Cine-File continues to cover streaming and other online offerings during this time of covidity.
The Chicago Cinema Workers Fund also continues to raise money to assist local cinema hourly employees who have lost work due to theater closures. In honor of the fund, we’re spotlighting a cult film favorite in our rerun section, one featuring cinema workers facing a different kind of precarious situation. Please consider donating.
NEW REVIEWS
Prem Kapoor’s BADNAM BASTI (India)
Livestreaming on Thursday, May 7 at 7pm via Block Cinema; RSVP here
This is one of those films so rare that all the information that seems to exist about it is included in the screening description, leaving little else for a critic to discover. The facts, however, bear repeating: once presumed to have been lost, Prem Kapoor’s BADNAM BASTI (ALLEY OF ILL REPUTE) might be the first Indian film to depict a queer relationship. It’s based on a novel by Hindi writer Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena, originally called Badnam Basti like the film but later retitled Ek Sadak Sattavan Galiyan. The editing—which, if I’m understanding this article by Manish Gaekwad for Scroll.in correctly, was eventually done by Kapoor himself—is bewildering and audacious; Gaekwad writes that “[t]here were two versions of the edit, and Kapoor’s decision to go with the second cut rather than the one by Hrishikesh Mukherjee sealed BADNAM BASTI’s fate,” according to the film’s cinematographer, R. Manindra Rao. The somewhat confusing plot centers on a dacoit (bandit), Sarnam Singh, who falls in love with a young woman, Bansari, whose family he’d once helped to rob; they meet again when Singh, now a truck driver, comes across the roadshow where she’s performing. Their affair is brief, as he’s arrested again and loses track of her. Some time later, Singh finds new company with a young man, Shivraj, though the details surrounding their arrangement are kept vague. According to Gaekwad’s article, BADNAM BASTI was originally released with an A (adults only) rating and re-released in 1978 with a U certificate (which allowed it to play to a wider audience), the “offensive bits” presumably having been cut out. (There also appears to have been a version that was approximately 100 minutes, nearly 20 minutes longer than the version Block Cinema will be livestreaming.) Rao speculates that the references to human trafficking—Bansari comes back into Singh’s life when he helps a friend purchase her to be his wife—is why it was initially given an A certificate. Singh also delves back into dacoity (banditry), resulting in the film’s somewhat incomprehensible ending. All that said, it’s difficult to critique the film, Kapoor's first, which I think is good, if somewhat appealing simply as a curiosity. The inclusion of homosexuality and the New Wavish editing style are bold and interesting; furthermore, the film includes music by Vijay Raghav Rao, who, according to one resource, was “at the forefront of classical Indian music for six decades.” I’m eager to watch it again and to hear the discussion afterward, as I hope it will provide insight into elements of the film with which I am not familiar. (1971/1978, 100 min) KS
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The livestream screening will be followed by a discussion between Simran Bhalla (NU PhD candidate and interdisciplinary graduate fellow at the Block Museum) and Sudhir Mahadevan (Associate Professor, University of Washington, Seattle).
Kinji Fukasaku’s BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY (Japan)
Available free on Tubi
Kinji Fukasaku jump-started the yakuza genre with BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY, a film so popular it spawned two sequels within the very year it was released. (It also led to the production of a second three-part series a few years later.) BATTLES broke with genre traditions in several noteworthy ways. Rather than being based on an original screenplay, it was drawn from real-life stories about organized crime families in the immediate postwar era. Rather than valorize its subjects, the film adopted a downbeat tone that presented most criminal activity as futile. And rather than employing an expressionistic visual style, Fukasaku drew inspiration from documentary cinema, plunging viewers into the action with shaky handheld camerawork. The frenetic movement is only one distinctive technique in the director’s arsenal here; Fukasaku also uses freeze-frames, unexpected onscreen titles, and camera angles so cockeyed they make Carol Reed’s set-ups in THE THIRD MAN seem subdued by comparison. Many have compared BATTLES to THE GODFATHER in its seismic impact on the national gangster genre, but the film feels closer in spirit to MEAN STREETS—it exudes a vivid, gritty vibe in its depiction of the urban underworld that suggests the impressions of someone who’s experienced it first-hand. Even more colorful than the settings is the violence, which was some of the most extreme ever to appear in Japanese cinema at the time the movie was made. As in MEAN STREETS, the beatings and murders seem to represent the eruption of some primitive force, and the camera, always racing to keep up with the action, creates the impression that the violence is beyond rational control. The film opens with some expository passages about the ruthlessness of life in Hiroshima in the years after World War II; after that, it careens from one violent set piece to another as the city’s yakuza clans engage in a years-long power struggle replete with countless honor killings. You may find it difficult to keep up with who’s on top at any given time, but that seems to be the point. In both form and content, BATTLES is a movie about chaos. (1973, 99 min) BS
Jeff Barnaby’s BLOOD QUANTUM (Canada)
Available to stream on Shudder (subscription required)
Ever since George Romero unleashed the first modern zombie film in 1968 with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, this subgenre has been fertile ground for political subtext. Unfortunately, for the most part, the average zombie film these days seems to want to be a comedy or drama, rather than a zombie outbreak as an indirect shorthand for social collapse. It’s rare now to see a zombie film return to the overt politics of Romero. Thankfully we have Jeff Barnaby and his BLOOD QUANTUM to bring the genre back to its roots. The rules of the film are generally the same, the dead are coming back to life, and if bitten by one of the dead you become one. Except if you’re of First Nations descent. For unknown reasons, it’s only people descended from white European settlers that are infected with this plague. Because of this the Mi’kmaq community in Canada has created a makeshift fortress style city-state to survive, fighting off the white zombies beset on consuming them whole. But even though the people have banded together, there is still a high amount of tension in the camp, especially over the pregnant, white partner of one of its First Nations members. She keeps trying to help bring non-First Nations people onto the reserve, not seeing that this increases the risks of infection and starvation. Romero’s classic “OF THE DEAD” films were actually about racism, consumerism, and militarism in America. BLOOD QUANTUM digs even deeper to discuss colonialism in the Americas. It addresses the lingering effects of First Nations conquest, such as drug and alcohol abuse on the reserves. I can’t speak to the authenticity of its depiction of contemporary First Nations life, but director-writer Barnaby is of First Nations descent, the film is filled with actors of the like, and it was filmed on location on reserves, making it a zombie film unlike any made before. It’s a unique and a much welcome addition to the canon that well might achieve immediate cult classic status. It might also upset the more reactionary corners of horror fandom on the internet—it’s loudly and proudly pro-First Nations, and that’s going to confuse some people into thinking its anti-white. These people are going to hate BLOOD QUANTUM for the very reason I found it better than the average zombie film—it is unapologetically political. From a pure horror standpoint, the movie has some amazing splatter and gore; it doesn’t skimp on the blood. Colonialism is a very bloody affair, so it only makes sense for a film about it would also be. But even though the film is trying to convey a strong metaphor, it’s not all dim and dour about it; it’s well acted, briskly paced, and wildly entertaining. (2020, 96 min) RJM
Quentin Dupieux’s DEERSKIN (France)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
DEERSKIN follows Georges (Jean Dujardin) as he experiences a midlife crisis and decides to blow his savings by purchasing a deerskin jacket and running to a small town in the French countryside. Georges’ obsession with his new jacket and its ‘killer style’ grows exponentially and he soon develops a symbiotic relationship with the jacket, which begins to have a consciousness of its own, egging on Georges to rid the world of all other similar jackets. How does one achieve such a lofty goal? By becoming a guerrilla filmmaker with a handheld digital camera that was also given when the jacket was purchased and conning a starry-eyed bartender (Adèle Haenel) into becoming his editor. DEERSKIN is darkly humorous and beneath its absurd premise is a well-conveyed metaphor about the power of material possessions have to control one’s life. There are some HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING vibes present in the plot but instead the malevolence is directed outwardly instead of towards the protagonist. The film is also self-reflective by pointing out its own ridiculousness through the film-within-the-film that Georges is making. Georges’ confidence in himself mirrors the confidence of his filmmaking, with the jacket serving as the emboldened unifier. With a muted color palette that evokes a hazy, dreamlike feeling, DEERSKIN serves as a comedic cautionary tale about the dangers of unrestrained egomania. (2019, 77 min) KC
Films by Ken Jacobs (Experimental)
Available at the artist’s Vimeo page; individual links in the text
Ken Jacobs is a structuralist filmmaker who created some of the undeniable classics of the genre. Also he created messy improvisational masterpieces of unwieldy length and ardor and rage. Also he also created eyeball-splitting fierce and ornery video work that did the rare feat of being purely political and purely aesthetic. He's a magician of cinema in so many ways. He plays with the simple, essential, powerful tools of cinematic magic. And he creates whole new genres and ways of working out his hat every decade or so. He's got north of two-hundred-and-fifty videos on his Vimeo page, so you can spend quite a while exploring, but here are a few highlights that show his eras and range. FLO ROUNDS A CORNER (1999) is one of the best examples of a celluloid artist figuring out their place in the non-analog world. It is a pure rhythmic dance transferring his older interrogations of cinematic space and time into the digital lingo. THE DOCTOR’S DREAM (1978) is one of those structuralist classics, taking a 16mm print of some old episode of tv and rearranging the shots following a strict formula to reveal unintended narratives lurking beneath. Oh, did I mention Jacobs is an unrivaled cinematic performance artist, too? His THE GEORGETOWN LOOP (1996) grew out of his "Nervous System" performances, which had Jacobs behind two matching film projectors capable of adjusting speed and featured custom-made exterior shutters that would alternate which image you were looking at. Long story short, this process would wield stuttering looping widescreen images that used basic cinematic apparatuses to transform seemingly innocent images. CAPITALISM: CHILD LABOR (2008) use many of his celluloid tricks of interrogating details in an image with his digital stroboscopic effects to plumb depths of a single image over 14 minutes to damming and enlightening effect. (1978-2008, 56 min. total) JBM
Dee Rees’ THE LAST THING HE WANTED (U.S.)
Available on Netflix (subscription required)
Since her debut feature PARIAH (2011), director Dee Rees has expanded both her thematic concerns and visual palette; this third feature builds upon the historical concerns of MUDBOUND (2017) to consider American oppression on a global scale, and it features some compelling cinematic device in practically every scene. Based on a 1996 novel by Joan Didion, this tells the story of Elena, a Washington journalist, who becomes embroiled in international gun smuggling. Anne Hathaway gives one of her rare good performances in the lead; her readings of Didion’s prose (which Rees and cowriter Marco Villalobos incorporate as narration) convey such enthusiasm for language that you understand from the start why her character would devote her life to writing. At the start of THE LAST THING HE WANTED, Elena is covering Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign, which has her traveling all over the U.S. and talking with Reagan supporters both blue-collar and super-rich. She leaves her job to care for her dying father (Willem Dafoe, superb as usual), an international arms dealer. He starts to entrust her with his business, and sooner than she knows it Elena is in Central America, facilitating the transfer of guns to paramilitary groups. Rees doesn’t make excuses for Didion’s contrivances—Elena becomes adept at her father’s work remarkably quickly, Ben Affleck’s government agent always appears in Elena’s life at exactly the right moment, and it feels too on-the-nose that the heroine should go from covering Reagan to witnessing atrocities carried out with his administration’s support. Yet as in MUDBOUND, which got plenty of mileage from its central image/metaphor of characters unearthing the dead, Rees plays up the literariness of her source material, resulting in images that carry the added weight of words. One impressive early sequence finds Rees executing a lengthy, David Fincheresque tracking shot through the offices of the Washington Post while Hathway in voiceover breathlessly delivers swaths of Didion’s prose. Few other moments in LAST THING recapture the rush of that scene, but Rees makes intriguing choices throughout, like filming certain dialogue scenes with off-center angles that cast suspicion on the characters or editing sequences in such a way that one feels a little off with regards to time. One starts to feel the world of the film breaking down, and this makes sense, given the narrative’s progression from order to chaos. (2020, 115 min) BS
Peter Bogdanovich’s SAINT JACK (US)
Available free on Tubi and streaming on Amazon Prime Video; available for rent or purchase on iTunes
The colorful life and checkered career of director/producer/screenwriter/actor/scholar Peter Bogdanovich has reached almost legendary status. He followed three career-making hits in a row (THE LAST PICTURE SHOW [1971], WHAT’S UP DOC? [1972], and PAPER MOON [1973]) with three consecutive flops (DAISY MILLER [1974], AT LONG LAST LOVE [1975], and NICKELODEON [1976]), which all but buried him in Hollywood. He blamed this swift and steep decline on the compromises he accepted in order to get his films made and released. Starting over, he swore he would never compromise again. Whether that’s how things went is another story for another day, but the first uncompromising film he made after NICKELODEON may be his best. SAINT JACK, based on the novel of the same name by Paul Theroux, one of Bogdanovich’s co-screenwriters on the film, was produced by Roger Corman, the director’s first movie boss. Shot on location in Singapore for a lean $1 millions, it focuses on Jack Flowers (Ben Gazzara), a Korean war veteran from Buffalo, N.Y., who works as a small-time pimp and runs errands for a legitimate business to maintain his work visa. They send him to the airport to pick up William Leigh (Denholm Elliott), a British accountant based in Hong Kong who comes in for a few days each year to do the books, and it is through these yearly visits that the film marks the passage of time. In the first act, we see Flowers hustling his whores while making plans to open his own whorehouse, see that ambition realized in the second act, and watch him scramble after he runs afoul of some Chinese gangsters who don’t like competition in the final act. Jack’s friendly, but superficial patter and perpetual motion through a town where everyone knows his name delights William, a quiet and circumspect man who enjoys going along for the ride and who slowly becomes Jack’s friend. SAINT JACK respects this world and is as unashamed of how it works as the whores and hustlers who live in it. There are so many specific touches that humanize and reveal character, as when two whores perform a double act for a client, banging into the wall of the small room, with a record of Shirley Bassey singing “Goldfinger” playing in the background or when Jack helps his Ceylonese girlfriend Monika (Monika Subramaniam) unwrap the sari she has on in a touchingly affectionate scene. Sadness creeps over Jack when soldiers on R&R from the Vietnam War pitch up in Singapore. Gazzara’s large acting style is effectively tamped here; Jack’s hyperawareness is something we see, but nobody else does, except perhaps the observant William, who is beautifully realized by Elliott. Bogdanovich appears as a military fixer, and while I’ve never cared for his acting, he does a pretty good job here as an ugly American. It is never made clear why Jack has chosen this life, but there is a certain freedom from hypocrisy in what he does, and it seems fairly clear that Jack and Bogdanovich have a few attitudes in common. (1979, 112 min) MF
Cédric Klapisch’s SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (France/Belgium)
Available for rent through the Wilmette Theatre
The basilica of Sacré-Coeur is certainly one of the treasures of Paris, but not one that has reached icon status, at least in the movies. Thus, its frequent, distant appearance high atop its butte in Montmartre allows director/co-screenwriter Cédric Klapisch to use it as a refreshing symbol for his psychological romcom, SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, in a way Paris’ more famous monuments could never be. SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE charts the course of its two protagonists, cancer researcher Mélanie (Ana Giradot) and warehouse worker Rémy (François Civil), over a stretch of about a year. Both live alone in adjoining apartment buildings and suffer from temporary sleep disorders—she sleeps all the time and he can’t sleep at all—brought on by mild depression. They ride the same Métro line, shop in the same overpriced food market, and seek the help of psychotherapists to help them understand why they can’t seem to connect in satisfying ways with lovers, friends, and family. Watching them try different electronic fixes—she seeks love on Tinder and he joins Facebook—puts a point on the modern dilemma of proximal intimacy, but this film isn’t content to simply critique or lampoon modern relationship-building. While SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE is very funny—I particularly liked a bizarre dream Rémy has about an automated warehouse and the hustles of the market owner played with panache by a favorite of mine, Simon Abkarian—Klapisch has incredible affection and sympathy for his characters and their struggle to recover their faith and capacity to love. We feel that a final clinch must happen, but when it does, it is not a tired happy ending, but rather the culmination of a journey we have been privileged to experience. In every aspect, this is a beautiful film. (2019, 110 min) MF
Jonas Mekas' WALDEN (Experimental)
Available for purchase through KinoNow (your purchase supports the Anthology Film Archives)
WALDEN is the first collection of film diaries by the legendary Jonas Mekas, shot and edited between Spring 1965 and Summer 1968. According to the Lithuanian filmmaker, poet, and founder of the Anthology Film Archives, the Film-Makers' Cooperative and Film Culture journal, most of this footage was not originally intended to be presented publicly, but was rather exercises he undertook to master the handheld 16mm Bolex camera, in order to capture images around him instantly so no moment would slip away unfilmed due of technical hesitation. The spontaneity of the filming makes WALDEN feel like the home movies of a masterful artist inventing and discovering a new language throughout. The only consistency in the style of shooting and editing is the joy of abandoning forethought for a passionate connection with the film and the people and events depicted, resulting in a gorgeous and occasionally intense piece of filmmaking. Featured in the film are: Gregory Markopoulos (preparing his film portraits), Carl Dreyer (as a subject for Mekas' portrait), the Brakhage family (in a excellent, long section), P. Adams Sitney, Tony Conrad, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Ken Jacobs, Michael Snow, Peter Orlovsky, Tuli Kupferberg, and many many others. (1969, 180 min) JBM
The Whole World is (Still) Watching (Experimental)
Available for free on VBD TV until 5/8
Curated by art critic and educator Solveig Nelson, this third program in the VDB TV: Decades series features video art from the 1990s in conversation with the political turbulence of the 1960s, the two generations corresponding through what the accompanying essay describes as “a sense of the unfinished political promise of nonviolent direct action, and in turn, the unfinished art historical promise of early video.” The content of the videos are specifically dominated by the AIDS crisis and the deficient realizations of the sexual revolution for women and queer individuals. Nelson writes: “These political issues are not simply backgrounds for the art works in The Whole World is (Still) Watching. Rather, ‘politics,’ or the effort to call a new audience forth, entailed—or required—formal innovation, new modes of address and politicized engagement with a history of depiction.” Artist and activist Tom Kalin has three works in the program, each touching on issues respective to then-comtemporary queerness. The first, THEY ARE LOST TO VISION ALTOGETHER (1989, 13 min), was first presented in Kalin’s thesis exhibition at the School of the Art Institute. Through a collage of media footage—culled from sources ranging from home movies to Hollywood films likes Edmund Goulding’s 1939 film DARK VICTORY (in which it’s thought that Ronald Regan’s character, best friend to Bette Davis’ lead, was secretly a homosexual) to early news footage detailing the emerging AIDS crisis—Kalin creates a queer history, as he declared in a press release, “finding [it] where one can and making up the rest.” Considering what was happening at the time, when the general public was finally ‘confronted’ by the existence of predispositions that had heretofore been relegated to secrecy, they, too, made up their own ‘history,’ which brought out into the open, and on national television no less, a dreadful combination of hate and apathy. Kalin and Gran Fury’s KISSING DOESN’T KILL (1990, 3 min) highlights that this hate and apathy comprise the actual social crisis. KISSING is a combination of four versions of a public service announcement that features various couples kissing, each version with its own soundtrack and a combination of text that reveal greed and indifference as the true culprits of the AIDS epidemic. Another television spot by Kalin, INFORMATION GLADLY GIVEN BUT SAFETY REQUIRES AVOIDING UNNECESSARY CONVERSATION (1995, 1 min), with a title riffing on an incomprehensible subway message and an aesthetic referencing MTV, features individuals repeating some variation on “You/We/I are/am the public.” A similar question—even if not really a question—is raised in Tom Rubnitz’s LISTEN TO THIS (1992, 15 min), in which prominent AIDS artist-activist David Wojnarowicz delivers a rant derived from his essay Post Cards From America: X-Rays From Hell. About a ‘general public,’ Wojnarowicz says, “That’s a nice phrase. Doesn’t it make you feel safe to know there’s a general public? And that maybe, just maybe, you can be admitted as a member of this group?” This video implicates television as a mode used to abstract mortality, which, in connection to the AIDS crisis, pits the ‘general public’ against those contending with the virus. The first of the three Kalin videos most explicitly references the 1960s, through a newscaster mentioning a protest reminiscent of those from the era and a text overlay on top of footage from a protest that reads, “Not the 1960s.” The other two, along with Rubnitz’s work, are examples of direct action, a form of protest prevalent in the 1960s that seeks to create a desired change on the world at large. Like THEY ARE LOST TO VISION ALTOGETHER, Dara Birnbaum links direct action with a 1960s corollary in CANON: TAKING TO THE STREET (1990, 10 min); the video opens with graphics from the May 1968 protests before transitioning to purple-tinted footage of a 1987 Take Back the Night march at Princeton University. In Suzie Silver’s A SPY (HESTER REEVE DOES THE DOORS) (1992, 5 min), the 1960s are more blatantly evoked through performance artist Hester Reeve, dressed up as Jesus and lip-syncing to a Doors song in front of a screen displaying psychedelic video footage. The title of Leah Gilliam’s SAPPHIRE AND THE SLAVE GIRL (1995, 18 min) is a reference to both Willa Cather’s 1940 novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl and Basil Dearden’s 1959 film SAPPHIRE. In the program notes, Nelson elaborates on its connection to the 1960s, noting that “urban planning discourses of ‘open spaces’ and ‘networks’ from Sixties era television broadcasts are countered with footage about racial segregation.” Finally, Sadie Benning’s GERMAN SONG (1995, 5 min), shot in black-and-white Super 8 and set against the music of the band Come, is wondrously grungy; it contains an amalgam of footage, some of which features artist Gwen Biley wandering around a carnival and roller skating and another young woman walking in the snow. It also includes a prolonged kiss between Benning and Biley; the bold queer representation—in a film that includes footage shot in Love Canal, a surbub once abandoned after buried chemicals poisoned the community—is direct action that serves to reclaim queer life. KS
RERUN REVIEWS
Thom Eberhardt’s NIGHT OF THE COMET (US)
Available free on Tubi
Celluloid saves. Case in point, when most every living creature has been turned to dust upon the comet-induced end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it in writer-director Thom Eberhardt’s NIGHT OF THE COMET, 18-year-old Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) manages to survive after spending the night in an old-school projection booth. As it would happen, projection booths used to be lined with steel, the very alloy that protects against the comet’s dissolutive effects. Reggie and her boyfriend, the projectionist, are thus spared from the after-effects of the comet, which not only vaporized most living things, but also turned some who weren’t killed into flesh-eating zombies. Wandering around Los Angeles, her boyfriend having been killed by said miscreations, Reggie finds a few other survivors, including her 16-year-old sister Sam (Kelli Maroney), who is alive after spending the night in a steel tool shed, and Hector (Robert Beltran), a good-looking truck driver who was protected by his vehicle's steel cab. The film’s plot is relatively unsophisticated—and exploitative, all in good fun—but its distinction lies in that simplicity. (Eberhardt described its scenario as “Valley girls at the end of the world." Incidentially, the mall scenes were shot at Sherman Oaks Galleria, where both VALLEY GIRL, appropriately, and FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH were filmed. Joss Whedon claims it was a direct influence on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer.") I was taken with the neat ingenuity; it’s a film that uses its limitations to its advantage, rather than as an excuse as to why it can’t be something else, something more. But it needn’t be, with a self-assured aesthetic that makes up for a thin, albeit quotable, script. To give a sense of its visual triumph, there’s a crewmember whose credit is simply ‘neon,’ of which there is seemingly no shortage in post-apocalyptic L.A. For years, rumors of a sequel flooded the Internet; in October 2018, it was said that SOUTHBOUND co-director Roxanne Benjamin had been conscripted by Orion Pictures to pen a remake. Despite all this, and alleged influences ranging from THE OMEGA MAN to DAWN OF THE DEAD to LIQUID SKY, this B-movie-turned-beloved-cult-classic remains something singular, something that, much like a comet, comes around only once in a good long while. (1984, 91 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 and the Music Box Theatre, 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.
The Music Box Theatre also has partnered with several distributors to offer streaming of films, with part of the rental cost supporting the theater. Check their website for details.
Facets, too, is doing distributor partnerships, and also 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 Archives – the CFA’s annual “Media Mixer” event, previously scheduled for May, is postponed until late summer (date TBA)
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 until further notice
Music Box Theatre – Closed until further notice
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 Cinepocalypse film festival (June) – Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
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: May 1 - May 7, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Kyle Cubr, Marilyn Ferdinand, JB Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez