Cine-File continues to cover streaming and other online offerings during this time of covidity. We will list/highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that have reopened, and list streaming/online screenings below. Cine-File takes no position on whether theaters should be reopening, nor on whether individuals should be attending in-person. Check the venues’ websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place.
PHYSICAL SCREENINGS
Alfred Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST (US Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
An urbane gentleman is pursued by a sinister organization headed by a cultured villain while simultaneously shadowed by a gorgeous female spy. That's the basic setup for NORTH BY NORTHWEST—and for a sizeable portion of the James Bond series. What's under acknowledged is that Hitchcock, and specifically this masterpiece of playful paranoia, 1950s style, has acted as a lasting and flexible template for 007's cinematic adventures. James Mason's ultramodern, mountaintop house, as imagined by production designer Robert Boyle, uncannily anticipates many of the fantastic evil lairs designed by Ken Adam for Bond villains (especially Goldfinger). And doesn't the film's famous closing scene remind you of many 007 double-entendre finales? But where NORTH BY NORTHWEST moves into deeper territory is on the question of identity. Not only is no one else who you thought they were, but you yourself are not who you thought you were. Yet in Hitchcock's hands such a weighty existential theme sounds like the best time a guy could have. (1959, 131 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]
Alfred Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (US Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
Hitchcock was rarely, if ever, judgmental of his characters, but it seems the judgment he spared them was instead reserved for his audience. It's evident in many of his films as he forces the audience, along with the "innocents" of the stories, to identify with the criminal or the accused while likewise punishing them for doing so. This dynamic is particularly pronounced in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, a film in which one character, Guy, is harassed by another, Bruno, after he kills Guy's estranged wife in hopes that he'll return the favor and murder his domineering father. An element of condescension plays into both the plot and Hitchcock's assessment of those watching; at the beginning, Guy patronizingly tells Bruno that his idea of a "you-do-mine-I'll-do-yours" murder plot is okay, that all his ideas are okay. Guy is obviously dismissive of the idea, but Bruno takes his stooping agreement as confirmation that Guy is on board with his plan. In that scene, Hitchcock shows us just how grey the area is between good and evil, and how something as simple as a throwaway platitude can have such disastrous implications. Despite Hitchcock's sympathy for the killer, he allots sympathy to the victim as well, but only so far as he can use it to further indict the audience. In a telling scene, Barbara, the sister of Guy's love interest, remarks that his deceased ex-wife was a tramp, thus implying that her status as a "lesser person" justified her brutal murder. Barbara's father, the senator whom Guy hopes to emulate, tells her that the dead woman was also a human being. Considerably less wordy than Jimmy Stewart's impassioned epiphany at the end of ROPE, the scene is like a swift smack in the face from Hitchcock. Bruno's easygoing and almost infectious attitude towards murder is brought from the dark into the light—it's all fun and games until humanity becomes a factor. Another key motif that Hitchcock uses in several of his films is that of the rhetorical "perfect murder," scenes in which innocent characters participate with the real criminals in surmising how to commit a foolproof crime. During a party at the senator's house, Bruno convinces two elderly aristocratic ladies to indulge in fantasies of committing murder while Barbara looks on. The scene serves dual functions: It reveals the sinisterness that lurks beneath the genteel surface and, as Barbara notices Bruno staring at her, transfixed by her resemblance to Guy's wife, punishes her and therefore us for previously being so quick to dismiss the victim. That's Hitchcock reminding us that we could so easily be the killer or the one killed, exposing both our hubris and our fragility along with that of his characters. (1951, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Kathleen Sachs]
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Also at the Music Box this week: Bryan Bertino’s 2020 film THE DARK AND THE WICKED (94 min, Digital Projection).
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More info on the in-person Music Box screenings (including COVID policies) at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Music Box and Elevated Films present a drive-in screening of Seth Savoy’s 2020 film ECHO BOOMERS (94 min, Digital Projection) on Tuesday at 7pm at ChiTown Movies. Director Seth Savoy will join via Zoom for a post-show Q&A. More info and tickets here.
CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL
The Chicago Underground Film Festival takes place virtually from November 9 – 22 and will also include two nights of drive-in screenings on November 12 – 13. More information here.
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Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco’s FLANNERY (US/Documentary)
ChiTown Movies – Thursday, 6pm, and also available to rent that same day at 6pm here
Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco’s documentary FLANNERY animatedly—in some instances literally—tells of the work and life of influential and controversial mid 20th-century southern writer Flannery O’Connor. The film follows O’Connor’s Catholic upbringing in Georgia, focusing on her early creativity as a cartoonist in college and her stints studying writing at the University of Iowa and at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs to her first, enigmatic novel, Wise Blood, and finally her popular success. Diagnosed with lupus, O’Connor passed away before turning forty. The documentary provides a solid introduction to O’Connor’s work, interviewing those that knew her, fans, and literary critics, and emphasizing how her Catholicism, southern background, and health all profoundly shaped her writing. FLANNERY also directly speaks to the racist language she used and her engagement with racism throughout her work. Dishearteningly—though it somewhat addresses the subject—the documentary fails to wholly grapple with the racism that appears in her personal writings, even excusing it. Just as the documentary dodges a complete and honest examination of the complex and problematic aspects of O’Connor’s thoughts on race, neither does it fully capture the described grotesque darkness found in her work despite the film’s dynamic bricolage of talking heads, archive footage, photographs, audio, and animation. The best parts of FLANNERY are those which analyze the deeper meaning of her work, using a variety of footage to bring the stories to life while critics interpret. Particularly perceptive is an anecdote about John Huston, director of the 1979 WISE BLOOD: the filmmaker noted that, in adapting the novel, the film he ended up making was not what he initially intended and concludes that the mystifying story is more about Flannery O’Connor herself than anything else. (2020, 97 min) [Megan Fariello]
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Chicago Shorts at the Drive In - Program 1
ChiTown Movies – Thursday, 8pm
This compilation of shorts by Chicago filmmakers will be a treat to experience at the drive-in; much like the residence of their makers, these films are bold and industrious, representing the citizenry’s breadth and tenaciousness. Lisa Barcy’s FÔRET (2019, 4 min) is a warm welcome. Accompanied by festive music from Malian multi-instrumentalist Luka Guindo, this short is a series of animated collages that move in tandem with Guindo’s score. Barcy mixes colorful patterns in fun and hypnotic combinations. Jennifer Boles’ THE REVERSAL (2020, 11 min) is another animation, here a series of institutional glass-plate photos that document the reversal of the Chicago River away from Lake Michigan, which was completed in 1900. The images are rapturous and eerie, befitting the herculean feat detailed within. Near the end, a poem by Isham Randolph, then chief engineer of the Sanitary District of Chicago, concludes what we’ve just seen. “The labor of the Titans/Was a myth of ages gone,” it reads. “But this shall seem the Titans work/To the ages yet unborn.” Similarly haunting is Brian Ashby’s FLIGHT LOGS (2019, 8 min), one of two films in the program that have previously screened at the Chicago Film Archives’ annual Media Mixer. Ashby explores white flight using footage from the Archives’ collections and text passages that elucidate perspectives on the matter, with quotes pulled from such sources as an article entitled “Confessions of a Block-Buster” and Stud Terkel’s Division Street: America. The concept is inspired, archival footage being the perfect medium through which to probe this phenomenon. Will Klein and Tymon Brown’s CHILDREN OF THE MOON (2019, 18 min) is a documentary short featuring people who were born into but left the Unification Church (the disciples of which are often called Moonies). The subject matter is fascinating, and the interviewees’ testimonials are heartbreaking. As this film depicts people leaving a culture, Jiayu Yang’s I DREAM OF VIETNAM (2019, 17 min) shows one woman attempting to enter another. Compelled in part by her grandfather’s memories, the Chinese Yang sets out to visit Vietnam for the first time. Yang considers the relationship between the two countries, combined with stunning imagery and insightful ruminations on the documentary form. The second film to have premiered at a CFA Media Mixer is Amir George’s MAN OF THE PEOPLE (2019, 17 min), centered on Chicago’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington. This mysterious paean is deceptively simple; described as being a political thriller, it contains artfully edited archival footage and curious flourishes. Annie Kielman and Joshua Patterson’s DECIDE. COMMIT. THRIVE (2019, 20 min) is an uncanny study of cultish behavior via their imagined MorphoTransverse Method. It’s almost too on point—what might otherwise be termed a mockumentary takes on a new layer at it straightforwardly mimics activities and behaviors respective to cults. Amber Love’s short documentary A GALAXY SITS IN THE CRACKS (2020, 18 min) is a fascinating examination of Afrofuturism as it’s envisioned and realized by Black artists and activists. The information is interesting, but it’s the philosophy that intrigues, as it ties back to the issues faced by Black people who are often looking forward to a future free from oppression. The merging of ideas and perspectives is galvanizing—one might say the same about the program as a whole. [Kathleen Sachs]
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Shorts Program 1
Available to rent on Tuesday from 9 – 11pm here
The centerpiece of this shorts program, Shelley Silver’s A TINY PLACE THAT IS HARD TO TOUCH (2019, 39 min), is a poetic essay film that considers a modern Japanese woman’s life vis-a-vis her letters to a woman living in the United States. Over depopulated shots of Tokyo landscapes, the woman narrates the contents of her letters and sometimes imagines apocalyptic or sci-fi scenarios. Silver maintains a curious tone that reflects the contemplative mood of the narration; her central conceit of not presenting people while considering human affairs is beguiling and sustains one’s interest over the movie’s running time. Also beguiling is THE EYES OF SUMMER (2020, 15 min), an experimental quasi-narrative shot in the jungles of Sri Lanka. “Collaboratively developed with members of my family, shortly after the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2010, a narrative was improvised around an investigation into my mother’s interactions with spirits,” writes director Rajee Samarasinghe. “The film describes a population reeling from devastations of the past, where distinctions between the living and the dead are thinning.” The eerie black-and-white widescreen cinematography makes this idea palpable, even when the story feels obscure. In NO CRYING AT THE DINNER TABLE (2019, 16 min), which opens the program, director Carol Nguyen interviews her mother, father, and sister about painful family memories, then films them as they listen back to their testimonies. Nguyen delves into her family’s antipathy for affection, physical and otherwise. In one memorable sequence, her sister voices her resentment of her immigrant parents for having to work throughout her childhood, stating she felt neglected by them. Her feelings of vulnerability set the tone for the rest of the program. Also screening but not available for preview is Jayce Kolinski’s WHAT YOU LEFT BEHIND (2020, 6 min). [Ben Sachs]
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Shorts Program 2
Available to rent on Wednesday from 9 – 11pm here
The second shorts program focuses on the domestic and the pastoral through jarring abstractions and gentle contemplations. Anna Kipervaser's WHEN IT IS STILL (2018, 10 min) features her quiet, sensitive eye turned toward images of water, light, and life. Stunning natural images of horses and water trade off with deep blue fluttering close-ups of flora and fauna. It builds to a reverie of pure light and rebirth that is really delightfully grand. With each new film (and there are a good number of them) Kipervaser's overall project becomes more clear, resonant, and impressive. Jiayu Yang's I DREAM OF VIETNAM (2019, 17 min) is an award-winning contemplative documentary essay about the border areas between China and Vietnam, and the filmmakers personal, familial, and political connections to the area. Mike Gibisser's SLOW VOLUMES (2019, 5 min) is a stuttering vertical glide across space using a hand-built 35mm camera. Bold colorful celluloid brushstrokes are tempered with domestic city noises. Recognizable images creep in as the visuals become, in turn, domestic, natural, and personal. Gibisser has an uncanny ability to imbue structuralist impulses with humane touches. He wows with a total control of cinematic daring-do that is always grounded, personal, and gorgeous. Paul Turano's BACKYARD ON SAINT ROSE (2019, 25 min) features personal domestic footage and interviews the filmmaker shot 10 years ago and set aside unsure what to do with it all. Reconsidered again after a time away, he has the distance and wisdom to present the material about parenthood and couplehood with plainspokeness and a bit of wisdom. This film is as straightforward as they come, but features such an easy confidence in its cinematic approach to earnestly questioning everything else. Also screening is Mike Hoolboom's 27 THOUGHTS ABOUT MY FATHER (2019, 25 min) [Josh B. Mabe]
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Shorts Program 3
Available to rent Thursday from 9pm – 11pm here
A unifying theme of at least four of the shorts in this program is defamiliarization, as both classic experimental and DIY film techniques are employed to unsettle how we perceive space, time, and identity. Stephen Wardell’s URIAH PLAYS THE ALIEN (9 min) is all about reconfiguring notions of difference and disability. A scrappy but elegant shot-at-home production, it centers on the filmmaker’s brother, whose “otherness” is rendered as extraterrestrial by his siblings. But this is not a portrait of ostracization or abnormality. Lines that would be denigratory in another context (“He is a weird creature that I don’t think is really human”) become affectionate and empathetic as narrated in a brother’s playful, rhotacistic cadence; Uriah, meanwhile, clearly embraces his “role,” skulking in the darkness and performing impishly for the camera. By the end, it’s clear that no hierarchy of “normal” obtains in this loving family. In a different but equally poignant way, blood ties are at the heart of Andrea Oranday’s UEITA (11 min). Comprised of still photographs of the filmmaker’s mother and father and their farmstead in Mexico, it evokes a family album at once intimate and ghostly. A soundtrack of a woman cooking a meal overlays and at times directly dictates the tempo and shape of the montage, suggesting a process of sifting through and scrutinizing the past for information. As the photographs turn increasingly elegiac, the absences indexed by both the visuals and sounds materialize as the lacunae of memory. From stillness to the thrill of cinematic kinesthesis, Richard Tuohy’s VAIPI (9 min) slices and dices Santiago, Chile, into ribbons—quite literally. Fragmenting the visual plane into a number of horizontal bands that each pan on their own independent axis, it’s an exemplary piece of optical film-art, mesmeric and sensuous in its gleeful perceptual disorientation. The many motor vehicles that can be glimpsed in its shifting tectonic strata, along with the constant mechanical ambience, point up VAIPI’s euphoric, modernist conflation of urban motion and cinematic spectatorship. Speaking of modernist form, Lisa Barcy’s FORÊT (4 min) harkens back to the experimental tradition of “visual music” pioneered by such filmmakers as Norman McLaren and Len Lye. Its colorful, dancing paper-collage squares and jubilant Malian music are a delight. Also playing are Ankit Poudel’s SONG OF CLOUDS (15 min) and Andy Graydon’s THE TRANSECT IN THREE OR FOUR MODES OF OBSERVATION (30 min), which were unavailable to screen for this review. [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
BLACK HARVEST FILM FESTIVAL
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 here.
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Casimir Nozkowski’s THE OUTSIDE STORY (US)
Available to rent November 7 – 20 here
Set on an absolutely beautiful day in autumn, writer and director Casimir Nozkowski’s first feature THE OUTSIDE STORY is a cozy film about making connections. Film editor Charles (Brian Tyree Henry) is having a very bad day. Heartbroken and frustrated after a recent breakup with his live-in girlfriend, Isha (Sonequa Martin-Green), he finds himself locked out of his apartment. As his attempts to get back inside repeatedly fail, the normally introverted Charles is forced to interact with a variety of eccentric neighbors, most of whom he’s never met. Navigating his neighborhood, he’s also preoccupied by memories of Isha. THE OUTSIDE STORY could become a series of fragmented vignettes, but instead Nozkowski weaves multiple interactions throughout; characters such as a disgruntled traffic cop (Sunita Mani) and a young piano prodigy (Olivia Edward) make more than one appearance, steadily building on Charles’ newfound and meaningful connection with the community right outside his door. Filled with colorful shots of tree-lined streets and brownstones, it’s hard not to exaggerate how appealing the film looks. While the series of transitional characters are compelling, they are ultimately there to illuminate Charles’ journey through a challenging time in his life; Henry drives the whole film with his sweetly charismatic performance. THE OUTSIDE STORY has a simple premise and familiar setting, but it delivers on both with a pleasant aesthetic and solid performances. (2020, 85 min) [Megan Fariello]
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Detdrich McClure’s BROWN PAPER BAG (US)
Available to rent November 8 – 21 here
In writer and director Detdrich McClure’s film noir BROWN PAPER BAG, it’s 1942 and movie-obsessed Archie Glass (Rasheed Stephens) has arrived in Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. As a Black man in mid-century Hollywood, however, it’s a struggle to find opportunities, and, when he does, he faces a racist system—he quickly gets blacklisted from studio films. After a white studio starlet, Mona Lane (Amanda Holquin), goes missing, Archie finds himself with information pertinent to the case. Much to the dismay of his girlfriend Sandra (Tiara Parker), he offers to help find Mona in exchange for a reversal of his ban and a guaranteed part in a studio film. Aspiring actor turned detective, Archie now must navigate the local underground, which puts an even starker light on how difficult—and dangerous—it is to be a Black man in Hollywood. Especially in early scenes, BROWN PAPER BAG at times looks a bit anachronistic for the 1940s setting, but Archie’s noir-style voiceover narration and black and white footage of fictional Hollywood anecdotes that appear throughout give the film an overall lively, dreamy quality—the thoughtful editing is impressive, particularly the use of sound bridges with the jazz-style score. After Archie starts sleuthing, the film takes a darker tone, relying more on vignettes which provide absorbing performances from minor characters and several truly great scenes. While it doesn’t consistently land the concept visually, McClure’s reflective homage to the film noir genre is always interesting, and at times captivating, grounded throughout by Stephens’ charming main performance. (2019, 93 min) [Megan Fariello]
LAKE COUNTY FILM FESTIVAL
The Lake County Film Festival runs through November 16 with a mixture of virtual and physical screenings of features and shorts. Full schedule and more info here.
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Jack C. Newell’s MONUMENTS (US)
Available to rent here
There are very few films that could possibly get away with using the cremated remains of a spouse as a MacGuffin, but MONUMENTS not only pulls off that incredibly sardonic feat, but somehow even manages to create a quality comedic road movie around it. After the sudden, and tragically banal, death of his wife Laura, Steven decides to ignore her family’s generations-long tradition of burial on their farmland and instead abscond from Colorado with Laura’s remains to Chicago. His plan is to spread her ashes inside of the Field Museum, the place where he believes they had the happiest moment of their life. Of course, Laura’s family is not okay with this decision, and with the help of Laura’s romantically scorned friend, try to chase down Steven and get her ashes back. Writer/director Jack Newell manages to entertainingly couch a story about love, grief, and catharsis as a slapstick road comedy of errors. Throughout his adventure, Steven meets up with strange, curious characters, and has visions of Laura that help him along his way. As Steven is a professor of history, there is a wonderful framing device of the Egyptian afterlife myth of Anubis, and his judgment of a person’s heart against the Feather of Truth. While something like this could seem ham-fisted, or crudely shoehorned in, Newell not only makes it relevant, but truly breathtaking when he shifts the film into a short scene of gorgeous shadow-play animation. In a more perfect world (or a different time) a film like MONUMENTS would have been given a few more million dollars for production and a solid, albeit limited, theatrical run. This is exactly the type of adult-driven dramedy that very well could have been a mid-budget hit at one point. Thankfully we have the instant market of VOD to have MONUMENTS reach as many people as it possibly can, because this is a film of genuine heart, something that is sadly lacking in so much cinema of today. (2020, 94 min) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Frederick Wiseman’s CITY HALL (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Frederick Wiseman has always said he makes movies about institutions, but his thematic focus is much broader than that. His films are about how institutions reflect larger social structures, what values seem to guide them, and whether they uphold our collective hopes for civilization. Wiseman’s concerns lend themselves to considerations of the zeitgeist, and indeed, many of his films capture the spirit of their times in which they were made. LAW AND ORDER (1969), which features a cameo from Richard Nixon himself, speaks to America’s reactionary response to the events of 1968; ASPEN (1991), which presents a divided city of materialistic elites and blue-collar have-nots, may be the ultimate film about the Reagan-Bush era; and the multicultural panorama IN JACKSON HEIGHTS (2015) gives dramatic form to the promise of the Obama years. Now, Wiseman gives us his Trump film, CITY HALL. Characteristically coy, it features nary a conservative onscreen; even Trump’s rhetoric gets acknowledged only indirectly. Yet the movie profoundly considers Donald Trump’s poisonous impact on American culture, from his attacks on immigrants to his heartless disregard for people in need. “We don’t have leadership coming from Washington right now,” says Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh in one of the many committee meetings we see him attend in the film, and much of CITY HALL presents a community taking steps to lead itself and set a positive example for the nation. The most memorable scenes tend to present discussions among the diverse staff of the institution, with everyone making an effort to listen to people unlike themselves and confront difficult truths. A common question emerges from these encounters: How do we make our society more equitable for historically under-represented groups such as women, immigrants, ethnic minorities, disabled veterans, and the poor? In other words, how do we empower the people Trump is encouraging Americans to hate? Perhaps we can start by electing more leaders like Walsh, who honor civic responsibility and the people they’re working for. CITY HALL is one of the few Wiseman films centered on an individual person; we see Walsh all around the title location and all over the city at large, attending charity events, meeting with Latinx youth, and lecturing at a senior center about how to avoid scam artists. In one of the film’s emotional highlights, Walsh opens up to a gathering of war veterans about his decades in recovery for alcoholism, noting he knows what it’s like to need to ask for help with your problems. The Mayor isn’t especially charismatic or eloquent, but his effort to locate common experience with others is touching. CITY HALL sustains this uplifting tone for most of its running time, which makes the tonal outliers seem all the more unsettling. One sequence that appears late in the film finds an agent from city pest control stopping by the house of a sickly, 70-ish divorcé who unexpectedly starts lamenting his life’s misfortunes. The man delivers the sort of colloquial aria one finds all over Wiseman’s films, but its inclusion is mysterious. Maybe it’s another reminder that, for all the optimism on display, there are some very big rats lurking just outside our view. (2020, 275 min) [Ben Sachs]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Abderrahmane Sissako's BAMAKO (Mali)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Similar to the work of Ousmane Sembène, Abderrahmane Sissako's BAMAKO is an audacious piece of political filmmaking that imagines a trial in which the plaintiff, African society, has charged the defendant, international financial institutions such as World Bank and the IMF, with the crimes of neocolonialism and the unjust exploitation of African peoples. Shot almost entirely in Sissako's childhood courtyard, the film is an intriguing blend of fiction and documentary. On the one hand, the scenario couldn't be more fantastical, however, the film features real Malian denizens voicing their outcries as well as professional lawyers who approach the proceedings as if they were part of an actual court case. As the trial progresses, the hum of everyday existence continues in the periphery: a marriage disintegrates, women dye cloth, a wedding takes place. This attention to marginalia has a humanizing effect, reminding the viewer that amidst all the weighty political rhetoric, individual lives carry on. One of BAMAKO's most surreal moments is a mini-film parody of the western genre titled "Death in Timbuktu" starring Danny Glover (one of the film's producers), which satirizes the dispensability of African life and the omnipresence of American influence. When the trial reaches its crescendo, Brechtian detachment gives way to an impassioned indictment of global capitalism and a vociferous demand for a guilty verdict. Despite being released in 2006, BAMAKO has a fresh, contemporary relevance for American viewers in the wake of the Occupy movements, which signaled an unprecedented First World disillusionment with major financial institutions. (2006, 115 min) [Harrison Sherrod]
Tyler Taormina’s HAM ON RYE (US)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
HAM ON RYE, a suburban coming-of-age comedy-drama with a large ensemble cast, boldly stands out from the crowded landscape of recent American indies for its genuine narrative weirdness and singular aesthetic ambition. What seemingly begins as an end-of-high-school nostalgia trip, in the vein of AMERICAN GRAFFITI and DAZED IN CONFUSED, soon gives way to something far darker and more subversive: The movie's first half features deft cross-cutting between short, clever scenes in which dozens of teenage characters are getting dressed and prepping for a big, prom-like event, an annual rite-of-passage where kids in late adolescence are expected to congregate at a popular local delicatessen in the unnamed town where the film is set, and ultimately pair off into couples for a celebratory dance. But, as in the early work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, HAM ON RYE proves to be something of a narrative shapeshifter—the warmth and humor of the early daylight scenes are soon displaced by a second half imbued with a potent, Hopper-esque sense of nocturnal melancholy. Most of the characters from the first half disappear at the dusky half-way mark—some quite literally into thin air—only to be replaced by a new cast of more disaffected-seeming young adults. One character, Haley (Haley Bodell), who pointedly flees from the deli before the dance begins, bridges the film's two halves but it is unclear how much time elapses in between; the second half could either be taking place the same night as the first half or a couple of years later, an ambiguity that lends the movie much of its haunting and dreamlike power. What does it all mean? I think that Taormina, a first-time feature filmmaker but hardcore cinephile who is also a talented musician, intends for the narrative to function as a kind of complex metaphor for the notion of "growing up" in general and, more specifically, the way some people leave their hometowns in an attempt to fulfill ambitious destinies while others choose to sadly remain behind. But see it and decide for yourself: independent American cinema of this uncommonly poetic caliber deserves to be seen and discussed far and wide. (2019, 85 min) [Michael Glover Smith]
Rea Tajiri’s HISTORY AND MEMORY (US/Documentary)
Presented free by South Side Projections on Saturday at 7pm on Twitch
The current administration in Washington’s malevolent attitude toward truth has only exacerbated the madness behind American racism. As anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric had cascaded through the public sphere the last four years, watching HISTORY AND MEMORY, a powerful and crucial video essay about the director’s family’s experiences and the long-term repercussions of those experiences in the WWII Japanese Concentration Camps set up by FDR, has gained new, sad relevance. It is difficult to forget, for instance, the ugly incident two weeks after Election Day when a prominent media surrogate for the President-elect cited the Camps as precedent for a proposed registry of foreign-born Muslims, redefining one of the more especially loathsome episodes in America’s living memory as a morally-neutral policy of national safety. Tajiri’s work is built around absences: the blankness left behind when a family is unjustly imprisoned by its own government; the emptiness of a home returned to when the house itself has been taken, leaving only bare foundations; the silence of a generation that refused to discuss, that willed itself to forget, what had been done to it. As the video plays, distorted found footage appropriations play across the screen, scenes culled from Hollywood’s clumsy but heartfelt attempts to dramatize the nation’s guilt, to personalize its victims, overlaid with Tajiri’s voice-over meditation on how to unlock the secrets of how her parents and grandparents might have lived while interned. But forgetting our national and personal histories isn’t mere tragedy for Tajiri. Again and again, the video provocatively suggests that it is only by learning through the loss of one’s past that a meaningful narrative can be written, that the rawness and pain felt by the victims of great injustices themselves need to be cleaved away in order for the descendants of those victims to use those injustices as ways out of the mammoth lies they try not to believe. In a telling, breathtaking moment, Tajiri cuts in 8mm footage shot by an interned man on a camera illegally smuggled into the Camps. I found it incredibly moving to see these tiny intervals—a lonely girl badly ice-skating, a woman cleaning snow off her roof, some men digging a ditch, et cetera—and on the soundtrack, Tajiri saying, ‘When you create a story, you create a picture in your mind; sometimes the picture returns without the story.’ These are shards of life that were stolen from the living, from people who believed they had been allowed to choose their lives and learned suddenly that they had no such privilege, were secondary within their own stories. As the public debates today prove, the lessons from eight decades ago are all-too unlearned, the narratives rebuilt by their descendants unheeded. Let us hope that the wiser ones among us will find a way to make it such that future generations can watch this remarkable video essay and see it just as an historical document and not, as it horrifyingly is today, a desperate call to arms, and a canary dying in the coal mine of our hatred. (1991, 32 min) [Kian Bergstrom]
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The event will also include Tajiri and her nephew, writer Vince Schleitwiler, sharing and discussing photographs taken of Japanese Americans who were resettled into Chicago’s South Shore after World War II. Followed by a Q&A with Rea Tajiri and Vince Schleitwiler, moderated by Chelsea Foxwell
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Co-presented by Center for East Asian Studies (Univ. of Chicago) and Logan Center Community Arts
Federico Fellini’s LA STRADA (Italy)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Featuring one of the most expressively iconic performances in cinema history, LA STRADA is a visually lyrical character study. Director Federico Fellini’s approach to the film straddles the neorealism style of post-World War II Italian cinema and his later, more surrealist works like LA DOLCE VITA (1960) and 8 ½ (1963). LA STRADA tells the story of Gelsomina (the remarkable Giulietta Masina), a childlike young woman who’s purchased from her mother by the cruel Zampanò (Anthony Quinn), a traveling strongman performer. He trains her to entertain crowds as a clown and play music as he performs his act. Despite Gelsomina’s eagerness to learn and to please, Zampanò is an abusive caretaker. The film follows their travels on the road, as they eventually join up with a circus that includes high-wire performer, Il Matto (Richard Baseheart), who relentlessly teases Zampanò. The two men’s rivalry leads to tragedy for the sensitive Gelsomina. LA STRADA combines a sense of fantasy—with the circus setting and musical performances—with the harsh reality that Gelsomina is forced to navigate. It is heartbreaking to watch her enthusiasm waver as she faces the challenges of life on the road with Zampanò. The cinematography is impressively affecting throughout, concentrating on emotional beats rather than story, and supporting the outstanding performances; THE GODFATHER composer Nino Rota adds to this with his moving score. LA STRADA, however, most fully belongs to Giulietta Masina whose face, both in and out of clown makeup, is incredibly expressive, bringing poignancy to every scene. She is extraordinary to watch, and it is near impossible not to be moved by her performance. (1954, 108 min) [Megan Fariello]
William Greaves’ NATIONTIME (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
At a time when Black Lives Matter has become a vital rallying cry for change the world over, William Greaves’ NATIONTIME (sometimes listed as NATIONTIME—GARY) asserts that Black lives are also a source of political and social change. The film documents the National Black Political Convention of 1972, when Black Americans of all walks of life convened in Gary, Indiana, to draft a platform of national unity. There are no scenes of the break-out sessions that led to the actual drafting; rather, Greaves focuses on the speeches delivered to the Convention as a whole. The opening remarks, delivered by Rev. Jesse Jackson, comprise the film’s longest and most electric sequence, as Jackson stresses the need for Black unity and a proportionally accurate representation of Black people in U.S. government and public offices. (Other prominent speakers include Dick Gregory and Imamu Amiri Baraka.) Best known today for the experimental feature SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE (1968), Greaves matches Jackson’s excitement with such cinematic techniques as dynamic editing, sudden zooms, and immersive handheld camerawork. NATIONTIME exudes energy from the opening moments, apropos to the historic breakthrough of the Convention; but more importantly, it conveys the immense potential that Black political groups possess, whether through voting or direct social action. Haunting the Convention are the shocking tragedies of the 1960s (Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz, widows of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, respectively, are both key speakers), and the film suggests that the call for Black political unity in the early 1970s grew, in part, out of a sense of dissolution following the murders and arrests of too many prominent Black leaders. The Convention didn’t produce a viable platform, since the delegations could not agree on all parts of the document, yet NATIONTIME doesn’t end in a sense of failure. Indeed, a spirit of triumph prevails. Perhaps the Convention’s failure to reach consensus after a few days speaks to the remarkable richness and diversity within the Black American community, which is something worth celebrating. (1972, 80 min) [Ben Sachs]
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
Block Cinema (Northwestern University)
Block presents Unreal City: Film Essays on London by Ayo Akingbade and Reece Auguiste on Thursday at 7pm (and will remain available for 24 hours). Screening are: Reece Auguiste’s 1989 UK film TWILIGHT CITY (52 min) and Ayo Akingbade’s UK films TOWER XYZ (2016, 3 min) and DEAR BABYLON (2019, 21 min). The Thursday live stream will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Reece Auguiste and Tiff Beatty, Program Director of Arts, Culture & Public Policy at the National Public Housing Museum. More info and an RSVP link here.
Gallery 400
Shelly Bahl's 2019 video WE KNOW WHAT IS AND IS NOT (3 min) is online until November 22 here.
Mostra Brazilian Film Festival Chicago
Mostra moves online this year, from November 4-14. Full schedule and more info here.
Renaissance Society (UofC)
The Renaissance Society presents two videos online in conjunction with their current show Nine Lives. Streaming here through November 15 are: Marwa Arsanios’ 2014 video HAVE YOU EVER KILLED A BEAR? OR BECOMING JAMILA (26 min) and Tamar Guimarães’ 2018 video O ENSAIO [THE REHEARSAL] (51 min).
Facets Cinémathèque
Ali Ray’s 2020 UK documentary FRIDA KAHLO (90 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Facets website for hold-over titles.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Oliver Laxe’s 2019 Spanish/French/Luxembourgian film FIRE WILL COME (85 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Siskel website for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Ali Ray’s 2020 UK documentary FRIDA KAHLO (90 min) is available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Music Box website for hold-over titles.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Remi Weekes’ HIS HOUSE (US/UK)
Streaming on Netflix (with subscription)
In an outstanding feature film debut, director Remi Weekes provides a moving and relevant ghost story in HIS HOUSE. After an arduous journey, refugee couple Bol (Sopé Dìrísù) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) have finally made it to England from war-torn South Sudan, though their daughter, Nyagak (Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba) was tragically lost in the crossing. Despite the hardships, they are unexpectedly provided with a rundown but large home. Guided by their case worker, Mark (Matt Smith), the couple is instructed on the rules of the home and urged to acclimate to their new life as soon as possible—any problems could mean losing the house and risks their status as asylum seekers. Despite the unwelcoming neighbors, Bol is excited to start his new life, leaving the house to engage with the community. Rial, however, is less enthused, haunted by their experiences and those they left behind. Strange incidents almost immediately start happening in the house—creepily, there seems to be something lurking in the walls. While Rial takes the hauntings seriously, Bol refuses to let the disturbances challenge his newfound freedom. As they each contend with the manifestations in the house, Bol and Rial are also forced to face the traumas and actions of their refugee experience. An emotionally powerful story that is also genuinely chilling and with true scares, HIS HOUSE is a unique take on the haunted house film. Weekes elegantly shifts between the horror genre and the serious drama of Bol and Rial’s relocation and slowly straining relationship, never letting one overpower the other. Both main actors are fantastic, but Mosaku (recently seen in HBO’s Lovecraft Country) gives an especially wonderful performance, equally demonstrating Rial’s strength and vulnerability. The most affecting ghost stories are the ones that reveal very human experiences, and HIS HOUSE succeeds even beyond that by unswervingly tackling the intense effects of a humanitarian crisis; this is especially reflected in the film's devastatingly poignant final moments. (2020, 93 min) [Megan Fariello]
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:
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
CINE-LIST: November 6 - November 12, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Rob Christopher, Megan Fariello, Kalvin Henley, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Josh B. Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Harrison Sherrod, Michael Glover Smith, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky