We will highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that have reopened, grouped in our previously standard Crucial Viewing and Also Recommended sections, as well as all other physical screenings, and list streaming/online screenings below.
Remember to check the venues’ websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place. More and more venues are now requiring proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test. We recommend verifying those protocols before every trip to the theater. And, of course, always wear a mask.
👁️THE CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The 57th Annual Chicago International Film Festival begins on Wednesday and goes through October 24. We have select reviews of films playing during the first two days of the festival below; next week’s list will include the bulk of our reviews. There are several locations for the physical portion of this year’s festival: AMC River East 21, Music Box Theatre, Gene Siskel Film Center, and Pilsen ChiTown Movies (the drive-in venue). We will indicate venue as well as dates and times with each review. Furthermore, there’s a virtual aspect to the festival; information about a film’s virtual availability will be noted where applicable. More info here.
Semih Kaplanoğlu's COMMITMENT HASAN (Turkey)
AMC River East 21 – Thursday, 7:15pm
Turkish writer-director Semih Kaplanoğlu might be described as a post-Tarkovsky filmmaker in that his work often aspires to a meditative quality through reverential depictions of natural landscapes. COMMITMENT HASAN, the second film in Kaplanoğlu's "Commitment" trilogy, feels less contemplative at first glance than most of his previous movies (or, for that matter, Tarkovsky's), since it forgoes his usual long-take style in favor of shorter shots that maintain the flow of the story and character development. It's still designed for patient audiences—the pacing is relaxed, and most of the substantial revelations don't occur until the final third—but it suggests that the filmmaker is beginning to sublimate his tonal and aesthetic concerns into more accessible pursuits, similar to how his countryman Nuri Bilge Ceylan evolved starting with ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (2011). As the title suggests, the subject under consideration is commitment, whether it's commitment to one's homestead, family, or faith. Hasan is a middle-aged landowner who grows fruits and vegetables on the 20-acre farm he inherited from his parents. Early in the film, a representative from a power company arrives to propose the construction of a new electrical tower on Hasan's land; the farmer rejects this proposal, but the company man insists that the tower will benefit the surrounding rural community and ominously pledges to return to continue the conversation. Kaplanoğlu seems to be setting up a fable about the eternal battle between tradition and progress, but he gradually reveals that he has something else in mind. As concerns over the electrical tower fade into the background of the story, a sense of Hasan's entire life begins to take shape; Kaplanoğlu considers the character's complicated relationships with his wife and son, his religion (much of the movie considers Hasan and his wife's upcoming pilgrimage to Mecca), and his business associates. Hasan emerges as a complex figure, more like the protagonist of an epic novel than a typical feature film. Noble in some respects but callous in others, Hasan resists simple interpretations, and this reflects the complexity of adulthood and the challenges of living in the world. (2021, 148 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Also available to stream for the duration of the festival in the following states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin. More info here.
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Mia Hansen-Løve’s BERGMAN ISLAND (France/Sweden)
AMC River East 21 – Thursday, 8pm
Shortly after Ingmar Bergman died in July 2007, the critic, programmer, filmmaker, and onetime Cine-File contributor Gabe Klinger organized a weekend program of Bergman titles at the Chopin Theatre. Jonathan Rosenbaum introduced a revival of SAWDUST AND TINSEL (1953), then led a post-show discussion; the conversation yielded some of the most constructive thinking about Bergman I’ve yet encountered, in large part because Rosenbaum acknowledged what makes the Swedish writer-director such a difficult filmmaker at times. Noting that Bergman was inspired to make SAWDUST AND TINSEL by the dissolution of one of his marriages, Rosenbaum called out the film’s central allegory as being too personal to achieve the sort of universal impact the filmmaker was going for. “One definition of pretension,” Rosenbaum suggested, “might be pretending that something is universal when it’s really not.” I bring up Rosenbaum’s insight not to devalue Bergman, but to honor him. How many filmmakers before him attempted to give voice to the full range of their psyches, good and bad? Bergman almost single-handedly brought to narrative cinema the idea that a movie could be the expression of a filmmaker’s soul, and this makes him one of the indisputable giants of the medium. At the same time, Bergman was a complicated human being; as more than one character in Mia Hansen-Løve’s BERGMAN ISLAND points out, he was great artist but also a self-centered jerk whose relationships with his nine children by six mothers ranged from nonexistent to psychologically abusive. Because Bergman plays such a crucial role in the development of movies, reconciling with his personal contradictions feels like confronting certain contradictions inherent to movies as a whole. Like all the major art forms, cinema can be a vehicle for unbridled self-expression, in all that implies—it can give rise to soul-searching and narcissism, and Bergman certainly indulged in both. BERGMAN ISLAND is an appropriately personal tribute to the Swedish master: it’s the kind of soul-bearing, self-regarding art film that could not have been conceived without Bergman’s influence. Plainly inspired by Hansen-Løve’s longtime relationship with fellow French director Olivier Assayas, the movie charts a short vacation that two married filmmakers (Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth) take to Fårö, the small island where Bergman spent the last several decades of his life. The first half of the movie follows the couple as they tour the island and run into other cinephile tourists (including Gabe Klinger, who’s credited as “American Man”); Hansen-Løve delivers a semi-autobiographical account of a marriage falling part that can’t help but recall certain passages of Bergman’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE (1973). The second half, which largely consists of the movie that the female filmmaker is currently writing, recalls some of Bergman’s narrative experiments like PERSONA (1966). Both stories center on a woman who’s unhappy in her longtime relationship; the major difference is that the first shows the woman remaining unhappy in her plight and the second shows her having an affair with an old flame she re-encounters at a wedding. The concentration on female psychology is Bergmanesque, but the sensitivity and understatement shown by Hansen-Løve, a great director in her own right, are very much in keeping with her previous films (particularly GOODBYE FIRST LOVE [2011], which the second half of BERGMAN ISLAND most resembles). As usual, Hansen-Løve elicits exacting performances from her leads (including Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie as the stars of the movie-within-a-movie), and she uses Fårö to memorable, if characteristically subtle, effect. This may be too inside-baseball for many viewers (even fans of Hansen-Løve’s other films), but it succeeds in stirring debate about Bergman—and making a passionate case for why he still matters. Preceded by Gabe Klinger’s BERGMAN’S GHOSTS (4 min), which involves “Super 8 fragments captured during the production of Bergman Island; in voiceover, Mia Hansen-Løve offers candid impressions on her creative process.” (2021, 113 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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More info here.
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Jacob Gentry’s BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION (US)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:30 pm
In our current digital age, fascination with analog technology abounds, as seen in referential shows like Stranger Things or in the sale of audio cassette tapes at places like Urban Outfitters. I’ve argued elsewhere that this fascination represents both a nostalgic pull and a longing for the physical, both in terms of objects and the community they engendered. While Jacob Gentry’s BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION adds to the contemporary obsession with outdated media technologies, it also explores this intriguing idea about the vacillating of technology as a tool for human connection and as an isolating force. In Chicago in 1999, archivist and AV whiz James (Harry Shum Jr.) stumbles upon on video of a cryptic hacker who interrupted a local television channel in the late 1980s; the film loosely references a real-life Max Headroom signal hijacking that occurred in Chicago in 1987 and for which no one was ever caught. As James digs further into these enigmatic acts of video piracy, he discovers they may be related to a series of disappearances, including his wife’s from years earlier. BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION leans heavily on inspiration from 70s paranoid thrillers; it’s here where the film gets bogged down in a convoluted plot rather than focusing on the compelling psychological horror at its core. It works best when it directly engages with its dark thematic questions about media and communication; the fetishization of technology throughout the film feels compulsive, as James easily utilizes innumerous formats in his quest for answers. Gentry uses a few fascinating techniques to draw the audience into the unnerving use of technology; at moments, characters begin to speak before their mouths can be seen moving, highlighting the ways audio/visual technology can create temporal and spatial disruptions—not just for James, but the viewer as well. Director Jacob Gentry and star Harry Shum Jr. in person. (2021, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Also available to stream for the duration of the festival in the following states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin. More info here.
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Ousmane Sembène’s CEDDO (Senegal)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) — Wednesday, 7pm (Free Admission)
There’s more than meets the eye to Ousmane Sembène’s CEDDO—much, much more. What at first might appear to be a standard historical epic about the director’s homeland is actually a nuanced depiction of pre-colonial Senegal and a faint commentary on the misconceptions of both pre- and post-colonial Senegal that exist in most outsiders’ minds. In his Cahiers du Cinéma review of this enduring masterpiece (considered by many to be among Sembène’s best films, if not the best overall), Serge Daney began his discerning assessment of the film by noting that “[b]y habit and laziness, racism too, whites always thought that emancipated and decolonized black Africa would give birth to a dancing and singing cinema of liberation… [t]he result of this… is that the Western specialists of the young African cinema, too preoccupied with defending it through political solidarity or misguided charity, have failed to grasp its real value and originality: the oral tradition, storytelling.” Ironically, then, the film’s complexity lies in its modesty, its ties to the very sort of customs that the ceddo (the “people of refusal,” referring to the Wolof villagers who reject the imposition of monotheistic religions, namely Islam and Christianity, onto them) are fighting to maintain. Set in the 17th century (though the era in which it takes place is ambiguous, with some sources claiming it takes place in the 18th or even 19th century), CEDDO begins with the kidnapping of a young princess, Dior Hocine, whose father has recently come under the thumb of white interlopers and an aggressive imam. The ceddo have taken her in protest against their ruler and his court’s conversion to Islam; back in the village, some brave citizens appeal to the king by way of impassioned monologues. Concurrently, several members of her father’s court, among whom there’s a disagreement about which of them is the rightful heir to the throne, attempt to save the princess from where she’s being held, though eventually they’re killed by the unrelenting ceddo. Having been expelled from the council by the imam, the ceddo prepare an attack but are preempted by the imam and his supporters, after which it’s revealed that the king has died—allegedly due to a snake bite, though murder is implied—and the imam has taken power, soon converting the ceddo to Islam and preparing to trade them as slaves. The film’s ending (which I won’t spoil here) involves the princess, who heretofore has been shown in almost dream-like sequences far and away from the hecticness of the central action back in the village. It’s an extraordinary, almost mythical conclusion to what’s preceded it, the stuff of cinema that eschews analysis. That a female character, specifically an elite figure who may have come to realize that her own oppression as a woman is linked with her people’s oppression at the hands of colonialism’s forebears, is responsible for such a pivotal moment underlines Sembène’s subversive aims. Overall CEDDO transforms a classic filmic mode, historical recreation, by way of subtle transgressions, including the use of brief fantasy sequences and the folklorish compression of epochs into days (in the film) and hours (as we, the viewers, watch it). The film’s Third Cinema aesthetics complement the accordant ideologies, utilizing everything from the natural influences of the landscapes and the bodies that inhabit them to traditional costumes and hair styling; it’s a stunning film in both its visuals and philosophy. Funnily, the film was banned in Senegal because Sembène had spelled ceddo with two d’s instead of just one. In direct opposition to that which is being opposed, a film wherein, as Daney loosely observes, people say what they mean and mean what they say, there’s probably more than meets the eye to that, too. Also of note is the film’s score, by Cameroonian musician Manu Dibango, who sadly passed away from COVID in March 2020. Introduction by Evan Mwangi, Professor of African Studies and English at Northwestern University. (1977, 120 min, 35mm) [Kathleen Sachs]
William Wyler’s THE SHAKEDOWN (US/Silent)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30pm
A ne’er-do-well young man is redeemed by the love and faith of an orphan boy—it’s an old and often-told screen story, particularly in cinema’s early days, when Victorian sentimentality mixed with low life expectancy made such stories both contemporary and popular with audiences. In the late silent THE SHAKEDOWN, master director William Wyler displays his usual felicity with character development not only through deft direction of his cast, but also through some sometimes dazzling visual effects. James Murray, who was plucked from obscurity by King Vidor to star in the masterwork THE CROWD (1928), plays conman Dave Roberts, who chases down Clem (Jack Hanlon), an orphan who lives by his wits and his quick fingers, after he snatches a pie from the woman (Barbara Kent) Dave is chatting up at the diner where she works. Soon, Clem has taken up residence in Dave’s bedsit. When it is announced that barnstorming boxer Battling Roff (George Kotsonaros) is coming to town to take on all challengers for a $1,000 purse, Clem throws himself into stoking Dave to train for the fight. Wyler signals Roff’s menace by photographing him sitting in his corner of the ring with his arms spread to either side, gripping the ropes and puffing them like eagle’s wings. The director makes interesting use of a construction elevator, shooting down as Dave descends from a high beam in a foreshadowing of the bravery he will display later in the film. While Hanlon has nothing like the appeal of Jackie Coogan (and it doesn’t help that there are far too many scenes of him making faces at a childish man), Wyler pulls a decent performance out of him, especially when he is confronted with Dave’s anger. Barbara Kent, who was so appealing in LONESOME (1928), is just as appealing here and handles her obligatory duties as Dave’s conscience in a believable manner. Wyler makes the most of this genre film, offering a lot to like in seven reels. (1929, 65 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Yasujiro Ozu’s AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON (Japan)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 1pm
The Japanese title of Yasujiro Ozu’s last film translates as “Taste of Mackerel,” so you can understand why it was renamed AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON for western audiences. An invocation of fall seems befitting for a final work, particularly one about a 60-ish gentleman taking stock of his life to date and preparing for his last decades on earth. Yet the original title is no less appropriate for Ozu, one of the greatest chroniclers of everyday life in cinema. In his untouchable postwar masterpieces, the writer-director constructed stories around quotidian sensations and routines, finding beauty in experiences most of us take for granted. So it goes with AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON, which reaches its poignant insights about aging, disappointment, and loss through observations of the protagonist (played by Ozu’s favorite actor, Chishu Ryu) as he goes to his white-collar job, meets his buddies for drinks after work, and dines at home with his grown children. The film also considers Ryu’s character’s mission to find a husband for his daughter before she becomes an old maid, but this never assumes the urgency that Ozu brought to a similar search in LATE SPRING (1949). Rather, one comes to sense—through a characteristically subtle network of allusions and behavioral cues—that most of the major events in this character’s life have already taken place, namely his military service, his experience of raising children, and the death of his wife. The pervasive feeling of important events having already happened makes AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON one of Ozu’s most melancholy films; and in one critical scene, when Ryu encounters a man who’d served under him in the war (and who still experiences nostalgia for the Japanese military), that sense of melancholy takes on national proportions. The theme of defeat becomes obvious only in hindsight, however, as the movie is by and large a cheerful one. Building on the pleasant comedy of their recent GOOD MORNING (1959), Ozu and his longtime cowriter Kogo Noda fill AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON with humorous scenarios and charming character portraits. A key subplot involves Ryu and his friends catching up with their old middle-school teacher and discovering that he loves nothing more than getting blissed-out drunk; one motif involves the drinking buddies playing practical jokes on the barmaid at their favorite watering hole; and one of Ryu’s grown sons begins to sulk like the little boys of GOOD MORNING when his wife won’t let him buy new golf clubs. Such details contribute to a sweet (or, better, mackerel-flavored) appreciation of the day-to-day in which every encounter provides something to savor. Screening as part of the Siskel's Gentle Giants series. (1962, 113 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Satoshi Kon’s PAPRIKA (Japan/Animation)
Doc Films at the University of Chicago – Thursday, 7pm
PAPRIKA was Satoihi Kon's final film, and what a wonderful way to wrap up a remarkable career. Kon passed away in 2010 due to pancreatic cancer at the early age of 46, but his work has left a lasting impression on cinema, inspiring filmmakers worldwide and even garnering some copycats, to put it nicely (just Google it). In PAPRIKA, we see the culmination of themes and stylizations that occur throughout his work; it also represents a boundlessly creative approach to the anime medium. Kon often blurred the line between reality and fantasy, and in PAPRIKA he addresses the world of dreams and its position in our worldview. The titular Paprika is the dream persona of a psychologist who enters patients' dreams to help guide their rehabilitation. Things get chaotic when someone steals a device that makes Paprika's dream-hopping possible and starts to use it for nefarious purposes. PAPRIKA successfully juggles a multitude of genres—it’s a horror movie, comedy, and psychological thriller at the same time. Kon, like a few of his contemporaries, recognized the similarities between cinema and dreams. Filmmakers like David Lynch and Apichatpong Weerasethakul are known for utilizing dream logic in their films, and Kon deserves to be mentioned in the same discussions about the close relationship between these two forms. In PAPRIKA, Kon recognizes that cinema has the power to manipulate and replicate dreams, and he questions the morality of cinema's ability to do so. Is it wrong to toy freely with dreams, places of purity and unbounded freedom and safe havens from the harsh reality that plagues our waking lives? Kon decides that, through cinema we can take the joy and freedom of our dreams and transplant them into our day-to-day lives for everyone to enjoy. (2006, 90 mins, 35mm) [Drew Van Weelden]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Michael Caplan’s ALGREN (US/Documentary)
Chicago Humanities Festival at the Field Museum – Saturday, 3pm
About 30 years ago, I was in a book club composed of people who were in my circle through marriage—mostly doctors and psychologists from places other than Chicago. When it was my turn to choose a book for the group to read, I picked Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm. When next we met, the looks on their faces let me know that mine wasn’t a popular choice, and when I said I identified with the characters, their outraged disbelief was truly a shock to me. Now that I’ve seen Michael Caplan’s ALGREN and heard Billy Corgan voice what I felt—that it’s hard to explain how much Algren understood what Chicagoans from all walks of life feel about the city—I don’t feel crazy, though I’d still be an outcast in many circles for my sympathies. ALGREN is a chronological telling of the life of Chicago’s “bard of the down-and-outer” (as he was introduced when he was presented with the very first National Book Award for Fiction), from his working-class upbringing on the Northwest Side to his college matriculation into the jobless abyss of the Great Depression and through his career as a novelist and journalist. Caplan makes copious use of the still photos of Art Shay, who documented Algren and life on the skids better than anyone, to reflect what his interview subjects have to say about the writer and his city. He also creates animations that illustrate, for example, Simone de Beauvoir flying between her two lovers on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean—Jean-Paul Sartre and Algren. While I know a great deal about Algren from his writings, newspaper articles, an expansive biography, and another documentary about him, Caplan added to my knowledge of the man and gave an alternate and plausible explanation for why Algren moved to the East Coast in the final years of his life. The film, which apparently was finished in 2014 but not released until now, includes interviews with several people who are now dead, including Florence Shay, Art Shay, and Studs Terkel—all people who knew him very well. Best of all, Caplan is generous in recording excerpts from Algren’s work, read by Terkel, a voice double for Algren, and the writer himself. This is a worthy look at the man who famously penned, “Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.” (2014, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Bill Gunn’s GANJA AND HESS (US)
Facets Cinema – Thursday, 8pm
Any screening of Bill Gunn’s experimental, avant-garde horror masterpiece, GANJA AND HESS, is cause for celebration, not least because it almost never existed in the first place. Its original producers, Kelly/Jordan Enterprises, were eager to capitalize on the commercial viability of BLACULA, which was released the year prior. Gunn, who was a fixture in the NYC theater scene, and had written the screenplay for Hal Ashby’s THE LANDLORD, was tapped for the project. Though he was leery of working in the Blaxploitation genre, Gunn saw an opportunity to use studio resources to bring about his own audacious vision. The result, despite winning the Critics Prize at Cannes in 1973, was a wholesale departure from the script approved by Kelly/Jordan, who subsequently sold the film, which lead to it being cut from 112 to 78 minutes and re-released under the guise of a handful of other titles like BLOOD COUPLE, DOUBLE POSSESSION, and so on. The original version was virtually unavailable for decades until MoMA restored a 35mm negative several years ago, enabling a Kino-Lorber re-release. If the producers were expecting anything resembling a formulaic Blaxploitation movie—or, for that matter, something with any semblance of a conventional narrative—you can see why they were dismayed by the final product. GANJA AND HESS is less campy B-movie and more Ingmar Bergman or David Lynch, with a plot that’s deliberately enigmatic and driven by poetic symbolism. The film centers on Dr. Hess Green, an anthropologist stabbed by his deranged assistant (played by Gunn) with a diseased dagger from an ancient civilization, thereby causing him to metamorphose into a vampire (although the term “vampire” is never explicitly used throughout the film). The titular Ganja arrives not long after and is infected with the vampiric germ, prompting the couple to spend the rest of the film attempting to satiate their newfound bloodlust. It’s not hard to read vampirism in GANJA AND HESS as a thinly veiled metaphor for drug addiction, an interpretation that has been confirmed by producer Chiz Schultz, but there are deeper valences here. Tasked with making a Blaxploitation film, Gunn instead opted to use the trope of the vampire—a creature that’s all about sucking up human life force—to tell a story about the actual exploitation of Black people throughout history. Gunn’s film is not didactic, though. Instead, his thesis is embedded within the visual syntax of the film, which employs elaborate montage editing techniques to subliminally display signifiers—including nooses, body bags, and copious amounts of blood—that conjure up the atrocities of racism throughout American history. Along the way, he interpolates surreal (flash)back to Africa imagery, religious symbolism, and shots of various artworks from the Brooklyn Museum (a commentary, I think, on the reification of living people into things). Moreover, the half-human/half-other hybridity of the vampire is used here by Gunn as an analog to decry the ways in which black people are systematically treated as less than human—put simply, GANJA AND HESS is a horror film made by a director who knew that reality is much more horrific than fiction. creening as part of Facets’ Alternative Horror Essentials series. (1973, 112 mins, Digital Projection) [Harrison Sherrod]
Claire Denis’ TROUBLE EVERY DAY (France)
Facets Cinema – Friday, 8pm
TROUBLE EVERY DAY was Claire Denis’ most contentious film before BASTARDS; not surprisingly it was her goriest film to date, trading in dark, eroticized violence that can be a deal-breaker for many viewers. Vincent Gallo stars as an American doctor who travels to Paris with his innocent young wife. He says they’re on a honeymoon, but really he wants to research the rare condition with which he’s afflicted—it makes him want to drink human blood. Gallo encounters a doctor (Denis regular Alex Descas) whose wife (Beatrice Dalle) is afflicted with the same condition; Denis goes on to parallel Gallo’s story with Dalle’s, showing how terrible things might get for the American doctor. The violence is shockingly graphic, yet the narrative is characteristically vague. Is TROUBLE EVERY DAY an AIDS allegory? A Cronenbergian fable about how little we understand our own bodies? Or just a reflection of whatever nightmares Denis was having at the time? As usual for the director, Denis makes you feel vivid sensations before you understand what the film means. The associative editing, the moody cityscapes, and the evocative Tindersticks score combine to create a memorable sensory assault. Screening as part of Facets’ Alternative Horror Essentials series. (2001, 101 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
Leos Carax’s ANNETTE
Doc Films at the University of Chicago – Friday, 7pm and Sunday, 4pm
The financing for Leos Carax’s ANNETTE—the French director’s sixth feature in just under 40 years—came from seven different countries, so we aren’t noting the film’s nation(s) of origin as we usually do. While this is an inevitable reflection of contemporary international film production, it also feels appropriate to this individual movie. More than any other Carax film to date, ANNETTE belongs to no country other than the Cinema, that magical land where sounds and images can override the particularities of any individual culture. It was probably easier for filmmakers to achieve that effect during the silent era than today, and indeed, silent movies remain a crucial touchstone for Carax (not for nothing does the protagonist of ANNETTE watch King Vidor’s THE CROWD at one point). This singular filmmaker has always preferred archetypes to three-dimensional characters, the better to channel universal emotions. He also has a tendency to foreground his formal experiments so they overwhelm whatever story he’s telling, and this connects him to 1920s innovators like F.W. Murnau and Jean Epstein. But Carax is more than just a stylist—he’s an autobiographical poet in the tradition of Jean Cocteau, although (like Cocteau) he tends to bury the autobiographical content of his films in visual tricks, movie references, and jokes. ANNETTE, for instance, may be Carax’s confession about his experience of fatherhood (he dedicates the movie to his daughter, Nastya, who also appears onscreen with him), yet he obfuscates this confession by portraying the main characters’ daughter as a wooden puppet. Any confession on Carax’s part is further obscured by the very personal contributions of his cowriters, Ron and Russell Mael, better known as the songwriting duo behind the long-running band Sparks. The Mael brothers also wrote the music for ANNETTE, which is (among many other things) an opera, that highly cinematic form that predates cinema itself. Most of the film’s dialogue is sung, and much of the singing circles around simple, repeated phrases, a technique the Maels have employed in numerous songs. Audiences going into ANNETTE anticipating a rock opera in the style of Sparks’ 1970s glam classics (e.g., Kimono My House, Propaganda) are sure to be disappointed; the music is decidedly in the vein of their divisive 2002 album Lil’ Beethoven, a collection of pop songs written and arranged after the fashion of symphonic and operatic compositions. There simply isn’t a lot of music that sounds like this, and it has the effect of defamiliarizing the film’s observations about such common subjects as celebrity, art, love, and family. But that seems to be the point of ANNETTE, which exists in part to remind us how strange and wonderful our world can be. (2021, 140 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
Kelly Reichardt’s FIRST COW (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 8pm
Kelly Reichardt’s FIRST COW begins with a poignant quote from William Blake: “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” Based on a novel by Reichardt’s frequent writing collaborator, Jonathan Raymond, FIRST COW is a gorgeously crafted masterpiece about the importance of friendship to the human condition. In early 19th century Oregon Country, Otis “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro), a survivalist and chef, meets King-Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese immigrant on the run; they begin to reside together at King-Lu’s shack on the outskirts of a settlement. Conversations about Cookie’s baking leads them to steal milk from the region’s first cow, owned by a wealthy Englishman (Toby Jones). The biscuits they make with the milk become quite popular at the local market, gaining them a bit of cash, but their growing reliance on–and fondness for–the cow ends in tragedy. It’s an unassuming story but meticulously told and with beautifully achieved, overarching themes. Stunning cinematography of nature and heartbreaking performances drive the film; Magaro and Lee are both excellent, especially in scenes that feature Cookie and King-Lu’s thoughtful conversations about their pasts and ambitions. Likewise, even characters that only appear for a scene feel completely realized. At times exceedingly slow paced, FIRST COW is itself about time, both its passage and what remains when we’re gone. Widely released around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s difficult not to feel particularly moved by a story of two people supporting each other with such kindness when they need it most. It’s also an interesting commentary on U.S. history, quietly yet firmly critiquing American ideals of ownership, capitalism, and manifest destiny; like many of Reichardt’s films, it’s a sweet, small tale with profound implications. (Notably, FIRST COW was consistently the highest ranked film amongst Cine-File contributors’ best of 2020 lists.) Screening as part of the Siskel's Gentle Giants series. (2020, 122 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR (Thailand)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 5:45pm
It's a fitting choice for a director whose films feel like reveries to set a film in a clinic for soldiers who are unable to wake up. Likewise, the hallucinatory gradient glow of lamps placed beside the patients' beds to calm their dreams are analogous to the particular narrative and stylistic approach that makes Weerasethakul's work so unique and immediately recognizable. The protagonist, Jenjira (played by Jenjira Pongpas), is a volunteer at the hospital who "adopts" one of the soldiers as her own son. Outside the few hours he is awake, her main channel of communication is a medium whose skill allegedly once garnered a job offer from the FBI. The agents of the soldiers' malady are dead kings—disturbed by a government project to lay a fibre optic cable near their graveyard—enlisting their spirits to wage otherworldly wars. The loose narrative structure that propels the film forward is just as concerned with detailing Jen's life experiences as it is with resolving the soldiers' situation, unspooling in leisurely sequences that can feel both casual and monumental. By the end, you realize how much personal and temporal ground you've covered without even noticing as it was happening. The elements of the story certainly encourage metaphorical readings, engaging Thai history up to the present day. For all the enigmas of Weerasethakul's cinema, in the context of the 2014 coup and continued military control of the country, the final five minutes of CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR feel remarkably explicit. What is political cinema? Let us hope that, as opposed to the myriad Sundance-anointed "issue films" coming soon to a theater near you, it's something like this. Screening as part of the Siskel's Gentle Giants series. (2015, 122 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Kopecky]
Abbas Kiarostami’s TASTE OF CHERRY (Iran)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 5:30pm
This is one of the great big-screen experiences, comparable in its effect to L'ECLISSE or 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Like those films, Abbas Kiarostami's Palme d'Or winner confronts some of the essential questions of existence; while Kiarostami's approach may be more modest than Antonioni's or Kubrick's, the poetic simplicity of TASTE OF CHERRY assumes a monumental quality when projected. The plot is structured like a fable: A calm middle-aged man of apparently good economic standing drives around the outskirts of Tehran. Over the course of a day, he gives a ride to three separate hitchhikers; after engaging each in conversation, he asks if the stranger will assist him in committing suicide. That the succession of hitchhikers (young, older, oldest) suggests the course of the life cycle is the only schematic aspect of the film. Each encounter contains enough digressions to illuminate the magic unpredictability of life itself—not only in the conversation, but also in the formal playfulness of Kiarostami's direction. The film is rife with the two shots that, paradoxically, form Kiarostami's artistic signature: the screen-commanding close-up of a face in conversation, eerily separated in space from the person he's talking to; and the cosmic long-shot of a single car driving quixotically across a landscape. Here, both images evoke feelings of isolation that are inextricable from human consciousness, yet the overall tone of the film is light, even bemused. The final sequence, one of the finest games conjured by a movie, sparked countless philosophical bull-sessions when TASTE OF CHERRY was first released, and it remains plenty mind-blowing today. Screening as part of the Siskel's Gentle Giants series. (1997, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Wim Wenders’ PARIS, TEXAS (Germany/France/US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, Noon
One of the most revealing pieces of dialogue in PARIS, TEXAS occurs when, following a screening of an old family movie, the eight-year-old Hunter is getting ready for bed. Hunter had noticed the way his father Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), who’s just returned from an unexplained four-year estrangement, watched the footage of his wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski), who’s been absent for the same length of time. The boy explains to his adopted mother that he believes Travis still loves Jane. “But that’s not her,” he pointedly adds. “That’s only her in a movie.” A beat, as a cheeky smile forms across his face. “A long time ago. In a galaxy far, far away.” What begins as a remarkably lucid insight about the illusion of the cinematic image, and about the fantasies on which it hinges, can’t help but be capped off by a quote that then reinforces those very illusions. This is PARIS, TEXAS in a nutshell: a world of willful, even blithe mirages and images, in which all understanding of other people is mediated by the idealized myths of mass culture. Wenders is not above speaking the language of these myths, even as he meticulously dismantles them. Written by the all-American Sam Shepard and L. M. Kit Carson, the film radiates a love for the aesthetic and narrative iconography of the American West, from the wide-open tableaux of towering mesas and endless road to Travis’ rugged, archetypal masculine loner, whose quest to rescue a woman and tenuous attempts to reintegrate into society remix that of Ethan Edwards in THE SEARCHERS. Like so many other émigré artists ensorcelled and perturbed by the U.S., including compatriots like Douglas Sirk, Wenders doesn’t merely indulge in the grammar of Americana but defamiliarizes it to reveal, from an outsider’s critical distance, how truly melancholy, strange, and even menacing it can be. From Wenders’ vantage (and from the extraordinary camera of Robby Müller, who really hits the patriotic reds and blues copiously supplied by art director Kate Altman and costume designer Birgitta Bjerke), the West is no longer a grand frontier of imperialist expansion but a desiccated strip of roadside advertisements, diners, and motels. Not only is our would-be hero Travis a Man With No Name, he’s practically a Man With No Self, an icon emptied of past and presence and purpose, set to roam perpetually in the desert to which he’s withdrawn himself. He clings desperately to the idée-fixe of a measly plot of land he’s bought in Paris, which he and his parents wished was in France. Unfortunately, it’s really just in this godforsaken Southwestern dust bowl, and like Jane in that family movie, it’s nothing but an image. Travis’ illusions, and his dawning understanding of his need to atone for all the damage they’ve caused, finally lead to PARIS, TEXAS’ famous peep-show scenes, where mirrors and screens—those quintessential analogs of the cinema apparatus—give way, ironically, to piercing disillusions. In Wenders’ ambivalent but heartfelt ode to American lives dreamed and (uncertainly) lived, such revelations are a bittersweet matter of course. It’s what you do with them that counts. Screening as part of the Siskel's Gentle Giants series. (1984, 145 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Julia Ducournau’s TITANE (France)
Gene Siskel Film Center and Music Box Theatre – Check Venue websites for showtimes
Julia Ducournau’s TITANE is difficult to summarize without revealing too much of the wild and twisted plot. It centers on Alexia (Agatha Rousselle), a woman with a deep predilection for cars and violence and who's had a titanium plate in her skull since a vehicular accident in childhood. Did the accident awaken her perversions? Or did the piece of metal implanted in her head do it? The film cares not to say. One thing that is certain is that many of Alexia's motivations seem to come from someplace deep within herself. She expresses them in an animalistic fashion, focusing on her baser urges and her will to survive. Much like Ducournau's first film, RAW (2016), TITANE takes body horror to a shocking extreme, and the brutalities it depicts again tie into the animal side of human nature. Body horror isn't relegated to violence; it also explores the ideas of the body as status symbol and personal prison. There comes a point in the film where Alexia finds herself living with fire captain Vincent (Vincent Lindon), and their relationship takes on a father-daughter dynamic. The interactions between these two are surprisingly touching, offsetting the film’s more gnarly moments. Like the inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Toys, Alexia and Vincent find solidarity and comfort from a lonely world in each other’s presence. Visceral and thought-provoking, TITANE demonstrates Ducournau’s ability to weave a story that is batshit crazy yet grounded in fully realized characters. (2021, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]
Rene Laloux's FANTASTIC PLANET (France)
Doc Films at the University of Chicago – Saturday, 7pm
In this Dali-esque animation, based on the Cold War-era novel Oms en Serie (1957) by Stefan Wul, the earth is ruled by the "Draags," a giant race of blue neutered technocrats with a passion for meditation. Domestic humans known as "Oms" are the "little animals you stroke between meditations" while wild humans/Oms are hunted like cockroaches. The surreal and perilous world of FANTASTIC PLANET (originally LA PLANETE SAUVAGE) is rendered in beautiful (very 70s) cut out stop motion. Highlights include a glow-orgy induced by an aphrodisiac communion wafer and a cackling anthropomorphized Venus flytrap. The soundtrack is a near-constant synth jam that oscillates from moody and spacey to raunchy porn funk. The film was begun in Czechoslovakia but finished in France for political reasons, and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union looms over the story. Themes of repression, rebellion, and the dangers of technocracy permeate FANTASTIC PLANET. The film seems to suggest that excessive rationality can make the ruling class blind to its cruelty, but also that solidarity can flourish in the midst of persecution and degradation. (1973, 72 min, Digital Projection) [Mojo Lorwin]
📽️ MUSIC BOX OF HORRORS: DAWN OF THE DRIVE-IN
The Music Box of Horrors: Dawn of the Drive-In series takes place through October 31 at the Chi-Town Movies Drive-In, with films playing every night of the week. In addition to the film reviewed below, Hideo Nakata’s RINGU (1998, 95 min, Digital Projection) and DARK WATER (2002, 101 min, Digital Projection) screen on Friday starting at 9:30pm as part of J-Horror Night; William Friedkin’s THE EXORCIST (1973, 121 min, Digital Projection) and Ovidio G. Assonitis and Roberto Piazzoli’s BEYOND THE DOOR (1974, 97 min, Digital Projection) screen on Saturday starting at 9:30pm as part of Rip-Off Saturdays; Rupert Wainwright’s STIGMATA (1999, 103 min, Digital Projection) screens on Monday at 9:30pm as part of Nü-Metal Mondays; Paul Maslansky’s SUGAR HILL (1974, 91 min, Digital Projection) screens at 9:50pm on Wednesday; and Wes Craven’s VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN (1995, 100 min, Digital Projection) screens on Thursday at 9:30pm as part of Thirsty Thursdays. Check Venue website for more information.
Cindy Sherman’s OFFICE KILLER (US)
Sunday, 9:30pm
It often seems that when famous gallery artists turn to film they tend to stick to the experimental. Perhaps it’s the desire to be “taken seriously,” or to continue their high art, just in a different medium. From Salvador Dali to Yoko Ono to Matthew Barney, those respected in the art world seem to, quite ironically, play it safe by staying weird. Cindy Sherman’s sole feature film, the 1997 horror-comedy OFFICE KILLER, is in direct contrast to this tiring practice—and thankfully so. Her film is pure, gleeful genre fare through and through. No too-clever-by-half attempts at cinematic subversion or meta commentary. No gimmicks, no tricks. Just a fun, entertaining black comedy. This doesn’t mean that the film is without any visual beauty. As a photographer in the late 1970s and early 80s, Sherman forever changed the art world with her incredibly cinematic, and highly influential, Untitled Film Stills series. This was the work where she took pictures of herself as different clichéd female types, very inspired by film imagery of the 1950s and 60s. The photographs go far beyond simply being well executed “stills” of non-existent films; her exploration of female identity and female roles in American society is ultimately what is being put on display. So anyone familiar with Sherman’s work shouldn’t find it surprising that when she decided to finally direct a feature that she would tell the story of a female office worker, of a certain age, and her growing madness in dealing with the world around her. The visual touches of Sherman’s photography delightfully appear now and again, but she mostly frees herself from the idiosyncratic eye of her past and allows herself all the room needed to tell this oddball story. Given the dry academic lens her art is often viewed through, it’s easy to forget how truly playful Sherman’s work is. This film is a great reminder than underneath everything Sherman continuously celebrates the joy that can come with artifice. Starring one of the grand dames of American comedy, Carol Kane, and a perfectly cast-against-type Molly Ringwald as the scenery-chewing villain, corpses and laughs quickly pile up. Co-written by New Queer Cinema pioneer Todd Haynes, OFFICE KILLER plays out as a lighthearted (blackhearted?) mélange of MS .45-lite and OFFICE SPACE. When Kane accidentally kills a man who has been emotionally abusing her at work she realizes that she may actually enjoy murder. What makes this film particularly timely is the source of her growing alienation. She is thrust, unprepared, into the same uncomfortable new world that so many people are experiencing right now—working from home. The comedy/horror of email and long distance work are splattered across the screen. Laugh at the absurd, squirm at the gore, and remember that this goofball movie was directed by the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Screens as part of Serial Killer Sundays. (1997, 82 min, Digital Projection) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
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Philip Kaufman's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (US)
Tuesday, 10pm
“We don’t hate you. There’s no need for that. Or love. Not anymore.” Chicago-born filmmaker Philip Kaufman's reimagining of Don Siegel's 1956 chiller is one of the rare remakes that's every bit as worthy of classic status as the original. Transplanted from small town California to sophisticated San Francisco by screenwriter W. D. Richter at Kaufman's behest, the film taps into urban paranoia in ways that bear comparisons with Alan J. Pakula's work from the period. The story's resilient ability to be forever timely is uncanny. As Kaufman put it in a 2018 interview, "Could it happen in the city I love the most? The city with the most advanced, progressive therapies, politics and so forth? What would happen in a place like that if the pods landed there and that element of ‘poddiness’ was spread?" Read that quote again and see if it doesn't remind you of the past five years. Yet a huge reason why this 1978 film is so gripping now is its very "1978"-ness: Jeff Goldblum at an early zenith of exotic nerdiness, Brutalist corporate skyscrapers with escalators that seem to lead nowhere, Leonard Nimoy in creepy tweeds and an unexplained leather hand brace, fern bars and mud spas, and Veronica Cartwright's bleary, Visine-craving visage. The film is a vivid time capsule of its era, but its haunting final shot, an early meme that's still going strong, is timeless—one of cinema's indelible images of terror. (1978, 115 min, Digital Projection) [Rob Christopher]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
Also Screening
⚫ Asian Pop-Up Cinema
Yung Chang’s 2021 documentary WUHAN WUHAN (90 min, Digital Projection) screens at the Chinese American Museum (238 W. 23rd St.) on Saturday at 2pm, and Cheang Pou-soi’s 2021 Hong Kong action thriller LIMBO (118 min, Digital Projection) screens at the ChiTown Movies drive-in (2343 S. Throop St.) on Tuesday at sunset, with gates opening at 6pm. Asian Pop-Up Cinema also offers a variety of films to stream on their website. More info and tickets available here.
⚫ Chicago Seminar on Media and the Moving Image
The newly revamped seminar kicks off with “Modernism is Not for Children: Reckoning with Annette Michelson," presented by Dan Morgan from the University of Chicago. The event will take place from 5 - 6:30pm in DePaul's Richard and Maggie Daley Building at 14 E. Jackson Blvd. in Room 1834. More info here.
⚫ Comfort Station
The Chicago Democratic Socialists of America are presenting a fundraiser screening of Martin Ritt’s 1979 film NORMA RAE (110 min, 16mm) at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) on Wednesday at 7pm, in support of IATSE’s authorized strike. More info here.
⚫ Doc Films at the University of Chicago
In addition to the films reviewed above, Rob Reiner’s 1989 romantic comedy WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (96 min, Digital Projection) will screen on Bartlett Quad on Saturday at 7:30pm; the event is free and snacks will be provided. Back at Ida Noyes, John Huston’s 1950 heist film THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (112 min, Digital Projection) screens on Thursday at 9:30pm. Per Doc’s website, “[c]urrently, only UCID holders will be allowed to purchase single tickets. Please bring cash or purchase tickets online here, as [they] no longer take credit cards at the theater. There is a Citibank ATM on the first floor of Ida for your convenience. Non-UCID holders cannot purchase single tickets and must buy a season pass to attend screenings. Passes may be purchased at the theater in cash upon showing proof of vaccination.” More info here.
⚫ Facets Cinema
In advance of the 38th Annual Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, an audience favorite from a previous edition of the festival, Damon Gameau’s 2019 Australian film 2040 (92 min, Digital Projection) screens on Saturday at 3pm. On Sunday, to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, a one-day festival called Latin American Rarities will include screenings of four films: Luis Buñuel’s 1951 Mexican film SUSANA (86 min, Digital Projection) at 1pm; Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll’s 2001 Uruguayan film 25 WATTS (94 min, Digital Projection) at 3pm; Juan Mora Catlett’s 2006 Mexican film ERENDIRA IKIKUNARI (107 min, Digital Projection) at 5pm; and Victor Gaviria’s 1990 RODRIGO D: NO FUTURO (91 min, Digital Projection) at 7pm, with an introduction from Cine-File contributor Raphael Jose Martinez. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts)
Presented in conjunction with Relational Futures: A Symposium for Indigenous Land, Water, and Environment, which is taking place at the Smart Museum through October 9, David Byars’ 2020 documentary PUBLIC TRUST (96 min, DCP Digital) screens on Friday at 7pm. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Indigenous scholars and outdoor enthusiasts Angelo Baca (Diné/Hopi) and Ashleigh Thompson (Red Lake Ojibwe) with the film’s producer Jeremy Hunter Rubingh, moderated by University of Chicago Department of Anthropology faculty member Teresa Montoya (Diné). More info here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Jon Siskel and Greg Jacobs’ 2020 documentary THE ROAD UP (93 min, DCP Digital) plays this week with directors in person for post-screening Q&As, as well as Amalia Ulman’s 2021 Spanish film EL PLANETA (79 min, DCP Digital). Check Venue website for showtimes; more info on all screenings here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s 2021 documentary RESCUE (108 min, DCP Digital) starts this week, check Venue website for showtimes; James Gunn’s 2006 horror film SLITHER (95 min, 35mm) screens on Friday and Saturday at midnight; and the premiere of Ewa Bielska’s 2021 short film HER CALL (18 min, DCP Digital) is on Thursday at 4pm, beginning with a champagne toast and red carpet pictures and followed with a Q&A. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Nightingale Cinema
Chicago’s favorite rough-and-ready micro-cinema reopens its doors with a screening of programmer selections from the Chicago Film Archives. “From the Reels of the Chicago Film Archives” will screen on Friday at 7pm; seven short films from CFA’s collection are included, one of which was selected by Cine-File associate editor Kat Sachs. “Coast to Coast with Nancy Cain” will screen on Sunday at 7pm, with six works by the late artist. More info on both screenings here.
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
João Paulo Miranda Maria's MEMORY HOUSE (Brazil)
Available to rent through Facets Cinema here
A striking, unsettling story set in southern Brazil from João Paulo Miranda Maria pits Christovam (Cinema Novo regular Antonio Pitanga), an aging, solitary Black man relocated from the north, against the austerity measures of the multinational dairy factory that employs him as well as the local Austrian community who disrespect and torment him (and his dog). The headstrong Jenifer (Ana Flavia Cavalcante) is a prostitute at the local watering hole who rejects Christovam’s chauvinistic guidance. His ramshackle home houses a panoply of ancestral totems, which prompt him to transform first into a traditional cowboy and, eventually, to imagine himself as an avenging bull. With its unified motifs of cattle and execution, Miranda Maria’s film—his feature debut—offers no simple vision of racism, resistance, and colonialism. Make this one a priority: while cold, it offers the kind of original, visceral, surprising vision we look for. (2020, 93 min) [Scott Pfeiffer]
Notes on Black Video: 1987–2001
Available to stream for free on VDB TV until 10/20
Something struck me as I watched and rewatched the five videos in this program, a gripping survey of Black video art curated by Emily Martin: In addition to being made by Black artists, each of the works contains multitude forms of divergence, forswearing symbolism and revelling instead in almost punishing ambiguity. Why should you get the answers so easily? each seems to ask—and they’re right to do so, as theirs is a truth I cannot possibly understand. Upon reading Martin’s illuminating essay on her program, it became clear that this loaded obscurity is the essence of these works’ brilliance, which embrace a concept known as black space. Martin quotes poet and video artist Anaïs Duplan, who asserts that “[t]his approach, a kind of ‘communication after refusal’ decentralizes a white socio-racial meaning-making framework by naturalizing the idea of opposition, rather than marginalization. This opens up for black [sic] artists a new, local margin in which to propagate what has yet to be seen.” The first video in the program, Lawrence Andrews’ AN I FOR AN I (1987, 18 min), is a formidable visual reckoning, transposing meaning in every edit. Using a variety of techniques, including piquing sound design, discursive on-screen text, and evocative split-screen machinations, Andrews confronts mass media as a tool of dehumanization, specifically in how they portray Black people. This isn’t conveyed straightforwardly—scenes from RAMBO and random hardcore pornography subliminally transmit the notion that violence has become sexualized and vice-versa; the gaze is a vicious spectator here. Throughout, Andrews includes footage of himself being punched in the stomach over and over, saying “again” each time. These actions reveal how violence can become learned (and even desired) by way of repetition and eventually directed toward one’s self; at the end we see Andrews hitting his hand with his own fist. Learned paradoxes are further explored in Thomas Allen Harris’ BLACK BODY (1992, 5 min), a compact work that nevertheless embodies a strong message. Various strong messages, actually, during which the image of Harris’ naked body, entangled in wire, is shown writhing against its constraints. (Harris originally performed this during the 1992 Los Angeles uprising.) Over this visual are myriad, conflicting phrases beginning with the prompt “Black body is…” Beaten, beautiful, feared, living. These are some of the contradictory qualifiers that express the indefinable quality of being, especially of being a marginalized person whose identity is constantly in question by society and who in turn may begin to incarnate that sentiment. A disembodied monologue, delivered by an unidentified woman, mentions random body parts not respective to the speaker’s gender but inclusive of all. This emulates the piece’s subject of projection, as each descriptor featured on screen is one of many unduly cast upon those with Black bodies. Cannily referred to as a “video noir” by Martin in her essay, Leah Gilliam’s SAPPHIRE AND THE SLAVE GIRL (1995, 18 min) references Basil Dearden’s 1959 crime drama SAPPHIRE, about the murder of a young bi-racial woman who passed for white. Several women portray the titular Sapphire in Gilliam’s rendering, though they’re not really characters so much as they’re embodiments, all of these enigmatic figures inexplicably fleeing from authority. Gilliam examines the qualifiers of identity that often serve to depersonalize someone versus empowering or even just describing them. She also explores urban locales, using on-screen titles like networks, buildings, and open spaces to draw a connection between the vastness of space and the smallness of self. Tony Cokes’ FADE TO BLACK (1990, 32 min) has an extraordinary introduction, in which, via a cropped image with text below it on screen, the artist—or at least a ghostly, unidentified stand-in for him—assesses their relationship to Hitchcock’s VERTIGO. “What does this film have to do with me?” reads a snippet of the text. Then, later: “Why didn’t I just go to sleep in this master-piece, [t]his other world where I am not imagined, [w]here no one looks like me.” There’s more to it, including further excoriations of various films; like the rest of the works in the program, it’s a collage of considerations, utilizing “found” sound and footage. Cokes also includes a dialogue between two men about interpellation (hailing), a Marxist philosophy originated by Louis Althusser that connects the formation of ideology to the material world. Additionally, the onscreen text includes titles of films that depict Black people in a stereotypical light. The epilogue comes from a speech by Malcolm X, offering, in a way, a solution to the problem at hand. Art Jones’ LOVE SONGS #1 plays like a distillation of the videos before it; each of the three quasi-music videos in it is its own vibrant contradiction. The first, “Blow #2,” juxtaposes lethargic, pixelated images of beautiful women with machine guns against the melodic tones of The Delfonics’ “Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time),” the disparity—but also the uncanny symbiosis—between violence and beauty blatantly obvious. Ironically, Jones takes a a subtler approach with the second segment, “Nurture,” which features Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Brooklyn Zoo” against quivering imagery from the Bronx Zoo over which animated animal characters perform their requisite movements. The connection between the song and the images, both relating to the zoo, is obvious. More transgressive, however, are the Franz Fanon quotes that periodically appear without context, like subliminal messages. The most subdued of the three, “Over Above,” appears as if shot from a plane window looking down upon a chaotic event. What’s seen is footage of a real-life event, the 2000 beating by police of a Black man, Thomas Jones, as it was filmed from a window above. The ethereal song to which it’s set, “Sunday Part II” by Cibo Matto, is a foil to the events being depicted. Where “Blow #2” trades in a humorous dichotomy, the dichotomy of the final segment is more disconcerting. The viewer assumes the vantage of a passive onlooker, helpless, and even maybe unwilling, to intervene. This last video puts the onus back on the viewer, after all they have seen, to examine their role as a quiescent witness. [Kathleen Sachs]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Also Screening/Streaming
⚫ Black World Cinema
bwcTV.tv, a program of Black World Cinema curated by Floyd Webb and Imani Davis, presents a free online screening of Christopher St. John’s 1972 film TOP OF THE HEAP (94 min) on Sunday at 3pm. St. John will introduce the screening, and a discussion and Q&A session will follow it. More info here.
⚫ Facets Cinema
Jeanette Nordahl’s 2020 Danish film WILDLAND (88 min) is available to rent through October 21. More info here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Michael Caplan’s 2014 documentary ALGREN (96 min), reviewed above, is also available to rent beginning this week through November 12.
Connie Hochman’s 2021 dance documentary IN BALANCHINE’S CLASSROOM (88 min) and Ted Bogosian’s 2021 documentary LIVE AT MISTER KELLY’S (83 min) are available to rent beginning this week through November 4. More info on all films here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Bogdan Mirică’s 2016 Romanian Western DOGS (104 min) is available to rent beginning this week. More info and hold-over titles here.
CINE-LIST: October 8 - October 14, 2021
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Rob Christopher, Kyle Cubr, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Alex Kopecky, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Mojo Lorwin, Raphael Jose Martinez, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael Glover Smith, Drew Van Weelden