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.
NOTE: The Music Box Theatre and other area theaters that had been running physical screenings have suspended them for the time being due to new city restrictions.
CINE-FILE SELECTS: DAMNATION
In partnership with film distributor Arbelos, Cine-File is presenting the exclusive Chicago virtual screening of Béla Tarr’s 1988 film DAMNATION, in a stunning new digital restoration. The film is available here for two weeks; rental is $10, with half the proceeds going to Cine-File (funds will be used for general expenses, future programming, and to provide honoraria to our contributors).
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Béla Tarr’s DAMNATION (Hungary)
Available to rent here
With DAMNATION, his fifth theatrical feature, Béla Tarr proved himself to be the successor to master directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky, advancing a style of intricately blocked long takes and ravishing-looking scenes of industrial decay. The film specifically evokes Antonioni in its towering visual compositions and thematic focus on the de-spiritualized nature of modern life; it recalls Tarkovsky in its fetishistic obsessions with rain, mist, stray dogs, and crumbling buildings. Yet DAMNATION never feels derivative—Tarr filters his influences through a distinctive sensibility informed by black humor, film noir, and the world of small-town Hungary in the final days of Communism. The resulting style is hypnotic, inspiring such fascination with the settings and despairing mood that the minimal plot comes off as secondary. The story isn’t bad, though; it’s essentially a drawn-out Hungarian joke. A drunken layabout named Karrer (Miklós Székely B.) falls head over heels with the married woman (Vali Kerekes) who sings at his town’s only bar. When a local criminal offers Karrer a job transporting contraband from across the country, Karrer extends the offer to the singer’s husband (who’s already suspicious of Karrer’s behavior towards his wife) in order to get the guy out of town for a few days. In spite of the heavy air of defeat, things actually play out in Karrer’s favor for a while. But the film lives up to its aesthetic (not to mention its title) and the drunk arrives at his doom in grand fashion. It’s a critical cliché to describe DAMNATION as a decisive break from Tarr’s first four features, but those early achievements inform the film in significant ways. The documentary-style dramas FAMILY NEST (1977), THE OUTSIDER (1981), and THE PREFAB PEOPLE (1982) introduced the director’s interests in economic desperation and broken relationships, which he’d take to nearly abstract extremes here, while his theatrical ALMANAC OF FALL (1984)—notable for being Tarr’s only theatrical feature shot in color—revealed his talent for making very slow camera movements seem highly engrossing. Still, the newfound literary sensibility of DAMNATION marks a distinct change in Tarr’s filmmaking; this progression can be likely attributed to novelist László Krasznahorkai, who collaborated with Tarr on the script and would go on to co-write all his features after this. (Two of those features, SATANTANGO [1994] and WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES [2000], are adaptations of Krasznahorkai novels.) The dialogue, when it occurs, is rich and philosophical in the tradition of William Faulkner, and the passages of intense concentration on mundane activity evoke the kind of burrowing-in to life one finds more often in novels than in films. Tarr shares the “film by” credit for DAMNATION not only with Krasznahorkai, but with some other important collaborators: cinematographer Gábor Medvigy, editor Ágnes Hranitzky (also Tarr’s wife, who would co-direct some of his subsequent features), and composer Mihály Vig. It follows that an atmosphere so dense would be the work of multiple individuals. (1988, 120 min) [Ben Sachs]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – New Reviews
Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI (Taiwan)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Seven years ago, a friend and I made the cold November trek to Hyde Park for what we considered an unmissable screening: Hou Hsiao Hsien’s FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI. I can’t recollect the exact quality of the print, but what remained in my mind were the hazy, glowing interior spaces wrapped in ribbons of opium, the smoke from the brothel patron’s carefully packed pipes, the opening scene's circular gaze fixing us in a quiet, placid reverie. These were all scenes I had seen before, but blown up to such height and scale, I felt I had re-entered that world anew. After being subjected to the Kino Lorber DVD of FLOWERS for years, which suppressed many of the film’s formal strengths, everything the film contained was present; and now, thanks to a luminous restoration by L'Immagine Ritrovata, we have another imperative reason to revisit this masterpiece. At last rescued from the dregs of inadequate transfers and sub-par DVD releases, the immense richness and depth of the film can be seen without waiting for the Shochiku print to makes its rounds again. Set during the Qing Dynasty, FLOWERS unfolds across planes of time and half-recollected thought as the young women of the upscale brothel (or “flower house”) seek to buy their own freedom while maintaining their clientele’s physical and emotional needs (though Hou displays only the latter onscreen). The men and women play games together and smoke; some choose to let their passions develop beyond the careful confines of the flower house, allowing jealousy to seep through the tiniest of cracks, threatening to disrupt the delicate balance within the ornate walls. Likewise, atmosphere and plot become almost as detached as the stoned patrons’ glances and gestures permeating the stillness. Scenes fade to and from black; Hou reveals moments of memory, then returns them to the dense void of time and space. Thinking back on that screening almost seven years ago today, at the beloved and sorely missed Doc Films, I’m reminded that there is an essential feeling to every film by Hou that surpasses most of what qualifies today under the hot term "slow cinema." Hou’s vision is impartial, but one he hopes we can follow along without wasting too much time deciphering. In fact, what Hou believes probably is rather simple. Not simplistic, but simple in the way one might call Ozu or Rossellini simple: plot specifics are deceptively by the books (though in Hou’s case the linear structuring becomes the thing fragmented), actors seem to emote into the tunnels of time, and moments of melodrama make minor appearances, never disturbing the harmony and texture. One might find SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON a closer cousin to this period, given that both FLOWERS and RIBBON share a common belief in light and color as the ultimate emotions. With Hou, plot specifics advance past what most filmmakers may think they need to feed their audience to get their story across, paying little attention to the obvious, trusting the viewers' intuition. In Hou’s trust, he remains as revelatory and fresh as when he began. We may not have the main theaters of Doc or the Music Box right now, but make no mistake, this is as essential a watch as it gets. (1998, 113 min) [John Dickson]
Joshua Tsui’s INSERT COIN (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Facets Cinémathèque here
An interviewee calls Midway Games the “punk rock” of video game companies and while INSERT COIN is a fairly straightforward documentary, its approach offers a detailed history. The Chicago-based company became well-known for its coin-operated arcade games and development of photorealistic graphics using video digitization, especially in its most famous title: Mortal Kombat. As the documentary addresses, this opened up a lot of discussion—and disagreements—about showing realistic violence, both between those working at Midway and in larger conversations about the cultural effects of video games. With no narrator, the interviewees share their personal experiences, and director Joshua Tsui (a former game developer at Midway) provides structure through an arcade-style credit countdown as the film progresses chronologically. The interviews have an informality about them, and none of the personalities overpower the others, emphasizing the collaborative—and at times very competitive—aspect of game development and programming. A clever feature are the chyrons under interviewees’ names, that change according to which company they’re with at the time or on which specific game they’re working; it’s a subtle way to address the instability of the video game business. While footage of the games is featured throughout, with a fun video game-style soundtrack by electronic artist Savant, INSERT COIN is most interested in the people behind the scenes and their effect on gaming history. It benefits from that focus, letting the story of Midway speak to video game culture as a whole. The film isn’t just a glowing celebration, but an honest look at the inner workings of one company in a competitive and ever-changing business. It’s clear from the many Chicago barcades that Midway has had a continuing influence, and INSERT COIN made me miss those unique arcade spaces even more. (2020, 101 min) [Megan Fariello]
Matthew Rankin’s THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (Canada)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Most nations have their own primordial myths, stories of valor, ingenuity, and achievement that embed themselves in the cultural imagination and fortify a collective identity. Then, there are nations like Canada. What, as many have wondered, does it mean to be Canadian, to belong to a “middle power” that has for most of its statehood existed in the shadows of the British and French Empires, to say nothing of its downstairs neighbor? Cult film favorite Guy Maddin has famously answered by confabulating myths and memories of his own, resurrecting obsolete cinematic styles to simultaneously exhume a Canadian (film) history that never was; with THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, fellow Winnipegger Matthew Rankin carries the torch. In fittingly daffy, deadpan, and neurotic fashion, he tells the (highly) fictionalized story of the ascent to power of William Lyon Mackenzie King, the 10th and longest-serving prime minister of Canada. One could feasibly call this a “biopic,” but Rankin has no interest in detailing King’s 21 years in office, nor does he care much for historical fidelity (the film takes place in 1899, two decades before King was actually elected). Instead, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY uses the figure of the good-natured but inescapably diffident prime minister to sketch a lovingly scathing portrait of Canadian self-perception. For Rankin, it’s a self-image characterized by perpetual, mostly contented disappointment, by vacillating feelings of inferiority and humble pride, by warring impulses to follow and tamp down one’s desires. “Canada is one failed orgasm after another,” scoffs an embittered daughter of the Governor General. Those failed orgasms are metaphorically manifest in the film’s droll parade of absurdities, from the competition for prime minister itself, which entails such rounds as “Ribbon Cutting” and “Waiting Your Turn,” to, most explicitly, a tumescent cactus and a very noisy chastity belt. Rankin stages all this within brilliantly imaginative set design, utilizing Expressionistic geometric motifs and Lotte Reiniger-esque silhouettes to abstract Toronto, Quebec City, Winnipeg, and more into variably ominous dreamlands. Surreal though it is, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY is ultimately more restrained than Maddin tends to be, and is also more performance-driven. All of the actors give delightful turns (cross-dressing Maddin muse Louis Negin included), none more so than Dan Beirne as King. All clipped, prim cadences and genteel flop sweat, Beirne’s performance is a precision-timed gem of self-effacing comic underplaying. He could just be the face of Canada. (2019, 90 min) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
ZAPPA Reviews x 2
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Alex Winter’s ZAPPA (US/Documentary)
I first started listening to Frank Zappa when I was in middle school, and while I didn’t have enough knowledge of music to comprehend exactly why, I knew it was something profoundly exceptional. I’ve since gained a better understanding of the density of his compositions and their political and social commentary on American culture, but I’ve learned so much more from Alex Winter’s comprehensive and energetic documentary. ZAPPA is an excellent introduction to his work and features an overabundance of footage for those that may already be familiar. Winter interweaves together a detailed personal and musical history of Zappa primarily steered by the artist himself via extensive archive footage, along with interviews from his widow, Gail Zappa, and various musicians that played with him. The sheer amount of this material could be overwhelming, but Winter cohesively grounds it all in a larger historical context which is simultaneously reflected in Zappa’s concurrent music, played as soundtrack throughout. As with Winter’s other striking documentary released this year, SHOWBIZ KIDS, ZAPPA doesn’t sidestep the darker aspects of its subject, allowing for a more honest introspection about Zappa himself as well as outside forces affecting his work; the expressiveness of the film’s last section regarding Zappa’s cancer diagnosis and death is heart wrenching. His final live performance is featured, underscoring that the most arresting points of ZAPPA are when it decelerates to let the audience engage more fully with the music. There is a scene in which the Kronos Quartet play “None of the Above” and, particularly moving, a performance by former Zappa collaborators Ruth Underwood and Joe Travers as they play “The Black Page,” known for its complexity; it’s surprisingly poignant to hear both the musicians and filmmakers behind the camera cheer at the completion of the performance. With its intricacy of form, contradictions of genre, humor, cultural commentary, and avenue for collaboration, his music is the film’s ultimate guiding force and, as Underwood notes, “the music that Frank made, I think, will last;” I’m certainly going to keep listening. (2020, 129 min) [Megan Fariello]
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Alex Winter’s ZAPPA (US/Documentary)
If you know anything about musician/composer Frank Zappa, you will not be at all surprised that Alex Winter’s thorough-going documentary, ZAPPA, begins with the rocker mounting a stage in front of a packed crowd in Prague, where he was such a symbol of revolution that the Czech Republic asked the U.S. to appoint him as their cultural and trade representative. Zappa, whose lyrics were sexually explicit, politically iconoclastic, and seemingly designed to insult as wide a variety of “plastic people” as possible, and whose concerts were raucous and provocative (I attended one in which the stage was hung with the underwear he’d collected from women during the tour) was all about freedom. While he fought Tipper Gore and her Parent Music Resource Center to prevent censorship in music, mainly because none of his musician colleagues seemed interested in getting involved, he also brought a wide-ranging sensibility to his music, writing everything from silly ditties like “White Port and Lemon Juice” to a modern classical composition for the Kronos Quartet. Winter covers a lot of ground in ZAPPA, taking the amazingly self-taught musician from his literally toxic childhood next to a chemical factory where his father worked to his spacious home in Southern California’s Laurel Canyon where his massive archive of all of his work was stored. Interviews with his former bandmates include Steve Vai, a guitar master who started his career with Zappa, and Ruth Underwood, a percussionist who was lured from her elite training at Juilliard for the chance to do more than play the triangle in a symphony orchestra upon graduation. Zappa, we learn, was an emotionally withholding, relentless taskmaster who unilaterally broke up the first iteration of the Mothers, rarely saw his children, and openly cheated on his wife. It’s tempting to think that a fan attack that left him crippled for nearly two years was some kind of cosmic payback, but I felt nothing but sympathy for his disillusioned hurt at how so many people abandoned him in his hour of need. Whatever his faults, he fought the good fight to evolve as a musician, provide a decent living for himself and his bandmates, and expose the corrosiveness in American society. The film is a treasure trove of footage from his life on and off the stage, though I found it frustrating that the music, while ubiquitous, was only presented in snippets—no doubt a copyright-inflected condition producer Ahmet Zappa imposed on Winter. Zappa’s associations with Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) and stop-motion animator Bruce Bickford, who contributed so much to 200 MOTELS (1971), are satisfyingly explored, and the film does not shrink from his losing struggle with prostate cancer. Zappa’s singular focus on trying to achieve the sound he heard in his head eventually turned him to electronics in an effort to completely control the sound. Had he lived, I’m sure we would have seen some major innovations from his quick and exploratory mind. (2020, 129 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
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]
Gabriel Mascaro’s DIVINE LOVE (Brazil)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
I have only vague memories of Gabriel Mascaro’s first two features, AUGUST WINDS (2014) and NEON BULL (2015), though by looking up my old reviews I see that I had a low opinion of the first and a mildly positive view of the second. In contrast, I’m not sure what I think of Mascaro’s third feature, DIVINE LOVE, but I’m confident that I won’t forget it any time soon. A peculiar mix of political allegory, science-fiction, and soft-core pornography, the film looks and feels like little else; and thanks to the droning electronic score, you may find yourself hypnotized by it. The story takes place several years in the future. Brazil is now a technologically advanced, highly bureaucratized theocracy whose state religion preaches the sanctity of life, marriage, and free love. Joana (Dira Praes) is a model citizen of this new society. Working for the state records department, she processes divorce certificates from couples about to separate and uses her position to dissuade the couples from breaking up their marriages. Joana and her husband Danilo (Julio Machado) attend couples’ therapy sessions in the evenings where they praise Jesus, then take part in group sex; their lives are centered on trying to conceive a child. Mascaro presents all this in trance-inducing long takes marked by slow camera movements and lots of neon light. The actors, for their part, maintain the director’s deadpan tone with unwaveringly solemn performances, and their commitment reflects the characters’ devotion to the order of the day. One surprising aspect of the film is that the explicit sex emerges as automated and cold—but then, this makes sense, given that Mascaro’s subject is the willingness of some people to accept nearly any form of social control. (2019, 100 min) [Ben Sachs]
Manoel de Oliveira’s FRANCISCA (Portugal)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
At various points in FRANCISCA, the actors break the fourth wall to stop whatever they’re doing and look directly at the camera. It’s an audacious gesture, and only in part because it disrupts the film’s narrative flow. FRANCISCA takes place in the mid 19th century, and, for the most part, Manoel de Oliveira doesn’t let you forget it—the film advances a deliberately antiquated aesthetic, with declamatory line readings, tableau-like imagery, and extended passages where title cards summarize offscreen dramatic action. Such devices can feel alienating at first, but they have a way of luring you into the past setting. Oliveira doesn’t want to re-create the look of the 19th century, but rather invoke how people comprehended the world then. It’s significant that the film spends so much time on people writing and reading letters; Oliveira wants us to understand how the ubiquity of written expression shaped relationships and perceptions at this point in history. The director’s authoritative sense of the past informs everything about FRANCISCA, even those moments when the actors break the fourth wall. In Oliveira’s hands, the actors’ gazes into the camera suggest the 19th century looking out at us in the present. This experience is rare in cinema, as most historical films dramatize the present looking at the past, yet it defines almost all of Oliveira’s work. To watch a film like FRANCISCA is to stand in dialogue with history, not passively absorb it. The movie recounts a tragedy in the life of author Camilo Castelo Branco (whose novel Doomed Love provided the source material for another Oliveira film), when his friend José Augusto seduced and married a woman Branco had loved, the titular Francisca. For Oliveira, the relationships between these three characters reflect 19th-century (and historically Portuguese) notions of honor, passion, and domination; the film, in its grand provocation, asks us just how distant we feel from the values on display. (1981, 167 min) [Ben Sachs]
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]
Luchina Fisher’s MAMA GLORIA (US/Documentary)
Available for rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here
MAMA GLORIA is a deeply personal documentary that illuminates a larger history of transgender people of color in Chicago. Gloria Allen, now in her 70s, is an icon of the community, having started a charm school for transgender people at the Center on Halsted. The charm school inspired Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins’ Charm, and Gloria became known for her maternal support for and engaged work with transgender youth. The charismatic Gloria narrates her own story, which is filled with traumatic moments of violent abuse and loving acceptance from her family and friends, especially her mother. Allen begins by telling how her grandmother worked as a seamstress for drag performers in the early 20th century; she’s aware of how her personal history intertwines with a broader one, framing her story against historically significant moments and people, from the Civil Rights Movement and Emmett Till to the Stonewall Riots and Marsha P. Johnson. MAMA GLORIA emphasizes the power of Gloria sharing her story, not just directly with the film’s audience, as she recounts her personal history into the camera, but also with others, most compellingly with the queer youth she inspires. Gloria mentions, in a lovely scene where she shares a meal with her friends from high school, that she was voted “most friendly,” and the camera captures her welcoming nature. Gloria is also aware that her older age signifies survival, as she mentions losing so many friends; MAMA GLORIA notes that only 14% of transgender identifying adults in the U.S. are seniors. Gloria’s story is compelling not just in its engagement with history, but in its acknowledgement of contemporary struggles, as transgender rights are threatened and incidents of extreme violence against transwomen of color continue. MAMA GLORIA is an optimistic film that also recognizes there is still a lot of work to be done. (2020, 76 min) [Megan Fariello]
Joyce Chopra’s SMOOTH TALK (US)
Available to rent through the Music Box Theatre here
Winner of the 1986 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film, SMOOTH TALK stars Laura Dern as Connie, a fifteen-year-old exploring her sexuality, navigating the carefree life of a teenager obsessed with boys and the terror of unwanted sexual attention. Spending the summer before her sophomore year with her friends at the beach and the mall, Connie avoids helping her parents (Mary Kay Place and Levon Helm) and is constantly negatively compared to her more obliging older sister (Elizabeth Berridge). Connie spends nights out flirting with boys, but things get dark when it becomes clear she’s being stalked by an older man (Treat Williams). Director Joyce Chopra deftly balances SMOOTH TALK’s pastel-colored 80s coming-of-age story as it teeters into horror. Williams is so completely menacing that his first quick appearance on screen—watching Connie from afar—creates a distinct shift in the film. His physicality, especially in a scene where he moves further from his parked car towards Connie alone in her house, using the titular “smooth talk” to disarm her from outside the screen door, presents an anxiety-inducing amount of threat. The dread is very much grounded in reality, however, and the film never feels exploitive or critical of Connie. Rather, SMOOTH TALK takes seriously the distinction between Connie innocently exploring her own desires and someone else aggressively forcing his upon her; it’s an overall powerful take on the coming-of-age film. Dern expresses so clearly the fluctuating excitement and unease of a teenager pushing boundaries, and her chemistry with Place conveys a convincingly fraught, yet loving, relationship between concerned mother and teenage daughter. Also noteworthy is the way the film places an everyday importance on music for Connie and those around her—James Taylor acted as music director on the film. (1985, 92 min) [Megan Fariello]
LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – Also Screening/Streaming
Video Data Bank
The Video Data Bank continues its “Video Art and Mass Incarceration” series with a pair of 1991 documentaries by Wendy Clarke: ONE ON ONE: ARNOLD AND AHNEVA (47 min) and ONE ON ONE: RICKY AND CECELIA (29 min).
Black Harvest Film Festival
The Gene Siskel Film Center continues with an online edition of the Black Harvest Film Festival through November 30. Information and full schedule at the Siskel website here.
Gallery 400
Sara Ludy’s short videos DESERT ROSE (2016, 34 min) and SKY LAPIS (2018, 6 min) are on view through December 13 here.
Facets Cinémathèque
Check the Facets website for hold-over titles.
Gene Siskel Film Center
Kim Jong-hoon’s 2020 South Korean film BEASTS CLAWING AT STRAWS (108 min), John Davies’ 2020 documentary LINCOLN IS CRYING: THE GRIFTERS, GRAFTERS & GOVERNORS OF ILLINOIS (86 min), Sandra Kogut’s 2019 Brazilian film THREE SUMMERS (94 min), and Alexander Nanau’s 2019 Romanian film COLLECTIVE (109 min) are available for streaming beginning this week. Check the Siskel website for hold-over titles.
Music Box Theatre
Check the Music Box website for hold-over titles.
ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Henri Decoin’s RAZZIA (France)
Available to rent through Noir City International now through Sunday here
In 1955, Jules Dassin’s crime masterpiece RIFIFI was released to great acclaim. That film overshadowed another crime film, RAZZIA SUR LA CHNOUF—RAZZIA for short—from Henri Decoin, a popular French filmmaker and screenwriter who directed more than 50 films during his long career. The full title of the film, which roughly translates as “drug raid,” is based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton. If one compares this film with a similar film from the same year, the movie Otto Preminger made of Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm, RAZZIA is much more honest about the ecosystem of the illegal drug market. Jean Gabin plays Henri Ferré, whom drug lord Paul Liski (Marcel Dalio) hires as his second-in-command to tighten up his operation and make it more profitable. Liski sets Henri up as a restauranteur and sends his two enforcers, Roger the Catalan and Bibi (the always wonderful Lino Ventura and Albert Rémy), over to retrieve the photo of an opium smuggler who wants out of the business. Liski doesn’t want any unmotivated employees. In short order, Henri gets to know Liski’s operation. He meets the chemist (Roland Armontel) who makes the heroin, the couriers who distribute it from the chemist, and finally, the small-time dealers and their customers. And despite his age and portly physique, he also romances Lisette (Magali Noël), a young and beautiful cashier at the restaurant, who moves in with him. Gabin is the strong, stoic center of a film that stays on the move in sometimes confusing and contradictory directions. His position as the Robert Mitchum of French cinema not only validates his every move, but also keeps us from judging him harshly, viewing him instead as a highly competent manager. It is the scene around him that emphasizes how degrading, dangerous, and destructive drug trafficking and use are. Particularly sad is dealer/junkie Léa (Lila Kedrova), whose desperation leads her to have public sex in a private Arab club. The film’s climax is a lot more than a shoot-out; it is a grimly mundane picture of how many people are caught in the web of drugs, thus justifying the cautionary title card that opens the film. (1955, 105 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Ruby Nell Sales Oral History Interview (US/Oral History)
Available to stream for free through the Library of Congress here
Just as home movies have taken their rightful place as important documents of our history and shared experiences, so, too, do oral histories provide a vital link to events both monumental and mundane. Much less cinematic than confessional documentaries like PORTRAIT OF JASON (1967) or in-the-moment accounts like the Emmy-nominated Beirut episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (2006), oral histories provide eyewitness accounts that, while subject to the vagaries of memory and emotion, have the authenticity of the subject’s lived experience. The Library of Congress began filming interviews for its Civil Rights History Project in 2011, and its collection now numbers 514. The April 25, 2011, interview Joseph Mosnier conducted in Atlanta with Ruby Nell Sales is a stellar example of how oral history can bring power and immediacy to events that are becoming distant and distorted. Sales, a historian, seminarian, activist, and educator, discusses her background, her path into “the movement,” her subsequent years of study, and her founding of SpiritHouse, a national community-organizing and community-building nonprofit. If Sales is known at all by the wider American community, it is for her participation in a Aug. 14, 1965, action in Fort Deposit, Ala., to protest the economic exploitation of Black workers. Jonathan Daniels and Richard Morrisroe, two white clergymen from the North who were working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, were shot by store owner Tom Coleman. Daniels was killed protecting Sales, and she was so traumatized that she hardly spoke for nearly a year and would not acknowledge that she had been in the movement for many years. Have I heard of Bloody Lowndes, the county where Fort Deposit is located? Yes. Did I know this story? No. But now I’ll never forget it. Sales’ haunted, horrified voice belies the rather calm face she turns to the camera, and suddenly I was there, feeling Sales hit the pavement hard when Daniels pushed her out of the line of fire, hearing Morrisroe moan after being shot, finding out that the two men were missing for days after the incident, so quickly had the white authorities scooped them up and sent them to a morgue and hospital, respectively, without a word to anyone. In my opinion, there is simply no other way to achieve this visceral understanding—not from a book, not from a feature film, not even from a documentary. The strength of Sales’ emotional memory and her deep commitment to her cause infuse this incident with the kind of meaning that will teach you more than any amount of antiracism training or earnest book-reading and discussion you might be inclined to indulge. There is a great deal more in this interview, from learning that Stokely Carmichael had a breakdown in an airport from all the abuse he had seen and suffered, to Sales’ use of the term “Southern freedom movement” because she believes that civil rights alone would not have sustained the struggle, and the disruption of the racial knowledge and solidarity of Black education by the firing of 75 percent of the Black teachers in the South in favor of white replacements. And if you’re obsessed with trying to understand the “Trump voter,” look no further. Sales neatly sums it up by describing the elements that allowed for the successful attack on Northern liberalism that has made white Southern culture acceptable to a vast swath of the American public. Learning history from the people who lived it, unfiltered by the approved textbooks and narratives of the dominant American culture, is the essential homework all thoughtful Americans need to do to form the foundation of a nation so many of us say we want but may not have the tools to realize. (2011, 93 min) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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.
CLOSED/POSTPONED/HIATUS:
Beverly Arts Center – Events cancelled/postponed until further notice
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Closed until further 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*
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)*
Music Box Theatre – The Music Box has again suspended in-person screenings; it continues to present online-only 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 27 - December 3, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // John Dickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Michael Glover Smith