We will highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that have reopened, newly regrouped in our standard Crucial Viewing and Also Recommended sections, as well as all other physical screenings, and list streaming/online screenings below.
Remember to check the venues’ websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place. More and more venues are now requiring proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test. We recommend verifying those protocols before every trip to the theater. And, of course, always wear a mask.
📽️ BLACK HARVEST FILM FESTIVAL
The 27th Annual Black Harvest Film Festival continues through December 2; it takes place at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Below are reviews of select films playing as part of the festival, with more to come in future lists. Furthermore, select programs are available to rent virtually. More info here.
Melvin Van Peebles’ SWEET SWEETBACK'S BADASSSS SONG (US)
Friday and Saturday, 9:30pm
Released several months before Gordon Parks’ SHAFT, Melvin Van Peebles’ SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSS SONG is generally considered the film that kicked off the Blaxploitation cycle of the 1970s. Van Peebles employs the quick-and-dirty methods of exploitation cinema to consider issues facing black people in America. (To underscore the seriousness of his intent, Van Peebles credits “The Black Community” as the film’s star in one of the opening shots.) Sweetback (played by Van Peebles, who also wrote, directed, produced, edited, and co-composed the score) is a man who’d been groomed for prostitution since early adolescence. One night, some white cops bust into the brothel where Sweetback works; they offer to let the owners off the hook if they can arrest Sweetback on a minor charge to “make themselves look good.” As they’re bringing him in, Sweetback discovers that the cops intend to frame him for murder; he escapes, and the rest of the film follows his long, grueling run from the law. Sweetback’s journey grows increasingly abstract as it proceeds, reaching its climax in a trippy desert landscape that may remind you of Antonioni’s ZABRISKIE POINT. (Not for nothing is the film one of the major creative points of reference on Madlib’s Quaismoto LP The Unseen, one of the most phantasmagoric hip-hop albums ever.) Despite the prevalence of exploitation-style sex and violence, Van Peebles’ message is ultimately humane—one reason Sweetback is able to survive is that he gets help from a diffuse, but collaborative, community that includes various disenfranchised people (blacks, gays, sex workers) as well as the white counterculture (represented by a civically minded biker gang). Van Peebles also achieves some impressive effects with sound, with unpredictable bursts of voiceover narration, offscreen sound, and a rousing score that features Earth, Wind & Fire. (1971, 97 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Kelley Kali and Angelique Molina’s I’M FINE (THANKS FOR ASKING) (US)
Friday, 6:30pm and Saturday, 4pm
This LA-shot indie tells a breezy, engaging story to call attention to an important social issue. Kelley Kali, who co-wrote and co-directed, stars as Danny, the recently widowed mother of an eight-year-old girl. When the film begins, the two are homeless, having spent their meager savings on funeral expenses. Danny has been telling her daughter that they’re just “camping,” but the little girl is starting to suspect that something’s amiss. Thankfully, Danny will be spared from having to tell her daughter the truth; she’s been approved for a new apartment and has been given the go-ahead to move in… if only she can come up with the last $200 for her security deposit by the end of the day. What ensues is a series of misadventures in which Danny tries everything she can think of to make money without sacrificing her dignity. Kali and co-director Angelique Molina succeed in granting dramatic weight to what might seem like a trivial sum, and in doing so, they dramatize how poverty upends not only people’s priorities, but also their very sense of big and small. The movie is most commendable for avoiding clichés about poverty: Danny isn’t alone in the world, but rather surrounded by friends who would love to help but lack the resources to do so. Also, the character isn’t unemployed (she braids women’s hair for a living); she just can’t make enough to get by. This is no WENDY AND LUCY, but it still fosters sympathy for a large—and unjustly demonized—part of American society. (2021, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Arie and Chuko Esiri’s EYIMOFE (THIS IS MY DESIRE) (Nigeria)
Saturday, 7pm
The feature-length directorial debut by brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri is thoroughly understated and all the more devastating for it. Almost every scene of EYIMOFE (THIS IS MY DESIRE) plays out in a modest medium distance from the camera, which comes to assume the role of a curious but unobtrusive observer. The perspective never feels impassive, however; this isn’t one of those movies where the camera makes a point of never moving. (The film’s occasional panning and tracking shots are simple yet effective.) In fact, the calmness with which the Esiris present their tragic stories communicates a wide range of emotions. Sometimes it suggests reflective wisdom; other times it connotes a blasé attitude, implying that the sad events here are so commonplace in Lagos that there’s no use getting worked up over them. EYIMOFE unfolds in two parts, and while at least one character from the first reappears in the second, the stories are connected more by theme than by specific details. Both tales center on a hardworking Nigerian trying and failing to raise money to emigrate to Europe. The first, titled “Spain,” follows middle-aged electrician Mofe, a single man who lives with his grown sister and her two young boys. I won’t reveal the tragedy that befalls these characters, but suffice it to say, it tightens Mofe’s ties to life in Lagos more than he ever expected. The second story, “Italy,” presents a few weeks in the life a 20-something hairdresser named Rosa, who’s struggling to support her pregnant teenage sister. She plans to move to Italy after her sister gives birth, but again, circumstances force the protagonist to change course at the last minute. Because the Esiris refuse to underscore the narrative developments, they create the impression that misfortune is simply part of life in Lagos. (Too bad Hou Hsiao-Hsien already named a movie A CITY OF SADNESS.) And because they shot this on Super-16, the present-day setting looks significantly older than it really is, as if the people of Lagos were grappling with some eternal weight. (2020, 116 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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David Weathersby’s IT’S DIFFERENT IN CHICAGO (US/Documentary)
Sunday, 6pm and Tuesday, 8pm
It's easy to name some of the big current Chicago rappers: you have Kanye West, Common, Chief Keef, or Lil Durk, among many talented and famous names. But house music, while arguably just as influential and as important to Chicago, has remained alive mainly through an older generation of fans and artists. In this documentary, David Weathersby presents a side-by-side view of the two genres, referred to as “cousins” or “twins” in one of the engaging interviews. Like any family, though, these genres are not without their spats. At one point, the two cultures were at odds; the LGBT history connected with house music scared away some people in the early days of Chicago hip hop, creating a rift that would linger. Despite this rift, Weathersby highlights how similar the forms are to one another in an attempt to bridge the gap between the two divided groups. We hear a house music DJ talk about how the songs get people to move and feel alive, then we see scenes of the same exact things at a hip hop open mic night. The two genres' respective genealogies are not that different either--house music eventually spawned completely unique genres, like EDM and techno, which sound quite different than the music of their origins. We're witnessing a similar transformation now with hip hop yielding things like emo trap, NY drill, and grime. When these current trends are compared to some of the old-school hip hop artists mentioned in the documentary, like A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul, it's fascinating to see how different the genre has become but also how fast it has evolved, no doubt thanks to the Internet. While the pandemic has made things tougher for artists, house and hip hop artists alike have found their place performing virtually online; specifically, the old guard can easily reach an audience around the globe who are interested not only in listening but in creating music themselves. Despite some technical hiccups here and there, the film does a great job of balancing worthy information with interesting people and sights. My favorite shot, a short lingering view of a man’s rear comes from an event called Thee Debauchery Ball, which blends house music with BDSM. But besides the butt, there is plenty to see and hear in this one. It is definitely worth a watch if you are into music, history, or Chicago in general. (2021, 91 mins, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
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Gordon Parks’ MOMENTS WITHOUT PROPER NAMES (US/Documentary)
Monday, 8pm
Far from a fact-filled account about photographer, writer, musician, composer, and filmmaker Gordon Parks, MOMENTS WITHOUT PROPER NAMES represents Parks’ personal valedictory statement. In summing up his life, he dips into his semi-autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree, and scenes from the film he made from that book, as well as A Choice of Weapons, his memoir about becoming a photographer as a means to resist the punishing effects of poverty and racism, and A Hungry Heart, a more expansive look at his life and work. Archival footage of the times through which Parks lived intermix with some of his still photography depicting impoverished people and fashion models alike. We also get coverage of the Vietnam War as a way to tell the story of his son David’s service there. While the film is a bit arty and impressionistic, with not nearly enough time paid to the beauty of his images, it more than makes up for this lack with stirring recitations from his works by actors Avery Brooks, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Joe Seneca, as well as Parks himself. The film was recently restored from the original camera negative. Preceded by FLAVIO, Parks’ 1964 short film about a young boy from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro who was photographed by Parks for Life Magazine (12 min). (1987, 60 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Jane Campion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG (US/UK/Australia/New Zealand/Canada)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
It’s been 12 years since Jane Campion’s last feature film, BRIGHT STAR. That movie stays with me for containing one of the rawest scenes of a character crying in grief I’ve ever witnessed; I still get chills thinking about it. THE POWER OF THE DOG is darker, but no less emotional, unhurriedly revealing the devastating and murky inner lives of its characters with astonishing skill and empathy. The film is demarcated by roman numeral chapters, each building tension by slightly shifting audience expectations. It’s clear this growing anxiety is leading to a dark, violent end, but I was constantly reconsidering what that end might be and consistently taken aback by Campion’s twisting complexity of the characterization onscreen. The story takes place in 1920s Montana, following the Burbank brothers: quiet and clean-cut George (Jesse Plemons) and rough yet charismatic Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch). For years they've run a prosperous cattle ranch, but their situation is upended when George marries sweet Rose (Kirsten Dunst), a widow who brings along with her scholarly son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil is enraged by this change, and his immediate cruelty to Rose and Peter is distressing. It’s slowly revealed his unbridled rage is complicated by his past; most notably he had a deeply meaningful relationship early in his life with a cowboy mentor who’s long since passed. Though never onscreen, Bronco Henry’s presence looms as large as the Montana mountains. And, oh, those mountains. Ari Wegner’s cinematography is breathtaking and true to the Western genre, but it also feels alien. The landscape seems both impossibly picturesque and quietly full of terrors. Shots of wide-open spaces are juxtaposed with tight quarters, driving the characters fears and desires: the camera captures scenes through windows and doors (à la THE SEARCHERS), the brothers’ cold ranch house, and Phil’s secret sanctuary in the nearby woods. We witness the characters as they navigate not only the setting, but their own troubled existence within it. They dance around each other as they grapple with overwhelming loneliness fueled by constantly needing to assess the intentions of those around them. Cumberbatch is powerfully unsettling, but the film belongs to Dunst, who masterfully portrays Rose’s emotional shifts with crushing compassion. Smit-McPhee, too, is incredible as Peter, whose motives are skillfully inscrutable until the final, quietly shocking moments. (2021, 125 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Daniel Hymanson’s SO LATE SO SOON (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Venue website for showtimes
This compact documentary portrait of two Chicago-based artists who’ve been married for fifty years takes a refreshing, direct cinema approach. I appreciate filmmaker Daniel Hymanson’s no-nonsense style, as it privileges the film’s subjects—Jackie and Don Seiden—with a freedom that befits their creative spirits. It’s also a personal matter for Hymanson, who’s known the Seidens for years: Jackie was his teacher when she taught children’s art classes at the School of the Art Institute, and the two forged a bond that resulted in Hymanson visiting the Seidens at their quirky Rogers Park home. A true community isn’t complete without a house like theirs, wonderfully weird and laden with artistic projects. Jackie is an avant-garde renaissance woman, bringing her gifts to everything from roller-skating performances to found-object sculptures. She’s decorated their home with the latter works; near the beginning, we see Jackie hanging a cow figurine within a cat’s cradle of dental floss in the middle of the kitchen. Don assists his wife, encouraging her by asserting he never goes into the cabinet that’s being blocked off by the impromptu installation. In general, too, she’s a wacky kind of delight, eating ice cream for breakfast and dancing to Sade in her living room. While Don is certainly the more reserved of the two, his work is no less eccentric; it consists of perceptive, caricature-like sketches and life-sized sculptures of animals (two of which appear in their backyard). Lest one mistake the film for a twee, overly sanitized look at two elderly artists’ unusual life, Hymanson inserts scenes from the several years he spent shooting that show the more complicated aspects of a half-century relationship and the experience of aging in general. Jackie humorously conveys the story of how Don got a mild case of cold feet at their courthouse wedding—the justice of the peace made them go to the back of the line so that Don could get the courage to say ‘I do.’ Later, Jackie brings this up with resentment and hurt in her voice, adding that Don also didn’t want to have children when she did. The two also bicker about issues in the here and now, but these moments of vexation are balanced by scenes of the two expressing unbridled, genuine love for one another. Details of their artistic practices are interconnected with reminisces of their life together, which add an interesting angle to the artist documentary paradigm. While filming, Jackie was working on video pieces that involve photos of dogs, which are hard to describe but utterly charming. Having known the Seidens for so long—Hymanson was once their neighbor, and he recently moved into their house after Don sadly passed away in 2019 and Jackie transferred to an assisted living community—the director’s affection and respect for these two unique people emanates from every shot. All told, it’s a guileless slice of life—two lives, in fact, made better and more interesting because the other was in it. Director Daniel Hymanson will be in attendance for post-screening Q&As at the Friday, Saturday and Sunday showtimes. (2021, 71 min, DCP Digital) [Kathleen Sachs]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Matías Piñeiro’s ISABELLA (Argentina/France)
Facets Cinema – Check Venue website for showtimes
Director Matías Piñeiro has sought inspiration from William Shakespeare’s plays across a number of films he has written and directed, perhaps most famously A Midsummer Night’s Dream with his 2016 feature HERMIA & HELENA. His latest film, ISABELLA, uses Measure for Measure as the backdrop for examining the creative process and, specifically, the desire of his protagonist, Mariel (María Villar), to be an actor. The film opens on an explanation of purple as a borderline color between hot and cold, setting up a rather clever ritual that involves throwing 12 stones, which represent doubts, into a body of water. If the thrower hangs onto one stone, that means their doubt is important; if all the stones end up in the drink, then the action they had doubts about is what is called for. As it happens, this ritual is the basis for an experimental play Mariel has written and is prepping for production. She also has been induced to audition for the part of Isabella in a production of Measure for Measure, with her brother’s lover, fellow actor Luciana (Agustina Muñoz), offering to act as her coach. The film skips around in time with repetitive actions and few character introductions, so piecing together the dramatis personae and the story is a real challenge. The out-of-sequence presentation and lack of character information distances one from the “real-life” story, forcing an appraisal of the artifice of what they are doing instead of how we feel about what they are doing. I was not particularly moved by the film, but its experimental inventiveness is intriguing. Those drawn to such modes might find more in it. (2020, 80 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Joanna Hogg’s THE SOUVENIR: PART II (UK)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
If we don’t get stuck in the process, we often grow through grieving. When last we heard from English director Joanna Hogg, she was recounting in fictional form a painful period in her life—her love affair in the 1980s with a charismatic British diplomat who was addicted to heroin and died of an overdose. That recounting, THE SOUVENIR (2019), used the emotion-filled script she wrote in the 1980s, notes, photos, diaries, and letters to inform many of the improvised actions of her professional and amateur actors, particularly those of Honor Swinton Byrne, who played her alter ego, film student Julie Harte. THE SOUVENIR: PART II, which retains many of the original cast members, picks up the story where the first film left off. Julie (Harte) is staying with her rich parents (Tilda Swinton and James Spencer Ashworth) at their country estate as she goes through the throes of her very fresh grief over Anthony’s (Tom Burke) death. Hogg skips most of Julie’s recovery time, bringing us to the point where Julie is ready to get back to London and renew her film studies. She has jettisoned her original graduation film script and written a new one that recounts her romance with Anthony. As in the first film, the all-male advisory committee don’t like the script; this time, however, they refuse to fund it at all, sending Julie back to her mother for a loan—though this time it will not be fueling Anthony’s drug habit. Much of PART II is taken up with the production of Julie’s film, also titled The Souvenir, after the painting by Jean-Honore Fragonard that played a role in the first film as a symbol of undying love. The Julie of PART II, however, is not the passive woman who let Anthony tell her what to do. She risks alienating a friend by not casting her in the film and refuses to change her instinctual and spontaneous directing style to assuage the confusion and anger of the cast and crew. When, at last, the film is ready to premiere at the graduation showcase, one of the advisors continues to cast doubt on her future. She merely dedicates the film to absent friends and sits down to watch her film—a grand, experimental departure from the film we have been watching and a clue to Hogg’s early influences and mature confidence in her abilities. As in the first film, Swinton Byrne subtly but convincingly portrays her character’s journey through pain and uncertainty to a deeper understanding of herself, her feelings for Anthony, her developing artistic voice, and her place in the world. It’s delightful to see her play a scene in Julie’s newly redecorated apartment with Tilda Swinton, the actor’s real mother, and watch two masters working on a story that must, in some ways, parallel their own. The final scene in Julie’s apartment, which echoes the opening scene of PART I, brings Hogg’s saga full circle and indicates that she has found closure on this part of her life. As a viewer, I found the entire cycle satisfying and loaded with the kind of humanity that makes cinema so worthwhile. (2021, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Pablo Larraín’s SPENCER (UK/Germany)
Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes
After her husband gifts her a stunning piece of jewelry, which she knows he also gave to his mistress, Diana laments, “It’s not the pearls’ fault, is it?” SPENCER is in many ways a film about clothing, its personal and symbolic significance, how it’s used to stand out or to hide. A film about Princess Diana focusing on her wardrobe may seem frivolous, but fashion is tension. SPENCER takes her relationship to clothing seriously, and thus challenges the audience’s perception of her as a fashion icon. Director Pablo Larraín knows how to turn that tension into compelling storytelling about real life figures—his 2016 film JACKIE does the same. SPENCER shines a light on the costuming in such a way that it moves beyond the mise-en-scène; costume designer Jacqueline Durran does an amazing job transforming relatively tame early 90s fashions into disruptive, disobedient garments. Clothing is more than ornamental: for Diana it’s equal parts terror and rebellion. SPENCER follows Diana (a dizzyingly powerful Kristen Stewart) as she visits the Queen’s Sandringham Estate over Christmas during the final, unhappy days of her marriage. The film presents the estate as a haunted house, highlighted by Jonny Greenwood’s intense string score. Diana is spied upon by the staff and disturbed by the past, though generally ignored by the family. In some ways, it feels more closely aligned with female-led dramatic horrors like THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE or THE INNOCENTS than a traditional biopic, especially in regards to women’s mental states and actions constantly being questioned. But the film is also grounded in its portrayal of Diana as a woman desperate to get out of an unbearably tragic situation. This is due in no small part to Stewart’s compassionate performance. SPENCER opens with the words, “A fable from a true tragedy.” Stewart convincingly portrays Diana as a woman who’s endured these hardships for a long time—and will continue to—but with brief, shining moments of relief, defiance, and joy. So many of these revolve around the seemingly simple idea that she can make her own choices—like what she wears. (2021, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
Also Screening
⚫ Doc Films at the University of Chicago
Sabrina Doyle’s 2021 film LORELEI (110 min, DCP Digital) screens on Friday at 7pm and Sunday at 4pm, and Vincent Ward’s 1998 film WHAT DREAMS MAY COME (117 min, 35mm) screens on Saturday at 7pm. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Edgar Wright’s 2021 film LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (116 min) continues this week, with all screenings now on DCP Digital. A preview screening of Paul Verhoeven’s 2021 film BENEDETTA (126 min) takes place on Tuesday at 7pm, in advance of the film opening regularly on December 3. More info here.
⚫ Nightingale Cinema
Jose Luis Benavides: Letters to Lost Loved Ones and Other Works (Approx 52 min Total) screens on Friday at 7pm. The program includes seven short works made between 2013 and 2021. Notably, this program includes an in-progress work, LETTERS FOR LOST LOVED ONES, a documentary short created in collaboration with the Illinois Deaths in Custody Project and several people who were incarcerated in Illinois prisons during the pandemic. More info here.
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Todd Chandler's BULLETPROOF (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Facets Cinema here
BULLETPROOF doesn't reveal anything new about the problem of American school shootings and our reaction to them, but it adopts a cool distance that makes the exploitation and fear it shows all the more infuriating. In the vein of the late Harun Farocki's films, Todd Chandler approaches the institution of school systems through a deep chill. The camera almost never moves, and BULLETPROOF uses B-roll long shots of fields and playgrounds for punctuation. The film could have been more focused—while quite a short feature, it still feels padded. But it diagnoses a problem where the threat of violence is blown out of proportion—for instance, when his class is interrupted by a shooter drill, a math teacher tells his students that they're far more likely to get hit by a car walking to the cafeteria than face gun violence at school—in order to make money and exert tighter control over students. It avoids turning the subjects into characters or explaining where the film was shot, but the one person to whom it returns is a woman who grew up in a dangerous neighborhood and now manufactures bulletproof hoodies. Inspired by an incident in her neighborhood, she set out to keep her mother safe. But her business grew from sewing a few hoodies a week herself to running a factory with the help of an investment from gun manufacturers. She justifies her business by saying that she can now donate some hoodies to poor children. It's a microcosm of the large-scale problem shown in BULLETPROOF: putting a bandage over the problem of violence instead of searching for true root causes and solutions, especially if one can make money traumatizing children and profiting from a community's fears instead. (2020, 82 min) [Steve Erickson]
Radu Jude’s UPPERCASE PRINT (Romania)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and through the Music Box Theatre here
UPPERCASE PRINT is an adaptation of a “documentary play” by Romanian theater director Gianina Cărbunariu, but it’s hardly filmed theater. Radu Jude, one of the most inventive filmmakers working today, doesn’t present a production of the play or even a filmic re-staging of it; rather, the movie represents a dialogue between Cărbunariu’s art and Jude’s—and, by extension, between theater and cinema. Much of the film transpires on a soundstage, where actors deliver passages from the production, which recounts an episode of Romanian history from the early 1980s. Jude intersperses these passages with archival footage of things that appeared on Romanian TV around this time, and the material alternately provides context for and ironic counterpoint to the stage show, resulting in a rich, tonally complex montage. The narrative centers on Mugur Călinescu, then a high school student in the city of Botoşani who took to the streets to express discontent about food shortages, the lack of free labor unions, and the totalitarian government’s suppression of civil liberties. Little did Călinescu know that as soon as he started writing his protest statements on public buildings, the state secret police opened a file on his activities and began an intricate manhunt to discover who he was. Much of Cărbunariu’s play derives from secret police files and official testimonies; in a Brechtian spirit (which also animated Jude’s 2018 film I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS), the material isn’t performed so much as recited, spotlighting the inherent dramatic power of political rhetoric. In this context, the TV footage takes on a rhetorical quality as well—programs that might seem innocuous otherwise (like scenes of adults singing to children) register as metaphors for the Ceaușescu regime’s efforts to distract or lull the restless population, while news reports of widespread unrest in Soviet Bloc countries seem to grow directly out of Călinescu’s protests. One reason why Jude is so valuable to contemporary cinema is that he uses filmmaking to confront dark aspects of his country’s history that many of his fellow Romanians would prefer to forget. More importantly, he recognizes that history repeats itself—his movies are ultimately warnings for the present. Late in UPPERCASE PRINT, Jude incorporates an archival news broadcast about the rise of neo-Nazi groups across western Europe. He just as easily could have included a contemporary report on the Proud Boys or any number of 21st-century blackshirt organizations. The threat of totalitarianism isn’t going away, which makes this film as necessary as it is stirring and intellectually provocative. (2020, 128 min) [Ben Sachs]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Also Screening/Streaming
⚫ Blacknuss Network (aka Black World Cinema)
France Štiglic’s 1956 Yugoslavian film VALLEY OF PEACE (82 min) streams on Sunday at 3pm. More info here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Select programs from the Black Harvest Film Festival are available to rent virtually. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Check hold-over titles here.
⚫ VDB TV
To celebrate the launch of the Hans Breder archive at the Video Data Bank, five short videos by the artist and filmmaker are available to stream for free on VDB TV. More info here.
🎞️ ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s MOTHER, I AM SUFFOCATING. THIS IS MY LAST FILM ABOUT YOU (Lesotho/Qatar/Germany)
Available to rent through Dekanalog here
The second Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese film to see American release this year, MOTHER, I AM SUFFOCATING. THIS IS MY LAST FILM ABOUT YOU is much more experimental than THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION. One could take it for a documentary, but its scenes are staged. Working in black-and-white, with narrator Sivan Ben Yishai reading an English-language voice-over, Mosese creates an allegory for his ambivalent feelings about Africa. (Although Mosese was born in Lesotho and now lives in Berlin, he’s careful not to specify the setting of MOTHER, I AM SUFFOCATING.) THIS IS NOT A BURIAL sang the praises of a village’s maternal figure, but this film allows for a more troubled range of emotions. It’s both quiet and extremely anxious. Mosese introduces the audience to its world slowly, with images of seaweed and rocks followed by a woman carrying a crucifix around town. As it begins, Yishai slowly reads the title several times, then delves into memories of listening to Michael Jackson with his mother. The b&w cinematography creates a wide range of textures. Mosese shoots crowded street scenes in slow motion, with the repeated motif of boys staring into the camera. At first, this looks like a spontaneous reaction to the sight of a woman struggling with a crucifix down a busy street, but the fact that they’re staged becomes evident (especially when a man with two bandaged eyes looks into the camera.) The soundtrack is hushed. The score of THIS IS NOT A BURIAL played a major role, but the sounds of this street are faintly audible. The film disturbs its slow path towards a confrontation with the narrator’s anger only a few times: a man wheels around a huge speaker playing pop music, and a lamb’s corpse being torn apart is captured in shaky, handheld camera. Mosese consciously chose to use close-ups of his actors’ faces as a reference to paintings of icons, and the film’s attitude towards Christianity is as complicated as its view of Africa. While less immediately accessible than THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, MOTHER, I AM SUFFOCATING. THIS IS MY LAST FILM ABOUT YOU is just as rewarding. (2019, 76 min) [Steve Erickson]
CINE-LIST: November 19 - November 25, 2021
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Drew Van Weelden