Cine-File continues to cover streaming and other online offerings during this time of covidity. As more local venues and series expand or begin to offer online screenings, we are re-focusing the list to give greater priority to those and are attempting to be more comprehensive with local listings.
The Chicago Cinema Workers Fund will continue to raise money to assist local cinema hourly employees who have lost work due to theater closures for ONE MORE WEEK (the final day is Thursday, May 21). You can donate at the link above in any amount.
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Chicagoland Shorts Vol. 6
Available to rent beginning Thursday 5/21 through the Music Box Theatre here
Chicagoland Shorts is a yearly rotating program of local short films presented by the film nonprofit Full Spectrum Features and selected by their lead programmer Raul Benitez and two guest judges. Instead of focusing on a genre or a theme, the project does a great job of giving a view into what is happening in various academic programs and artistic communities in our city. SATURDAY by SAIC student Pegah Pasalar is a lovely and quietly affecting family narrative shot in a lyrical international style. I DREAM OF VIETNAM by Northwestern student Jiayu Yang is an award-winning contemplative documentary essay about the border areas between China and Vietnam, and the filmmaker’s personal, familial, and political connections to the area. KILLING IRMA by Sarah Clark is a dark dramedy road film about friendship and end-of-life choices. GO GO, BOY! by Oriana Oppice is a coming-of-age piece about discovering your adolescent queer identity through the confusing but blunt eroticism of professional wrestling. OH BABY! by Meghann Artes skillfully combines a big musical production number with stop motion animation to create a colorful myth about the randomness of life and birth. OFF THE HIGHWAY LIKE ANOTHER DEER by SAIC student Sofia Alfaro is a playful mixed-media Eros and Thanatos rumination. MY MATTACHINE by Martin Mulcahy is an accomplished mix of found footage, animation, and personal voiceover telling the story of the filmmaker’s youthful quests into the gay community in the inhospitable southwest-side of Chicago. FORET by Lisa Barcy is a bouncing and bewitching twirl of collaged animations. (2019, 82 min total) JBM
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The premiere screening on Thursday at 7pm will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers; check the Music Box website for details.
From Soil, Sand, and Salt Crystals: Films and Natural Processes (Experimental)
Presented online by the Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) through Thursday 5/28
There are some great films and videos in this program, and we will get to those shortly. But first a tip of the hat to programmer and UofC PhD student Sophie Lynch and the Film Studies Center for the facility and wherewithal to transform this program of intense material-specific works to the online environment with a keen act of academic legerdemain. Taking a program largely comprised of painted, punched, buried, and scratched celluloid and streaming the results will probably go down as one of the more perversely enlightening movie-watching experiences of our "stay at home" Chicago theater-going time. ATHYRIUM FILIX FEMINA (2016) by Kelly Egan is a patch of blue cyanotype weaving between stark vegetal imagery and menacing found footage. Jennifer West has three films in this program that star world-traveling strips of 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm film that take exotic baths in far-flung locales for your viewing pleasure. These are process-based films with unwieldy descriptions of their creations that sometimes elicit a murky beauty. LAGOS SAND MERCHANTS (2013) by Karimah Ashadu is an extraordinary piece that has some structural similarities to a Chris Welsby film, in which the camera becomes part of the action, rolling and tumbling through the space. Whereas Welsby was commenting on the connections between technology, nature, and art; Ashadu is creating a rhyming dance to the labor of the men at work and commenting on the strains of the environment and effort. Jürgen Reble’s ZILLERTAL (1991) takes a film trailer buried under the trees and chemically treats it to remove the surface story of sex and power back in to their cellular roots. TREE OF CONSUMPTION (1993) by Dana Claxton combines performance art with low-end video, stretching and slicing the images of nature and women to correlate and rhyme the mistreatment of both. SOUND OF A MILLION INSECTS, LIGHT OF A THOUSAND STARS (2014) by Tomonari Nishikawa features 35mm film covered by fallen leaves for a short period alongside a road near Fukushima, highlighting the sensitivity of film and other delicate things to the lingering radiation. ASBESTOS (2016) by Sasha Litvintseva and Graeme Arnfield is an immersive documentary into the history and current state of an only-recently-defunct mining town. MOUNTAIN CASTLE MOUNTAIN FLOWER PLASTIC (2017) by Annapurna Kumar is deeply beloved work for me and one I have written about and shown many times before. It is a Robert Breer-esque, flickering, squirming, poetic trip through suggestive mountains, an 8-bit castle, gif-y flowers, and a shifting floating plastic debris island. It's a jolting and gorgeous tottering tumble of suggestive colors and shapes. LANDFILL 16 (2010-11) by Jennifer Reeves is a buried film that uses ominous natural and industrial sounds to suggest both a sadness over celluloid being an obsolete "junked" material and a dismay over the excess of man-made materials overwhelming the natural world. ALL THAT IS SOLID (2014) by Louis Henderson is a desktop documentary that explores exploitation and e-waste. RECYCLED (2013) by Lei Lei and Thomas Sauvin ennobles trashed images pulled from, well, the trash and animates the recovered images to create a portrait of shared humanity. This is a long, dense, rewarding program that thankfully we have two weeks to sample and enjoy. (101 min total) JBM
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There will be two online panel discussions, one Friday 5/15 and Thursday 5/27, featuring a number of the filmmakers; check the FSC website for details.
Dan Sallitt’s FOURTEEN (US)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Have you ever felt a sense of responsibility to a friend in the present because of feelings of indebtedness you may have had to that person in the past? Have you ever anguished over whether to provide emotional or material support to someone you once cared about because you thought they might no longer deserve it? Does the process of growing up with someone necessarily entail growing apart? These are just some of the ethical questions you might find yourself contemplating while watching Dan Sallitt’s remarkable new movie FOURTEEN, which features two of the best performances I expect to see all year: Tallie Medel plays Mara, a 20-something woman living in Brooklyn who goes from being a preschool teacher’s aide to a full-time teacher while simultaneously navigating the complicated world of adult dating; and Norma Kuhling plays Mara’s childhood friend Jo, an emotionally unstable social worker who has difficulty keeping any one job, boyfriend, or fixed place of residence for very long. The chemistry between these actresses is phenomenal: Through subtle body language, pointed glances, and rat-a-tat-tat line readings (in which they frequently seem to be collaborating over the heads of whoever else may be in the room with them), Medel and Kuhling always manage to suggest a rich and complex history between their characters. Sallitt, in his fifth and best feature to date, deserves credit for directing the pair to underplay even the big dramatic scenes: These women are in many ways temperamentally similar while being presented in stark contrast to one another visually (Medel is short and dark-haired with an open, honest face while Kuhling is tall, fair, angular and more guarded), suggesting that they are meant to be seen as doppelgangers. While it is probably going too far to say that Mara and Jo represent two halves of a single personality, there is a lingering sense that each of these women, while on opposite narrative trajectories, could have easily ended up on the path of the other. The way Sallitt charts the evolution of their relationship over a span of several years in his uniquely quiet and de-dramatized fashion only makes the drama that is present all the more affecting. Scenes take place primarily indoors in modest apartments, restaurants, and bars, unfolding in long takes that feature practical lighting, with the dialogue and performances always taking center stage. But what makes FOURTEEN not just a stirring experience but an exquisitely cinematic one is the daring nature of Sallitt's elliptical editing. He tends to end scenes without ceremony, often straight-cutting from one seemingly unimportant moment to another, making it seem as if no time has passed. Then, all of a sudden, the abrupt appearance of a new boyfriend or even a new offspring in a scene dramatically contradicts this prior impression. The cumulative effect of Sallitt structuring his deceptively simple 94-minute film this way is that he impressively conveys a sense of the ebb and flow of life as it is actually lived, felt, and remembered—and provides a devastating reminder of how time gets away from us all. (2019, 94 min) MGS
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You can listen to a podcast interview with Sallitt by Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Cinematheque’s Mike King (a former Cine-File contributor) and get information on free access to Sallitt’s first three features here.
Sandwiched Between Trauma and Apocalypse (Experimental)
Available for free on VBD TV until 5/22
The fourth program in the VDB TV: Decades series is the one that’s resonated with me the most. Comprised of videos made between 2000 to 2009—the lineup of which was curated by programmer Aily Nash—and centered on the intersection between history and biography, or, as it’s expressed in the program’s titular video, Steve Reinke’s HOBBIT LOVE IS THE GREATEST LOVE (2007, 14 min), trauma and apocalypse as being connected with biography and history, respectively, its works radically reconfigure the relationship between the two, as per Nash’s accompanying essay. I was born in 1988; the 2000s charioted me—on a chariot made of confusion, disaster, and the start of now endless warfare—into adulthood. For many in my generation, said adulthood has been marked by a sense of impending apocalypse and by feelings of trauma associated with it. Several of the works in this program reflect our experience of this time, both as a society and as individuals; Nash aptly notes that “[they] variously articulate the irreconcilability of worlds—we live together in alternate, yet parallel realities.” Reinke’s work often takes the form of all-out polemical assaults (I mean that as the highest of compliments), and this is no less the case with HOBBIT LOVE. The last of its five segments is sheer, maddening brilliance: portraits of military figures fill the screen, with Reinke zooming in on smaller segments over and over again while a catchy song plays. Once the whole spate has been shown, text appears describing the composition: “The American military casualties of the Second Gulf War for whom photographs were available as of November 7 / 2006 arranged by attractiveness.” This glib reconstitution, equal parts repulsive and relatable, reflects back at us the ways that we organize information in order to process it. Walid Raad’s HOSTAGE: THE BACHAR TAPES (ENGLISH VERSION) (2001, 16 min) might best be described as an experimental documentary, but its effect is that of a morbidly realized mockumentary. The work takes as its subject the Lebanon hostage crisis; the makers allege that it’s the work of a sixth, Lebanese hostage named Souheil Bachar (who’s also credited as a co-creator). Raad examines the situation through the artificial subjectivity of this fictional figure, namely as it relates to sexual preoccupations that Bachar is alleging he and the five other, real American hostages experienced in captivity. This is the most incendiary aspect, but what stands out for me is when Bachar humorously questions the American hostages’ desire to each write a book about their experience. The inherent subjectivity of trauma—and, too, history—is at once evidenced and interrogated. Jesse McLean’s THE BURNING BLUE (2009, 9 min) takes a more personal approach to history and trauma in its consideration of the 1986 Challenger disaster, one of the most visible tragedies of recent decades due to it having happened on live television. McLean’s interpretation evokes more recent tragedies (notably 9/11), which beget narcissistic ruminations about where we were when the event occurred. People have always examined their personal connection to public tragedies, though this seems to have increased with the Challenger explosion, due in part to the very medium on which it was broadcast. Ximena Cuevas’ LA TOMBOLA (RAFFLE) (2001, 8 min), which also considers the nature of media, hinges on a conceit both elementary and ingenious. Cuevas once appeared on a Mexican talk show called Tómbola (“Raffle”), apparently bored by the outsized behavior of the other participants (one of which, if my research is correct, is the performance artist Rocio Boliver). For most of the work, the viewer assumes a similar stance, passively observing the “show” as one would any regular television program. But toward the end, when the host addresses her, Cuevas pulls out a camera, directs it at the talk show’s camera, and says, “I want to find one person out there… who has a life of their own… who is interested in their own life,” repeating these last two phrases until the video fades out. Though it appears to be an outlier within the group, it’s still a type of determined historical appropriation—inasmuch as anything recorded can be considered history—but on a smaller scale. Its philosophy, however, is the most resounding. Paul Chan’s RE: THE_OPERATION (2002, 27 min) addresses the Bush era most directly as it contemplates him and other key players in his administration. Chan represents each person with a digital avatar, figuring him or her as a wounded soldier; accompanying vignettes characterize, largely via fictional letters being read aloud, the person in a manner that seems at odds with their actions, either blatantly or abstrusely. Throughout is seemingly random footage tenuously connected to the text, some of it sexual in nature. This idea of association is persistent in the program; history and biography are often one and the same, and, also, not. KS
Michael Murphy’s UP FROM THE STREETS—NEW ORLEANS: THE CITY OF MUSIC
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
My wife Karolyn and I make at least one or two trips to New Orleans every year. What attracts us, more than anything else, is that town’s endlessly fascinating culture, history, and traditions. One way this culture is chronicled is in the music, and it’s through that prism that we view the city in Michael Murphy’s UP FROM THE STREETS—NEW ORLEANS: THE CITY OF MUSIC, a life-affirming and exhilarating documentary. Our tour guide is Terrence Blanchard, the consummate trumpeter. We meet him down by the Mississippi River, and soon we’re off to the birthplace of jazz and funk, Congo Square—where, in the 1740s, the French allowed their slaves to dance, sing, and play drums on a Sunday afternoon: an expression of freedom that still echoes, as Wynton Marsalis says—all the way up to bounce. Murphy shows how the unique New Orleans street culture—Mardi Gras Indians and second line parades—grew out of these celebrations, these preservations of West African cultural expression. As drummer Herlin Riley puts it, “The street has the beat, the beat embodies the rhythm, the rhythm embodies the culture.” Co-writing with Cilista Eberle, Murphy wisely abandons chronology, more or less, and instead approaches the music as a kind of Möbius strip of connections and inspirations between songs and performers—a bit of a Greil Marcus approach. It's a canny organizing principle that allows him to tie in contemporary performances, showing how these old spirituals and field songs continue to speak—to live—in different historical contexts. Along the way, we get the obligatory interviews with rock stars, mostly British (Sting, Robert Plant, Keith Richards), which makes sense: after all, it took the Brits to reawaken us Americans to the treasures of our own culture. Murphy does a good job of making the most important point: that this music is a multicultural fusion, a mix of ingredients from French and Spanish colonialists, Native Americans, escaped slaves, Creoles. It moves fast, but only occasionally did I feel rushed, as if I were being hustled through a Hall of Fame museum where I might wish to linger. At its best, each segment is a marvel of research and elegant concision. In just a minute of two, for example, he demonstrates the influence of Caribbean-Latin American music—the Afro-Cuban rhythms you hear in Fats Domino and Professor Longhair. I especially appreciated his take on the towering Louis Armstrong—occasionally today, you’ll come across the wrongheaded notion that Satchmo was a sellout. The film reclaims Armstrong as a courageous, cutting-edge musical revolutionary who invented solo improv, showing his subversive side—how he snuck the line “when it’s slavery time down South” into a recording of the famous song where the word “sleepy” would have been. Ben Jaffe of Preservation Hall makes the case that New Orleans music is about finding a new language as well as preserving tradition—the New Orleans pioneers were the punk rockers of their day. On the one hand, the film offers “NOLA music 101,” a history in a list of names: guitar legend Danny Barker, Cosimo Matassa, whose J&M Studio was one of the birthplaces of rock ’n' roll, piano genius James Booker, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, great drummers Earl Palmer and Ziggy Modeliste, gospel’s Mahalia Jackson, songwriter/bandleader Dave Bartholomew, the Wild Tchoupitoulas, saxophonist Lee Allen, Earl King, Irma Thomas, the Meters/Neville Brothers, and on and on, all the way up to the next unknown kid playing on the corner of Frenchmen Street. On the other, it offers enough well-chosen details, interviews, photographs and clips to enrich the understanding of the connoisseur. Murphy sees the music as a unified cultural expression that links the town to its history, but also shapes and unites its citizens as a family; after Hurricane Katrina, it offered them a living symbol of resilience, and fuel for rebuilding. UP FROM THE STREETS documents the fearless spirit of the New Orleans that Karolyn and I know, and for that I find it a beautiful and admirable film—a collection of moments of joy and solidarity. (2019, 104 min) SP
Hlynur Pálmason’s A WHITE, WHITE DAY (Iceland)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
This bleak character study of grieving widower would have been just another dry take on a police officer on the verge of breaking if it wasn’t for Ingvar Sigurdsson’s beguiling performance. As Ingimundur he lives fully in all facets of this man’s life: He’s a doting grandfather and family man, a self-sufficient man building his own home by hand, a police officer, a husband still deeply in love with his deceased wife. We watch Ingimundur’s attempts at therapy, to work out his grief for his wife. The stern, pillar of a man obviously uncomfortable and inconvenienced by the prodding of his ordered therapy. He’s a man doing his best under the worst of circumstances. When a box of his dead wife’s belongings is opened in his new home, he goes through them and starts to see that the woman he loved was not exactly who he thought she was. Infidelities come to light and we watch, in real time, Ingimundur having to learn who this new woman is and start to grieve all over again—this time in a shroud of anger, not sadness. Using his privileges as a police officer, he begins to track down the man with whom his wife had an affair. Drowning deeply in himself, he flails and lashes out at everyone close to him, burning nearly all his bridges as he marches on an offensive to confront the man who has sullied his wife’s memory. A WHITE, WHITE DAY was Iceland’s submission to last year’s Academy Awards, and it’s obvious as to why. This is a tense film, not quite a thriller but not quite a drama. Ingvar Sigurdsson’s performance fills the screen, and the story, with a cold ferocity that’s worth the price of admission alone. (2019, 109 min) RJM
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements
Jean-Luc Godard's BAND OF OUTSIDERS (France/Revival)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
Time has been incredibly kind to Jean-Luc Godard's lightweight "crime movie," a notable flop in its day, which has emerged, more than half-a-century later, as one of the filmmaker's most enduringly (and endearingly) popular films. A seemingly tossed-off distillation of the themes, obsessions, and techniques of JLG's early period, this loose adaptation of a largely-forgotten American pulp novel—Fool's Gold, by Dolores Hitchens—stars Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur as a couple of incompetent dreamer hoods, and Godard's then-wife and muse Anna Karina as a girl they meet in their English class and rope into helping them commit a robbery. Karina gives what is perhaps her definitive performance, combining tragedy, resolve, and girlish charm into a single enigmatic package, and the film's giddy, scuzzy style—packed tight with references, meta-jokes, and directorial flight-of fancy—is downright intoxicating. If you've never seen a Godard film, this might be the place to start. (1964, 97 min) IV
D.W. Young’s THE BOOKSELLERS (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
When Bibi, the owner of Imperial Fine Books on the Upper East Side of New York City, talks about the moment she fell for fine, leather-bound books, a documentary that already had my sympathy won me over completely. My maternal grandfather was a bookbinder who fashioned finely tooled, gilt leather bindings, and a photo album he created is among my treasured possessions. The family connection matters, but my appreciation for a nearly vanished craft put me in the company of the like minds of antiquarian booksellers, archivists, curators, and writers whose world director D.W. Young explores in THE BOOKSELLERS. Young covers a lot of ground, from the history of bookstores and rare booksellers in New York to the effect of technology on the sales of physical books. Most intriguing are the collector/booksellers who fill their homes, shops, and warehouses with books and other artifacts they love. Young probes why they do what they do—the beauty of the books, the (formerly) years-long search for a particular volume, the preservation of underrepresented histories in archives like the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. A visit to Priceline founder Jay Walker’s Library of the History of Human Imagination, whose design is fashioned after an M.C. Escher drawing, is both fascinating and an homage to extreme acquisitiveness. But then, people of much more modest means in this film have amassed even more than Walker. If you are a book lover, and especially if you are seized by the collection bug, THE BOOKSELLERS will unite you with your people. (2019, 99 min) MF
Horace B. Jenkins’ CANE RIVER (US/Revival)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
When you hear about films that are or were previously thought lost, you typically think of films from way back when (for example, 24 of the BFI’s “75 Most Wanted” list are from the 1930s alone), rather than those from the near-distant past. Of course, more recently thought-to-be lost films do exist: there’s one from the 1980s on the BFI’s list, and another such example of a “lost” film that’s not yet 40 years old is writer-director Horace B. Jenkins’ CANE RIVER, which was believed to have been lost until a negative resurfaced several years ago. The longtime elusiveness of CANE RIVER is compounded by the fact that it was set to be released in New York, after having enjoyed a gala debut in New Orleans (where the film partly takes place), until Jenkins passed away unexpectedly in 1982; at one point, when Jenkins was still alive, the comedian Richard Pryor had even been interested in bringing it to Hollywood but was rebuffed by the film’s producers. Now, thanks to film preservation organization IndieCollect (which salvaged the 35mm negative from a defunct film lab and deposited it at the Academy Film Archive, which struck a new preservation print, which IndieCollect then used for a 4K restoration) and Oscilloscope Laboratories (who are giving it the theatrical distribution it never had), we can finally see Jenkins’ one and only feature film, a work made by a Black man about Black love amidst issues respective to Black life. Prior to making it, Jenkins was an Emmy-winning television producer and director, whose work ranged from segments of Sesame Street to a public television documentary called SUDAN PYRAMIDS: A ZANDI'S DREAM (which won two Oscar Micheaux Awards). Considering he spent much of his career in television, I was impressed by how cinematic CANE RIVER is—it’s imbued with a sense of weightiness, with references to offscreen developments, both present and past, that feels more at home in cinema than TV. The story follows Peter (Richard Romaine), a former college football star who rejected the pros to become a writer; he returns home to Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, where his family lives along Cane River. He meets Maria (Tommye Myrick) while on a tour of a local plantation that had been owned by his distant relatives. The two enter into a romance with Romeo and Juliet overtones: he’s from a prominent Creole family and she’s from a less affluent part of town. Jenkins explained in an interview that Peter’s family history was inspired by that of the real-life Marie Thérèse Coincoin, an African woman who liberated herself from slavery and went on to marry Frenchman Pierre Metoyer. Coincoin and Metoyer had ten children and owned the Melrose Plantation—and slaves, a point of contention between Peter and Maria. Jenkins also specified that Metoyer and Coincoin’s children “are considered to be the origin of the Creole culture in Louisiana,” lending a sense of history not made explicitly clear in the film. (When Peter and Maria meet, she’s reading Gary B. Mills’ The Forgotten People: Cane River's Creoles of Color; I think it’s especially clever to have as its main historical signifier a book that viewers would need to seek out to fully understand the fraught cultural dynamic between the lovers.) That Jenkins is able to convey this history, along with several subplots, in a relatively compact film is telling of an artist whose existence as a Black man bore the burden of context: in this world, it’s not just boy meets girl, but light-skinned boy from a certain kind of family meeting a darker-skinned girl from the town over, the dynamics of which make the Montagues’ and the Capulets’ drama seem petty by comparison. Jenkins tempers the tension, both actualized and implied, with music by Leroy Glover and Phillip Manuel; the latter sings the songs that accompany many of the film’s illuminating montages. It’s unfortunate that Jenkins passed away at a relatively young age, but thankfully his work has been given new life in this handsome restoration. (1982, 104 min) KS
Albert Serra’s LIBERTÉ (France)
Available for rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
The least likely thing an audience might take away from LIBERTÉ (if they don’t turn it off in revulsion first) is the stillness and sustained ambiance found during the evening of debauched games of perversion it presents—perversions far removed from the chaste and sterile “eroticism” seen in so much modern cinema today. Despite all of the powdered wigs dogging in a forest, an undeniable, contrasting mood and ambiance breaks through, enveloping the non-narrative images (sound and picture wholly integrated), prevailing over some very funny images of people beating off in the dark. The sonorous woods, full of poison, serenaded with nocturnal late night birdsong, occasionally layered with the scrapings of wood on dirt, the snapping of twigs, the collapsing of belt buckles, and, more often than not, bodies and skin slapping against each other, saliva lubricating the muscles and organs of bodies, threatening, but never overtaking, the sustained stillness of the surrounding forest. The ambience embraces everything we will see, as dusk gives way to night, and eventually to dawn. Night, however, is when most of the film transpires, though the faint notion of time is one of several barely discernible elements: the hardly-there narrative and dimly lit images become wholly pleasurable as moments that make up an entire night separate into a few hours as we begin to anticipate the dawn. The “narrative” features a group of late 17th-century French libertines hiding from the courts in the middle of a forest along the Prussian border. Their libertinage has had cast them out, their days surely numbered. Time stretches into long passages, every moment surrendering to the sensual atmosphere, the “plot” escalating as the sexual acts rise and fall. We wait for moments that remind us of THE DEVILS or SALO, yet we only seem to get glimpses of flesh and fragments of sounds through the trees in the dense darkness. The legendary Helmut Berger, who plays a much older Duke and a sort of idol to the group, is murdered, but, like most of the violence, one is almost unsure whether it happened or not. We see the Duke apparently being murdered, his body lying on the ground, but is all this the projection of some sex/death drive fantasia? A sort-of horny revolution for the death of hierarchy? Or is it just selfish carnality misinterpreted as liberation, a momentous opportunity taken full advantage of? The libertines frequently praise one of the women taking part in the naughty acts, crediting her as “the greatest actress,” while most of the violence is only ever discussed, never taking place on screen, or possibly at all. Serra’s use of lighting adds to the pervasive sense of uncertainty, fragmenting objects, focused on the beauty of an eye, a branch, the moon, or a bare ass; the sexual acts themselves remain harder to fully perceive (but are still graphic). Two of Serra’s most recent films, STORY OF MY DEATH and THE DEATH OF LOUIS XIV, are (despite their giveaway titles) depictions of worlds on the precipice of change, where a moment has happened and passed, yet not fully turned. The slow stillness of Serra’s camera in LIBERTÉ highlights this feeling, as the languid passing of minutes and seconds give way to the steady flow of space and time, highlighted by some of the most beautiful digital imagery to date. (2019, 132 min, Digital) JD
Christophe Honoré’s ON A MAGICAL NIGHT (France)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Writer-director Christophe Honoré thanks Woody Allen and Bertrand Blier in the end credits of this comic fantasy, and it’s easy to see why. Like the comic fantasies of Allen and Blier, ON A MAGICAL NIGHT wastes little time on exposition, taking viewers straight into a whimsical scenario without providing any rational explanation for it. This strategy could be described as “head first” in more ways than one: with minimal context, the fantasy feels like something out of a dream, and watching it develop is akin to burrowing ever deeper into the subconscious mind. The film makes haste of is set-up in a few minutes. Maria (frequent Honoré collaborator Chiara Mastroianni) is a middle-aged professor who’s been married to her husband for about 20 years. One evening her husband finds out about her recent extramarital affair, which she’d been hiding from him. He gets upset, and she leaves the apartment, renting a room at the hotel across the street to figure things out. But who should she find waiting for her in the bathroom but her husband as a 20-year-old man. He’s neither a time-traveler nor a figment of her imagination, he’s just… there. Naturally he’s curious about the sort of woman his wife will become when they’re both 20 years older, just as she’s curious to revisit what attracted her to him in the first place. The mutual curiosity intensifies until the two go to bed together; as is often the case in French cinema, sex makes everything crazy. Other visitors stop by the hotel room over the course of the night, including Maria’s dead grandmother, the human embodiment of her will (who, for some reason, resembles Charles Aznavour), the piano teacher with whom Maria’s husband had an affair in his late teens, and in what may be the movie’s best gag, the few dozen men with whom Maria’s had extramarital affairs over the years. The conceits arise gracefully, even effervescently, all the while deepening our understanding of the heroine. With each visitor, we learn about a different facet of Maria’s past or personality; what emerges is a recognizably complicated individual capable of both good and terrible decisions. The film’s lighthearted tone betrays the incisiveness of its characterization. (2019, 86 min) BS
Cédric Klapisch’s SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (France/Belgium)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
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
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
Facets Cinémathèque
Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León’s 2018 animated Chilean film THE WOLF HOUSE (73 min) streams this week.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Halina Dyrschka’s 2019 German documentary BEYOND THE VISIBLE: HILMA AF KLINT (93 min) streams this week.
Music Box Theatre
Josephine Mackerras’ 2019 French film ALICE (103 min) streams this week. Check the Music Box website for additional titles held over.
Gallery 400 at UIC
Rami George’s experimental short UNTITLED (STANLEY, MY SECOND LOVER) (2012, 8 min) streams for free through May 24.
Media Burn Independent Video Archive
Media Burn livestreams their 2019 documentary/essay film GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE (65 min) in four parts this week, each section showing at Noon from Monday-Thursday. This omnibus film, made from footage in the Media Burn archives, features individual sections by directors Lori Felker, Mikhail Zheleznikov, Dimitri Devyatkin, and Dmitrii Kalashnikov. The livestream is here. The entire film and more information on artist Q&As can be found here.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE RECOMMENDATIONS
E.A. Dupont’s THE ANCIENT LAW (Germany/Silent Revival)
Available free on Kanopy through participating libraries with your library card
In 2018, Flicker Alley did the world a huge favor by releasing the restored THE ANCIENT LAW on an extras-loaded Blu-ray/DVD set. The stunning restoration by the Deutsche Kinemathek combined five tinted prints from different countries, some of which were out of sequence, and corrected the scene order and intertitles based on the original German censor’s certificate. THE ANCIENT LAW is remarkable not only for having survived and recovered to a magnificent degree, but also because the Weimar-era film tells a specific story of Jewish life during the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the 1860s as realized by some major Jewish artists: director E.A. Dupont, cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl, and actors Ernst Deutsch and Avrom Morewski. The story, now a familiar Jewish trope of tradition versus assimilation, begins in a shtetl in Galicia, near the border of Russia, where Baruch (Deutsch) lives with his father, Rabbi Mayer (Morewski), and mother (Grete Berger). Baruch shows off his love of acting when he parades into his parents’ home as King Ahasuerus during the annual Purim celebration. His father is furious and bans him from ever play-acting again. Baruch rebels, spurred on by tales of the outside world he has heard from itinerant beggar Ruben Pick (Robert Garrison). He runs off, joins a traveling theater company, and is noticed at an impromptu performance of Romeo and Juliet by Archduchess Elisabeth Theresia (Henny Porten) (a fictionalized version of Archduchess Maria Theresa). Smitten with Baruch, she arranges for him to join the court theater in Vienna headed by Heinrich Laube (Hermann Vallentin) (an actual director, playwright, and novelist of that time). Baruch makes a triumphant, but fraught debut as Hamlet because the performance takes place on Yom Kippur. With one taboo broken, he decides to cut off his sidelocks and commit wholly to the celebrated career he eventually achieves. With Dupont at the helm, shtetl life and religious observances are created with an authenticity that enlivens each scene. No detail, from kissing the mezuzah on the door jamb to slicing a piece of bread for each family member on the sabbath, is too small to include. At the same time, Dupont doesn’t shrink from portraying the Jewish community as narrow and ill-informed. Pick’s entreaties to Rabbi Mayer to at least read the plays he condemns might also be a plea for religious tolerance to the German audiences burbling with anti-Semitic feelings. Sparkuhl, who worked for Paramount and William Cagney’s production company in the U.S., fairly paints with his camera, creating gorgeous landscapes and evocative close-ups. One shot I especially like is of the archduchess and her entourage having a picnic in the woods, reminiscent of a contemporaneous and scandalous painting by Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (1863), signaling how out of place these city slickers are in the country and foreshadowing the forbidden romance Elisabeth Theresia will pursue with Baruch. Enjoyable comedic interludes with the traveling theater company sandwich between the more serious elements of the film. By the end, the ancient laws of Jewish identity, court etiquette, and personal individuation have been affirmed in this thoroughly satisfying masterwork of silent cinema. (1923, 136 min) MF
Jeffrey Schwarz’s I AM DIVINE (US/Documentary)
Available with a subscription to Amazon Prime Video
“Who wants to be famous?! Who wants to die for art?!” If American underground film had a patron saint, his name would be Divine. I AM DIVINE is a love-letter biography to one of cinema’s true originals—Harris Glenn Milstead, more commonly known by his drag/stage name, Divine. As much hagiography as documentary, this film makes no pretenses at being a detached, sterilized look back. Rather, this is a celebration of the life of Divine, and the voracious appetite he had for life, pot, and donuts. All the expected guests come by: John Waters, Mink Stole, Tab Hunter. But it’s the unexpected drop-ins by people such as his mother, Frances, and Diana Evans, Divine’s prom date and girlfriend of six years, that really make this film special. With so much of Divine’s professional career being attached to that of John Waters, it’s wonderful to see his story leave Waters’ gravitational pull. For those of us who didn’t happen to be of a specific age, at a specific time, in a specific place, we finally get to see footage of Divine’s infamous off-Broadway theatrical work. We learn all about his singing/musical career and are treated to footage of that. The good, the bad, and the sweaty. Divine died more than 30 years ago now, just as her mainstream star was ascending. It’s still easy to pine for what could have been. Instead, celebrate a unique life marked by camp and charm with a film that allows you to worship at the altar of the truly Divine. (2013, 90 min) RJM
George Ogilvie’s THE SHIRALEE (Australia/Television Miniseries Revival)
Available for rent at Amazon Prime Video and Vimeo
“Shiralee” is the Australian term for the bundle of worldly possessions carried by itinerant workers famously known from the unofficial anthem of Australia, “Waltzing Matilda,” as swagmen. In this television adaptation of D’Arcy Niland’s classic book, the infrequent voiceover narrator calls a shiralee a burden, and reckons that the swagman at the heart of the story, Macauley (Bryan Brown), has two of them—his bundle and his daughter Buster (Rebecca Smart). How a tough guy like Macauley ended up dragging his 9-year-old daughter through the Australian bush, sleeping around a campfire and walking miles in the harsh sun, is only part of the story. This wonderful family film creates a time and place you can practically taste and shows how the bond between a parent and child can dissolve even the most stoically borne disappointments and open up possibilities abandoned long ago. The film flashes back to 1939, when Macauley, the product of an Adelaide orphanage, has left city life behind him and struck off for the hinterlands. He enters a general store and asks for clothing suitable for hard travel. The shopkeeper asks if he’s going on horseback or by foot, and when told foot, slaps down a sturdy pair of walking shoes. “Socks or no?” “Socks,” answers Macauley. “City boy,” the shopkeeper surmises. Macauley eventually lands in Eucla, Western Australia, and is hired as an apprentice butcher to Thaddeus (Simon Chilvers). He is immediately smitten with Thad’s daughter Lily (Noni Hazlehurst). She returns his affections, much to the annoyance of her current beau, Tony (Lewis Fitz-Gerald), who arranges to have Macauley thrown out of town. Skipping past World War II, the film takes us to 1946. Macauley is working for a traveling carnival as a boxer who takes on locals who hope to beat him and win a cash prize. He’s content enough with his carney family until he runs into a man he used to know in Eucla and is introduced to the man’s wife—Lily. That evening, he informs the carneys that he and Marge (Lorna Lesley), a young barker on the carnival midway, are getting married. By 1953, this rebound marriage has failed, and Macauley begins his adventure as a single dad. Macauley is a sun-scorched and solitary man who likes to stay on the move and avoid personal ties. Buster is a typical child who squeals with delight at finding a caterpillar, complains of hunger, and runs almost to tripping to keep pace with her hard-stepping father. Buster falls into the rhythms of Macauley’s life and forms her attachment easily, while Mac comes to love Buster only gradually through admiration at her determination and abilities, not through some magical, idealized bond. When she takes a hatchet to chop a piece of wood for their campfire, rather than pull the tool away from her in fear, he places the branch so she will be able to strike it more effectively. It’s so refreshing to see a child treated as an actual person instead of an appendage or a porcelain doll in need of constant protection. The small-town South Australia locations where Ogilvie shot probably still have buildings that date back to at least 1939; adding some period clothing, sundries, and autos locates the characters over time but doesn’t take away appreciably from the timeless quality of this rural existence. Bryan Brown is perfectly cast as Macauley. Handsome and rugged, he can project pleasure with a smile or clamp down his emotions with the utmost restraint. His growing relationship with Buster is believable and comes to a climax of emotional release that is very moving and realistic. The supporting cast is terrific, including Lorna Lesley, who plays a spurned and bitter wife with pathetic intensity, and Simon Chilvers, who is decent, understated, and commanding of respect. Even the somewhat melodramatic ending feels grounded in reality and elicits emotions from us that the rest of the film has earned. (1987, 190 min) MF
Matthew Bates’s SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! AN AUDIO MISADVENTURE (US/Documentary)
Available free on Tubi
This film takes us back to those heady alterna-days of the late-1980s/ early-1990s. Back when fanzines, tape trades, and street cred ruled supreme. One of my personal favorite trends from those years of slacked out bliss was the rise of prank call/audio vérité recordings. It seemed there was a flavor for every type of person, from PC-adverse Jerky Boys, to the surrealist Longmont Potion Castle, to the political audio tapestries of bands like Negativland. In the midst of all this were the Shut Up, Little Man! Tapes. These tapes were audio recordings of two, often very drunk, men arguing with each other. Laced with profanities and insults of mind-boggling originality, they’re sometimes uncomfortable to listen to, but a pure audio car-wreck that you can’t stop gawking at. These fights were recorded surreptitiously by a couple of quintessential 90s hipsters, Eddy Lee Sausage and Mitchell D. After putting up with their neighbors’ ridiculous fights for nights on end, they decided to record them by sticking a microphone out their window. And in the way things went viral in the pre-digital age, soon enough the coolest of the cool got their hands on copies of these tapes. The film explores not only the legacy of the recordings, but brings up the question of exploitation. Here were two twenty-somethings, secretly recording their drunken neighbors, who may or may not have issues beyond simple alcoholism, making money and getting underground credibility from others’ private conversations. As the popularity of the recordings spread, via a commercial cassette release by legendary fanzine Bananafish and then a CD release by equally legendary indie-rock taste-maker Matador Records, a whole world of fanart and fan re-appropriation bloomed. Underground comics popped, DIY theatrical performances were created. And in the midst of all this, Eddy Lee and Mitchell D. decided to copyright the material. The material that they recorded and reproduced under questionable legal standing and moral circumstances. American outsider art has always fought to find the line between appreciation and exploitation, and SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! tackles this head on, with Eddy Lee and Mitchell D trying to track down the men they recorded and give them money. But one wonders whether this is an honest attempt at recompense or just a cynical plot element for the documentary. Still, the film is highly entertaining and does a wonderful job of trying to show that people genuinely were laughing with the couple on the tape, not at them. The popularity and influence of the Shut Up, Little Man! tapes ranges from GHOST WORLD creator Daniel Clowes, to composer/performer John Zorn, to Sponge Bob Square Pants, a show that lifted dialogue directly from the tapes. For those of you who miss the 90s, or missed the 90s, SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! takes you back and reminds you about how truly weird that time was. (2011, 90 min) RJM
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; and Facets 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 until further notice. Below is the most recent information we have, which we will update as new information becomes available.
Note that venues/series marked with an asterisk (*) are currently presenting or plan to do regular or occasional “virtual” online screenings.
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 15 - May 21, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // John Dickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, JB Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael Glover Smith, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky