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.
NEW ON OUR BLOG
Contributor Michael Glover Smith interviews Garrett Bradley, director of the acclaimed new documentary TIME (also see his review below). Read the interview here.
PHYSICAL SCREENINGS
Garrett Bradley's TIME (New Documentary)
Landmark Century Centre Cinema - Check Venue website for showtimes
My favorite movie of 2020 is Garrett Bradley’s TIME, a documentary about Sibil Fox Richardson, a remarkable woman who spent 21 years fighting for the release of her husband, Rob, from Louisiana State Penitentiary after he received an unjustly harsh 60-year-sentence for a first-offense robbery. One of the rallying cries of the Black Lives Matter movement has been that there are seemingly two justice systems in America, one for white people and another for everyone else; Bradley, a young, second-time feature director, illustrates this tragic maxim in the most human terms possible—by closely concentrating on the love story between Fox and Rob and the sadness of their separation. Given the subject matter, many other non-fiction filmmakers would have undoubtedly chosen to include more information about incarceration inequality (with an emphasis on statistics presented via on-screen text, expert interviews, etc.) but Bradley daringly eschews this approach in favor of a relentless focus on just a few people and their emotions (the Richardsons' children are also prominently featured). TIME poignantly incorporates Fox’s own SD video diaries from over the years with newer HD footage of the Richardson family in the months leading up to Rob’s release, a strategy that, in Bradley's own words, allows the narrative to move forwards and backwards through time simultaneously. The resulting accumulation of scenes spans over two decades but has been telescoped into a tight 81-minute run time, one that climaxes with a reunion so intimate and powerful to witness that it bears comparison to the final scene of Mizoguchi’s immortal SANSHO THE BAILIFF. Adding to the film’s spellbinding effect is evocative black-and-white cinematography and a soundtrack comprised of terrific gospel-blues piano songs by the Ethiopian composer Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou. (2020, 81 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
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More info on the in-person Landmark Century Centre Cinema screenings here.
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 on the in-person Davis Theater screenings 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, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]
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More info on the in-person Music Box screenings (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
MUSIC BOX OF HORRORS AT THE DRIVE-IN
Ramón Peón’s LA LLORONA and Jayro Bustamante’s LA LLORONA (Mexican Revival/New Guatemalan Double Feature)
Music Box Theatre at the Chitown Drive-In – Tuesday, 8:45pm
The legend of La Llorona—the weeping woman—is a centuries-old Latin American ghost story, passed down through oral tradition. Rooted in the history of colonization, the story has many variations, but often tells of a woman who, after drowning her own children, kills herself out of guilt and appears as a wailing, mourning ghost. This double feature presents two versions of the legend, originally released nearly ninety years apart. The 1933 version, LA LLORONA, directed by Ramón Peón, is considered the first Mexican horror film. The film is being screened for the first time in Chicago and was restored by Viviana García Besne of Permanencia Voluntaria Archivo Cinematográfico. Set during three periods of Mexican history, LA LLORONA tells the story of a doctor (Ramón Pereda) and his family who are descendants of the colonizers originally cursed by the crying woman. Learning about the legend, which goes back to the 16th century, he realizes his firstborn son is in great danger of being the curse’s the next victim. The three settings suggest the many versions of the legend, each including a ghostly woman in white, and connect to a larger understanding of Mexican history, specifically of European colonization. The implications of the 1933 film are fully realized in Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante’s 2019 LA LLORONA. He similarly frames the story contemporarily but draws on more recent instances of genocide and violence to tie the legend to a larger cultural context. In this political horror, a retired war general (Julio Diaz) is on trial for the genocide he committed of the Mayan-Ixil people of Guatemala in the 1980s. Though initially found guilty, he is released on a technicality due to his poor health. The country is in an uproar over his release, protesting at his door. At the same time, almost all his house staff have quit, frightened by the behavior of the senile old man and the voice of a woman crying heard in the home. After a mysterious new maid, Alma (María Mercedes Coroy), arrives, things take a more supernatural turn as the general’s past sins comes to haunt him and his entire family—including his wife, daughter, and granddaughter. One of the film’s most compelling aspects is its exploration of the complicity of these women, particularly his wife. LA LLORONA is slow-paced, foregoing jolts for eerie imagery, especially ones of water, which draws directly on the drowning aspect of the legend. Its most disturbing horrors, however, come from the representation of violence based on true events. While the 2019 film is much more direct in these themes, both films bring attention to the intergenerational trauma of oppression, colonization, and genocide—especially the violence against indigenous women and children. Taken together, both LA LLORONA films present a remarkably compelling look at the how the ghost story reflects a historical reality that continues to have consequences in the present moment and is much more horrific than the legend itself. (1933, 70 min / 2019, 97 min; Digital Projection) [Megan Fariello]
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More info here.
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Rania Stephan’s THE THREE DISAPPEARANCES OF SOAD HOSNI (Lebanon/Documentary)
Starting at 7pm on Thursday, October 15, the film will be available to view on Block's Vimeo page for a 24-hour period; RSVP here
It’s a tale as old as time. A beautiful woman is at first revered—her attractiveness, usually concurrent with youth, a virtue worthy of admiration. Then, as she ages, though often before, cruelty comes into the mix, by way of physical violence, sexual exploitation, and emotional malice, all wielded against her like weapons. Finally, after the admiration and persecution comes the forsaking, the woman relinquished to time, almost as a sacrifice to our collective apathy. This describes both facets of systemic oppression against women in society (especially those in the entertainment industry) and the loose structure of Lebanese video artist Rania Stephan’s found-footage video essay about Egyptian movie star Soad Hosni, once known as the Cinderella of Egyptian cinema. Soad was prolific, appearing in 82 films between 1959 and 1991; images from her films comprise Stephan’s unconventional chronicle of the Arab bombshell’s life. (Hosni passed away in 2001 after falling from a friend’s balcony in London; mystery shrouds her death, some believing it was suicide, others murder.) Stephan culls footage from VHS tapes of Hosni’s films, creating a tactile quality to the video that emphasizes the star’s corporeality. Sporadically manipulated and shrewdly edited, the work is a revisionist biopic as well as a historical epic; it reflects the trajectory of Hosni’s life and the ever-changing society in which the films were made. It’s divided into three acts, with a prologue and epilogue, and the meanings of these delineations are ripe for interpretation. The first part includes clips from films in which Hosni plays younger, more naive characters; the second features Hosni as more sexual characters; and in the third, she plays older, wary, and thus more maligned characters. On a cinephilic level the footage is thrilling, as Western moviegoers likely don’t have access to most of the films sampled. (A 2008 article written on the film at Bidoun.org, when it was still a work in progress, explains that the source material was “culled from cheap, pirated videotapes procured from suburban Cairo street stalls,” and that, at the time of writing, Stephan had tracked down 70 of Hosni’s 82 films.) It’s also something of a mini-archive centered on Hosni, about whom there’s no authorized account. Stephan elucidates in the Bidoun article, “There’s no official biography of her, only gossip from trashy magazines. She’s dead, so she can’t tell her own story. And she dedicated her life to cinema and never had a private self. It was as if she burned herself into the film when Egyptian cinema went down the drain. She was stuck. She was stuck in her image.” The saturation effect of Stephan’s video mimics this idea; through repetition, we see how Hosni the person becomes lost in Hosni the character. In general there’s more going on that meets the eye in Stephan's maximalist editing. Catherine Russell, in her book Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices, writes that it's “a parallel version of… history, in which excerpts of Hosni’s films serve as Bakhitian ‘utterances’ that point to a collective memory, particularly regarding the ‘sexual and sartorial mores’ and how they changed over three decades of Egyptian modernism,” referencing the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, whose theory applies in that the work’s editing is, to quote Bakhtin, “anonymous and social as language, but simultaneously concrete, filled with specific content and accented as an individual utterance.” (Here, it’s the language of moving images that is “anonymous and social,” rather than language proper.) The concept of ‘disappearing’ is significant to women in general and in the Arab world specifically; as Russell notes, “Stephan’s film underscores [Hosni’s] refusal to actually disappear forever,” from our memories, from history, and from cinema. (2011, 68 min) [Kathleen Sachs]
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Followed by a pre-recorded discussion between Rania Stephan and Hannah Feldman, Associate Professor of Art History at Northwestern; registration at the link above is for both a link to the film and to the Q&A.
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
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]
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]
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]
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 scholar Delinda Collier about her new book Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa on Thursday at 7pm. RSVP here. A selection of related films is streaming for free via the Gene Siskel Film Center from October 11-17.
Gallery 400 (UIC)
Dread Scott’s 2002 video WELCOME TO AMERICA (5 min) is available online through October 11 here. Natalie Bookchin’s 2016 video LONG STORY SHORT (45 min) is available from October 12 though October 26 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.
Facets Cinémathèque
Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak’s 2019 Mexican/US film THE WALL OF MEXICO (110 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Facets website for hold-over titles.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Jethro Waters’ 2020 documentary F11 AND BE THERE (84 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Siskel website for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Josh Melrod’s 2018 film MAJOR ARCANA (82 min) is 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
Robert Duvall’s ANGELO MY LOVE (US)
Streams free on Cinephobe on Saturday, 5:15pm CT
When Robert Duvall was on the promotion tour for ANGELO MY LOVE, he always told the story of how the film came to be. He said he was on Columbus Avenue in New York City when he overheard a conversation between an 8-year-old boy and an older woman. The boy, Angelo Evans, said, “Patricia, if you don’t love me no more, I’m moving to Cincinnati.” Hearing such an adult conversation coming from a pint-size lothario instantly grabbed Duvall’s imagination. Several years later, Duvall, loose script in hand, directed Angelo and his large network of family and friends in New York’s Romani community in this energetic, semi-documentary slice of life. The film follows Angelo and his older brother Mike as they roam the streets of New York, chatting up people for fun and profit. Angelo courts his non-Roma girlfriend, Patricia, but chases any pretty girl he sees, including a country-western singer named Kathy Kitchen whose story of being on Hee Haw is absolutely true. Indeed, virtually everyone in the cast plays themselves, and because many of them are illiterate, a fact revealed in Angelo’s one day in school when he is asked to read aloud and proceeds to make up a narrative, a lot of the film is improvised. The cast falls back on Romani beliefs and superstitions to create some amazing set pieces, including the pilgrimage of the entire community to Sainte-Anne de Beaupré in Québec to pray to their patron saint and the incursion of a ghost into one of their camps. Providing comic villainy is Patalay (Steve Tsigonoff), who bribes a Romani court to acquit him of stealing a ring from the Evans home. Watching him and his sister, Millie Tsigonoff, steal some chickens is pure slapstick delight. At the film’s core, of course, is Angelo, one of the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen. His cocksure attitudes are startling, but he remains a child who feels fearful when he descends into a dark underworld of junkies and winos, and who cries when his mother reprimands him. Duvall debuted as a director in 1977 with WE’RE NOT THE JET SET, a documentary about a Nebraska rodeo family. With ANGELO MY LOVE, he extends his interest in ethnography and family life, holding this sprawling, improvised story together with a sure and appreciative hand. (1983, 115 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Barbara Albert’s MADEMOISELLE PARADIS (Germany)
Available to rent on Amazon Prime Video and to subscribers on Ovid and through Kanopy with a library card
The Age of Enlightenment set the stage for reason, religious tolerance, constitutional government, and other principles based on reason that persist to our day. Among the things it did not do was free women from exploitation and servitude. The biopic MADEMOISELLE PARADIS reveals the sad lot of women—even women of noble birth—who could not fit into one of society’s prefab slots. Maria Theresia von Paradis was a blind musician, composer, and teacher who was born in Austria during the 18th century and performed throughout Europe during her lifetime. The film covers the months in 1777 and 1778 she spent having her blindness treated by Franz Anton Mesmer, best known today for his theory of animal magnetism, a precursor of hypnosis. We first meet Maria (Maria Dragus) as she performs beautifully on the harpsichord for a gathering assembled by her father and mother (Lukas Miko and Katja Kolm). Her sightless eyes move haphazardly, and the guests agree that while her playing is divine, her appearance is rather repulsive. To try to help her claim a place in society, her parents have pushed Maria through a series of painful treatments to restore her sight. When news of the success Mesmer has had with ailing individuals reaches them, they hand her over to his care. He breaks down her aristocratic reserve, gives her treatments for her infected scalp, and begins to pass his hands through her magnetic field. Miraculously, Maria begins to discern objects and colors. Vienna society comes to witness her in a dog-and-pony show put on by Mesmer to win favor at court. In her sumptuous, beautifully lit film, director Barbara Albert visualizes the sensations Maria experiences through music and nature. In an understated way, she also shows how Maria is used by Mesmer and her parents to forward their ambitions, even as her ability to play starts going south as sight shares space with sound in her brain. Agnes (Maresi Riegner), Maria’s maid and companion, is included realistically as a representative of the serving class with whom the gentry took liberties and who were thrown away when they became too visible. A fine cast, a fascinating story, and a stand-out performance by Dragus makes this a thoroughly satisfying experience. (2017, 97 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Milwaukee Underground Film Festival – Program 5
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Film Department – Program 5 is available free October 13-20 here
This program highlights experimental docs and essays with a bent toward the queer and performative. Anna Kipervaser and Rhys Morgan's NO GARDEN BEYOND (2019) features an adventurous and inquisitive camera exploring the Sargasso Sea, the nearby lands, and science research. With the sea's odd and unique position in the middle of the ocean cross currents, the waters there are a special canary-in-the-coal-mine. I really love Kipervaser's work, which is usually quite a bit more mysterious and reserved, but her sharp eye is still present and delightful. Pol Merchan's PIRATE BOYS (2018) is treatise on queer bodies, strong personalities, art, and well lived lives. A portrait of Kathy Acker by intersex photographer Del LaGrace Volcano serves as the starting off point and bedrock for this lovely celebration. Tyrone Deise's MISSING TEETH (2018) is an imaginative essay of meandering shower thoughts, regrets, and fractured hearts and teeth. Malic Amalya's RUN! (2019) is a beautifully shot and sharply drawn act of rebellion against the militaristic and jingoistic view of human existence most efficiently swept away. It is a hand-hewn radical rejoinder that instead celebrates life outside of that system. Ryan Betschart's A PECULIAR WEEK IN MY DREAM JOURNAL, MAY 1973 (2019) features emergency calls reporting UFOs while exploding and cracked abstract images fill the screen, followed by a joyously bitter odd bit of performance that seems to give a little Muppety fuck-it shrug to the life we've been born into. Sara Bonaventura's THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS (2019) is an excellent live performance music video with one hand attempting to draw while the other hand alters the image with analog video bells-and-whistles with a pounding hooky electronic track. It's an enchanting, perfectly conceived and executed number. Ben Edelberg's THEY LOOKED AT ME AND I SMILED (2019) shatters domestic and public boundaries between self and performance, collapsing the barriers into a meaningless lark. Zack Parrinella's NEST VISIONS (2019) is a stark black-and-white film featuring "inward and outward" images of stark natural smears and mysterious personal abstractions. (2018-19, 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)
Jacques Doillon’s THE THREE-WAY WEDDING (France)
Available to stream for free on Tubi here
Like his countryman and fellow great filmmaker André Téchiné, French writer-director Jacques Doillon specializes in characters who are mysteries to themselves. The men and women in his films tend to act on impulses even they can’t anticipate, changing their lives and entering into sexual partnerships according to inscrutable logic. But where Téchiné has developed a sumptuous, lyrical style that enhances his novelistic conceits and calls attention to the specialness of his characters, Dillon has long favored a plainspoken, self-effacing aesthetic that suggests nothing unusual about the behavior on display—which, in turn, makes it seem that much stranger. Consider THE THREE-WAY WEDDING, a highly characteristic effort that provides an excellent introduction to his work. August (Pascal Greggory) is a successful playwright in his 50s who’s almost done writing a new script that will go into production in Paris and then tour the country. His ex-wife, Harriet (Julie Depardieu), is set to play the lead; one afternoon, she visits August’s home with her current lover, a younger actor named Théo (Louis Garrel), whom she intends to convince August to cast alongside her in the play. Their arrival sparks feelings of sexual jealousy among all three characters, and this colors the negotiations for the casting. Adrift in the contentious affair is August’s 20-year-old secretary Fanny (Agathe Bonitzer), an innocent law student with secret dreams of becoming an actress herself. At some point, Harriet hits on the idea of bringing August and Fanny together as a couple, and this adds another layer to the already complex sexual dynamics. Doillon orchestrates the chamber drama fluidly, generally filming the action in long takes with subtle camera movements that reframe the action according to the characters’ changes in behavior. With this fluidity, he achieves a sense of limitless possibility. Which characters will couple? Or will they all come together in group sex? (The film’s original title, “Le marriage à trois,” is an overt pun on “ménage à trois.”) The film suggests an experiment, charting the interactions between several free particles in a closed space, and the tone is appropriately curious. As is often the case in Doillon’s films, one walks away from THE THREE-WAY WEDDING more keenly aware of what an odd creature the human being is. (2010, 108 min) [Ben Sachs]
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 9 - October 15, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Kyle Cubr, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Kalvin Henley, Tien-Tien Jong, Josh B. Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Michael Metzger, Michael Glover Smith, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky