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
Abel Ferrara’s THE PROJECTIONIST (US/Documentary)
Davis Theater – Check Venue website for showtimes
Master director Abel Ferrara’s documentary portrait of New York theater owner Nicolas Nicolaou is a big, sloppy kiss of a movie. It’s unruly and sometimes graceless, but also sincere and eminently lovable. As in his earlier documentary CHELSEA ON THE ROCKS (2008), the director frequently appears onscreen to interact with his subjects or comment on things directly—the documentary-film equivalent of coloring outside the lines. This time Ferrara’s accompanied by his wife Cristina and daughter Anna, last seen in his autobiographical fiction feature TOMMASO (also 2019). THE PROJECTIONIST feels like a natural continuation of that film in that Ferrara, serving as a foil to Nicolaou, gets to reflect on his own life as well as his subject’s. There’s a touching moment about halfway through the film when Nicolaou describes how he met his wife and started a family and Ferrara cuts to a shot of Cristina and Anna, showing through the most direct cinematic terms how he relates to his friend’s experience. Later on, Ferrara includes a scene where he stands outside one of Nicolaou’s theaters and engages two teenage boys in a chat about BLADE RUNNER 2049, which they just came out of and which he likely has no intention of seeing. Ferrara’s open-ended questions encourage the boys to speak openly and enthusiastically; the scene provides a glimpse into how he works with actors. Throughout THE PROJECTIONIST, Ferrara adds to Nicolaou’s recollections about running independent New York cinemas in the 1970s and 80s with clips from movies he remembers seeing at those theaters: underground films like PUTNEY SWOPE, ambitious hardcore films like BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR, and art films like Pasolini’s ARABIAN NIGHTS. (Ferrara’s own DRILLER KILLER gets quoted as well, reminding us of the director’s close ties to this particular scene.) None of the personal interjections distract from Nicolaou’s story, which at times suggests something Ferrara might have imagined in the 90s; rather, the autobiographical elements illuminate the main narrative by showing how Nicolaou directly inspired Ferrara. Nicolaou is a wonderful character from the start: a Cypriot who emigrated to New York when he was ten years old, he fell in love with going to the movies as a boy, got a job at an independent theater when he was in high school, and worked his way up the industry so quickly that he came to own several theaters by his mid-20s. I won’t reveal how Nicolaou came into his first million dollars (that story is a highlight of the film); suffice it to say, he spent his money in model fashion, sponsoring community efforts in his native Cyprus and sustaining several independent movie houses in New York and New Jersey that likely would have shuttered years ago if not for his patronage. One of the chief accomplishments of THE PROJECTIONIST is that it makes you glad, even proud, to support local movie houses; fittingly, 100 percent of the ticket sales from its Chicago run will go to host venue the Davis Theater. (2019, 82 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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More info at davistheater.com.
Brandon Cronenberg’s POSSESSOR (US)
Music Box Theatre – Check Venue website for showtimes
In the subgenre of body horror, the Cronenberg name carries weight. Due to David Cronenberg’s nearly 50 years of making audiences squeamish, his son Brandon Cronenberg’s film career contains a certain set of expectations. His first film, ANTIVIRAL in 2012, opened to solid, though not exceptional, reviews of a first entry in another career marked by the psychological and body horror genres. His follow-up, POSSESSOR, takes these ideas to another level, crafting a film equally horrifying and arresting. Focused on the idea of brain-implant technology that helps assassins commit high-profile murders, Cronenberg’s Sundance hit will satisfy fans of his father’s work, giving him established credibility as an impressive filmmaker in his own right. It’s a bloody, visceral, striking film that relies on detached performances from Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Abbott’s performance sticks into your mind, though, nestling itself deep inside your brain, due to the disturbing imagery Cronenberg throws at you with constant pressure. Abbott represents a man who delves into madness, confusion, and the unknown, representing a relatable feeling of uncertainty cranked up to max volume. The film knocks you down without hesitation, showing you just enough gore to make you turn your head, but not enough for you to close your eyes. Cronenberg completes a balancing act of taking you to the edge of the building, and only reeling you back in once you’ve seen and heard enough. Though not without a few plot holes, unexplainable moments, and nearly implausible jumps in story, POSSESSOR shows Cronenberg’s growth in the eight years since his first feature, placing him as a filmmaker with talent, guts, and the willingness to show audiences the unexpected. If you can stomach it, POSSESSOR is a burst of light, blood, and gushing beauty, pricked with fine actors, interesting ideas, and a sense of technological dispassion that only a Cronenberg can create. (2020, 103 min, Digital Projection) [Michael Frank]
Christopher Nolan’s TENET (US)
Music Box Theatre – Check Venue website for showtimes
Christopher Nolan has a fascination with time in nearly all of his movies, whether it’s the dilation of time as in INTERSTELLAR, the deconstruction of narrative time as in MEMENTO, or telling a story utilizing different increments of time as in DUNKIRK. TENET marks the first time in which he actually tackles time travel. The film centers on a CIA agent known only as The Protagonist (John David Washington) who’s placed on a mission to stop a global terror threat that could end the world. His only hope to accomplish this task is through the use of time inversion, which essentially allows him to interact with the world around him while time flows in reverse. TENET is Nolan’s most technically accomplished film, with ornate, awe-inspiring action sequences and impressive visual effects, many of which are accomplished in camera. It’s a clear homage to many of the James Bond films and, particularly, to the grand, often-times outlandish global plots found in that franchise’s entries from the ‘90’s and ‘00’s. In fact, the entire film seems to be constructed around its grandiose moments of visual splendor. Much of the film’s exposition relies on key-conversations amongst The Protagonist and several other characters, which can be frustratingly difficult to comprehend at times due to TENET’s sound design, which prioritizes the cacophony of its action sequences and its booming score. Nevertheless, the film offers viewers many clues needed to unlock its narrative puzzle, though, like other Nolan films, it may demand multiple viewings to fully decrypt. (2020, 151 min, 70mm) [Kyle Cubr]
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More info on the in-person Music Box screenings (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
REELING: THE CHICAGO LGBTQ+ INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival (presented by Chicago Filmmakers) is taking place virtually this year, with online screenings through October 4. The full schedule and additional information are here. Selected films available this week are reviewed below.
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Jose Luis Benavides’ LULU EN EL JARDÍN (US/Mexico/Documentary)
Available to rent Friday, October 2
Chicago-based filmmaker, writer, and educator Jose Luis Benavides combines several years’ worth of research and reflection into a feature-length documentary about his mother, Lourdes Benavides, an incredible Latina woman who, as a teenager in the 1970s, was institutionalized after experiencing mental health issues and disclosing her same-sex attraction, then verboten in her community. This happened several years after she and her family returned from Mexico, adding another layer to Benavides’ staggering portrait of individual and generational trauma. As the filmmaker explores issues of race, migration and sexuality, so too does he expose an era of mental health care at the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center that was nothing short of appalling. Benavides interrogates these issues through a weaving of modes that effectively centers each issue and posits them in connection with the others; appearing throughout are ephemera surrounding the center and now-outdated mental health practices, which illuminate the environment in which his mother and others were being treated. One section is a reenactment (by an all-Latina cast) of the transcript of the Knapp Commission on Mental Health Meeting, held at Chicago-Read Mental Health Center on February 15, 1972; this involved a female journalist going undercover at the facility to expose accusations of physical and sexual abuse. Other parts are more opaque, utilizing written texts and film clips with a poetic overtone. One throughline is nature—flowers and trees, flora abundant—likewise signifying Lourdes’ womanhood and sexuality, as well as emphasizing the ways that idyllic locales, like that which surrounds the institution, mask internal struggles to the outside world. This dual representation evokes beauty and pain—an appropriate metaphor for the filmmaker's extraordinary subject. (2018, 55 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
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Lonely Beautiful Boys (Shorts Program)
Available to rent through Sunday, October 4
Ranging from pithy comedies to a historical epic, the shorts in this program use their diverse genres and styles to survey the many flavors of loneliness. Each understands the alienation, frustration, and yearning that are frequently central to LGBTQ life; they also recognize the alliances—fragile or firm—that can provide reassurance in trying times. William Stead’s ALL THE YOUNG DUDES (8 min) is exemplary of how empowering it can feel to find someone who understands you. When its teenage hero—a glam rock-loving outsider in rural, early ‘70s Georgia—is approached by a friendly male classmate with shared musical tastes, he finds a sense of belonging he never knew existed. A final, lingering close-up of the lead actor, with the titular Bowie song cresting in the background, is an expression of euphoria so intensely joyous you’ll want to burst. The prepubescent, wrestler-obsessed protagonist of Oriana Oppice’s GO GO, BOY! (6 min) may have yet to find an ally of his own, but his fantasies of fabulous dancing and feather boas give him sufficient comfort. Florent Gouelou’s BEAUTY BOYS (18 min) makes the dream of performance real, as a trio of teens in provincial France prepare their drag routine for an upcoming talent show. Despite homophobic bullying and protests from a sibling, the group bands together with fierce determination. A different king of pageantry is on display in Shivin & Sunny’s THE LONELY PRINCE (15 min), a lavish period piece about an Indian prince who solicits a sculptor to craft him a personalized artwork. Needless to say, the two fall in love, with the kingdom roiling around them. The film has an uncommon visual ornateness for a short; this, along with its ending on a note of rising action, makes it play more like a prologue than a self-contained piece. No such narrative concerns exist in Naures Sager’s loosey-goosey 1-1 (7 min), a Scandinavian romp where dates Ayman and Jonas communicate their attraction through crafty one-upmanship. It’s slight, but delightful and sexy all the same. Much heavier are Chris Coats’ CONTENT (11 min) and Krit Komkrichwarakool’s PLANTONIC (15 min). In the former, a model gets more than he bargains for when a photoshoot with his idol turns sexually abusive. The latter, a fable-like tearjerker, sees a man recounting his relationship with his dead partner through a gardening allegory. It’s unashamedly weepy, but I was moved; there’s something weirdly refreshing about a tragic romance where the gayness of its lovers has nothing to do with the tragedy. Two nearly wordless films from Columbia College Chicago’s Aleksei Borovikov round out the program. Both GLANCES (7 min) and ONE MORE PLEASE (5 min) turn on the charged, often inscrutable quality of anonymous, reciprocated gazes, especially ones that seem to look with desirous intent. The actors’ agile faces do the heavy lifting here, inviting us to feel the weight of thoughts unspoken. [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Something Wicked This Way Comes (Shorts Program)
Available to rent through Sunday, October 4
Reeling’s shorts program Something Wicked This Way Comes features three unsettling stories, each grappling with themes of obsession and isolation. BLAME IT ON TOBY (2018, 48 min), directed by Richard Knight, Jr., is the most traditional horror of the three shorts, paying homage to the demonic doll subgenre. Young couple Calvin (JJ Phillips) and Edward (Christopher Sheard) are out to dinner when Calvin decides to propose. Not only is Edward reluctant, wanting to wait until they are more financially stable, but the proposal is interrupted by an eccentric, and extremely wealthy, older gentleman, Arthur Prentiss-Wilcox (Kevin J. O’Connor) and the creepy doll he always carries with him, Toby. The couple overlook this peculiarity, and agree to have dinner at his mansion, hoping to take advantage of Arthur’s generosity and immense wealth. Predictably, Arthur’s eccentricities and his relationship with Toby are far more sinister than Calvin and Edward imagine as they get further enmeshed in the horrors surrounding the man and his precious doll. While BLAME IT ON TOBY may feel familiar, Kevin J. O’Connor’s measured performance as the unnerving Arthur is particularly captivating. In IMMORTAL (2020, 10 min), directed by Natalie Metzger and Robert Allaire, a geneticist, Anna (Laura Coover), goes rogue to experiment with death defying treatments. The camera slowly moves throughout her home, showing a mostly solitary existence, but filled with experiments involving plants and rats and, most shockingly, a comatose human subject (Doug Scroope). The glowing sunlit space juxtaposes the more insidious work suggested by her experiments. When Anna’s partner, Harper (Meredith Casey) surprises her with a visit, she faces choosing between her work to gain the secret to immortality and her already fraying relationship. Surrealist horror LIMERENCE (2020, 34 min), directed by Dan Pedersen, takes place in an old movie palace. Phoebe (Angela Riccetti) works as the projectionist, as well as lives above the theater; her life is relatively isolated and her obsession with physical film is clear from her opening monologue about the flammable dangers of nitrate film—fire is a visual theme throughout LIMERENCE. Things start to get particularly strange after Phoebe encounters a charming woman, Tig (Michaela Petro), who stops by the theater requesting to post flyers for a local play. Phoebe becomes infatuated with Tig, as the woman manifests in her fantasies. Phoebe’s preoccupation with film is reflected in LIMERENCE’s saturated colors and lingering on film technology, adding to the distortion between reality and fantasy within the remarkable space of the antique movie palace. The most striking element of LIMERENCE, however, is not the fantasies she experiences, but the depiction of Phoebe as physically embodying the projection equipment she obsesses over. [Megan Fariello]
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Jonathan Wysocki’s DRAMARAMA (US)
Available to rent Friday, October 2 through Monday, October 5
On the last day of summer in 1994, a group of theater-obsessed friends gather to celebrate the end of high school by dressing up as their favorite Victorian literary figure, drinking Martinelli’s, and daring each other to give the middle finger on camera—not the typical exploits of a teen movie. In Jonathan Wysocki’s coming-of-age film, DRAMARAMA, Gene (Nick Pugliese) is pulling away from his friends, struggling to come out to them, and questioning the Christian upbringing that has tied them all together. Leader of the group, Rose (Anna Grace Barlow), is leaving for NYU and hosts a murder mystery slumber party for Gene and their group of friends (Nico Greetham, Danielle Kay, and Megan Suri) to say goodbye. At first, the atmosphere is frenzied, as the group revel in Rose’s planned evening of games, filled with literary and theatrical references. The night is interrupted by the appearance of J.D. (Zak Henri), the pizza deliveryman and friend of Gene’s, who also happens to be a recent high school dropout. J.D. immediately brings a more familiar vibe to the gathering, spiking the Martinelli’s with liquor and explaining why dropping out was the best decision he ever made. Despite leaving soon after, his presence haunts the rest of the evening, as the group faces their sheltered upbringing. It is easy to see why Gene gravitates more towards the open-minded J.D. than his current friends, who ridicule the idea of sex-before-marriage and play games that highlight their homophobia. In between the moments of bickering and tension, writer and director Wysocki also scatters in sincere fun, as the group quotes Mel Brooks films and dance to They Might Be Giants—an earnest portrayal of wavering friendships on the verge of profound change. While the group is well cast, Pugliese gives an especially touching performance, demonstrating the simultaneous love Gene has for his friends and the complete fear of their rejection should he come out to them. Danielle Kay, as the slightly wilder member of the group, Ally, also stands out, particularly as she anchors the emotional moments towards the end of the film. The promise of a traditional boisterous high school party hangs over the film, but ultimately DRAMARAMA is about the dynamics of the group—J.D. is the only outsider seen on-screen—and both how comforting high school friendships can be and knowing when it is time to let them go. (2020, 91 min) [Megan Fariello]
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Pablo Larraín’s EMA (Chile)
Available to rent Friday, October 2 through Monday, October 5
EMA is as an immersive aesthetic experience in the vein of certain films by Jean-Luc Godard, Wong Kar-wai, or Claire Denis, where to watch it is to get swept up in a swirl of ideas, formal devices, movement, and music. The movie raises provocative questions about love, art, and sexual politics, but you may find it difficult to reckon with them until after it’s over. Pablo Larraín creates the impression that the film is discovering its identity as it goes along, that it’s capable of changing its shape on a whim. You don’t watch it so much as chase after it. EMA is a classical work in that the form mirrors the content: the title character (played by Mariana Di Girolamo in a larger-than-life performance) spends the film in an existential free-fall, and Larraín’s unpredictable filmmaking feels driven by her unpredictable behavior. The film begins with a spectacular passage that introduces the contemporary dance troupe Ema belongs to before it introduces her character fully. Larraín interweaves dance and bits of drama brilliantly, cutting between different kinds of camera movement and multiple choreographed routines. Nicolas Jaar’s electronic score is constant for almost the first 15 minutes; as it does later on in EMA, it guides the flow of the action, making it seem trancelike. Only after the music stops does Larraín reveal the cause of Ema’s unrest: she and her choreographer husband (Gael García Bernal) recently changed their mind about raising an adopted boy after he set fire to their apartment. Ema still loves the boy despite having rejected him; her obsession baffles her husband, and their marriage quickly breaks down along with their creative partnership. Ema responds to the chaos in her life through dance, setting things on fire, and sex, lots of sex, seducing every principal character and is shown making love to them all in a ravishing montage that manages to top the one at the start of the film. Larraín’s depictions of sex are at once frank and highly aestheticized; they also give way to allegorical readings. Is Ema’s sexual quest selfish or is it, like Terrence Stamp’s in Pasolini’s TEOREMA, some magical process by which she radically transforms everyone around her? Could it be both? (2019, 107 min) [Ben Sachs]
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Ebs Burnough’s THE CAPOTE TAPES (US/Documentary)
Available to rent Saturday, October 3 through Tuesday, October 6
At some point in his life, Truman Capote began to find writing difficult. He’d get up, position himself in front of the yellow legal pads on which he’d start to write, by hand, whatever he was working on, and then immediately seek some kind of distraction from actually doing it. This is just one of many insights about the infamous scribe imparted to viewers by first-time director Ebs Burnough, former senior advisor to Michelle Obama in brand strategy and strategic communications, who uses as the basis of his engaging documentary recordings of interviews that gentleman-journalist George Plimpton conducted with Capote’s social circle in preparation for his 1997 biography about the openly gay, Lilliputian iconoclast. I knew about most everything included—what kind of cinema-loving journalism student would I have been if I hadn’t read Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, and then all about these books, the movies, and their author?—but still what’s discussed, and at times revealed, is intriguing. Capote himself was the ultimate gossip, and Burnough’s film aptly reflects the salaciousness and tenebrosity associated with that genteel pastime. In that vein, the film focuses heavily on Capote’s fabled, unfinished novel, Answered Prayers, only three chapters of which were published. Perhaps most interesting about the film is speculation from the featured interviewees, which include writers Colm Tóibín, Jay McInerney, and Dotson Rader; former Vogue editor André Leon Talley; talk-show host Dick Cavett; and Capote’s former, beloved personal assistant, Kate Harrington, with whose father he had an affair, about why Capote did what he did. For example, it’s suggested that Answered Prayers wasn’t intended to be a scathing gotcha to his so-called Swans (the society women who adopted him into their circle), but either a vengeful reprimand toward the facet of society that beguiled his mother, resulting in her death by suicide (it’s also suggested that Holly Golightly is based on her), or, rather, showing the society women as being victims, frequently outshone and treated poorly by their bigwig husbands. There’s no doubt that Capote was a complex figure, but Burnough considers him as a complex person, whose more egregious behaviors, including those attributable to his drug and alcohol addictions, were the result of his own pathos. Less despairingly, it’s good fun to hear about Capote’s Studio 54 days and, before that, his legendary Black and White Ball, attended by a veritable who’s who of society at the time. (Leon Talley discussed the impact of this party on his formative years; he also reveals that he owns the couch on which Capote took a now-legendary photo that appears on the book jacket for Other Voices, Other Rooms. A regret of his? Not buying a tin of gingerbread cookies made by Capote’s favorite cousin, which he carried with him throughout his life.) This bears some of the trappings of most documentaries of its kind, but Burnough imbues it with stylishness and a sense of piquancy that makes it enjoyable as well as edifying. (2019, 91 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
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Faraz Shariat’s NO HARD FEELINGS (Germany)
Available for rent Saturday, October 3 through Tuesday, October 6
Winner of the Teddy Award for Best Queer Film at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, Faraz Shariat’s semi-autobiographical debut is a fizzy coming-of-age film with a poignant sociopolitical undertow, a paean to a young generation finding its way through the cultural barriers that still persist in our globalized world. When the film begins, the gay, twenty-something Parvis (Benjamin Radjaipour, savvily mingling callowness and warmth) isn’t quite ready to understand such inequity. Born in Germany to Iranian exiles, he’s lived with a sense of complacency entirely foreign to the hardscrabble experience of his refugee parents, who have only made things easier for him by fully embracing his homosexuality. Everything changes when Parvis steals a bottle of liquor from a bar, and he is sentenced to community service at a refugee detention facility. There, he is enlisted as a translator for Farsi-speaking inmates, including the spunky Banafshe and her brooding brother Amon. While Banafshe awaits a final decision on her potential deportation, Parvis and Amon carry out a steamy, covert romance; ultimately, it’s a sense of precarious social status, nebulous cultural affiliation, and intersectional identity that binds the three tenacious youths. Like Nadav Lapid’s SYNONYMS from last year, NO HARD FEELINGS is a distinctly 21st-century European societal portrait, concerned as it is with the disorienting displacement of refugees in the West, and the attendant dysphoria, xenophobia, and nationalism that reemerge in allegedly egalitarian places (“Yeah, I’m not usually into ethnic guys,” says Parvis’ white hookup). Also like Lapid’s film, NO HARD FEELINGS unfolds in a loose, at times seemingly improvisatory shape, with the narrative often halting to accommodate dreamy slow-motion dancing and pensive, semi-surreal tableaux, typically scored to an infectious nightclub beat. I’m not sure Shariat entirely pulls off these flourishes; they tend to flirt with music video aesthetics, while the director’s choice to shoot in Academy ratio (is this an art-film cliché yet?) can seem an odd affectation rather than a motivated decision. Then again, what’s wrong with music videos? NO HARD FEELINGS certainly captures the anthemic pop spirit of one, and it’s all too happy to make its queer, multicultural teens the proud stars. (2020, 92 min) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Eric Steel’s MINYAN (US)
Available to rent Sunday, October 4 through Wednesday, October 7
Eric Steel’s MINYAN is a quiet and subdued film about the exploration of being in gay in the face of conservative religious tradition and community that never once plays into the familiar tropes and emotional excesses that are so common in telling these stories. The film takes place in mid-80s New York City, putting its teenaged protagonist not only in the middle of the AIDS crisis, but also in an aging Jewish community of Holocaust survivors. Bookish David spends much of his time in the local public library but has slowly become wise that this is actually a cruising area for gay men. A Russian Jewish immigrant going to a private, conservative Jewish school, his contact with the more secular world is extremely limited. At the same time as he starts to become curious about the world of gay NYC, he begins to realize that his grandfather’s neighbors in the Jewish old-folks home seem to be a quietly gay couple as well. Steel, using the commanding acting of Samuel H. Levine as David, weaves together ideas of community, loss, emptiness, love, yearning, and confusion in a quietly arresting way. The unsure world of teenaged David pushes him to demand fairness in life and love in a way that may not only go against the conservative old-country Jewish community he is from, but the larger world as well. The manner in which Steel draws parallels between the confusion and religious anger of Jews after the Holocaust that of the gay community trying to make sense of the AIDS pandemic is nothing less than masterful. The comparison is drawn as a matter of humanity, not comparative tragedy. Its tastefulness moves the story towards enlightenment. MINYAN is an elegantly told story of a gay teenager trying to make sense of the world by making sense of himself. It’s very rare that a film strives to connect difficult metaphors of deep, historical human tragedy, answer the questions raised, and achieves its aims. For a film that could be, and by all rights should be, difficult and depressing, MINYAN only brings hope, humor, and introspection. (2020, 118 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
MUSIC BOX OF HORRORS AT THE DRIVE-IN
Dan O’Bannon’s THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (US)
Music Box Theatre at the Chitown Drive-In – Tuesday, 9:30pm
Do you wanna party?! It’s party time! What we have here is a cult film of impressive influence. Usually cult films find themselves an audience that clutches to them so tightly that they are nearly suffocated by the fandom and then never do much more than appeal to those diehards. Dan O’Bannon’s THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD has escaped this insularity; not only has it managed to reach legitimate cult status, but it has also helped create an entire new (sub)genre of film—the zombie comedy. Without THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD there would be no MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK, no SHAUN OF THE DEAD, no ONE SHOT OF THE DEAD, no JUAN OF THE DEAD, etc. Just look at the worldwide influence in that short list alone; English, Japanese, and Cuban filmmakers all picking up where O’Bannon left off. Most famous for co-writing ALIEN and TOTAL RECALL, RETURN was the first of only two films he had the chance to direct. Based on his own screenplay, O’Bannon pits a crew of punk rockers against a graveyard full of zombies. A mysterious gas leaking from a U.S. government-marked canister infects employees and cadavers at a medical facility; the cremation of one of those newly undead contaminates the clouds overhead, creating a toxic rain that falls on a cemetery, bringing a host of zombies out of their graves. The plot is simple and direct, getting down to business right away. Played for laughs, THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD mixes humor, horror, gore, and punksploitation into a film that once dominated the home video rental market, and still lends itself perfectly to revival screenings and midnight showings. The film is a love letter to underground culture as a whole; to weirdos, freaks, and the socially awkward looking for the same. RETURN augments its cult cred with a soundtrack of equally-cult bands: The Damned, Roky Erickson, 45 Grave, T.S.O.L., The Flesh Eaters, and of course, The Cramps. Unlike George A. Romero’s social-message zombie classics, RETURN is pure 20th century American trash culture. And god bless O’Bannon for that. It’s a film of forever quotable lines, cheesy practical effects that you can laugh along with, and a Ramones-esque d-u-m-b nihilism that could have only been bred in the Cold War of Reagan’s ‘80s. This is a fun movie, plain and simple. I like it. It’s a statement. (1985, 91 min, Digital Projection) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
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More info here.
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Heiny Srour’s LEILA AND THE WOLVES (Lebanon)
Starting at 7pm on Thursday, October 8, the film will be available to view on Block's Vimeo page for a 24-hour period; RSVP here
LEILA AND THE WOLVES, the second feature by Lebanese director Heiny Srour—whose 1974 debut film, the documentary THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS ARRIVED, showed at Cannes, making her the first female Arab filmmaker to exhibit at the festival—is fiercely imaginative as it combines narrative and documentary elements (some of its footage even shot amongst the Lebanese and Syrian Civil Wars) to explore the collective memory of Arab women, specifically in Palestine and Lebanon from the 1920s onward. Shot over the course of several years and set in 1975, the film begins with a young Lebanese woman, Leila (Nabila Zeitouni), envisioning herself as an old woman surrounded by her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren; her old-world views (such as asking one of her “granddaughters,” who’s recently obtained her PhD, whether or not she’s married) keeps her from connecting with them. Looking in the mirror, the younger Leila insists that she’ll never become like that. Soon we learn that Leila lives in London, where she’s working on an exhibition of photographs and artworks that reflect the Palestinian struggle. When asked why none of the photos feature women, the curator, Rafiq, replies that, in those days, women had nothing to do with politics. This begins a journey back in time, through which Leila, adorned in a white dress, witnesses Palestinian and Lebanese women contributing to the fight against the struggles of these distressed but tenacious Arabic countries. In most scenarios, Zeitouni and the actor who plays Rafiq, to whom most of the revelations are addressed, appear again as new characters along with several other actresses. The vignettes include: Palestinian women in the 1920s throwing hot water onto British soldiers; the Arab revolt against the British Palestine Mandate in the years leading up to World War II, during which local women use wedding preparations to hide weapons and artillery to take to their men in the mountains; and the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, when young, often unmarried Lebanese women were eager to participate as full-fledged soldiers. (Many of the sequences are accompanied by archival footage related to the historical events happening within them, tinted blue and purple, like in silent film.) In tandem with the women’s participation in politics, and even battle, the expressly feminist Srour shows the oppression they face within their own culture. In one affecting scene, a woman whose baby is ill reflects on her husband demanding all her valuables for money to spend on weapons for the revolution, money that could have been spent on taking their sick son to the doctor. We see women fighting for liberation who are themselves not granted liberty by those with whom they’re fighting, such as young women whose presence alongside men in battle sparks gossip in the community. Srour explores all this ingeniously, never didactically, as she engages the depths of imagination to show the myriad ways in which Arab women, and, in some ways, even men, are victimized by patriarchal dogma. Throughout there are shots of women, covered head to toe in black niqabs and abayas, sitting on a beach while half-clothed men frolic in the water. Srour’s visual metaphors are vivid and evocative, clear but still artful. Just as the film opens with one, it ends with a series of powerful symbols: of rebel women taking off their blindfolds; of the black-clad women finally putting their feet into the sea; and, lastly, of Leila dancing with death. "The visual leitmotiv of the film is Arab women sitting immobile under the high sun, while half-naked men bathe joyfully on the beach,” said Srour. “Gradually, women will start getting impatient, as historic events go by, and they will move towards the water for a dip ... but in the Middle-East the dance of death still continues." For those interested, Cinenova: Feminist Film + Video, the UK distributor of the film, is working on a restoration (what’s being shown through Block is a scan of the original); there’s a GoFundMe to subsidize the cost of restoring both this and Srour’s first film. (1984, 93 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
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Followed by a pre-recorded discussion between filmmaker Heiny Srour and Professor Rebecca C. Johnson, Director of Middle East and North African Studies Program at Northwestern; registration at the link above is for both a link to the film and to the Q&A.
Alan Govenar’s MYTH OF A COLORBLIND FRANCE (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
The title of MYTH OF A COLORBLIND FRANCE is rather misleading. If you’re looking for an exposé of racism in France, that discussion takes up very little room in this film. A better title might have been “Black Americans in Paris,” as that’s the main focus of Alan Govenar’s edifying documentary about Black American expatriates that made their way to the City of Lights. He discusses how the incursion of Black soldiers into France during World War I set off something of a fad for all things American—especially African American. Govenar checks off the usual suspects—Josephine Baker, Richard Wright, James Baldwin—and spends a lot of time on the jazz luminaries who passed through Paris, particularly soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet. But he also provides snippets of information about other expats of note, such as writer Chester Himes and a slew of artists, including Beaufort Delaney, Lois Mailou Jones, and Augusta Savage. Scholars provide their talking-head assessments, poet James Emanuel recites some of his works, filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris discusses the ample space he found for his queer expression in Paris, and artist Barbara Chase-Riboud recounts her adventurous life and defends her convention-defying sculptures. Especially interesting is a segment on internationally celebrated artist Henry Ossawa Tanner, which includes some rare home movie footage. (2020, 86 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Brea Grant’s 12 HOUR SHIFT (US)
Available for rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Brea Grant’s 12 HOUR SHIFT is part of a current trend of films set in the late-1990s and early-2000s—not simply to make a period piece, but in order to tell stories that just wouldn’t be possible today. 12 HOUR SHIFT is set in 1999, but, since most of the film takes place in a small, rural hospital, there isn’t much of a need for set decoration, wardrobe, or makeup that has to be precisely period specific—scrubs have always been scrubs. The one aspect of the film that makes it necessary to be set in 1999 and not 2019 is an absolutely crucial, yet simple one—there are no cellphones. The film’s dark-black comedy of errors about an organ harvesting scheme gone awry would be avoidable with one phone call. Instead, this technological absence allows for a hilarious descent into blood stained slapstick. Written and directed by Brea Grant, 12 HOUR SHIFT takes place over the course of one night. Mandy is a nurse who is a part of an ongoing scheme, along with a co-worker, in which she kills depressed, terminally ill patients and sells their organs. When her dimwitted cousin-in-law Regina screws up a routine black-market organ pick up, things quickly get out of control. So while Regina starts killing more people, knowing nothing about the internal makeup of the human body, Mandy has to try to continue to get the promised organs while cleaning up the mess Regina creates—all while avoiding the police. The premise of an organ harvesting (or two) gone wrong should seem impossible to make funny, but Grant manages to pull it off. Mandy is driven by a no-nonsense, zero bullshit, blue collar work ethic that makes her the perfect straight-man to the insanity that is happening around her. Her steely-eyed, seen-it-all, stare cuts through Regina’s increasing psychotic actions, the police’s increasing suspicion, and the utter confusion of a hospital in lockdown because of an ever-increasing body count. With some great small roles by David Arquette (as a police-hating criminal of some local infamy) and professional wrestling legend Mick Foley (as the crime boss demanding a fresh kidney by the end of the night, or else) 12 HOUR SHIFT squeezes as much as it can out of its ludicrous premise. There’s a playful campiness to the whole thing that will let you lower the bar of suspension of disbelief to the floor and walk right on over it. (2020, 86 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Daria Price's DRIVEN TO ABSTRACTION (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
There are few things in the world that give me more joy that a well-played hoax. Hoaxes, schemes, scams, swindles, or cons, I love them all. They really show you how fragile our society actually is. How so much of what we believe to be a bedrock of society is really just blind faith that what everyone else is saying or doing is actually true. But an art hoax? These might be my favorite hoaxes of all time. Art is so arbitrary already. The idea that there is a multi-billion-dollar industry that is the art world balancing on pieces of art is so fascinating. I often don’t understand how it works, and how everyone can be so sure that a painting worth $10 million actually is just that. DRIVEN TO ABSTRACTION illuminates this issue by focusing on one of the greatest art hoaxes of all time, one with $80 million worth of forgeries—resulting in the closing of the oldest art gallery in NYC. The documentary investigates the scandal surrounding the Knoedler art gallery and its director, Ann Freedman. I say investigates because the film comes off very much like reportage. There’s a dryness to it that feels like a long form article in an arts magazine, or newspaper, more so than a film. We get a very standard amount of talking heads (mostly experts) and the ubiquitous partial zooms of still photos that so many modern docs have, all with a background score of mostly ignorable smooth jazz. But even with the formal elements of the film perhaps leaving something to be desired, the story itself is utterly fascinating; how the high minded, exclusive art world of NYC got tricked by an unknown Latinx art dealer and a Chinese immigrant painter is a story of hubris, deception, and self-deception. Frustratingly absent are interviews with those who pulled off the scam; we’re only left with the side of those who were had by them or eventually caught them, leaving a bit of one-sidedness to this oh-so-curious tale. Even so, we still have some of these experts tacitly admitting that which all of us on the outside of the art world wonder every day, “All of this is kinda bullshit, but that’s just the way it is.” It’s rare to have a secretive curtain pulled back by the gatekeepers themselves, especially on film. DRIVEN TO ABSTRACTION satisfies if you’re at all interested the story of a great hoax, as an erudite discussion of what makes art valuable, or you just want a peek into the exclusive world of high-end NYC art dealings. (2020, 84 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa’s A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME: WRIGHT OR WRONG (US/Documentary)
Available for free October 8-13 via the Chicago Feminist Film Festival here
Winston Churchill said, “We shape our dwellings, and afterwards, our dwellings shape us.” If this is true, and I daresay it is, does a house commissioned from a famous architect affect its occupants even more? That question and the very concept of home is at the heart of Chicago-based Iranian-American filmmaker Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa’s documentary, A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME: WRIGHT OR WRONG. The director, who has been the artistic consultant to the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Festival of Films from Iran since its inception in 1989, says that her attraction to physical dwellings began in childhood, even as the home her parents commissioned in Tehran became a huge source of antagonism between them, helping to end their marriage and solidify a mutual animosity that lasted to the end of their lives. Perhaps because of this home/house-related drama, which she partially explores, as well as her co-authorship with film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum of Abbas Kiarostami, Saeed-Vafa delves into the effect Rosenbaum’s childhood house, the Frank Lloyd Wright–Rosenbaum House, had on him and his brothers. She spends the better part of the film exploring the house in Florence, Alabama, with and without Rosenbaum and his brothers, getting a tour of this structure that is now a municipally-owned museum along with reminiscences of life in one of Wright’s cantilevered concoctions that are lovely to look at and very inconvenient to live in. That the brothers remember the house in different ways is not surprising, nor is their feeling that the changes wrought when it was turned into a museum have broken the bond they had with it. While Saeed-Vafa’s thesis is interesting, her film focuses on personal emotions that don’t necessarily illuminate the concept of home. The firsthand accounts of life in a Wright house, on the other hand, are fascinating. (2020, 74 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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A Q&A with Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa is on October 13 at 7pm; Registration at the link above is for both a link to the film and to the Q&A.
Melissa Haizlip and Sam Pollard’s MR. SOUL! (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
From 1968 through 1973, public television station WNET in New York embarked on an experiment in programming that would eventually stand as an influential cultural icon for generations of African-American artists. Soul!, a weekly one-hour talk and variety series produced by Ellis Haizlip, a Howard University-educated impresario in New York’s Black arts scene, was wholly dedicated to the talents and concerns of the Black community. Haizlip was ideally suited to elevate Black culture on TV, with his vast network of contacts, unerring radar for budding talents, and supreme belief in the value of presenting the finest that the Black civic and cultural community had to offer. Among the firsts on Soul! were the introduction of singing duo Ashford and Simpson before they had even cut their first album and the appearance of Toni Morrison reading from her first novel, The Bluest Eye. Haizlip loved dance and included performances by the Alvin Ailey Dancers and the George Faison Universal Dance Experience, among others. As MR. SOUL! highlights, there may never have been another show of any kind that was as great for poetry as Soul! was, including appearances by Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka, and bucking the censors by booking Last Poets to perform their works. These performances make clear the generations-long continuum of poetic expression that has sustained the Black community and from which rap arose. Political activists Kathleen Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, Betty Shabazz, and Lynn Brown also showed up, and in one revealing clip, Haizlip, an out gay man, even got homophobic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to accept that gay converts to Islam were part of his flock. The musical guests were nonstop, from Stevie Wonder and Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles to the Billy Taylor Trio, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Billy Preston. And Haizlip did not forget the Black diaspora in other parts of the Americas, asking African-Latino-American Felipe Luciano, a member of Last Poets and the Young Lords Party, to introduce the Afro-Cuban rhythms of Tito Puente and Willie Colon and their orchestras to Soul!’s audience. Co-directors Melissa Haizlip (Ellis Haizlip’s niece) and Sam Pollard have assembled a dizzying array of personal photos, clips from Soul!, talking-head interviews with some of the guests who appeared on the show and those who were inspired by it, as well as archival footage of the roiling times during which Soul! aired and Haizlip’s own words delivered in voiceover by actor Blair Underwood. This approach helps viewers get acquainted with Haizlip and his history, but also locates him and his work within the societal attitudes that made Soul! possible and the darkening national landscape under President Richard Nixon that spelled the show’s doom. What Soul! meant to the Black community is best summed up by African-American writer Chester Himes (A Rage in Harlem, Cotton Comes to Harlem) who, along with the vocal group The Dells, was a featured guest on a 1972 episode: “This is one of the highlights of my life to be on this sort of Black television program before a Black audience, because this is the first experience that I have had.” I knew nothing about Soul! or the estimable Ellis Haizlip before watching MR SOUL! I am so happy to have been introduced to both. (2018, 99 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Ric Burns’ OLIVER SACKS: HIS OWN LIFE (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
If you ever read the stunning 2004 essay "In the River of Consciousness" by beloved neurologist and author Oliver Sacks (later included his similarly titled 2017 book), you'll find he had a better understanding of film and filmmaking than Ric Burns, the director of this charming hagiography of Sacks. The film undercuts the life and work of Sacks with sloppy visual generalizations. Sacks' brilliant writing on migraines and vision is illustrated with all the conceptual complexity of an Excedrin commercial, and Sacks' harrowing drug-fueled youthful motorcycle trips might as well be out-takes from 90s syndicated TV show Renegade. But forget all that! Despite the standard-issue mainstream documentary trappings, it's a delight to be around the funny, warm, and brilliant Sacks for two hours. For those unfamiliar, it's a fine introduction to his life and his work; for Sacks fans, it's a pleasurable reminder of why you love him, and occasionally offers some new insights from his friends, family, and admirers. Sacks is shown as a gracious and sincere man with corny jokes and dirty stories. He is shown as a man who struggled with family trauma, and sociality-imposed and internalized homophobia throughout his life, the beautiful effectiveness of therapy (from professionals and friends), the great value of swimming naked, and the occasional drug-aided/addled career decision. While Sacks deserves and will hopefully get a better film than this one, it's still absolutely worth your time to spend an evening reflecting on his life. (2019, 114 min) [Josh B. Mabe]
Betsy West and Julie Cohen’s RBG (US/Documentary)
Available for rent through Facets Cinémathèque here and the Music Box Theatre here
Is there any figure whose opinions are more routinely ignored, discounted, or even ridiculed in our contemporary society than an old woman’s? And yet—even before 2018 would become a summer defined by grueling media attention on the Supreme Court—Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an exception, able to quietly command attention and reverence through every word she utters. The alluring mystery at the heart of the biography RBG is Ginsburg herself, as a representation of the increasingly rare, public figure still able to inspire thoughtful reflection and advocacy, against the tide of our culture’s worst instincts. This buoyant profile of Ginsburg lovingly emphasizes her significance in various career roles, first as a feminist icon (crediting her as the architect behind the ACLU’s strategy for the women’s movement in the 1970s), then as the Court’s most accomplished litigator, and finally—in modern, increasingly traditionalist years—as the Court’s most forceful and resolute dissenting voice. Although West and Cohen’s doc frequently takes on all the trappings of a glossy magazine profile rather than the incisive portrait surely deserved by one of the greatest intellects of our time, it nevertheless benefits immeasurably from the remarkable, rejuvenating presence of Ginsburg herself. The weirdness of our culture’s Internet celebritydom becomes a part of RBG’s story too, but compared with Ginsburg’s depth, this maddening new source of cultural power feels like an entirely false and estranging one. Still, in an age of inadvertent stardom, it’s comforting to have a figure like RBG to idolize. (2018, 98 min) [Tien-Tien Jong]
Justine Triet's SIBYL (France)
Available for rent through the Music Box Theatre here
SIBYL is going to infuriate viewers who go to films to gain insight into the reasoning behind people’s behavior, and delight viewers who get off on puzzling out the logic that guides the construction of a work of art. The interplay between these two processes—the bad judgment that promises to tear lives and careers apart, the erratic impulses that improbably guide artists towards successful creation—is vividly, even ludicrously dramatized in Justine Triet’s film, which follows an established psychotherapist, Sibyl (Virginie Efira), as she abandons her practice to return to creative writing. Unable to extricate herself from Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos), one of her needier clients, Sibyl begins surreptitiously recording their sessions, drawing on her patient’s drama for her own writing. Triet’s go-for-baroque plotting finds room to explore her heroine’s fraught relationships with her underemployed sister, AA group, son, partner, her other patients, and her own therapist, while multiple flashbacks peer into Sibyl’s reawakened memories of a passionate love affair gone sour. And that’s before things go fully meta, as Margot’s crisis—she’s an actress, pregnant from an affair with her co-star, and unable to decide whether to keep or terminate the pregnancy—gradually ensnares Sibyl as well. Once the therapist is called to help her patient make it through a tense film shoot on—get this—the volcanic island of Stromboli, the film’s lower-key comic elements erupt, thanks especially to the welcome midway addition of TONI ERDMANN’s Sandra Hüller as the disconcertingly pragmatic film director whose partner has been fooling around with Margot. The willful improbability of the second act will throw viewers for a loop, but it’s entirely in keeping with a film about the pleasures of breaking rules and taking license as a woman and as an artist. In this, I was reminded of two other recent films which contemplate female empowerment by dramatizing the pitfalls of the creative process, Greta Gerwig’s LITTLE WOMEN and Céline Sciamma’s PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN ON FIRE; like those films, SIBYL proposes that the social boundaries of acceptable behavior for women are inextricably linked to the boundaries of how art should or shouldn’t be composed. In all three films, narrative unfolds towards the fulfillment of creative desire, defiantly leaving a trail of broken rules behind—SIBYL just breaks more than the rest. (2019, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Metzger]
Jia Zhang-Ke's STILL LIFE (China)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
The people of Fengjie scramble to salvage what they can as their surroundings are submerged by water displaced by the Three Gorges Dam; there're the sensations of walking across rubble, of soup-steam getting in your face, of cheap labor and unheated rooms. STILL LIFE is a poem and a survey by director Jia Zhang-Ke, his actors, cinematographer Yu Lik Wai, the 21st century, digital video, and China's landscapes. (Social landscapes as well as geographic ones / the architecture of interactions as much the architecture of bridges and the building-ghosts of razed cities / great spans of distance across gorges and between people seated side by side.) It is tactile, aromatic, romantic, simple and final. A document of China's break-neck growth that tells us more about the present than most films that would call themselves documentaries. It's a lunar expedition to a familiar place: a Neo-(Sur)Realist film written by world economics like Jia's THE WORLD and UNKNOWN PLEASURES, and a (modern) history lesson like his debut PLATFORM. The film has more in common with a photograph than the painting its title suggests, capturing an instant in a rapidly changing world. It stresses the passage of time to express a feeling for life. A focus on time brings a focus to life. (2006, 108 min) [Kalvin Henley/Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
UPCOMING – Register Now
Industry Days at the Chicago International Film Festival
CIFF’s Industry Days takes place virtually from October 14-18. This series of panels, master classes, workshops, networking events, pitch sessions, and more is open to filmmakers and industry professionals. More information and a registration link here.
(In)Justice for All Film Festival
This grassroots, community-partner focused festival takes place online this year, with screenings through October 10. Full schedule and more info here.
Chicago Palestinian Film Festival
The festival partners with the Gene Siskel Film Center to present a mix of eight streaming and drive-in screenings through October 16. A final drive-in screening is on Thursday, October 8 and selected streaming films are available—for 24-hours only—on a variety of days through October 16. Full schedule and more info here.
Conversations at the Edge
The Conversations at the Edge series presents a livestreamed conversation with American Artist on Thursday at 7pm. RSVP here. American Artists’ 2019 video BLUE LIFE SEMINAR (20 min) is streaming for free via the Gene Siskel Film Center from October 4-10 here.
Gallery 400 (UIC)
Dread Scott’s 2002 video WELCOME TO AMERICA (5 min) is available online through October 11 here.
The South Side Film Festival
Sadly, we missed the other events for the South Side Film Festival’s online iteration, but there is one event remaining: the shorts program South Side & Beyond. It includes work by Jessica Tolliver, Derrick Cameron, Arkier Burton, Regina Hoyles, Shaquille Roberts, and Vick Lee. It’s available for rent on Saturday only, from 7am-7pm here.
PO Box Collective
Local filmmaker Salome Chasnoff’s 1996 documentary BEYOND BEIJING: THE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S MOVEMENT (60 min) livestreams on Friday at 6:30pm, followed by a discussion. More info here.
Renaissance Society (UofC)
The Renaissance Society presents two videos online in conjunction with their current show Nine Lives. Streaming here through November 15 are: Marwa Arsanios’ 2014 video HAVE YOU EVER KILLED A BEAR? OR BECOMING JAMILA (26 min) and Tamar Guimarães’ 2018 video O ENSAIO [THE REHEARSAL] (51 min).
Asian Pop-Up Cinema
Asian Pop-Up Cinema is presenting a series of drive-in screenings (through October 31) and online screenings (through October 10). The drive-in screenings are at the Davis Theater Drive-in at Lincoln Yards (1684 N. Throop St.). More information and ticket links here.
Chicago Film Society
The Chicago Film Society currently has four 1980s snipes featuring Chicago radio icon Larry Lujack up on their Vimeo page. 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
Mona Zandi Haghighi’s 2019 Iranian film AFRICAN VIOLET (93 min) is available for streaming beginning this week.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Check the Siskel website for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Haroula Rose’s 2019 film ONCE UPON A RIVER (92 min) and Fredrik Gertten’s 2019 Swedish film PUSH (92 min) are both available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Music Box website for hold-over titles.
Music Box of Horrors
The Music Box Theatre’s annual 24-hour horror film marathon is moving to the drive-in and spreading out over all of October, with at least one film each day. The full schedule and more information are here.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE RECOMMENDATIONS
Ron Fricke's BARAKA (US/Documentary)
Available to stream on Amazon Prime Video (with subscription) here
At a time when Americans’ wings are clipped, and rightly so, because of our (mis)leader’s murderous fumbling of the COVID-19 pandemic, I needed Ron Fricke’s BARAKA. I was able to roam and fly across the world virtually via this sweeping, breathtakingly gorgeous documentary. BARAKA (the word denotes “blessing” in both Judaism and Islam) was shot by Fricke himself in widescreen (“Todd-AO”) 70mm, on every continent except Antarctica and in almost as many countries as there are letters of the alphabet. Associational and non-narrative, and deploying not a single word, BARAKA sings of the universal human impulse toward the numinous. We flit across St. Peter’s Basilica, the Western Wall, whirling dervishes in Istanbul, a mass of pilgrims circling Kaaba in Mecca for Hajj, the sacred Uluru/Ayers Rock sandstone formation. The film pulses with a primal beat which evokes the quest—religious, intellectual, or both—for personal or collective transcendence. Michael Stearns composed the original music and curated the soundtrack, which conceives of all the world’s song, on one level, as a form of prayer. It is at least as important as the images to setting the movie’s tone, which veers from solemn majesty to sorrowful/ironic witness to our dehumanizing tendencies. I suppose a certain kind of critic may feel the film’s critique—essentially, that our modern world is out of balance, and that ancient or “primitive” cultures may offer more thoughtful, less destructive ways of living on our planet—is almost cliché. Maybe, but the point happens to be correct; moreover, Fricke’s juxtapositions are never facile, and his method actually involves a certain objectivity. Watch the fast-motion footage of workers in an electronics factory in Tokyo, and perhaps you reflect that it is probably much like the one where your laptop was made. Watch chicks being spit down the conveyor belt in a factory farm in Santa Cruz, and draw your own conclusions about what it takes to produce food for a mass society—as well as what, if any, connections might exist between overconsumption in the West and people foraging for sustenance in dumps in Calcutta. Nor do we pass over humanity’s genocidal impulse—at one moment we find ourselves alone inside Auschwitz, the next we’re in the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 prison/torture center. On the whole, though, this is a deeply humanistic vision. One of Fricke’s motifs is to have subjects gaze without expression directly into the camera, seeming to peer into us even as we regard them. If any of this sounds familiar, it is because Fricke was the cinematographer on Godfrey Reggio’s KOYAANISQATSI, that landmark of “pure cinema” from 1982. I vividly recall huddling around a TV in a darkened room with the family in the ‘80s, mesmerized by that film’s dizzying imagery and the hypnotic Philip Glass music. BARAKA is an evolution of that film’s techniques and themes, using time-lapse photography to show dawn break and night fall from the Angkor ruins to the pyramids of Giza, as the world turns under a whirling, vapory sky. Some may interpret the film as a work of praise—an invitation to celebrate God’s labors in the grandeur of nature. Your choice—but for sure it’s an overwhelming sensory and emotional experience. As BARAKA crescendos to its climax, we glide through the interior of the Shah-e-Cheragh mosque in Shiraz, Iran, which blazes with a seemingly infinite array of bits of colored glass. Its makers meant to evoke heaven. So beautiful. BARAKA is the movie I want flowing through my head on my death bed. (1992, 97 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy’s BLOW THE MAN DOWN (US)
Available to stream on Amazon Prime Video (with subscription) here
The image of a traditional New England fisherman looms over BLOW THE MAN DOWN, in the form of a wooden figure that welcomes visitors to the town of Easter Cove, Maine, and in the interludes of a grizzled man singing sea shanties. These figures are merely colorful background, however, in this dark and at times hilarious matriarchal crime drama. Connolly sisters Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) have just buried their mother, Mary Margaret, and are on the verge of losing their house and the family fish business. Mary Beth, who feels stifled by the idea of spending any more time in her hometown, abruptly leaves her mother’s wake for a local bar. Things take a violent turn after she drives off with a dangerous stranger (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), whom she harpoons in self-defense. Turning to her sister for help, the two decide to dispose of the body instead of involving the police. The Connollys find themselves not only dodging the cops, but also embroiled in the local underground crime scene, led by menacing brothel owner and friend of their mother’s, Enid Devlin (played by a perfectly cast Margo Martindale). They reluctantly must navigate this secretive side of their hometown, learning their mother and her close friends (played by the brilliant supporting trio of June Squibb, Marceline Hugot, and Annette O’Toole) may be deeply involved. BLOW THE MAN DOWN is a captivating take on the dark comedy crime genre, examining the ways in which the women of Easter Cove work to covertly gain power, manage the violence that surrounds them, and how best to protect each other. Directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy visually capture the moody feel of a New England coastal town in winter, with shots of fish-gutting and choppy waves off the shore, reflecting the murky underbelly of the town. The film disarmed me most, however, in its deft balance of humor with the seriousness of the film’s larger themes of violence against women which are woven expertly throughout, in both its imagery and in its numerous and impressive female performances. The final moments of BLOW THE MAN DOWN exemplify this, in one of the most affective film endings I’ve seen in recent years. (2019, 91 min) [Megan Fariello]
Milwaukee Underground Film Festival – Program 4
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Film Department – Program 4 is available free October 6-13 here
Program 4 focuses on landscape, migration, transformation, and identity. Lilli Carré's PRIVATE PROPERTIES (2019) is a terrific bit of transformational animation with private spaces altering with an erratic and messy grace. Impersonal straight lines form quiet corners and those alternate with personal and esoteric swirls and clattering messes. Saif Alsaegh's BITTER WITH A SHY TASTE OF SWEETNESS (2019) is a series of poetic diary entries on family and migration visually translated quite literally. Taking intensely personal story fragments and plainly presenting related images on the screen creates a very disorienting effect. Hân Phạm's TO: YOU, TO NIGHT (2020) features odd, starkly lit personal objects and a somewhat menacing nocturnal stroll. Discussions of identity and place get fractured as the landscape images become fractured on screen. Natasha Woods's CONFRONTATIONS (2018) tracks familial patterns of moving away and compromise with a witty and balanced charm. Paolo Zuñiga's EN MI PUEBLO (2019) is a landscape film with a soundtrack of hushed and warm family memories. Sky Hopinka's LORE (2019) is a mix of a musical rehearsal and the artist roughly pushing around transparent images on an overhead projector. It's very charming and meandering and ultimately is a deft metaphor for the creative process with silhouetted fingers smooshing around pictures and memories until they make some kind of pleasurable sense. Felicity E. Palma's MEDUSA AND THE ABYSS (2019) is a delightful punny piece with creative uses of text on screen, and jovial pokes at cultural gaze and gesture. Juana Robles's Y UN GATO DE PORCELANA (AND A PORCELAIN CAT) (2020) is a hazy and effective black-and-white account of ruined ghost towns left as stark reminders of the Spanish Civil War. Richard Tuohy and Dianna Barrie's VALPI (2019) features the pair's usual masterful control over the cinematic apparatus. Slats of images beautifully splintered with optical techniques create a portrait of a slanted and shaky city on the brink. (2018-20, approx. 74 min. total) [Josh B. Mabe]
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The festival is presenting one program per week for six weeks, through October 27. Each program premieres as a livestream at 5pm on Tuesday, and then will be available online for one week (select titles may not be included after the livestream, per filmmaker agreements)
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
Most independent, alternative, arthouse, grassroots, DIY, and university-based venues and several festivals continue to have suspended operations, are closed, or have 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*
CLOSED/POSTPONED/HIATUS:
Beverly Arts Center – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Closed until furtuer notice (see above for “virtual” online screenings)
Chicago Film Society – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Chicago Filmmakers – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice*
Comfort Film (at Comfort Station) – Programming cancelled until further notice
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) – Will be presenting online discussions and screenings in October
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.
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 until further notice
CINE-LIST: October 2 - October 8, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Cody Corrall, Kyle Cubr, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Kalvin Henley, Tien-Tien Jong, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Josh B. Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Metzger, Scott Pfeiffer, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky