exploring the forest are particularly enchanting and stand out as they juxtapose the harsher colors and lines seen in Kilkenny. The backgrounds and characters are rendered in such a way that they feel traditionally inspired yet surprise with movement and emotion, such as the use of triptychs to show multiple scenes on screen at once. WOLFWALKERS features arresting animation, but with an equally touching tale of friendship and family, creatively steeped in folklore, art, and history. (2020, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Also showing at the Music Box this week: Aaron Sorkin’s 2020 film THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 (129 min, 35mm) screens on Saturday at 1:30pm and Sunday and Monday at 7:30pm; and Jörg Adolph’s 2021 German documentary THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES (81 min, DCP Digital).
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COVID policies for the Music Box here.
🎞️ CHICAGO LATINO FILM FESTIVAL
The Chicago Latino Film Festival continues through April 18, with online screenings and the Centerpiece and Closing Night films also showing as drive-in events. We review a generous selection of films below, with new reviews of Sebastián Lojo’s THE GHOSTS and Simón Uribe’s SUSPENSION. Note that all are available for rent for the duration of the festival and that all are geo-blocked either to Illinois-only or to a block of Midwest states. Select features are accompanied by a short film. More info and full schedule here.
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Eduardo Margareto Atienza’s CUBA CREATES (Cuba/Spain)
Made to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the founding of Havana, CUBA CREATES looks at creativity in all its forms as the beating heart of Cuban society honoring the Indigenous, Spanish, and African heritages that are blended on the island. Guitarist and son practitioner Elíades Ochoa discusses the success of the Buena Vista Social Club, which he helped Wim Wenders realize as a film. Actor Jorge Perugorría uses part of his on-camera time to hype Cuba as an ideal place for international film and television production. Singer Danay Suárez recounts how she used the wide platform of a televised music contest to promote an anti-abortion message, thus disqualifying her from contention for changing the lyrics of her song. In a reverse of the usual story, Carlos Acosta was forced by his father to study ballet to prevent him from consorting with the break dancers in his neighborhood; Acosta became the first Black principal dancer of the Royal Ballet in London. The film abounds with visual artists, writers, and musicians whose works are presented to us like so many amuse-bouches—tasty, but leaving the viewer wanting more. What stood out to me was how urgently these Cuban artists, stamped by the psychological legacy of Fidel Castro, want to communicate with the outside world. (2020, 100 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Rodrigo Reyes’ 499 (Mexico)
The title of this Mexican art film refers to the 499th anniversary of Spain’s conquest of the Aztec empire; the drama reflects on the legacy of violence in Mexico, both historical and contemporary. Director Rodrigo Reyes employs a boldly fictional device to consider the weight of history, following a 16th-century conquistador who gets shipwrecked, magically, in the 21st century. Landing on the northern Mexican coast, the unnamed conquistador returns to the regions he once visited with Hernán Cortez and comments on how they no longer resemble the places he once knew. His narration also touches on the large-scale atrocities the Mexicans committed against the Aztecs; like Resnais’ NIGHT AND FOG and the numerous films it inspired, the film asks viewers whether they can see traces of historical atrocities in present-day landscapes. Reyes confronts present-day atrocities through documentary segments about men and women who have lost loved ones to pandemic violence in northern Mexico. Heightened by the historical meditation, these passages create the feeling that this area of the world will always be plagued by widespread murder. 499 is upsetting viewing to be sure, but it’s not always despairing; Reyes mines the scenario of the unstuck-in-time conquistador for subtle humor, and the widescreen cinematography is consistently good-looking. (2020, 88 min) [Ben Sachs]
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Sebastián Lojo’s THE GHOSTS (Guatemala/Argentina)
While aspects of Guatemalan writer-director Sebastián Lojo’s feature debut arouse considerations of economic instability in his home country, it’s more impactful for its understated evocation of urban alienation among the characters. In this way it’s reminiscent of Tsai Ming-liang’s films, not least because it centers on a protagonist who makes money by sleeping with (and, more sinisterly, stealing from) older men. By day the handsome Koki (Marvin Navas) is an unofficial tour guide in Guatemala City; details of his life, conveyed, like the rest of the film, via abstruse sequences with little-to-no exposition, seem to indicate that he has a girlfriend as well as a young son, raised with help from his impoverished, hard-working mother. Though Koki features most prominently, the film also delves into the lives of those around him, including his girlfriend and the manager of the hotel (played by an actor who’s credited as “Carlos Morales El Punisher”) where Koki brings his marks. Lojo incorporates what one assumes is Morales’ real-life profession into the film, as the hotel manager moonlights as a wrestler; both his and the girlfriend’s lives respective of Koki are explored through long, observational shots that show them in the midst of daily humdrum. Eventually Koki is attacked by one of the men he swindled earlier in the film, throwing his life off balance as he’s replaced by the hotel manager with another young man who takes over his role as a tour guide and in the bars where Koki had previously seduced his targets. Following the new guy as he goes about these activities, Koki is able to observe his own life from a distance—he is in essence a phantasm, as obsolescence due to being replaced here seems a form of death. Lojo’s tableau-like compositions at times recall those of Edward Hopper, unlikely though the comparison may seem, but the theme of existential disaffection is universal, connecting films by directors from Guatemala or Taiwan or the paintings of an American master. Lojo’s film is another entry into this tradition—its boldly opaque representations will haunt you for some time to come. (2020, 76 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
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Nicole Costa’s THE JOURNEY OF MONALISA (Chile/Documentary)
After over a decade of falling out of touch with her friend Ivan, director Nicole Costa reaches out to them in New York from Santiago, Chile to try to reconnect with her performer/playwright friend. Having left Chile in 1995 to study at a playwriting program for a month, Ivan never returned. What we get in the process of these friends entering each other’s lives again is a vibrant celebration of queer outsider life and art. The film never pretends to be an impartial documentary; Costa constantly inserts herself into Ivan’s story. Quite often she’s the one pushing for them to do more and more. When we first meet Ivan, they're in the process of attempting not only to attain documented personhood in the U.S., but also have their gender affirmed legally. This process becomes the framework for the story of Ivan’s life. From their arrival in NYC and adopting the persona of Monalisa, a beautiful, no bullshit sex worker, to the publication of their first book, Ivan Monalisa’s life is presented here in an incredibly candid way. Mixing archival VHS footage of performances, excerpted text from Monalisa’s notebooks, recorded contemporaneous phone calls and messages between them and Costa, and documentary footage of their current life and performances, we are truly taken on THE JOURNEY OF MONALISA. Filmmakers, especially documentarians, so often glamorize and other sex workers, casting them in this world of decadence (a word which Monalisa rants against) that seems novel and intriguing to more square people. With Costa being a lifelong friend of Monalisa all that pretense is stripped away. We get to see someone talking about their life in the true margins of American society without any kind of editorialization or framework besides that of the subject themselves. It’s beautiful. The blend of archival footage with contemporaneous footage does so much to demystify Monalisa’s life. The fact that Monalisa used to carry a small camcorder with them everywhere is a boon to this film. We get footage of them hustling on the street, of them actually engaging in sex with a client (tastefully done so that anonymity is retained). We’re presented with a more honest version of the lives of sex workers than most films provide. The film culminates in an incredibly happy and cathartic ending that would be boringly trite if it were scripted. There is a scene in which Monalisa is asked to explain their identifying as two-spirit gender nonconforming and their reply is so uplifting in its simplicity and honesty. Right now there's a concerted political attack happening on the trans community in the U.S. and stories like Monalisa’s are the ammunition queer folks—especially trans and gender nonconforming ones—need right now. THE JOURNEY OF MONALISA is a positive, honest story about dedication and triumph—something, frankly, that everyone could use. (2019, 92 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
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Mario Ramos’ LA CONDESA (Honduras/US)
The press notes for this Honduran horror film highlight that it was shot inside one of the oldest haunted houses in Maryland. Though there are no actual ghosts in LA CONDESA (at least none that I was aware of), the mood is sufficiently creepy; first-time director Mario Ramos wrings as much commanding gothic imagery as he can from the location. Oscar Estrada’s screenplay is compelling too: jumping between the late 1970s and the present, the film develops a multigenerational mystery with shocking secrets at the core. Naturally, the filmmakers withhold those secrets to draw out suspense, so you may guess what they are before they’re revealed, but there’s more to LA CONDESA than just its plot. The film belongs to the substantial body of recent Latin and South American films about the sins of the past carrying on in the present; even when the suspense flags, the story still works on a metaphorical level. There are also some sharp observations on changes in sexual politics over the last few generations. It speaks to how high the bar has been raised in the horror genre over the last decade that even a basic programmer like this manages to address issues of historical responsibility and sexual politics. (2020, 82 min) [Ben Sachs]
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Leonardo Medel’s LA VERÓNICA (Chile)
Filmed entirely in medium close-up to resemble a selfie or video blog, LA VERÓNICA focuses on one character only: Verónica herself. She is always facing toward the camera while supporting players are relegated to standing behind it, in the background, or on the fringes of the frame; that is, with the exception of those—like Verónica’s teenaged niece—who are attracted to the online attention and also eager to be on camera. The film is primarily made of scenes from Verónica’s real life framed like her online video posts, rather than what she chooses to show to the world. In this way, LA VERÓNICA uses some striking camera set-ups to sharply comment on how internet culture is drastically shaping the unraveling Verónica, who will go to extreme and unsettling lengths to get attention. As a self-absorbed social media influencer, Verónica is sharing a very carefully-managed version of her life on the internet. She’s also a mother to a baby daughter and married to a famous soccer star, but neither of these things makes her happy, and she’s resentful that each can only take her so far in her social media career. Desperate to reach two million followers on Instagram in order to receive a lucrative brand deal, her ambitions are additionally impeded by her being a main suspect in a murder investigation. LA VERÓNICA is a cinematic character study at its most fundamental, and, as a biting critique of influencer culture, it succeeds especially due to the main performance. Mariana di Girolamo—star of Paolo Larraín’s 2019 film EMA—is fantastic, as she provides ominous complexity to this outwardly superficial character and effortlessly shifts facades depending on who is, or isn’t, watching Verónica. (2020, 100 min) [Megan Fariello]
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Cecilia Aldarondo’s LANDFALL (US/Documentary)
The September 2017 arrival of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico provides the obvious title reference and starting point for Cecilia Aldarondo’s documentary LANDFALL, but, as one of her subjects says, it was only the beginning of the suffering this U.S. territory would experience. Aldarondo roams the island for two years following the hurricane, revealing the outsized devastation wrought as a result of years of disinvestment partially caused by the demands of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico (FOMBPR) appointed by then-President Barack Obama to pay down a $74 billion debt. As FOMBPR, derisively called La Junta by Puerto Ricans, exacted its pound of flesh on the devastated island, vulture capitalists from Silicon Valley swooped in to pick over the carcass. Aldarondo tours a high-end gated community on Puerto Rico’s northern coast where the developer caters to buyers looking for a place to protect their wealth from taxes. Quinn Eaker, a libertarian in the bitcoin business, and child star turned cryptocurrency capitalist Brock Pierce attend a conference where the naked greed of the all-white attendees is celebrated and young Puerto Ricans are induced to join the tech revolution as the new wage slaves of the island. Meanwhile, people in rural areas and a coastal community polluted and terrorized in the past by the U.S. Navy’s annual war games struggle to survive. Unwilling to endure any more malign neglect, Puerto Ricans from all over the island fill the streets of San Juan and force the governor, Ricardo A. Rosselló, to resign. The film ends with the momentary elation of the protesters, but there seems to be some truth to the bleak observation by one of the interviewees that, based on their response to the plight of the population, the government actually wants to annihilate the Puerto Rican people. The use of archival footage brings the sad history of the island into focus. Aldarondo’s direction effectively hones in on the points she is trying to make, but some of the allegorical imagery, such as a scene of pigeons waiting for a handout from an old man who drives to a parking lot each day to feed them, is clichéd and borderline offensive. (2020, 91 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Álvaro and Diego Sarmiento’s MOTHERS OF THE LAND (Peru/Documentary)
Short, heartfelt, and unexpectedly despairing, MOTHERS OF THE LAND succeeds foremost as a profile of people and places we rarely see in the movies. The principal subjects are female farmers in the Peruvian Andes who uphold agricultural traditions that have been in practice for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Filmmaking brothers Álvaro and Diego Sarmiento provide insights into the women as well as their work, which seems time-consuming and arduous yet also honorable and pure. In interviews, the women speak movingly of their connection to the land—you realize their stewardship of their environment is conscientious because one naturally shows care and consideration when tending to someone she loves. The Sarmiento brothers don’t champion the subjects’ organic farming techniques as progressive, since they make clear that the techniques predate modern politics. At the same time, they include blunt conversations about the ruinous impact of climate change on mountain farming communities all over the world; these passages build a strong case for ending commercial farming practices and mounting a global return to more environmentally sustainable ones like those we see in the film. That return seems unlikely, given the state of the world, and MOTHERS OF THE LAND doesn’t try to rally any false hopes. Still, the filmmakers inspire such admiration for their subjects that they ameliorate the sadness of the film’s global outlook. As you might expect of a film shot in and around the Andes Mountains, the movie contains lots of breathtaking imagery as well. (2019, 74 min) [Ben Sachs]
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Mauricio Leiva-Cock’s THE NIGHT OF THE BEAST (Argentina)
“We shall go on to the end…We shall never surrender!” Scream for me, Cine-File! Finally, a feel-good heavy metal movie. I’m a sucker for period pieces set in the recent past. You’ve got to get rid of the contemporary ubiquity of smartphones—the easy solution to so many plot problems. Add some historicity to it, and you’ve got my full attention. NIGHT OF THE BEAST is the story of two teenage friends who are trying to get across town in order to see Iron Maiden’s first ever concert in Colombia. Based on this actual event in 2008, the film intersperses actual video footage and audio clips of the concert, and the surrounding insanity that played out just outside of the concert gates. At a very brisk 70 minutes (less time than a Maiden live album!) Leiva-Cock delivers a wonderful film about friendship, loyalty, and brotherhood. It’s refreshing to see a truly tender film about platonic male love and companionship, where sacrifice isn't made on some kind of macho battlefield but in love for the arts. While the plot of this film follows the groundwork laid down by such cult classic music films as Robert Zemeckis’ I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND, Allan Arkush’s ROCK'N'ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, and Adam Rifkin’s DETROIT ROCK CITY, THE NIGHT OF THE BEAST manages to tone down the cartoonish camp of those films and injects a high dose of genuine heart. All the fat is trimmed from this movie, and it’s all the better for it. If you’re a fan of music, and by fan I mean fan as the shortened version of “fanatic,” and want to relive how important that one life-changing concert was, this will appeal to you. Iron Maiden fan or not, this is something that anyone with a love for that one band, singer, rapper, can relate to. But if you're into metal—and particularly Maiden—well, you absolutely can’t miss this one. Heartfelt hilarity wrapped up beautifully in a well-worn battle jacket. (2020, 70 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
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Alejandro Bellame Palacios’ OPPOSITE DIRECTION (Venezuela/Italy)
When the saying “opposites attract” was coined, it must have been meant for a couple like Eugenia Bianchi (Claudia Rojas) and Luis Tevez (Christian Josue Gonzalez). Eugenia, a conventional 17-year-old Venezuelan of Italian ancestry, can’t take her eyes off the gorgeous, brooding Luis when they meet at a party. She ditches her boyfriend, who has found someone else with whom to flirt, and takes off with him into the night to meet his artsy, outrageous friends. Soon, she and Luis set out on a road trip to find her Italian grandfather so that she can prove she is part-Italian and establish residency in Rome. This coming-of-age tale, based on the highly popular novel Blue Label by Venezuelan writer Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles, toggles between 2006 and 2019, as Eugenia returns to memories of her love affair/adventure with the volatile Luis, who has promised to meet her in Rome when she has reached age 30. The film captures the energy and passion of youth in the shadow of despair brought on by the hopeless economic and social milieu in Venezuela. It’s hard to understand what Luis sees in the ignorant, cynical Eugenia, and Rojas lacks the chops to make us believe in their connection. Still, the film manages to mesmerize. The cinematography by Alexandra Henao is exactly the sort of sun-kissed rainbow of beloved memories, and the colorful cast of characters are well realized by the acting ensemble. Erick Palacios and Edmary Fuentes as Luis’ friends Vadier and Titina are particular standouts. (2019, 123 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Manuel Ferrari’s OVERNIGHT (Argentina/Chile)
Charting the misadventures—romantic, professional, and otherwise—of a soft-spoken architecture professor and employing a naturalistic, long-take style, OVERNIGHT suggests a South American variation on a Hong Sang-soo comedy of manners. There’s nothing particularly cringeworthy here in the tradition of Hong’s early work, nor does this convey the wisdom of Hong’s more recent films; however, cowriter-director Manuel Ferrari strikes an agreeably laidback tone that encourages, like Hong’s, reflection on social mores and the nature of chance. The premise also evokes multiple Hong features (NIGHT AND DAY, ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE, etc.) in that travel plays a crucial role. At the start of OVERNIGHT, Ignacio, who teaches in Buenos Aires, accepts an invitation from two visiting students to deliver a lecture at their university in Valparaiso; while in Chile, he also plans to attend a job interview at a prominent architecture firm. He dives headlong into the trip despite the fact that he’s just learned his wife is pregnant—one sign among many that accepting responsibility is not Igancio’s forte. Ferrari develops a classical dramatic irony in the challenges he throws at his hero: over the course of Ignacio’s trip, he will have to assert responsibility over numerous things he generally took for granted. The decisions he has to make grow increasingly important as the film progresses, culminating with scenes in which Ignacio must decide on the future of his career, his nationhood, and his marriage. OVERNIGHT gains from Ferrari’s low-key approach, which accentuates the randomness of the twists of fate Ignacio encounters. You may leave the film wondering how unlikely were the decisive occurrences of your own life. (2019, 89 min) [Ben Sachs]
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Iuli Gerbase’s THE PINK CLOUD (Brazil)
In its opening text stating that it was conceived and filmed between 2017 and 2019, THE PINK CLOUD wants to make it clear it is not, at least originally, commentary about quarantine and the COVID-19 pandemic. This may seem like unnecessary information, but the unnerving prescience of this quiet sci-fi film cannot be overstated. Pink clouds of toxic gas have suddenly appeared across the globe; any human who comes in direct contact with it dies within ten seconds. Everyone is forced to remain inside with no idea what is causing these toxic clouds or when they might dissipate. After what would have likely been a one-night stand, Giovana (Renata de Lélis) and Yago (Eduardo Mendonça) find themselves trapped in a house together on the day the Cloud arrives. As time passes on without relief, these relative strangers are forced to share their lives, and are drastically changed by the result. The film is filled with uncomfortably familiar quarantine references: from the reliance on video chat and delivery services to conversations about how the change in weather will affect the Cloud and managing relationships and loneliness in the midst of an isolating global crisis. The weird timeliness of THE PINK CLOUD aside, it’s an excellent first feature from director Iuli Gerbase, shot beautifully with a pretty pastel tinge that contrasts the true terror of the pink clouds. The prophetic nature of the script reveals how carefully Gerbase thought out this scenario, and the outcome is a very realistic—and at times upsetting—depiction of what was once a very unfamiliar concept. It’s guaranteed that cinema will continue to grapple with this topic for years to come, but, without even the benefit of hindsight, THE PINK CLOUD is a wholly acute and affecting take on quarantine and the pandemic. (2021, 105 min) [Megan Fariello]
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Alejandra Marino’s SAND EYES (Argentina)
The chief interest of SAND EYES lies in how its narrative evolves. The film begins as a low-key character study, turns into a creepy mystery, and ends as a pulpy thriller. It never feels like the film is betraying its true nature or sacrificing its potential; rather, writer-director Alejandra Marino and cowriter Marcela Marcolini establish an air of enticing ambiguity that suggests anything can happen (also, each of the film’s segments is satisfying in its own way). This feeling doesn’t emerge until the movie’s second act, when Carla and Gustavo—a married couple who have been living apart since their young son was abducted a year ago—meet another couple whose eccentricities push SAND EYES away from realism and into a decidedly gothic realm. Before that, the film is a sensitive and observant consideration of grief, slowly introducing Carla and Gustavo so we have time to reflect on how their trauma continues to shape their lives. When they learn of another couple whose daughter may have been abducted by the same person or people who took their son, Carla and Gustavo jump at the opportunity to meet them—taking an interest in someone else’s tragedy may distract them from their own. The heroes travel to another town to meet the older couple, inadvertently going down a rabbit hole that leads to psychics, conspiracy, and murder. Marino maintains the same understated visual style throughout, emphasizing the nuanced characterizations and the wild developments of the script. (2020, 93 min) [Ben Sachs]
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Francisco Valdez’ SUN IN THE WATER (Dominican Republic)
Reminiscent of Gore Verbinski’s underrated A CURE FOR WELLNESS (2016), this atmospheric horror film from the Dominican Republic approaches the creepy hospital subgenre as a framework for bold, expressionistic imagery. It likely cost a fraction of what A CURE FOR WELLNESS did; in the great Val Lewton tradition, the filmmakers use the financial limitations to their advantage, drawing attention to the bare-bones cast and minimal number of sets to create a nightmare of isolation. Sol is a young woman who wakes up in a strange clinic with no memory of who she is or how she got there. The doctors and staff—all placid and withholding as medical professionals tend to be in horror movies—keep her doped up and evade her questions about when she’ll be able to leave. Sol becomes dogged in pursuit of answers, even as she drifts between dreams and reality; one of the most compelling parts of the film is that you’re never quite sure whether the heroine is awake. The filmmakers maintain a certain lucidity of narrative logic, so that it isn’t always immediately clear when the character has entered a dream state. The hospital, with its color-coded hallways and clothing, already feels like something out of a bad dream, while there’s something almost tangible about the dream sequences, particularly when they take place underwater. SUN IN THE WATER hinges on a familiar plot twist that some viewers may find disappointing. I didn’t mind it, given the abundance of imaginative visuals. (2019, 88 min) [Ben Sachs]
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Simón Uribe’s SUSPENSION (Colombia)
It’s appropriate that this breviloquent documentary occasionally recalls a horror film, as the roadway in southern Colombia it presents is the stuff of nightmares. Opened in 1944, the road between the municipalities of Pasto and Mocoa (the latter of which is the capital of the country’s Putumayo region, where this takes place) is a serpentine thoroughfare on which countless people have lost their lives. The so-called “Springboard of Death" is infamous for its hazardous driving conditions—there are 18 curves per kilometer; it’s thought to be the most dangerous road in the world—which are frequently exacerbated by floods and landslides. First-time director Simón Uribe isn’t a filmmaker in the traditional sense; he’s an academic who’s researched the Pasto-Mocoa road at length, even writing a book on the topic. In his film, Uribe relies on an equally engrossed highway engineer, Guillermo Guerrero Urrutia, to provide an overview of the road’s prickly history as he himself traverses it. Too complicated to recount here, Urrutia summarizes it well as he declares, “It was emotional and political madness,” referring to the hastiness with which the route was established, authorities having intentionally overlooked a more viable option mapped out by Capuchin monks. As a result, there has been great loss of life and a continued disconnect between Colombia’s lowland areas and urban power centers. Another topic of focus is the long-pledged San Francisco-Mocoa Bypass, a series of bridges and tunnels that would more safely connect the two regions. Uribe includes a family whose patriarch details the impact the roadway will have on their lives and ruminates on the project’s slow going. The film then shifts to the bypass’ construction, which involves work crews suspended over steep chasms; the enormity of the project, both tactically and emotionally, is keenly felt in these scenes, which precipitate the revelation that progress on it has ceased, the whole crew being unceremoniously laid off. The last part of the film shows tourists coming to the largely abandoned—and ostensibly cordoned-off—overpass to enjoy the views, take photos, and drive across it on motorbikes. Sections of the film are expressly observational, filling in gaps between pertinent information with shots of daily life in the area. The dreamlike quietude of these sections, which emphasize the visual and auditory splendor of the subjects featured, adds to the feeling of solemnity necessitated by desolate truths about the old and new roads, as well as the economic and ecological uncertainty of life in this part of the world. The film ends in spring 2017, during and after torrential flooding that destroyed the city of Mocoa and resulted in Urrutia’s untimely demise. Construction of the bypass remains halted indefinitely; the Springboard of Death lives on. (2020, 75 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
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Nicolás Rincón Gille’s VALLEY OF SOULS (Colombia/Belgium/Brazil/France)
The first narrative feature by Colombian documentarian Nicolás Rincón Gille is clearly influenced by the work of Argentine director Lisandro Alonso in its beautiful yet forbidding nature imagery, meditative long takes, and morbid tone. Yet where Alonso’s films achieve a certain metaphysical poetry in their considerations of death, VALLEY OF SOULS succeeds on more concrete, documentary terms. Rincón Gille dramatizes a painful episode of Colombia’s recent history that many viewers outside of South America might not know about. In the early 2000s, the Colombian government sanctioned paramilitary attacks on peasants and progressive organizations; these attacks employed methods that recall the Nazis in their sheer brutality. The hero of VALLEY OF SOULS finds himself in the middle of such atrocities, and his efforts to preserve his humanity account for the film’s dramatic force. José is a fisherman with three grown children living along Colombia’s Magdalena River in summer 2002. Upon returning from a fishing trip near the start of the film, José learns from his daughter that his two sons have disappeared. The fisherman, aware of the political situation, assumes at once that the young men are dead, then sets off on a mission to find their corpses and bury them properly. José’s mission is at once noble and reckless, and the film generates compelling tension from these conflicting emotions throughout his journey. One worries increasingly for José’s life the more one learns about the scope of the atrocities against the Colombian people. Appropriately, the film’s original title translates as “Too Many Souls.” (2019, 137 min) [Ben Sachs]
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Greta-Marie Becker’s THE WHISPER OF THE MARIMBA (Ecuador/Germany/Documentary)
In Esmereldas, on the border between Ecuador and Colombia where oil refineries and illegal drug trafficking form the official and unofficial industries, the impoverished descendants of Indigenous tribes and African slaves are working to recover their history and culture. At the heart of the effort is the marimba, an instrument and a sound considered threats to the ruling Spanish colonists. Benjamín Vanegas, a musician and marimba maker who is highlighted in Greta-Marie Becker’s anti-colonial documentary THE WHISPER OF THE MARIMBA, says, “In 1800, the Black community was forbidden to play marimba music, and again in 1930. The marimba, the bomba drum, the cununo drum came in the minds of the Africans brought to America and were the only form of resistance the enslaved Africans had.” The effort to pass on this culture might have had a boost when UNESCO declared marimba music an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2015. Sadly, the declaration provided nothing to Vanegas and the other practitioners of marimba Becker features—singer Rosa Wila Valencia and arts instructors Cristina Hurtado Quintero and Jorge González Hurtado—but bragging rights. This story is all too familiar and depressing, as we see that the inheritors of marimba are aging and learn that one of them—José “Nacho” Gabriel Caicedo—may be dying. The film was made before the pandemic, and it’s a worry that COVID-19 may have hastened the end of their struggle. Becker’s final scene of the townspeople in their small boats paddling out to sea to celebrate a religious rite as an enormous oil tanker looms in the background only adds to our sense of the fragility of their world and ours. (2020, 79 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Lissette Feliciano’s WOMEN IS LOSERS (US)
WOMEN IS LOSERS immediately sets up its sociopolitical stakes with an acerbic fourth wall-breaking opening scene. Taking its title from the Janis Joplin song of the same name, the film is set in late 1960s/early 70s San Francisco. Young mother Celina Guerrera (Lorenza Izzo) is acutely aware of the inequalities she and the women in her life are up against. After becoming pregnant and dropping out of high school, Celina is unwavering in her determination to get herself and her son out of poverty and out of her abusive childhood home. Characters continue breaking the fourth wall throughout, directly alerting the audience to the sexism and racism they are facing daily—Celina’s interludes are especially astute, highlighting both a very personal struggle and larger systemic issues. The plot, admirably tackling a lot, including abortion rights, the Vietnam War, and domestic abuse, sometimes feels unfocused and thus the film can never fully commit to its meta-narrative framing. It is, however, successful in balancing contrasting tones; despite its confronting of serious subjects, WOMEN IS LOSERS has an instant brightness to it, both in its colorful cinematography and gregarious performances. First time feature director Lissette Feliciano drew inspiration from her mother’s own experiences for the film, and the result, like its namesake, is a charismatic and empowering feminist anthem. (2020, 85 min) [Megan Fariello]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Maria Sødahl’s HOPE (Norway/Sweden/Denmark)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Scandinavian filmmakers seem to have a particular affinity for stories of troubled marriages. Along with the brilliant marital dramas of such luminaries as Ingmar Bergman and Jan Troell, we must add Norwegian director Maria Sødahl’s masterful film HOPE. Two of the world’s finest actors, Andrea Bræin Hovig and Stellan Skarsgård, play Anja and Tomas, a long-time couple with a large, blended family of adult and dependent children. Anja is a dancer/choreographer who has just had a great success in Amsterdam, the first such opportunity in a long time. Tomas, a theatrical producer who is extremely busy and often absent from home, is about to start a new project. Their world is turned upside down when they learn that the lung cancer Anja was treated for the year before has metastasized to her brain. Sødahl, who also wrote the semi-autobiographical screenplay, moves deftly between Anja and Tomas’ home life filled with friends, family, and celebrations, and the medical diagnostics and consultations that begin just before Christmas and culminate in brain surgery on January 2. However, the main focus of the film is on Anja and Tomas, who are forced to face their emotional alienation. They are together, but not married, and it is easy to see that Anja has suffered the fate of many women, sacrificing her own career and tending to Tomas’ children with his ex-wife and the three they had together as Tomas happily immerses himself in his work. With death staring her in the face, Anja can finally voice how much she has felt like a convenience to him, challenging him to really stand beside her as a fully committed partner. It is a privilege to see two titans of cinema, under Sødahl’s sensitive direction, create not only two separate individuals, but also the “one” they have struggled for nearly two decades to become. Their intensely personal moments are handled with complexity and understanding, illuminating what it means to confront not only the fear of death, but also the fear of intimacy. (2019, 130 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Rohmer x 4
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre
Éric Rohmer’s A TALE OF SUMMER (France)
Available for rent here
A TALE OF SUMMER, French director Éric Rohmer’s third in his “Tales of the Four Seasons” series, might be called quintessential Rohmer. Following a young man named Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud), the film uses the beachy, sunny landscape of Brittany, creating a “walk and talk” of sorts, as Gaspard meets various women over the course of his pre-career-starting vacation. Sans a soundtrack, with Rohmer’s characteristically simple, yet stunning visuals, A TALE OF SUMMER revels in Gaspard’s inability to choose between three women: Margot (Amanda Langlet), Solène (Gwenaëlle Simon), and Léna (Aurelia Nolin). While waiting for Léna, his on-and-off again girlfriend, Rohmer’s just-graduated, curly-haired protagonist meets local waitress Margot, spending his days meandering on the beach, chatting about her interest in ethnology, his musical ramblings, and the ideas surrounding a summer fling. Despite its affinity for romantics, the light drama is baked in a dose of reality, unwilling to flatter Gaspard, but rather taking every moment as a stroke of luck in his life. It harkens back to the freedom and levity of summer, before your career, family, and responsibilities fill your days. A level of uncertainty and opportunity feel limitless for Gaspard in this way, in that each chance encounter could lead to something as beautiful as love. As with some of us, when bouts of lust or passion come, we feel like they’re bound for destruction. Gaspard is no different, enacting a woeful tone with the innate knowledge that none of these romances will likely work out. Like several other Rohmer dramas, A TALE OF SUMMER focuses on the flaky nature of young love in all of its hopefulness and hopelessness. As Gaspard’s situations becomes hazier, by meeting the more-excitable Solène and the return of the less-committed Léna, he begins thinking and deciding in each moment what he will do next, with little to no concern for the girls’ well-being. Still, Margot remains a constant, a smile that seems to shine a bit brighter, a friendship that has more stakes than his two strictly romantic dealings. And this relationship swells into one of many points in A TALE OF SUMMER: friendship is as, if not more, serious than romance. (1996, 113 min) [Michael Frank]
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Éric Rohmer's A TALE OF AUTUMN (France)
Available to rent here
With A TALE OF AUTUMN, Éric Rohmer, cinema’s great observer of the psychology of the human heart, made what must be, in its characteristically modest way, one of the finest of romantic comedies. It’s warm and rather magical, even profound, in its elegant simplicity. The final film in the “Tales of the Four Seasons” cycle, it was made by a Rohmer who was in his late seventies, but arguably possessed of a keener-than-ever eye for the vagaries of friendship and love. The setting is a small, sun-kissed town in the Rhone Valley in southern France (Pont-Saint-Esprit and environs), gloriously illuminated by cinematographer Diane Baratier. It’s about two forty-something best friends, Isabelle (Marie Riviere), a happily married bookseller, and Magoli (Beatrice Romand), a widowed winegrower, as well as the cross-generational friendship between Magoli and Rosine (Alexia Portal), a twenty-something student who’s dallying with Magoli’s son, Leo. Noticing her loneliness, Magoli’s two friends plot, independently, to find her a man. Rosine wants to fix Magoli up with Etienne (Didier Sandre), her ex-philosophy prof (and ex-lover), with whom she’s struggling to establish the boundaries of a friendship. Meanwhile, Isabelle clandestinely places a personal ad in the local paper on Magoli’s behalf: though Magoli would like to meet someone, she feels she could never love someone she met through a “ploy.” Like a typical Rohmer hero, Magoli has a predicament, but also a certain ethical and philosophical code to which she dedicates herself uncompromisingly—whether it helps or hinders. The true Rohmer surrogate here, though, is Isabelle: watch how closely she observes other people, the way she lets her “actors” believe they are running the show, even as she’s discreetly setting the stage. Gerald (Alain Libolt) is the gentleman who answers the ad, and Isabelle begins secretly meeting with him, adopting an identity based on Magoli to vet him. Misunderstandings and mistaken identities ensue in a way that never quite feels clichéd, as Isabelle plans for Magoli and Gerald to meet “accidentally” at her daughter Emilia’s upcoming wedding. As acting, as writing, as direction, the film is so alive to the stories that faces and gestures tell—of hope against hope, of awareness of experience: glances and touches suffused with affection and intelligence. I loved watching these visages light up with the bloom of love, trust, and happy surprise at the continued possibility of both. I’d adored the younger versions of Riviere and Romand as seen in two earlier Rohmer films: Riviere as the somewhat neurotic protagonist of THE GREEN RAY (1986), unwilling to dissemble in matters of the heart, and Romand as the delightfully articulate and self-possessed teenager in CLAIRE’S KNEE (1970). It is stirring to see them again here, in middle age. In fact, like Gerald, I found myself falling in love with both of them a bit. (The film leaves tantalizingly open the question of whether Isabelle hadn’t started to fall in love with Gerald a bit, as well.) Meanwhile, Rohmer simply observes it all, as if to say, isn’t it all so beautiful: the wind in the trees, the way the sunlight falls on a woman’s hair as the day wanes? Aren’t human beings beautiful, and aren’t we a mystery, in our fumbling, confused way? And doesn’t the world Rohmer creates—in which life often seems to work out, by whatever mysterious combination of luck, fate, and demiurge, so that we meet the right people at the right time—resonate with our own experience? That’s not always an easy feeling to sustain, but whenever I’m watching one of the best films of Éric Rohmer—which A TALE OF AUTUMN most certainly is—my answer to these questions is always “yes.” (1998, 120 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
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Also available through the Music Box are Rohmer’s 1990 film A TALE OF SPRINGTIME and his 1992 film A TALE OF WINTER. See our reviews from last week below.
Charlène Favier’s SLALOM (France/Belgium)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Elite athletics is a perilous place for youngsters. Freighted with demanding coaches, strict and often punishing training regimes, and physical hazards like anorexia, amenorrhea, and injury, it’s not a track most parents would choose for their children. Yet the exhilaration and accolades of competing often make it the course children choose for themselves, not realizing that they may be risking much more than they realized. That is certainly the case with Lyz Lopez (Noée Abita), a teenage Alpine skier with Olympic dreams and the talent to realize them. Her father is absent, and her mother (Muriel Combeau) is the opposite of a sports mom, barely taking an interest in Lyz’s training and aspirations. Quite naturally, Lyz looks to her coach, Fred (Jérémie Renier), for approval. Once she becomes a winner, he focuses a great deal of attention on her and eventually rapes her. In her first full-length feature, director Charlène Favier offers an unflinching look at a teenage girl wrestling with her emotions as an angry, disappointed man comes close to destroying her while insisting he is helping her achieve her dreams. Favier’s close observations reveal the complicated situation of the two main protagonists while surrounding them with supporting characters who help paint a portrait of the elite sports world in all its pain and glory. Footage of the ski runs is thrilling, and the location shooting in Val-d’Isère, a mecca for competitive skiing in the French Alps, provides a perfect backdrop for the beauty and danger Lyz faces as she tries to discover her strength in a fraught situation. SLALOM is a riveting, horrifying film that goes behind the headlines to show exactly what some of these young athletes suffer. (2020, 92 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Kwok Cheung Tsang ’s BETTER DAYS (China/Hong Kong)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Part crime drama and part romantic melodrama, BETTER DAYS is a powerfully dark coming of age story. Exacerbated by the tragic suicide of fellow bullied student, Hu Xiaodie (Zhang Yifan), Chen Nian (Zhou Dongyu) becomes the next target of harassment by her peers. Her excellent grades make her competition, and her impoverished background only exacerbates other students’ resentment of her; their bullying is violent and relentless. With the stress of college entrance exams on the horizon and her mother (Wu Yue) in serious financial trouble, Chen Nian is still compelled to find justice for Hu Xiaodie. In this broken system, however, the bullies responsible are let off easy. Chen Nian’s impulse to stand up to injustice is also demonstrated when she intervenes in the violent beating of a young local street thug, Xiao Bei (Jackson Yee). Their friendship blossoms into romance as he becomes her protector, but a murder investigation puts both their futures at risk. Director Kwok Cheung Tsang creates a consistently intense, claustrophobic vision, moving between closeups and wide shots to mirror the intense inner emotions of the characters and their precarious place in society—juxtaposed by colorful montages of the everyday life of more carefree students who are not struggling with the same dire pressures as Chen Nian or Xiao Bei. As the dynamic, unsteady camera moves through the cityscape it reflects how Chen Nian is constantly under surveillance, scrutinized for her grades and terrorized by classmates; Xiao Bei’s life is also dictated by the spaces he can navigate seen or unseen. Surveillance as a compelling visual theme is reflected in the prominent role smartphones play throughout, as well as in the subplot surrounding a young police officer (Yin Fang) investigating both the suicide and the subsequent murder. The main performances are quietly moving, particularly the exceptional Zhou Dongyu; Zhou Ye is also an impressive standout as Chen Nian’s vicious main bully, Wei Lai. BETTER DAYS meanders from its main focus at times but is impressive in its unswerving confrontation of dark themes while ultimately maintaining a sense of hope—mirrored beautifully in its final few moments. (2019, 135 min) [Megan Fariello]
Ephraim Asili’s THE INHERITANCE (US)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
Based on writer and director Ephraim Asili’s own experiences, THE INHERITANCE combines a scripted narrative about a group of Black artists and activists starting a collective in a West Philadelphia home with a documentary-style exploration of Black political and artistic movements; the film focuses particularly on Philadelphia’s MOVE organization and the infamous 1985 police bombing of their row house. THE INHERITANCE is an impressive and exceptional amalgamation of cinematic forms with direct and profound audience engagement through musical performance, dance, and readings of theory and poetry; integrated, too, are segments of the collective’s workshops with real-life MOVE members and poets, including spoken word artist Ursula Rucker. With a subplot revolving around the creation of a house library, Asili emphases the significance of text within the collective, featuring numerous shots of book piles, photographs, vinyl records, and ever-changing quotes largely written in chalk on the walls. The cast at times reads directly to the audience from important 20th century works of the African diaspora, looking straight into camera, encouraging the audience to engage in the experience of exploration and education in the collective; this is particularly felt in a scene where poet Sonia Sanchez reads from her work, glancing up frequently into the camera, acknowledging the viewer as part of her audience. Asili uses bright, bold colors within the collective house itself which mirror shots of West Philadelphia and its vibrant outdoor spaces. Sound, too, is distinctive throughout: the whirring of the camera provides background noise, there are moments of persistent silence, and the recurring tuning of an obstinate radio. Asili also weaves in levity, with the scripted scenes of the collective members working through the everyday logistics of sharing space with others providing genuinely funny and sincere moments. THE INHERITANCE is a spectacular and unique first feature—a jubilant and commanding expression of Black culture, art, and politics. (2020, 100 min) [Megan Fariello]
Sky Hopinka’s MAŁNI - TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Feature-length movies by Indigenous filmmakers of North America are rare, but thanks to the efforts of the Sundance Institute, more stories of our native peoples are finding their way onto screens. Among them is Sky Hopinka’s MAŁNI - TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE, the Ho-Chunk/Pechangan’s first full-length documentary. It centers on two Native Americans, Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier, living in Oregon. Sahme is expecting her first child and wondering about the experience of motherhood as she reflects on her own mother’s teachings and inability to keep her from life’s negative temptations. Mercier discusses why he decided to grow his hair long and how it makes him feel. Mercier speaks only in chinuk wawa, an Indigenous language of the Columbia River Basin of the Pacific Northwest in which Hopinka is fluent; Sahme speaks in English. Both are subtitled in either English or chinuk wawa. Woven through these two threads, Hopinka relates Indigenous myths about the life cycle as images of the lapping ocean, lush forests, and winding rivers pass before our eyes. Hopinka also records a large tribal gathering in a somewhat haphazard fashion. MAŁNI is awash in visual effects, many of which seem like Hopinka is just playing around to see what his camera can do. Where the film really excels is in its sound design. From the drumming and singing of the tribal gathering to electronic droning and rushing waterfalls, scorer Thad Kellstadt, sound recordist Drew Durepos, and music supervisor Jennie Armon create an immersive, hypnotic environment. Most touching for me was listening to Mercier, an expectant father, sing a song he hopes to pass on to his child as it was passed on to him. (2020, 90 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here and the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Cute anthropomorphic animals, eccentric Scandinavians, heavy social messages, and arresting stylistic invention; Oscar’s wide-ranging taste in animation is well represented by this year’s nominees, which comprise both pet favorites and more esoteric marvels. Of the former category, it wouldn’t be the Academy Awards if Disney didn’t occupy its obligatory spot. Thankfully, Madeline Sharafian’s BURROW (6 min) is a delight, a warmly 2D-animated piece about a shy bunny trying to create her dream home. Reluctant to ask for help from the underground critters who keep digging through her walls, the bunny burrows deeper into the ground until she realizes she won’t be able to solve her problems alone. There are more complex thematic potentials here than Sharafian (and probably Disney) are willing to explore—urban development, housing inequality—but as a charming ode to community, the short is plenty satisfying. For those seeking ambitious, loaded concepts, Erick Oh’s mind-boggling OPERA (8 min) should do the trick. The antithesis of Disney, the short consists of one slow vertical pan down and then back up a giant pyramid structure, whose teeming contents reveal a vast, self-perpetuating ecosystem of exploitation and oppression. Despite the hierarchies of power he graphically delineates, Oh never guides your attention; rather, your eye is forced to wander endlessly across this perverse ant-farm serfdom and the plethora of cryptic dramas contained within. A more emotional approach to grim subject matter is found in Will McCormack and Michael Govier’s IF ANYTHING HAPPENS I LOVE YOU (12 min). Told in an elegant graphite-and-ink wash style, it depicts the paralyzing grief of two parents whose daughter is killed in a school shooting. In a film that goes the sentimental route, sometimes to a fault, its most potent gesture is simply a lingering shot of a large, vibrant American flag hanging in the school hallway; its stars and stripes should elicit only deep shame in anyone watching. From sobering reality to aesthetic phantasmagoria, Adrien Mérigeau’s GENIUS LOCI (16 min) charts the nocturnal odyssey of a young Black woman through a mystical, shapeshifting urban landscape. The look of it is breathtaking, whether it’s bringing to life the work of Belgian illustrator Brecht Evens, slipping into geometric abstraction reminiscent of Kandinsky and Klee, or even, at one point, detouring into a woodcut-esque montage. Rounding things out is Gísli Darri Halldórsson and Arnar Gunnarsson’s droll YES-PEOPLE (8 min), which chronicles a day in the lives of a handful of monosyllabic denizens of an apartment complex. It’s a deadpan Nordic symphony of minor annoyances, staged in little vignettes that suggest a more lighthearted Roy Andersson. Also playing in the program are three films that made the Oscar shortlist but were not nominated: THE SNAIL AND THE WHALE (26 min), TO GERARD (8 min), and KAPAEMAHU (7 min). [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Oscar-Nominated Documentary Short Films
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here, the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
Like its Live Action counterpart, Oscar’s 2020 Documentary Shorts slate is dominated by weighty subjects, from systemic racism in the U.S. to major geopolitical crises abroad. On the more hopeful side of things is Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers’ A CONCERTO IS A CONVERSATION (13 min), which comes from the New York Times’ Op-Docs series. Following from the titular metaphor, the film is structured as a dialogue between Bowers, a successful black composer and musician, and his nonagenarian grandfather Horace. Through their intergenerational exchange, we learn about Horace’s migration from Jim Crow Florida to Los Angeles, where he still runs a neighborhood cleaners. His journey, scarred by institutional racism, is juxtaposed with the early-career success of his grandson, whose comparatively smooth vocational path highlights the degree to which racial equality has progressed over the generations. It’s a polished and poignant piece, inspiring without being mawkish. Another dialogue across generations takes place in Anthony Giacchino’s COLETTE (24 min). It centers on Colette Marin-Catherine, a former member of the French Resistance who is persuaded by a young historian, Lucie Fouble, to visit the German concentration camp where Colette’s brother was killed during the war. Their emotional, mutual excavation of memory reinforces the importance of the historical credo to “never forget.” Sophia Nahli Allison’s A LOVE SONG FOR LATASHA (19 min) is also about remembering, in this case the life of Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old black girl who was shot and killed by the owner of a convenience store in 1991 South Central L.A. Her murder would partly catalyze the riots that erupted the following year, but Allison eschews footage of violence; instead, employing sensuous montage, animation, and simulated VHS static—as well as testimony from Latasha’s cousin Shinese and friend Tybie—she constructs an impressionistic archival tapestry that restores beauty and visibility to a life cut tragically short. The final two nominees address specific calamities unfolding in the present with on-the-ground immediacy. In Skye Fitzgerald’s HUNGER WARD (40 min), we follow a doctor and a nurse in war-torn Yemen who tend to fatally malnourished children at a pair of pediatric clinics. It’s a grueling watch, but one that’s productively angry in its exhaustion rather than resigned, fueled by the tenacity of the healthcare workers who refuse to accept as a norm the human rights abuses embattling their nation. Outrage also drives Anders Hammer’s DO NOT SPLIT (35 min), an immersive document of, and primer on, Hong Kong’s 2019-20 pro-democracy protests. Hammer puts us on the streets right alongside the activists, dodging rubber bullets and tear gas as the Chinese government escalates its siege against dissidents. The film has a powerful urgency, and a non-ending that underscores how still sadly necessary our global fight against authoritarianism remains. [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Oscar-Nominated Live Action Short Films
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here, the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
If the films nominated for this year’s Best Live Action Short Film Oscar appeared together in any other context, one would believe they were curated specifically to cover as many of our present-day sociopolitical challenges as possible: immigration policy and homelessness, racist police violence, and the prison-industrial complex. That the Academy has managed to include films from both Israel and Palestine further reinforces a sense of an engineered optics, a reassurance that Oscar is leaving no stone unturned. None of the nominees exemplify this earnest appeal to the zeitgeist more than Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe’s TWO DISTANT STRANGERS (30 min), a riff on GROUNDHOG DAY through the lens of Black Lives Matter. Here, the time loop conceit is used to convey the grinding recurrence of police brutality against people of color, as a young black man keeps reliving his day each time he is murdered by the same white officer. While initially effective in its bluntness, the short eventually groans under its heavy-handed and manipulative construction (there’s a cute pooch the guy needs to get back home to); a late-breaking twist, meanwhile, diminishes the systemic racism at play by making the cop character seem like a lone loony with a vendetta. I suspect others will be more receptive to the film’s mix of high-concept storytelling and social justice messaging. Other nominees are decidedly less didactic, locating their political concerns in intimate human drama. In Doug Roland’s FEELING THROUGH (18 min), a homeless teen develops a friendship with a deaf-blind man, helping him get home in the middle of the night. Roland’s patient, understated direction, sensitively attuned to the characters’ haptic mode of communication, grounds this moving tribute to everyday altruism. Similarly unfussy is Farah Nabulsi’s THE PRESENT (23 min), which portrays how a routine shopping trip in the West Bank turns into an arduous border-crossing ordeal for a Palestinian man and his daughter. The big ticket here, so to speak, is Elvira Lind’s THE LETTER ROOM (32 min), starring Oscar Isaac and Alia Shawkat. Isaac is a corrections officer at a penitentiary who is tasked with reading and monitoring the prisoners’ incoming missives. The film is evocatively shot, taking advantage of the strong overhead lighting in the prison hallways; the resulting sense of danger parallels the plot’s building intrigue, as Isaac’s officer is drawn deeper into the private lives of an inmate and his girlfriend. Tomer Shushan’s WHITE EYE (20 min), for my money the best of the nominees, closes out the program. A sort of modern-day BICYCLE THIEVES, this moral parable concerns a fraught encounter between an Israeli man, the Eritrean immigrant who supposedly stole his bike, and law enforcement. Unfolding entirely in a single take that navigates around a street corner and through a butcher shop, the film depicts how a seemingly just pursuit can have terrible and unforeseen consequences. Despite this, it’s never polemical or showy; its power lies in its anguished, unvarnished empathy. [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Emma Seligman’s SHIVA BABY (US)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
In her feature directorial debut, 25-year-old filmmaker Emma Seligman sets a trap for her heroine in her single-space, comedy-horror SHIVA BABY. Following Danielle (Rachel Sennott), a college senior without a clear path forward, to the events at a funeral service for someone she doesn’t know, filled with family, friends, and the random people you only see every few years at events like these, Seligman’s film is composed of situations that make you, and Danielle, squirm. It pushes your mind into a specific time and place in your own childhood, high school and college years, and post-grad aimlessness. After missing the service itself, Danielle arrives at a home congested by people she’d rather not interact with: her ex-girlfriend, her sugar daddy with his wife and baby, and distant acquaintances that pester her about her future. The result becomes a showcase for Sennott and the rest of Seligman’s cast, including Molly Gordon, Polly Draper, Dianna Agron, and Fred Melamed—a mix of staples and newcomers in the darkly comedic space. Comparisons are sure to be made to the Coen brothers’ A SERIOUS MAN, in terms of a familial Jewish story where everything that can go wrong certainly will, and the more recent UNCUT GEMS, the Safdie brothers’ tense, hilarious thriller, but SHIVA BABY remains wholly original, leaning on its condensed runtime, confined setting, and willingness to let awkwardness turn into terror. Seligman’s first film announces her and Sennott as a duo to watch, capable of creating a singular viewing experience, one that both reminds you of terrible times and causes you to laugh hysterically at surreal line readings. SHIVA BABY taps into tension with a clever touch, turning what sounds like a well-worn general idea into something overtly specific. It’ll raise your heart rate yet put on a smile on your face, one that’s forced and then warmly genuine. Seligman is a star. Sennott is a star. SHIVA BABY is a film full of stars in the making and those that deserve a little more spotlight. (2020, 77 min) [Michael Frank]
Éric Rohmer’s A TALE OF SPRINGTIME (France)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Despite his considerable gifts in the realm of visual composition, Éric Rohmer was ultimately interested in things that couldn’t be seen. His most popular film, MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S (1969), is about faith on the one hand and seduction on the other; the chief quality they share is that they’re both experiential. We can describe these things all we like—and Rohmer’s characters certainly do—but we can never touch either. A TALE OF SPRINGTIME, the first of Rohmer’s late career cycle “Tales of the Four Seasons,” is similar in its focus on the intangible—not for nothing is the main character a philosophy teacher. The opening sequence finds the 30-ish Jeanne (Anne Teyssèdre) leaving her boyfriend’s messy apartment, where she’s been staying while a visiting cousin uses her flat. Jeanne’s boyfriend has been out of town (indeed he never appears in the film), and his absence has Jeanne feeling impetuous. On a whim, she goes to a party one evening and meets a 17-year-old piano prodigy named Natacha (Florence Darel). The two become fast friends, with the teenage girl doing her best to draw the cool-tempered Jeanne into her life. Before A TALE OF SPRINGTIME enters into conversations of philosophy and the unknowability of others, it introduces the theme of trust, another intangible force. Natacha seems almost excessively, preternaturally attached to Jeanne, confiding in her new friend about her parents’ divorce from five years ago, her father’s love life since then, and her own current romance with a man roughly 20 years her senior. (The film addresses the problematic nature of this relationship, which, like Jeanne’s own romance, remains offscreen, though only once and in passing. Make of that what you will.) Does Natacha have ulterior motives in diving into this close friendship? She does hate her father’s current girlfriend and wants to replace her… Rohmer doesn’t characterize Natacha simply by her neuroses; rather, she’s a complicated individual who can go from being lovable to irritating and back again within the same scene. The great writer-director also manages nimble shifts in tone during the movie’s climax, an extended dialogue between Jeanne and Natacha’s father Igor (Hugues Quester) that represents, for at least part of its duration, one of the finest passages of Rohmer’s chaste eroticism. Critics like to invoke the old saying that Rohmer’s films are about privileged characters enjoying their privilege, yet it’s important to note that the privileges Rohmer considered are rarely material (although a beloved necklace is an important motif in A TALE OF SPRINGTIME). What Rohmer’s characters enjoy most is the privilege of free time, when they can think freely and abstractly, admire nature, or maybe fall in love. Spring is a good time to do all three, but it is above all a time of regeneration. Rohmer pursues that theme (another intangible) so subtly that it doesn’t become clear until the movie’s final scenes. That revelation is a classically unassuming surprise from a filmmaker capable of delivering at least one in every film. (1990, 107 min) [Ben Sachs]
Éric Rohmer's A TALE OF WINTER (France)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
A TALE OF WINTER is the second film that Éric Rohmer made in his "Tales of the Four Seasons" series—the third and final of his major film cycles, after "Six Moral Tales" and "Comedies and Proverbs"—but, thematically and according to the narrative's placement within the calendar year, it feels like the true end point to the series. (For the record, the films can be enjoyed when seen in any order.) It is also a special movie in the director's canon, one that begins atypically with an extended wordless montage as two newly acquainted lovers, Félicie (Charlotte Véry) and Charles (Frédéric van den Driessche), cavort in a French seaside resort town while on vacation before they become separated by a simple twist of fate. Even more atypically, Rohmer then flashes forward five years into the future to focus on Félicie's day-to-day life as an unwed single mother living in Paris. She's now involved with two new men, the snooty academic Loic (Hervé Furic) and the more down-to-earth hairdresser Maxence (Michel Voletti), but she refuses to fully commit to either of them since she has never gotten over Charles, the man she considers to be her soulmate in spite of the fact that their time together was so brief. In many ways, A TALE OF WINTER feels like a more female-centric remix of Rohmer's beloved 1969 film MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S. Both are set during Christmastime and feature "Pascal's wager," the philosophical argument that it is logical to "bet" in favor of the existence of God, as a prominent plot point. But WINTER is also arguably a more mature and profound reworking of the earlier film's ideas: in contrast to Jean-Louis Trintignant's mathematician-protagonist in MAUD, Félicie has never even heard of Pascal—whose name is only invoked by Loic, a character portrayed as an annoying mansplainer—so that she works through her dilemma regarding faith on the level of emotional intuition rather than intellectual calculation (and thus allowing Rohmer to keep his philosophical themes more on the level of subtext). It is not giving anything away to say that the lovably stubborn Félicie is ultimately rewarded for her faith and that the film climaxes with the depiction of a miracle that is as moving as any scene Rohmer ever directed. As in A MAN ESCAPED, an otherwise very different kind of movie by another great French Catholic director, Robert Bresson, the outcome here seems preordained from the beginning, with Rohmer generating suspense not by making viewers wonder what will happen but rather how it will happen. The result is Rohmer's most purely romantic film, a balm for the heart as well as the mind. (1992, 114 min) [Michael Glover Smith]
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION (Lesotho/South Africa/Italy)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and the Music Box Theatre here
The most exciting thing about THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION is its shape-shifting nature. BURIAL alternately resembles a realistic drama, an ethnographic documentary, a folktale, and an experimental film; each component defamiliarizes the others, since it always stands in sharp contrast to whatever cinematic modes surround it. (Even when director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese plainly cribs from Pedro Costa, Werner Herzog, or Andrei Tarkovsky, he renders his models strange by mixing them with so many unlike elements.) The myriad of forms, which comes to suggest a mural-sized mosaic, also has the effect of making the heroine seem larger than life. Introduced by a storyteller in quasi-mythic terms, the small-bodied but steely Mantoa seems monumental in her suffering: an elderly widow who’s also buried a daughter and a granddaughter, Mantoa learns at the start of the story that her son (the last living member of her immediate family) has died in a mining accident. The old woman decides that she has nothing left to live for and spends the rest of the movie preparing for death. Adding to the morbid vibe, the small village where Mantoa’s spent her entire life gets marked for demolition by the state; there’s a painful scene early on where a government representative explains to a congregation of villagers that their cemetery must be relocated before the area is flooded in order to build a dam. A vibrant spirit of community manages to shine through all of this, making BURIAL an exhilarating movie rather than a depressing one. It’s palpable, Mantoa’s connection to the people around her (both living and dead), ditto the bonds that her community members have with each other. Together, they will preserve their village’s traditions even if the village no longer exists physically. This theme of revitalization is mirrored in the film’s form, as Mosese fuses folkloric traditions with those of the avant-garde. (2019, 117 min) [Ben Sachs]
Chris McKim's WOJNAROWICZ: FUCK YOU FAGGOT FUCKER (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
This documentary about the late New York City artist David Wojnarowicz is incredibly impressive. Using an abundance of primary documentary sources from Wojnarowicz’s life, we get to have the late artist be a living voice in his own story from beyond the grave. The sources are an embarrassment of riches: 8mm home movies, audio diaries dating back to his early 20s, letters to and from family members, video interviews, journals, live footage of his no-wave band 3 Teens Kill 4, sketches, photographs, and even answering machine messages. For a film about a (mostly) visual artist, this is a heavenly bounty. Using all of these materials, WOJNAROWICZ charts the biography of the artist, who through his early street art and conceptual pieces (such as his photo series Rimbaud in New York) inadvertently made a name for himself in the New York art scene of the late 1970s and early 80s. What director Chris McKim does with the narrative form of the doc, however, is to curve the story—the politics of Wojnarowicz’s work and life, which become fully realized in both his art and anger after his diagnosis of AIDS in 1987, are given as much emphasis as the art itself. McKim shows the art making and attitude at the end of Wojnarowicz’s life were inevitable given everything that he lived before. The film opens with Wojnarowicz being filmed in December of 1989 while doing a phone interview about a group show about AIDS he was participating in that was losing funding due to the perception of it being too political. On the call you hear him very succinctly argue, “I don't have health insurance and I don't have economic access to adequate health care, isn't that political? To try to pretend that the subject of AIDS doesn't have a political tinge to it is ridiculous.” Three years later Wojnarowicz would be dead from the illness. Weaving us back to the beginning of his life, the film takes us through his history, from his childhood in an abusive home, to his street life and street art, to his first exposure in a legitimate gallery show, and to his later highly politically charged work and political activism of his post-AIDS diagnosis years. What makes WOJNAROWICZ a brilliant film, though, is that it is more than a film just about David Wojnarowicz. This is a film about queer art. About queer history. About queer anger. There is an overt indignation throughout the film at American society of the time. Something that is still echoed loudly right now. As is said in the film, this isn’t “gay as in I love you, [it’s] queer as in fuck off.” In the footage of Wojnarowicz at an ACT UP protest we see him wearing the now (in)famous jacket reading, “If I die of AIDS — forget burial — just drop my body on the steps of the FDA.” Produced by WOW Docs (the documentary arm of RuPaul’s production company) and directed by the former showrunner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, this is a movie made with an obvious love and passion for queer culture, for one’s own culture. I can’t even imagine what this film would have been like if it only focused on Wojnarowicz’s art in and of itself. We don’t ever need another hollow story about art, with a patina of queer politics, focusing on the New York art world ever again. I so wish it was possible to destroy those films before they're even made. This is a documentary on the level of THE NOMI SONG, a doc that has the distinct possibility to bring its subject back into the limelight of the (queer) community from which he left far too soon. It could quite possibly even take David Wojnarowicz’s name out of the art world, and academy, and back into the streets—where he belongs. I hope it does. Wojnarowicz’s art, writings, politics, and especially his voice—of which there is so very much of in this film—are just as relevant now as they were 30 and 40 years ago. When he sang “we are all essential laborers / you will die soon enough” in 1982, we can feel that now. When he said “There’s absolutely no way you can separate politics from AIDS” in 1989, we can feel that now. This film is David Wojnarowicz as a mouthpiece for an epidemic that killed tens of thousands of Americans before the President addressed it in a major policy address. This is David Wojnarowicz as the specter of all the art we know we lost, and all the art we’ll never possibly know we lost, because of AIDS. This is David Wojnarowicz not as a metaphor, but as an example. WOJNAROWICZ shows the artist’s life and work as the angry, queer mirror reflecting back the American culture that is truly diseased. This film has the capacity to truly affect people. Queer folks have forever been under attack in our society and we’re always in need of heroes of action, we need to hear the stories about the people like us that used every bit of themselves to fight against this perpetual pressure. If not an angry queer role model, WOJNAROWICZ gives us an angry queer role hero—and we could use one now as much as ever. (2021, 105 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
South Side Projections
SSP presents The Corrections Documentary Project, filmmaker and activist Ashley Hunt’s ongoing project about the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration. Hunt will screen three works from the project and discuss it with artist Maria Gaspar. It’s online on Sunday at 7:30pm. More info here.
Conversations at the Edge
CATE presents Wong Ping: Digital Fables, a program of six short works (2014-18, approx.. 63 min) by the Hong Kong filmmaker through April 18. More info here.
Asian Pop-Up Cinema
Asian Pop-Up Cinema presents a mix of online and drive-in screenings of more than 30 films for their Spring season. The online programming continues through April 30 and the drive-in screenings take place April 15-May 1. More information and a complete schedule here.
Video Data Bank
VDB presents Stephen Varble’s 1982 experimental video work LADY HERCULES, A PRELUDE TO ‘JOURNEY TO THE SUN’ (41 min) here.
Facets Cinémathèque
From April 16-29 Facets presents In Focus: Asian-American Film and its Media Representation, which includes a panel discussion this Wednesday and virtual screenings of Jiayan Shi’s 2020 documentary FINDING YINGYING (98 min) and Alvin Tsang’s 2015 documentary REUNIFICATION (85 min). More info here.
Jeffrey Wolf’s 2029 documentary BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS (75 min) and Damon Gameau’s 2029 Australian documentary 2040 (92 min) are both available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Facets website for hold-over titles.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Danny Madden’s 2020 film BEAST BEAST (85 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Siskel website for hold-over titles.
Current and upcoming offerings in the Film Center’s new online lecture series, Talking Pictures, include journalist and curator Sergio Mims (Mondays in April and May) and filmmaker/professor Jennifer Reeder (Tuesdays, April 13-27). Details here.
Music Box Theatre
Jeffrey Wolf’s 2029 documentary BILL TRAYLOR: CHASING GHOSTS (75 min) and Khyentse Norbu’s 2019 Nepalese film LOOKING FOR A LADY WITH FANGS AND A MUSTACHE (113 min) are available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Music Box website for hold-over titles.
🎞️ ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Prismatic Ground: Wave 3 – I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Festival)
Available for free through Sunday here
Memory and history loom large in Wave 3 of Prismatic Ground, a new festival taking place online through Sunday. Jim Finn's THE ANNOTATED FIELD GUIDE OF ULYSSES S. GRANT (2020) is an odd hybrid of hushed voiceover of Civil War history with gentle 16mm images of battleground sites, punctuated and illustrated with board game versions of war reenactments. The mashup is a purposefully dissonant revision of the softened and romanticized version of the Confederates’ terror and evil. FOUR PORTRAITS BY PAIGE TAUL is a collection of mostly silent portrait films. Some are visually and narratively complex and some are plainspokenly poetic. Elizabeth M. Webb's FOR PARADISE (2016) is a knotty and reflexive family history that navigates issues of racial identity and power with grace and elan. Martha Colburn and Pat O'Neill's MESSAGES 1-3 (2021) is a trio of charming audio-visual chats between two filmmakers of great esteem and skill. Colburn organizes and edits, while O’Neill tells the stories behind a sometimes-random collection of globe-hopping snapshots. Ericka Beckman's SWITCH CENTER (2006) is the standout of the program. Inside an abandoned Budapest water treatment facility, the beautiful and brutal mechanics still function, while men (and a few women) with sharply bland collectivist wardrobes straight out of a throwback propaganda poster move around with cartoon intensity. Progress in the form of pop songs and Pokémon creep in while the workers sadly look on to a bleak future. Abby Sun and Daniel Garber's CUBA SCALDS HIS HAND (2019) is a funny and charming miniature of the titular man doing the titular action backstage at the rodeo where he shakily does his job. Caroline Golum's THE SIXTEEN SHOWINGS OF JULIAN OF NORWICH (2020) is a lovely hand-made and home-hewn attempt and recreating a larger project that had to be abandoned post-pandemic. Ankita Panda's PAUSE, PLAY, REPEAT (2020) is a slipping and smushing animation of bodies being compromised by activities large and small. Also showing are Sophy Romvari's STILL PROCESSING (2020), Satya Hariharan's METEMPSYCHOSIS (2020), Wen Han Chang's STRANGE WORLD (2018), Elias ZX's YOU DESERVE THE BEST (2018), and Stefano Miraglia's THICK AIR (2020). [Josh B. Mabe]
Bertrand Tavernier’s A SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY (France)
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel (with subscription) and on Kanopy through participating libraries
Though it recounts just a handful of not especially consequential hours in its characters’ lives, Bertrand Tavernier’s 1912-set A SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY—in which painter Monsieur Ladmiral (Louis Ducreux) receives his children and grandchildren at his estate for a typical weekend get-together—implies the emotional weight of entire lifetimes. The writer-director, adapting a novel by Pierre Bost, achieves this enlightened perspective in part through his own narration, which intermittently materializes from above to sprinkle in information about the family. (An early sound bite establishes Ladmiral as a widower; his late wife appears in a few spontaneous, memory-laden passages.) Tavernier, working with the cinematographer Bruno de Keyzer, also expands the movie’s scope by letting the camera roam free—he often jettisons the activity of his characters in favor of surveying empty rooms, canvases hanging on the walls, or the leafy environs of Ladmiral’s property. Within Tavernier’s sensibility, afternoon naps and leisurely strolls coexist alongside long-simmering tensions, and it is this refracting of the everyday through the eternal that gives A SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY its unassuming force. Rigidly mannered Gonzague (Michel Aumont), who arrives from the city with his wife Marie-Thérèse (Geneviève Mnich) and three children, painfully plays the part of the doting but uninspiring son, silently fielding minor insults from Ladmiral before later helping to lay the old man’s head back for a snooze in the shade. Ladmiral’s favorite—flighty, unattached daughter Irène (Sabine Azéma)—visits her dad less frequently but on this day instantly revives his energy, even spurring him to offer rueful reflections on the staid path of his artistic career. Attentive to the lulls and mood swings of directionless group gatherings, Tavernier grasps how such a setting can paradoxically foster moments of privacy—neglected young Mireille (Katia Wostrikoff) tearing the leaves off a tree, or brothers Emile (Thomas Duval) and Lucien (Quentin Ogier) stealing sips of wine before mealtime. The movie bears witness to—but doesn’t overstate—the numerous indignities afflicting this family, with the full and disappointing knowledge that the characters themselves will never come around to discussing such matters. (1984, 94 min) [Danny King]
CINE-LIST: April 16 - April 22, 2021
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Danny King, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Josh B. Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Metzger, Scott Pfeifer, Michael Glover Smith