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.
PHYSICAL SCREENINGS
Screening at the Music Box this week are Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film INCEPTION (162 min, 70mm) and Yeon Sang-ho’s 2020 South Korean film PENINSULA [aka TRAIN TO BUSAN PRESENTS: PENINSULA] (116 min, DCP Digital). More info (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee) presents a socially-distanced outdoor screening of Chris Windsor’s 1982 film BIG MEAT EATER (82 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission. More info (including COVID policies) here.
CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL — BEST OF CUFF
The Chicago Underground Film Festival presents a month-long online retrospective, Best of CUFF, continuing through August 28, which includes at least 21 features and 14 shorts programs. All programs will be available for streaming for the run of the retrospective. Passes are $30 and individual programs are a suggested $10, or pay what you can. Reviews of select programs are below. Full details at www.cuff.org.
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Shorts Program Eleven
The films in Program Eleven take various warmhearted, egalitarian, and hallowed views on humanity with a long-lens perspective on people in relation to architecture, emotions, gender, and objects both commercial and universal. Sky Hopinka's ANTI-OBJECTS, OR SPACE WITHOUT PATH OR BOUNDARY (2017) is a vigorous and prismatic distillation of Hopinka's overall project up to that point. His tilted camera shows even the horizon lines are out of balance, stillness is unachievable as the camera is shaken after a long stretch of contemplation. But language and light might attune the tension. The words of architect/philosopher Kengo Kuma are commingled with jocular recordings of the threatened language Chinookan creole/Chinuk Wawa. Images of instability and ersatz landscapes flicker and smear. But this off kilter world is recognized and resolved with verbal aplomb and visual wit. The final images achieve a balance, but perhaps not a permanence. Hopinka's vision is sure and buoyant, and it is always a delight to revel in his work. Roger Beebe's HISTORIA CALAMITATUM (THE STORY OF MY MISFORTUNES), PART 2: THE CRYING GAME (2014) is the essay film version of a Sunday drive. It is, in turns, a sharp and meandering treatise on male crying. The excessive currency given to male tears are acknowledged, but the funny-peculiar tear-triggers are celebrated. It's charming and jubilant and will certainly find a way to draw a little sincere emotion. Jennifer Reeder's CRYSTAL LAKE (2016) is a shaky but affirmative growl of a teenage tale. Sure, the modern-day non-white star of the film seemingly relies on her 80s vinyl and VHS’s, but you could nitpick or you could celebrate the universality of pop-culture magic to smooth away the traumas of family and life. Skateboarding and riot/grrrl/power give our protagonist her shield while her new friend group reclaims the skate park as a feminine space giving her a safety-net which the fickle frailty of life has stolen from her. Also screening is Nellie Kluz's GOLD PARTY (2013), which is covered below in the review of Shorts Program Thirteen. [JB Mabe]
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Shorts Program Twelve
The only downside to this program of CUFF favorites is that it lacks a thematic through line; all of the shorts here are superb, yet they’re superb in very different ways. Chris Royalty’s SINCERITY: THE CHARACTER OF RONALD REAGAN (2010, 6 min) opens the set. Drawn from footage belonging to the Reagan Presidential Library, this brief experimental work considers the media manipulation required to create seemingly offhanded moments for public consumption. One shot, filled with cameras and wires, presents the filming of a TV ad for Reagan’s re-election campaign; another shows the President and his wife Nancy watching the election results on television as they’re surrounded by men with boom mics. Between these moments, Royalty presents part of an interview where Reagan reflects on how show business prepared him for a career in politics. The President speaks to the importance of putting feeling into what you say in order to reach a large audience, though whether he means genuine feeling or simply the veneer of it Royalty leaves to the viewer to decide. The next selection, Patrick Brice’s MAURICE (2011, 19 min), looks at another kindly older gentleman: Maurice Laroche, owner and operator of the last cinema in France to screen adult movies on 35mm. Brice observes his subject cleaning the theater, selling tickets, and inspecting 40-year-old film cans stored in the men’s room closet. Despite the lewd nature of the movies he screens, Laroche emerges as a cheery, approachable fellow, quick to share a joke or a nice word about a business acquaintance. There’s a melancholy undercurrent to the film, as Laroche knows that his business will close when he retires (and that day is quickly approaching), meaning a small industry will have to come to end. Yet a spirit of bonhomie prevails, along with a good-natured enthusiasm for celluloid projection. A MILLION MILES AWAY (2014, 28 min), a narrative short by CUFF stalwart Jennifer Reeder, shifts the tone of the program from jovial to unnerving. Often shooting in tight closeup, Reeder fosters feelings of nervous intimacy with her subjects. The first portion of the film depicts several teenage girls in suburban Ohio, emphasizing how they confide in each other in person and via text messaging. We learn of the characters’ messy family lives and musical tastes, and Reeder is astute in showing how, for many adolescents, these two things can seem equally important. In the film’s second half, Reeder switches the scene to a high school choir class, alternating attention between the various female students and their substitute teacher, who (we learn from diary entries) is having an affair with a married man. The writer-director navigates the numerous characters effectively, managing a half-dozen interpersonal conflicts. Things come to a head during the rehearsal of an a cappella version of Judas Priest’s “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming,” then resolve with the tidy emotional satisfaction of a good short story. Jeremey Bessoff’s puppet animation ANOTHER SONG ABOUT THE SEA (2013, 28 min) concludes the program on a poignant note, using deep-sea diving as a metaphor for the dissolution of a marriage. Set in the 1930s, the short looks at the designer of a deep-sea vessel and his strained relationship with his wife. He prepares for a record-setting dive while she ruminates on her past; their two trajectories converge during a tense climax when the hero embarks on his mission. ANOTHER SONG is notably free of dialogue, and the absence of words calls attention to the characters’ inability to communicate with each another. The soundtrack, however, is quite rich, featuring an experimental chamber score with creepy piano and string effects. [Ben Sachs]
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Shorts Program Thirteen
Does matter have meaning? Does meaning even matter? These are two of the existential and phenomenological questions implicitly posed by the shorts in this program, which interrogate the relationships between surfaces and perceptions, materiality and its inherent or assigned value. Scott Stark’s TRACES 1-5 (6 min) animates these very cinematic principles—quite literally. As per the description, Stark transferred a series of still images onto film, and then had the top and bottom halves of each image projected in rapidly alternating succession. The effect is an entrancing and visceral disordering of space, in which pavement, vehicles, foliage, and human figures become splintered and defamiliarized, often convulsing into an abstraction that forces us to relinquish habitual processes of identification. It’s not just a hypnotic visual experience, either; Stark lets the syncopated rhythms of his images generate the soundtrack’s percussive beats, underscoring the fact that TRACES 1-5 is, above all, a machine’s organization of reality. Dispensing with or at least challenging signification to an even greater degree is Manuela de Laborde’s AS WITHOUT SO WITHIN (25 min). Comprised of mostly stationary, close-up shots of unidentifiable objects, the film asks us to consider material forms without recourse to iconic recognition; in other words, it encourages us to see without knowing, to experience Kant’s ideal of a “thing-in-itself.” Even when the objects are most evocative—most viewers will probably be reminded of cosmic imagery and rocks—Laborde will switch to another angle, shot scale, or lighting regime to confound our perception. The borderline forensic scrutiny of the camera only serves, paradoxically, to make the inscrutability of the objects more pronounced. Nellie Kluz’s GOLD PARTY (17 min), also playing in Shorts Program Eleven, is a bit of an outlier here. Not only is there no mistaking the object being examined (hint: it’s in the title), but the film also takes a more prosaic approach to its material. The focus is primarily on scrap dealers as they attain, sort, evaluate, and process various gold items customers have brought in to exchange for cash. “Who determines the price of gold?,” asks one subject. “It’s inexplicable,” answers a dealer with honest puzzlement, distilling a feeling that hovers over so much of commodity culture. Bringing us back around to aesthetic experimentation, albeit in a more familiar family milieu, John Price’s HOME MOVIE - DOMASHNYEE KINO (27 min) is largely what it says it is: a document of the filmmaker’s domestic life, centered on his two young children. Price films them traipsing across a neighborhood playground, asleep at home, and in various states of youthful repose. What is notable here is his technique, employing a 35mm Russian camera, antiquated film stocks, impressionistic editing, and a protean soundscape to depict childhood as a state of shifting, tactile textures. Price may convey a sense of transience by contracting time and emphasizing the changing surroundings, but the lived-in rawness of his images lingers, both freezing and defying the realities they index. [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Shorts Program Fourteen
This shorts collection concludes with Nellie Kluz’s documentary SERPENTS & DOVES (2018, 30 min), an inquisitive, nonjudgmental look at a Mississippi theater company that stages outdoor productions of Shakespeare and Bible stories. Kluz focuses on the mundane aspects of putting on plays (blocking actors, making costumes, feeding the cast and crew), rather than the company’s religious mission, and this makes the subjects seem like any regional theater troupe. Occasionally the filmmaker allows some alarming detail to enter into the otherwise upbeat portrait, as when one of the actors, who’s a cop in his daily life, admits that playing characters in plays prepared him to go undercover and arrest drug dealers; another actor confesses that he doesn’t feel safe unless he’s carrying a firearm. Yet these moments serve primarily as shading for what is generally an operational study; they only seem more pronounced because SERPENTS & DOVES arrives after three wonderfully baffling works. Kent Lambert’s WREST (2012, 5 min), which opens the program, is a hypnotic video assemblage that incorporates a wealth of footage from Chicago Film Archives and a droning rock track by Chicago band CAVE. The music and editing seem to pulse as one as Lambert shifts furiously between random film clips, home movies shot at Disneyland, old wrestling matches in black-and-white, and much more. Jerzy Rose’s ALL GHOST WOMEN PLAY THE THEREMIN (2009, 18 min) is a bizarre narrative that centers around a date on a hot-air balloon that goes disastrously wrong, but also considers paranormal phenomena, dreams, and a woman playing a concert on the title instrument. As in Rose’s later features, Luis Buñuel seems to be a primary influence; one feels traces of the master’s early, Surrealist films in the way Rose moves fluidly between unconnected subjects, conveying a subconscious logic. The wacky humor, however, is distinct to Rose’s work; the scenes on the hot-air balloon are particularly absurd, with animator (and SAIC professor) Chris Sullivan delivering a very funny turn as the inept conductor. Lastly, Jim Finn’s CHUMS FROM ACROSS THE VOID (2015, 18 min) defies categorization. It’s a fake infomercial for a “Psychic Friends”-style network that connects users to the outspoken leftist figures they were in previous lives. Best known for the experimental features INTERKOSMOS and THE JUCHE IDEA, Finn excels at spinning fantasies out of old kitschy media and communist propaganda, creating strange alternate histories where Eastern and Western societies collapse into each other. The filmmaker generally presents his fantasies with a straight face, and this always makes them stranger and funnier; CHUMS is no exception. The catchy soundtrack features not only a theme song for the psychic hotline, but also a disco version of the theme. [Ben Sachs]
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Brian Ashby, Ben Kolak and Courtney Prokopas' SCRAPPERS (US/Documentary)
SCRAPPERS, which won both the Best Documentary Feature and Audience awards at the 2010 Chicago Underground Film Festival, is the definitive record of a vast underground culture. Who drives those spray-painted trucks with high walls full of battered appliances, and what happens to the things they collect? The first feature-length documentary by Brian Ashby, Ben Kolak and Courtney Prokopas, SCRAPPERS travels with two hardworking men and their families through three years of life at the margins of fickle, consumer-driven industry. The patient and curious camera reveals a Chicago of informal economies, not just ins and outs of collecting scrap metal, but bargains with neighbors through car windows and child-care arrangements made when everybody works and no one has money. Like their subjects, the filmmakers are quick on their toes and have their eyes wide open to the luck of circumstance; their captured goods range from the tenderly human to the violently mechanized. We notice every cat that wanders through the frame and peek into every pot cooking on a stove. The familiar aspect of Chicago's alleyways is rendered uncanny with gliding, truck's-eye-view camera work. Long wordless sequences of cars being compressed and copper being turned from cables to dust are buoyed by Chicago percussionist Frank Rosaly's optimistic workday funk score (performed on found metal objects). With the exception of a handful of well-placed inter-titles, SCRAPPERS lets the subjects and images do all the telling of both the personal stories about making ends meet and the big political story about a crashing economy and the crashing price of metals. They are the same and different stories at once; the connections are deep and plain. Documentaries rarely balance deep involvement with such a light touch. The result is essential. (2009, 90 min) [Josephine Ferorelli]
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Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley and David Beilinson's WHO TOOK JOHNNY? (US/Documentary)
When an entire airliner full of people can vanish into the ether it shouldn't be surprising that a 12-year-old boy can simply disappear, but it always is. How is it possible that he could just be nowhere? After all, every episode of every long-running TV cop drama starts with a body being found, and people don't just go missing from suburban Iowa. Yet in 1982, Johnny Gosch vanished while on his paper route in West Des Moines, leaving his dog and his newspapers on the sidewalk, never to be seen again. WHO TOOK JOHNNY? starts off telling this story like a PBS special: through archival footage and current interviews with witnesses, the disappearance and its immediate aftermath are given context and resonance. Over time Johnny's mother, Noreen, transforms from broken-hearted, big-haired mom to media-savvy advocate, helping to pass legislation streamlining the federal response to missing children (when her son vanished, filing a missing person's report on a child was subject to the same 72-hour wait as an adult, and all missing teens in her community were assumed runaways until proven otherwise.) Her dogged pursuit of justice and reform makes it all the more chilling when midway through the film, the story of her son's disappearance changes to one of conspiracy, pedophilia, and government cover-ups. It's a captivating story that makes you feel over and over again: is any conclusion really better than not knowing? (2013, 78 min) [Chloe A. McLaren]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Barbara Kopple’s DESERT ONE (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
In DESERT ONE, Barbara Kopple explores US-Iranian relations before, during, and after the capture of 52 Americans at the United States Embassy in Tehran and their holding as hostages for 444 days during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The documentary offers a fascinating and in-depth look at the covert extraction attempted in 1980 through a combination of archival footage, animated reenactments, and interviews with some of the hostages, members of the extraction plan (including Jimmy Carter), and some of the Iranians who played witness during the entire affair. Kopple’s storytelling approach here is methodical, candid, and thorough. She seemingly leaves no stone unturned to tell the most complete version of the narrative possible. This process not only offers an emotional connection to the parties involved but also provides thorough context to what both America and Iran were thinking at the time. The documentary also serves as a vehicle to discuss the political discourse happening in the U.S. during the 1980 presidential election between Carter and Reagan, while providing a platform for Carter to provide a post-mortem of sorts on the event that came to define the final year of his presidency. Considering the endless saber-rattling that characterizes the present-day foreign policy between the United States and Iran, DESERT ONE shows that relative civility existed between the two countries despite obvious tensions in the late 70’s-early 80’s, and that perhaps there is a path for reconciliation one day. (2019, 108 min) [Kyle Cubr]
JoAnn Elam’s EVERYDAY PEOPLE (US/Documentary)
Available to view for free on the Chicago Film Archives’ website here
With everything that's going on with the United States Postal Service—if you haven’t heard, now's a good time to buy some stamps—the rough cut of the late Chicago-based experimental filmmaker JoAnn Elam’s EVERYDAY PEOPLE, available to watch on the Chicago Film Archives website, is crucial viewing in the utmost sense of the phrase. Found on a videocassette (though parts of it were shot on 16mm as well as video) in the CFA’s collection of Elam’s films and related ephemera, it was and remains still a work in progress, which Elam labored on for over ten years. In addition to being a filmmaker, among whose best-known works are the films RAPE (1975) and LIE BACK AND ENJOY IT (1982), Elam was also, for at least some of the time she was making this film, a letter carrier based out of the Logan Square post office. What exists of EVERYDAY PEOPLE features four postal workers—two women and two men —as they go about their jobs, ruminating on the ins and outs of it, from the actual sorting and delivery of the mail to less-considered aspects like watching out for dogs and keeping an eye on the neighborhood; one of the workers recounts an incident when he saw a man had collapsed in his home and had to enter the house in order to save him. The women talk about their individual experiences, and while race isn’t explicitly broached, Elam wrote in her notes that she chose underrepresented workers (two of the four carriers are Black and one is Latino) as a contrast to the white Eurocentric males who tended to dominate affiliated labor organizations. One of the most compelling aspects of the film is how it shows the letter carrier to be an ingrained part of the community. Charmingly, it also features not one, but two folksy songs respective to the experiences of letter carrying, one of which is about the dogs that postal workers encounter along their routes (“Watch that doggy doggy doggy, watch that little dog”). Also included in the CFA’s collection is footage Elam either shot or collected on the postal worker experience: POSTAL SERVICE and two pieces both called POSTAL WORKERS' WASHINGTON DC (here’s one and here’s the other). Elam herself was heavily involved in the postal workers’ union, having “served as one of Chicago’s union delegates to the National Association of Letter Carriers biennial convention” at least three times, per Chicago Film Archives’ illuminating post on the film. For those interested in learning more about Elam and this film, I highly recommend reading it, as well as this article for Art21 Magazine that former Cine-File contributor Beth Capper wrote in 2011. Now’s a good time to revel in the sanctity of the post office and also to learn more about the work of a filmmaker who was ahead of her time in seeking to convey the intrinsic value of this extraordinary public service. (1979-1990, 22 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
Shridhar Bapat, Daniel Landau, Susan Milano, Garret Ormiston, and Elyshia Pass’ TRANSSEXUALS (US/Documentary)
Livestreaming on Zoom via Media Burn Archive – Thursday, 11am CST; register here
The long-unseen video documentary TRANSSEXUALS was made in 1971 and is very much a product of its time in several ways. Most obviously in its title, a marker, through its dated terminology, that fixes the video in an earlier era and serves as a reminder that our use of language is not static (the filmmakers acknowledge in text at the beginning and in the online description that the then-accepted descriptor of the title is out-of-date). It is also a work that sits at a pivotal point in the history of video—the early years of lower-cost, portable video recording. It was shot on ½” tape with a Sony AVC 3400 Portapak, just two years after Sony introduced the Portapak system. This new technology was quickly adopted by artists and guerrilla/independent documentary makers, including John Reilly, who co-founded in 1969 the NYC-based video group and media center Global Village, which capitalized on portable video, and soon after began teaching workshops in video production at the New School. It was as part of one of these workshops that TRANSSEXUALS was made, by a group of five students: Shridhar Bapat, Daniel Landau, Susan Milano, Garret Ormiston, and Elyshia Pass (though some period literature erroneously credits Reilly as the maker, he was the “project advisor,” as listed in the tape’s credits). Sony’s Portapak recorded in black-and-white, and in a reduced quality from professional/studio video cameras and recorders; these technical limitations, coupled with the age of the original tape, leave us with a video full of flaws—distortion, glitches, inconsistent sound, a fuzzy, lo-fi image—which, for some of us, are welcome indexes of the materiality and historical specificity of this early video format that add as much value to the documentary as the content does. For most viewers, though, it is the content that will be of main interest. The video consists primarily of interviews—with two main subjects, Deborah Hartin and Esther Reilly; group discussions with additional transgender individuals (including trans-rights activist Sylvia Rivera); a sociologist; and people on the street; there’s also a brief montage of television commercials for women’s beauty products and footage of male bodybuilders, a slightly awkward, slightly charming attempt to visualize social representations of the gender binary. Given its brief 26-minute running time, TRANSSEXUALS perhaps places undue emphasis on gender-affirming surgery, with detailed descriptions by Hartin and Reilly; though this exploitation-leaning discussion would likely be avoided now, considering when the tape was made it is handled surprisingly sensitively and forthrightly. The video as a whole shares these qualities; much that could easily slide into the sensationalistic is tempered by the seemingly respectful (if at times naïve or overly blunt) inquiry of the students, the candor, emotion, and, at times, humor of Hartin and Reilly, and the counterpointing of the person-on-the-street interviews (near the end an older man’s chauvinist opinions are undercut by his wife who interrupts him stating that he always said that when he comes back he would want to be a woman). As one of the earliest documentaries on the lives and experiences of transgender individuals, it’s a fascinating and valuable document both of the intimate possibilities of early video and of trans representation in media; it’s also moving in its simplicity and sincerity. Hopefully it will receive additional exposure now that it’s been digitized and lightly restored. (1971, 26 min) [Patrick Friel]
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The video streams as part of a live discussion event with co-director Susan Milano; Andrew Gurian, who assisted with the restoration; and Dr. Christina Milano, co-founder and Medical Director of the Oregon Health & Science University Transgender Health Program.
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Jonás Trueba’s THE AUGUST VIRGIN (Spain)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
THE AUGUST VIRGIN announces its intentions right from the start, when Eva (Itsaso Arana) is ushered into the Madrid apartment she will live in for the first two weeks of August by its current occupant, who is leaving the city to escape the oppressive heat and settle his recently deceased mother’s estate. He tells her he is working on an article about American philosopher Stanley Cavell and the influence of transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson on Cavell’s work. He explains to Eva that Cavell is best known for his book on 1930s Hollywood comedies, Pursuits of Happiness, and voices his admiration for actors like Barbara Stanwyck and Katharine Hepburn who were self-possessed and strong. This opening sets the stage for Eva’s quest to discover her true self as she moves through her picturesque hometown by day and celebrates the festivals of San Cayetano, San Lorenzo, and La Paloma by night, going out with friends, having long talks about life, and wondering what it takes to really emerge into adulthood. Arana wrote the screenplay, and she hones in on the issues that matter to women in their thirties and what it looks like to let go of limitless possibilities and put some stakes in the ground. THE AUGUST VIRGIN will hit many viewers where they live; for those long past this stage of life, Eva’s struggle is a bit nostalgic and very touching. (2019, 125 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Scott Crawford’s CREEM: AMERICA’S ONLY ROCK ’N’ ROLL MAGAZINE (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve been nearly as interested in criticism of music and movies as I have been in the thing itself. In my teenage years in the mid-‘80s, I began reading the first generation of rock critics—fiery writers like Lester Bangs and Dave Marsh, who found their initial place of freedom at a place called Creem, which I learned was this legendary Detroit-based magazine. Now the story of this seminal chapter in rock criticism is told in Scott Crawford’s alternately joyous and heartbreaking documentary, CREEM: AMERICA’S ONLY ROCK ’N’ ROLL MAGAZINE. Creem was founded in inner-city Detroit in 1969 by a hip capitalist named Barry Kramer, and soon attracted a group of young local misfits. When Bangs arrived from California, the “band” was complete. As writers they were a hell of a group, gifted; Bangs was a genius. Ferocious and iconoclastic, profane and wisecracking, Creem’s basic idea was, if some other magazine said “you can’t do that,” they’d do it. It treated music as if it were pure hilarious fun on the one hand, and the most serious thing in the universe on the other. The film follows the magazine’s trajectory outward from the inner city, whence they decamped to a communal farm in Walled Lake, and from there to the relatively tony environs of Birmingham. After Barry Kramer’s death in 1981, his ex-wife Connie sold the magazine and it moved to L.A., where it folded in 1989. Kramer and Bangs both died young and accidentally, in some combination of drug misadventure, personal demons, and illness. The film is essentially an homage to Barry Kramer—a driven, plucky man, an idealist and opportunist in competing measure. It honors the way that, as a publisher, Kramer unleashed a singularly puissant group of writers. These young Creem journalists became intellectuals and editors simply because Kramer anointed them as such. He goaded them until he smothered them, and then they had to leave him. Marsh departed circa ’74; Bangs in ’76. Though Creem was indelibly a product of a certain time and place—the squalor of Detroit in the terminal days of the ‘60s—it went on to become a kind of emblem of the ‘70s: degenerate, perhaps, but still teeming with life. Where I came in with rock ’n’ roll was, for better or worse, with Kiss—my favorite group when I was eight. In a famous stunt, Creem writer Jaan Uhelzki even reported on what it was like to go onstage with Kiss, decked out in full makeup and regalia. Creem gave female rock writers like Uhelzki, Roberta “Robbie” Cruger, and Susan Whitall, all of whom speak out in the film, a home for their writing, even if it basically set out to titillate teenage boys. That said, Creem never condescended to its young readers. As Marsh states, “I had a vision of what the magazine could do for kids who were out there getting ridiculed and beat up and all that shit…there’s some other kid who’s gonna read this thing, and be freed by it.” Cut to Michael Stipe of R.E.M., who testifies that he was that very boy—a queer kid who found his community by reading Creem. There was a time when I was quite interested in researching this subject, myself. I tracked down a couple old issues from ’71 or ’72; one featured poetry by Patti Smith. Director/co-writer Scott Crawford makes a solid, professional, occasionally exhilarating job of this. The film was co-written by Uhelzki, who also co-produced, along with J.J. Kramer, Barry’s son, whose on-screen grappling with the legacy of his late father—he was four years old when his dad died—is keenly poignant. There’s footage taken by a public television crew at Creem headquarters, located in the bombed-out Cass Corridor of the post-1967 uprising, that’s worth the price of admission all by itself. I love this vision of Creem as a place where everyone was passionately caught up in a common project. I liked the animated interludes, including a hilarious bit where a cartoon Marsh and Bangs reenact their famous—in certain circles—brawl involving dog-doo and typewriters. Cameron Crowe opines that the stakes Bangs and Marsh were really fighting over were “why and how to love the thing they love.” This jibes with Bangs’s legendary, breathtakingly hostile—and deeply funny—series of interviews with Lou Reed, which Greil Marcus opines were really about Lou and Lester trying to express their love for each other. The movie is very fast: it hops between a dizzying array of interviewees, though not some of the ones you might expect—there’s no Patti Smith, for example. It’s all over in a brisk hour and 16 minutes. There are ways the film could have gone deeper: there was a whole radical political context in Detroit for early Creem that the film barely touches. Still, because of my personal predilections, I enjoyed this tremendously. While refusing to flinch from the dark side, the film conveys the essential glory of Creem: its idealistic, truthful, and, finally, deeply affectionate spirit. Even as I age, Creem symbolizes a sensibility—a kind of integrity, a sense of community—that I’ll always try to keep close to my heart. Among many others, the film features appearances by John Sinclair, Ted Nugent, Chad Smith, Bebe Buell, Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Jeff Daniels, Kirk Hammett, Peter Wolf, Suzi Quatro, Don Was, Lenny Kaye, and Thurston Moore, as well as critics and journalists including Robert Christgau, Ann Powers, Robert Duncan, Ed Ward, Chuck Eddy, John Holmstrom, and Legs McNeil. (2020, 76 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
Kôji Fukada’s A GIRL MISSING (Japan)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here and the Gene Siskel Film Center here
The three films I’ve seen by Japanese writer-director Kôji Fukada—HOSPITALITÉ, HARMONIUM, and now A GIRL MISSING—are commendable for the very quality that makes them difficult to write about—that is, they change shape unpredictably. The pleasure of discovering Fukada’s work is tied to being surprised by it; because I want readers to enjoy the movies, I don’t want to deny them the surprises. I will say that Fukada’s plot twists never feel manipulative or desperate, but rather they seem to emerge from the mysteries of life itself. Life takes strange turns, so movies should too, Fukada seems to be saying. In A GIRL MISSING, fate intervenes cruelly in the life of a home-care nurse played movingly by Fukada regular Mariko Tsutsui; the film’s twists are generally tragic in nature. What makes them especially sad is that the nurse, Ichiko, suffers so randomly. She isn’t punished for a past sin, as in many classical tragedies; rather, she’s the victim of circumstance (and, later, the kind of herd mentality that’s so pervasive online). Even before Fukada introduces the element of tragedy, A GIRL MISSING is a quietly fascinating film, due in large part to the perceptive way it observes the heroine’s life. Ichiko is the sort of character that narrative movies tend to neglect: she’s a single, childless middle-aged woman who can support herself just fine. She isn’t sick from lovelessness, like Katherine Hepburn’s beloved spinster in SUMMERTIME, but something seems precarious about her life. Fukada presents the minutiae of Ichiko’s job as though her career hangs in a delicate balance, as though any small mistake could bring her downfall. The worst does occur, but Fukada holds off on letting it happen, cutting away from the story Atom Egoyan-style to a second story line about Ichiko’s bourgeoning relationship with a younger male hairdresser. How these narratives converge comprises another one of Fukada’s successful surprises. (2019, 111 min) [Ben Sachs]
Kris Rey’s I USED TO GO HERE (US)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Someone finally made it. And thank god it was Kris Rey. Up until now, nearly every film dealing with millennials have been stuck delivering the same tired avocado toast-style jokes, or have been nostalgic trips back to high school or the rosy days of the pre-2008 financial meltdown. With I USED TO GO HERE, Rey handles, with deft aplomb, what it’s like to be in your late-30s in the modern day. Gillian Jacobs plays author Kate Conklin, the writer of a rather terrible novel who is invited back to her alma mater by a former professor to give a reading. Returning to her college (the barely veiled Southern Illinois University, the actual alma mater of the writer/director, where the film was partially shot on location), Kate finds that she losing herself in a mire of self-doubt and aimlessness. All her friends back in Chicago are having babies, her fiancé has left her, and she’s been asked to take a teaching position at her old college. The idea of the Baby Boomer hating their steady corporate job and buying a sports car mid-life crisis is long dead and an impossibility for a generation who has lived through two financial crises; instead, Rey shows us what its really like for someone having an existential life crisis in 2020. Kate Conklin considers going back to early adulthood and shirking the life she once had. As an alum of SIU myself, who attended the school the same time Rey did, I absolutely understand this. In fact, I actually did this myself. I moved back to Carbondale for five years and went back to school. And I am far from the only person to have done it. Many people have written songs about the town being a black hole. It truly is a charming, bucolic, insidious place that way. Sigh. But anyway… Besides making a film that understands the realities of adult millennial weltschmerz, the manner in which Rey shows Conklin’s regression from self-assured adult to college-age ball of insecurities is masterful. I USED TO GO HERE begins as a rather straightforward dramatic comedy, replete with Girl Boss energy; but soon Rey not only plays with, but subverts, the entire style of the film until you find yourself in the back of a van full of college kids, alongside Conklin, as the film switches from thirtysomething dramedy into a by-the-book teenage college comedy film as Kate slowly befriends the college students who live in her old house, across the street from the Bed & Breakfast she’s staying at. There are absurd revenge schemes and sexual tension played for laughs. Soon, Kate gets caught up in the drama of college life, friend groups, infidelity, and sexual power dynamics. While the details of her story aren’t necessarily universal, the way she maneuvers through them definitely are. Even when the film plays the generational clichés for laughs, it does it with an honesty that is more self-reflective than cheap exploitation. Also, this is the first movie that has some straight up Millennial/Zoomer love going on, and I thoroughly appreciate that. As we reach our 40s, it’s those in their 20s that are going to be doing all the heavy lifting—culturally, socially, politically. Rey does a wonderful job of showing that, through the friendship and support this group of college kids gives. It’s genuinely heartwarming. (2020, 86 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Bert Stern and Aram Avakian’s JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
The history of motion pictures is inextricably tied to the field of photography, beginning with the motion studies of English photographer Eadweard Muybridge in the 1870s and moving through the 20th and 21st centuries with such photographer/directors as Agnès Varda, Stanley Kubrick, Gordon Parks, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Frank. Bert Stern, producer/director of JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY, was, like Frank, a commercial and fashion photographer. He’s best known now for his photos of Marilyn Monroe, but in 1958 he was interested in making an experimental film during the simultaneously occurring Newport Jazz Festival and the 18th running of the America’s Cup. Perhaps he was inspired by the entry of the first experimental yachts to be allowed into the Cup competition and the eclectic mix of Dixieland, big band, cool jazz, gospel, blues, and even rock ’n roll artists slated to appear at the festival. Whatever his motivation, he and five other cameramen descended on the elite island getaway and ended up creating, with the expert editing of Aram Avakian, the progenitor of the modern concert film. Dancing reflections in harbor waters are accompanied by the staccato sax of Jimmy Giuffre, the valve trombone of Bob Brookmeyer, and the guitar of Jim Hall playing “The Train and the River” as the credits introduce the talents Stern will feature. Louis Armstrong and Mahalia Jackson get top billing. Gerry Mulligan, Dinah Washington, Chico Hamilton, and Anita O’Day follow, and then other featured performers and a host of expert sidemen. The film warms us to its subject as it tees up preparations for the start of the America’s Cup and the day’s concert. A Dixieland band literally blows their way into town in an antique jalopy and acts as our intermittent guides through the film. The battle on the waves, seen in random geometric formations from the air, is scored with Thelonious Monk’s magnificent “Blue Monk,” making one wish there were more tunes from this jazz pioneer. I wasn’t familiar with Anita O’Day before this film, and she seems a dainty woman here in a feathered hat, frill-bottomed shift, and white gloves. She gingerly negotiates some steps in a pair of Lucite, high-heeled mules, but from then on, there is nothing timid about her ingenious, pitch-perfect renditions of “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “Tea for Two.” Perhaps my favorite act of the film is the Chico Hamilton Quintet, most memorable to cinephiles as the combo that backs Martin Milner in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957), performing the tribal-sounding, hypnotic “Blue Sands.” I was also thrilled to see Dinah Washington, a favorite singer of mine whom I’ve only known through recordings, smile her way through “All of Me.” Throughout the film, Stern’s directorial and photographic eye finds particular faces among the concertgoers—a man with a long cigar snapping his fingers, a mother and her young daughter enjoying Louis Armstrong’s banter and red-hot trumpeting, four African-American women swaying and snapping to Mahalia Jackson’s jubilant rendition of “Walk All Over God’s Heaven,” a young couple swing-dancing to Chuck Berry. These miniature portraits, as edited by Avakian, become something of a call-response between the musicians and the audience, building a feeling for the event that makes JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY more pleasurable with each viewing. Bert Stern never made another film, but that’s no cause for distress. Perfection’s hard to top. (1959, 82 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Dawn Porter's JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
It seems fitting that JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE is being released when it is. As we grapple with the racism made plain by the police killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, this film provides context for the present moment in this country’s still unfinished work for civil rights and racial equity. And while the current White House occupant until recently could not be bothered to wear a mask to help quash a global pandemic, this documentary celebrates a man who fearlessly put his body on the line for a cause greater than himself. The highlights of Lewis’ life may be familiar from obituaries and tributes: the Nashville sit-in movement, the Freedom Rides, his leadership of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the March on Washington, the “Bloody Sunday” confrontation with state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus bridge during the first Selma march. The filmmakers cover these points as well as other stories (like his childhood preaching to barnyard chickens) that Lewis himself acknowledges in the film he has told often before. Yet the filmmakers, working with Lewis, find ways to make these stories fresh, including visiting Lewis’ siblings and asking him to respond to previously unseen footage from the civil rights movement. The film covers his Congressional service, tracking one long day of constituent meetings and dropping in on a staff reunion; it also recounts the origin of the viral video of Lewis dancing in his office. Lewis does not always come off well in the film—we learn that his contentious 1986 primary election battle with former colleague Julian Bond fractured their friendship for years—and his decades-long marriage to his wife Lillian gets less attention than it should. Still, this documentary provides a well-rounded portrait of a courageous yet humble visionary who never stopped seeking justice or, in his words, making “good trouble” whether at the lunch counters of Nashville or the floor of the US House. Although Lewis himself is no longer with us, we are fortunate to still have JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE to tell his story and capture his spirit. (2020, 96 min) [Fred Tsao]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
Chicago Film Society
The Chicago Film Society currently has four 1980s snipes featuring Chicago radio icon Larry Lujack up on their Vimeo page here. A more general set of snipes are also available here.
American Writers Museum
Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco’s 2020 documentary FLANNERY (97 min) is available for rent locally via the AWM here.
Facets Cinémathèque
Oliver Krimpas’ 2019 UK film AROUND THE SUN (79 min), Rubaiyat Hossain’s 2019 Bangladeshi/International film MADE IN BANGLADESH (95 min), and Christopher Boone and Kevin Smokler’s 2020 documentary VINYL NATION (92 min) are available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Facets website for hold-over titles.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Check here for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Craig Roberts’ 2019 film ETERNAL BEAUTY (94 min) and the 2020 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour (82 min) are available for streaming beginning this week. Check here for hold-over titles.
Chicago International Film Festival
Check here for titles currently available for rental.
Chicago Latino Film Festival
CLFF is offering a selection of features and shorts for rental. Information here.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE RECOMMENDATIONS
CINEMA-19 (Experimental)
Available to view for free here
People have lamented the inevitable glut of films that will be made in response to the COVID-19 crisis, but I can’t help but be excited (is that the right word?) for them. Yes, throughlines will persist—Zoom will most certainly rear its ugly head—but many great art works have been made in response to similar adversities, and, when done effectively, are singular as a result of being a product of their maker. In the beguiling shorts program CINEMA-19, a project started by filmmakers Usama Alshaibi and Adam Sekuler, each 190-second film is wondrous in itself while still connected to others in the omnibus. As Alshaibi and Sekuler note, this collection of shorts by 16 filmmakers does “not attempt to summarize the pandemic, but instead focus on the personal, the political, the sensual, the distant, the abstract, and the absurd.” Courtney Stephens’ IRIS SEASON made me tear up—centered on the theme of irises, a flower in abundance where she was quarantining near San Francisco, Stephens’ film encapsulates the experience of trying to make sense of what’s happening around you, whether it’s within one’s control or, as with the pandemic, not. “It’s a trick,” she says. “When you decide that what you’re looking for is exactly what’s around you, life improves.” But is it a helpful trick or merely a distraction? A mindset that serves to draw us away from the horrors of the current situation? “Other things happened during iris season,” Stephens laments. “100,00 people died. Then more.” Somewhat similarly, Kalpana Subramanian’s WOOLGATHERING utilizes small facets of one’s immediate surroundings to ethereal, then ominous effect, the shadow-pattern of a lovely curtain turning into a field of dandelions, then back to the curtain, then, portentously, to a series of less-enchanting shots over which sinister music reverberates. Where Stephens explicitly ruminates on the dissonance inherent to the moment, Subramanian conveys this newfound paradigm via the contrasting of images; both are beautiful and discomfiting. The tonal shifts in Usama Alshaibi’s IN THE DIRT make it feel epic in scope. Opening with unidentified voices conversing as one person digs through the dirt, with foreboding music playing in tandem, it soon shifts to footage of people seemingly enjoying a bonfire, with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 2” playing on the soundtrack. It would seem Scott Cummings, who lives in New York City, himself had the virus. His potent short, TARANTULA, centers on the suggestion, as quoted by Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Deirdre Barrett, that those “closer to the pandemic threat… are more likely to experience outbreak-influenced dreams,” in particular about bugs. Cummings’ son then recounts, in hushed tones, his dream about a tarantula that attacks and kills him; onscreen text reveals that Cummings had a similar dream. Soon, a child's screams can be heard, presumably like those which might have occured during the aforementioned nightmare. Stylized cinematography, similar to the city’s neon-ethereal lighting, elevates the delirium. Filmed at 4:30 AM, Lori Felker’s BROKEN NEW: PANDEMIC reflects how much of life right now feels like rising at that time. Felker positions herself in front of a green screen, attempting to wake herself up in the process. The green screen then turns into a news broadcast-like setup (this most evokes the possibilities of Zoom out of all the films) in front of which she discusses Godzilla t-shirts. It doesn’t make any sense—in the best possible way—but neither does anything else right now, especially the news. “I don’t know,” she concludes. “I can’t remember anything.” Along those lines, Matt McCormick’s IN SOME OTHER WAY takes one of Trump’s press conferences, during which he suggests some utterly batshit solutions for the virus, enlarging his head and raising the pitch of his voice. Simple, humorous, and enraging. In OPEN FOR BUSINESS, Eman Akram Nader and Alex Megaro depict various signage, mostly billboards with cheesy sentiments about front-line workers, around a highway in New Jersey; it ends with footage of a closed amusement park called American Dream, an all-too appropriate symbol, along with saccharine messages of hope and togetherness seen on billboards. Christin Turner’s A DREAM IN RED, labeled as being an excerpt, uses 35mm nitrate film negative of footage of the 1944 Vesuvius eruption, some of which is tinted bright red. The sound, done by C H A I N E S, is a disturbing mix of atonal noise and whispering voices. Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa beautifully captures the entrancing magnificence of lustrous nighttime lighting in A YELLOW NIGHT. In the distance, sirens are heard and a train goes by, and below, a homeless man walks across a parking lot—its simplicity is affecting. The use of sound and music in most all of these films is interesting. In Kelly Gallagher’s POCO ALLEGRETTO, which considers the crippling anxiety brought on by coronavirus and the resulting crisis, she declares, in text over images of snow falling in a wooded area, that even Brahms couldn’t relax her; meanwhile, the third movement of Brahms’ “Symphony No. 3” plays. Gallagher relates this anxiety back to a bad car accident that nearly killed her and her husband, with pictures of the injuries she sustained. She also ruminates over her love of winter, with photos of her as a child enjoying the season, and concludes that the ability of the body to heal is a beautiful thing. Much has been made of the impact the crisis might have on victims of domestic violence, who now face even more difficulties in leaving because of quarantine. Sarah Ema Friedland’s HER OWN TIME, a Meerkat Media Newsreel, ingeniously appropriates the stock imagery that accompanies many articles on the subject, placing women, often with their heads in their hands, in different scenarios, showing them as being more than merely distraught victims. “When her hands are no longer holding her face, what will they hold?” it asks. The answer: her own time. William Brown and Mila Zuo subversively consider two things at play during the pandemic—cohabitation with loved ones and racism toward Asian people—in the delightfully droll, but still impactful, COYOTE. Brown and Zuo, the latter pregnant, appear as a couple facing standard trials: stress, paranoia, the passing of gas. After some playful banter between the two, it cuts to footage of a coyote in a park, over which news reports of racist incidents toward Asian people are heard. This combination of humor and potency packs a punch. Amir George’s UPHEAVAL OF CLEVE has a similar urgency as it depicts the titular Cleve (Anansi Knowbody, who collaborated on the story with George) contending with news of police violence against Black people, the protests, and economic struggle, in addition to the general malaise caused by quarantine; Cleave delivers a poignant monologue directly to us through a window, breaking that fourth wall, one that keeps many of us separate from the hurt and terror we see on TV and on our phones. Lastly, Adam Sekuler presents a compendium within a compendium, exhibiting videos provided by people he asked to share some thoughts on what’s happening, with a distorted voice musing on the fragility of this moment. At times, various renditions of the song “All by Myself” plays, hence the title, THOSE DAYS ARE GONE. Yes, they are. [Kathleen Sachs]
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Cine-File Associate Editor Kathleen Sachs will be moderating a Q&A with the filmmakers on Saturday, August 22 at 2 PM CDT. You can access the Zoom meeting here, using meeting ID 922 8775 3235 and passcode cinema19.
Diane Kurys’ PEPPERMINT SODA (France)
Available to stream with a subscription on the Criterion Channel, on Kanopy from participating libraries with your library card, and for rent on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, and Google Play
The saying goes, “write what you know.” It’s advice that has paid dividends for filmmaker Diane Kurys throughout her successful career, and no more so than with her screenwriting and directorial debut, PEPPERMINT SODA, which is the first of several of her films to contain large chunks of autobiographical material. In this film, Anne Weber (Eléonore Klarwein), the 13-year-old Jewish girl who is the avatar for Kurys, channels the director’s memories of being the child of divorce at an awkward age in a story that is as complex and occasionally ridiculous as life itself. Set largely during 1963–64 school year, the film opens with Anne and her older sister, Frédérique (Odile Michel), enjoying a day at the beach with their father (Michel Puterflam) and Frédérique’s boyfriend, Marc (Darius Depoléon), before the girls return to Paris to move in with their mother (Anouk Ferjac) and start school. The film spends a big chunk of its running time at the school (shot at the actual school Kurys attended), eavesdropping on Anne and her friends as they display their wild theories about sex, watching them torment their math teacher (Dominique Lavanant), and witnessing their camaraderie as they help each other cheat their way through their classes. While the film focuses on Anne, Frédérique’s story is perhaps more thought-provoking. While their mother forbids her daughters from getting involved in politics, Frédérique is moved by a student in her history class who recounts witnessing the murder in 1962 of eight protesters against the right-wing Secret Army Organization at the Charonne station of the Paris Métro and aligns herself with new friends who are socially conscious. At the same time, her mother warns her daughter not to get too wrapped up in her boyfriend, advising her that passion dims—which Frédérique learns on a camping trip hilariously depicted though snapshots in which she looks like she’s having all her teeth pulled. Another great moment is when their mother comes home, distraught that she’s just been diagnosed with psoriasis, to be shocked with a birthday cake and Anne and Frédérique playing “My Yiddishe Mama” on the stereo. This film is brilliantly lensed by cinematographer Philippe Rousselot and is full of wonderful performances by the charismatic leads and especially the genius comic performance by veteran actor Dora Doll as a PE teacher. Among the great debut films that seem like miracles to cinephiles, we have to count Diane Kurys’ PEPPERMINT SODA. (1977, 101 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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 through the Gene Siskel Film Center, 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.
OPEN:
Music Box Theatre – The Music Box has reopened in a limited capacity, presenting physical, in-theater screenings and also continues to present online-only screenings*
Comfort Film (at Comfort Station) – Comfort Film is doing socially distanced outdoor film screenings. More information here.
CLOSED/POSTPONED/HIATUS:
Asian Pop-Up Cinema – Spring series postponed till the fall*
Beverly Arts Center – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Events cancelled/postponed until furtuer notice*
Chicago Film Archives – The CFA’s annual “Media Mixer” event, previously scheduled for May, has been rescheduled for September 16
Chicago Film Society – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Chicago Filmmakers – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice*
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Screenings cancelled until further notice
Facets Cinémathèque – Closed until further notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
filmfront – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Gallery 400 (UIC) *
Gene Siskel Film Center – Closed until further notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)*
The Nightingale – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series (at the Park Ridge Public Library) – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Festivals:
Rescheduled with new dates announced:
The Gene Siskel Film Center will present a delayed online edition of the Black Harvest Film Festival from November 6-30. Information will be available at the Siskel website, www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
The Chicago Latino Film Festival – Originally scheduled for April, the Chicago Latino Film Festival will take place as a delayed online edition September 18-27. Information will be available mid- to late-August at www.chicagolatinofilmfestival.org.
Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival (presented by Chicago Filmmakers) has announced that the festival will take place online September 24-October 4. Information will be available at https://reelingfilmfestival.org.
Postponed with no announced plans yet:
The Cinepocalypse film festival (June) – 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: August 21 - August 27, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Kyle Cubr, Marilyn Ferdinand, Josephine Ferorelli, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, JB Mabe, Chloe A. McLaren, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Metzger, Scott Pfeiffer, Fred Tsao