We will highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that are open, grouped 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 venue websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place for COVID prevention. We recommend verifying those before every trip to the theater.
⭐ CHICAGO LATINO FILM FESTIVAL
The 38th Chicago Latino Film Festival continues through Sunday, with screenings both in-person and online. See below for reviews of select films. Note that in-person screenings are taking place across three venues: the Landmark Theatre's Century Centre Cinema (2828 N. Clark St.), the ChiTown Movies Drive-In (2343 S. Throop St.), and the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago (31 W. Ohio St.). A good portion of the films are available to stream within limited viewing windows; note that the content may only be viewable in authorized regions. We will note the film’s streaming availability below each review where applicable. More info on the festival here.
Anita Rocha da Silveira’s MEDUSA (Brazil)
Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema – Friday, 8:30pm
With a stylish soundtrack and neon cinematography, Anita Rocha da Silveira’s MEDUSA is certainly paying homage to Dario Argento’s horror films. Yet with a larger commentary on obsession with social media - especially focusing on female relationships and sexuality - the film is simultaneously reminiscent of Sofia Coppola. This makes for a unique thematic and visual combination as MEDUSA draws on dreamy, fairytale qualities of both directors. By day, Mariana (Mari Oliveira) sings with an extremely conversative, Christian all-girls choir. By night, she and the singers act as vigilantes, donning white masks and assaulting women they deem morally sinful, their violent acts inspired by a story of an actress whose face was deliberately burned by a woman in a white mask. The actress, Melissa (Bruna Linzmeyer), has since disappeared, though the girl gang, led by the enthusiastic Michele (a standout Lara Tremoroux), is desperate to revel in what horrors happened to Melissa. When Mariana’s own face is slashed by one of the group's victims, she risks the safety of her position in both the group and the larger society, which is dominated by an aggressive, misogynistic religious hysteria. Lacking options, she takes a job at a clinic for long-term comatose patients. From its striking first few scenes until its tenacious final moments, MEDUSA is consistently arresting. While it tackles many socio-political themes, it balances the thematic overload with hauntingly evocative visuals. Rocha da Silveira brilliantly juxtaposes close-ups of character’s faces with intense examinations of bodies, both in motion and in stillness, in joy and in pain; a few of these images I expect to stay with me for quite a while. (2021, 127 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Available to stream through Sunday; can only be viewed in Illinois. More info here.
Nico Manzano’s ME & THE BEASTS (Venezuela)
Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema – Friday, 8:45pm
ME & THE BEASTS may look like a low-key comedy about a floundering twentysomething musician; in fact, it’s a despairing movie about how few prospects there are (economic and otherwise) for Venezuela’s millennials. Andrés is the guitarist and primary songwriter of an indie rock band that’s fairly popular but not yet financially successful. In the opening scene, he quits the group because the other members won’t turn down a gig at a military-sponsored music festival and he thinks they should refuse the offer. Andrés’ decision may reflect a certain righteousness, but he couldn’t make it at a worse time: he’s now in no position to move out of his mother’s apartment or quit his unfulfilling day job in a laboratory, and the one friend whom he trusts to start a new band is trying to get out of the country. Refusing to let this keep him down, Andrés pours himself into writing new songs and even takes an unpaid leave from his job to record them. New frustrations come his way, however, bringing this short, wistful movie to a melancholy end. ME & THE BEASTS marks the feature debut for writer-director Nico Manzano (who also wrote or co-wrote all of the movie’s songs), but his even-handed tone feels highly developed already. In the fashion of so many endearing South American comedies, the film contains few people you could describe as heroes or villains; everyone is winningly polite, and the characters who might seem unsympathetic at first (like the corrupt cops who show up near the end of the film) often reveal themselves to be capable of kindness. If there are villains in the movie, it’s the members of the Maduro administration responsible for bringing Venezuela to an economic standstill, but these people remain graciously offscreen. Manzano’s chief concerns are how ordinary middle-class Venezuelans are weathering the ongoing economic crisis and how the arts function in a crisis-plagued society. These are big issues, but the movie renders them both approachable and hummable—as it turns out, Andrés’ songs (which might be described as Latin-tinged bedroom pop) are really swell. Preceded by David Busto's 2021 Spanish short film PLAYING DEAD (20 min, Digital Projection). (2021, 77 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Available to stream through Sunday; can only be viewed in Illinois. More info here.
Aly Muritiba’s PRIVATE DESERT (Brazil/Portugal)
Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema – Saturday, 7pm
After being ghosted by a love interest with whom he had contact only through text message, Daniel (Antonio Saboia) embarks on a journey from his home in southern Brazil to the country’s northeast region in pursuit of his mysterious paramour. It’s equally true that he’s trying to put distance between himself and his problems back home, where he’s in trouble at his job as a police academy instructor following a violent outburst toward a recruit; he’s also taking care of his elderly, infirm father with little help from his independent-minded younger sister. But it’s the ghosting from his would-be girlfriend Sara that puts him over the edge, spurring him to abandon both his family and any chance at being redeemed on the job. To reveal where this film—at first a seemingly straightforward treatise on masculinity, its symptoms, and its consequences—deviates from its purported conflict would be to spoil the plot, but this is integral to any discussion of it: Sara isn’t who Daniel thinks she is. Rather, she’s a young man, Robson (Pedro Fasanaro), who sometimes presents as a woman. A point in the film’s favor is that it doesn’t dwell on labels; director Aly Muritiba (who scripted the film with Henrique Dos Santos) presents the two protagonists’ sexualities matter-of-factly, refusing to brood over the painful nuances of their sexual and gender identities. Daniel and Sara/Robson eventually meet, setting off a chain reaction in Robson’s life; the change is demarcated by a stark shift at the film’s midpoint, when it switches focus from Daniel to Sara/Robson and their equally complicated life. The subject of toxic masculinity is broached via Daniel’s acknowledgements around his violent outburst, something he credits to a culture where men are forced to unquestioningly accept society’s patriarchal institutions. (His father is a retired officer, apparently one of high rank; he’s shown earlier in the film dressed in uniform and loading his gun during a particularly delirious and disconcerting moment.) Robson, however, is understandably dismissive of his excuses—they’re a particularly assured character, as confident in their gender fluidness as one could be under the circumstances. On the whole the film challenges accepted notions of masculinity in Daniel’s apparent emotional frailty and in Sara/Robson’s unwavering resilience. It’s likewise representative of the character’s fluidity, bold in its unwillingness to yield easy answers. (2021, 120 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Available to stream through Sunday; can only be viewed in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin. More info here.
Macha Cólon’s GARDENIA PERFUME (Puerto Rico/Colombia)
Available to stream through Sunday; can only be viewed in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin. More info here.
Isabel (Luz María Rondón) has just lost her husband of 53 years. An ardent gardener and knickknack hoarder, she creates such sensational funeral decorations for his funeral that they draw attendees from the next-door funeral decorated by Toña (Sharon Riley) and her three-person crew. Ever the entrepreneur, Toña induces Isabel first to start decorating her funerals and then to help her give some ailing people a nudge into the next world so she can work a few more funerals. Director Macha Cólon has cast these two Puerto Rican legends of stage and television in a comedy that doesn’t overlook the sadness of death and loneliness, but rather bumpily places it in the context of the joys of life and connection. Isabel’s bizarre decorations reflect the lives of the people who have died (for example, a shoemaker laid out in a gigantic high-heel shoe), and the deceased she has honored arise for a brief moment to smile their approval. A devout woman who fervently believes in an afterlife, Isabel goes along with the euthanasia scheme just once, but sours on it quickly when it goes wrong. However, her ties of love to the neighbors in her somewhat dangerous neighborhood in San Juan has her overcome her misgivings to help her queer neighbor Julia (Blanca Rosa Rovira) die with dignity and receive the send-off of her dreams. Cólon, a queer Puerto Rican artist and documentarian making her feature film debut, dedicates her film to the late political documentarian Benito Reinosa and the late Carlos Madera, who celebrated queer culture in Puerto Rico. GARDENIA PERFUME carries on their legacy with humor and heart. Preceded by Paloma Coscia de Luque’s 2021 Argentine short film FOURTH B (10 min, Digital Projection). (2021, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Joseph Morder’s MEMOIRS OF A TROPICAL JEW and Dominique Cabrera’s TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AGAIN (France)
The University of Chicago's Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center of the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.) – Friday, 7pm (MEMOIRS) and Saturday, 7pm (TOMORROW)
In honor of University of Chicago lecturer Dominique Bluher’s retirement, the Film Studies Center is screening two films connected to her prodigious scholarship: Joseph Morder’s MEMOIRS OF A TROPICAL JEW (1988, 80 min, 16mm) and Dominique Cabrera’s TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AGAIN (DIARY 1995) (1997, 79 min, Digital Projection), both rarely, if ever, screened in Chicago. It makes sense why Bluher, an expert in the work of Agnès Varda and the person responsible for the late auteur’s memorable 2015 visit, has an affinity for these films and their makers; it’s clear from cursory research that both artists have made the realm of the personal their domain, as Varda herself did. Bluher likens Morder (who will appear at the screening) with Jonas Mekas in his mode of filmmaking and prolificness, but distinguishes him by noting that “no other filmmaker has utilized so many forms of personal filmmaking,” citing the array of modes in his work, ranging from “genuine and fake diaries'' to “autofictions combining nonfiction with reenactments,” often filmed in Super 8. MEMOIRS OF A TROPICAL JEW would seem to fall somewhere in between, centered as it is on a contemporary Parisian love affair and recollections of Morder’s childhood in Ecuador, where he was born to Polish-Jewish parents. The protagonist, ostensibly Morder himself, is never explicitly named, imbuing what might seem like a straightforward autobiographical realization (sounding similar to something like Varda’s JACQUOT DE NANTES [1991]) with a quaint speciousness. About TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AGAIN (DIARY 1995), French scholar Agnès Calatayud writes that “Cabrera embarked upon this film as a kind of wager when everything seemed to be disintegrating around her on a personal level as well as politically and socially,” referring to the filmmaker’s turbulent relationship with her estranged husband and son as well as the final round of the 1995 French elections. Filmed over nine months, it also finds Cabrera grappling with depression and bulimia, all the while balancing a new love interest. This sounds to be at once a self-portrait, “taken” by the artist as a means of documenting the self, and a portrait of the self as a means of using that silhouette to construct another kind of depiction, one of the inner self and how the external perception of it is shaped. It seems to have been a therapeutic and arduous undertaking; as Calatayud writes, “[h]er new way of seeing things brought about by shooting and editing this film [made] her discard the unhealthy way in which she viewed her own life and her family. There comes a point when everything appears to be ‘new, as if it has just that moment come into being’ and she feels ‘calm, tired, light (...) perfectly replaceable and irreplaceable.’ But this apprenticeship involves also a loss of identity, an amnesia of sorts and self-effacement. She will bring about her own rebirth, cleansed of all secrets, faults and impurities… [i]n the same vein, she relates in interviews how the day after the film was released, her insomnia suddenly disappeared as if ‘after a confinement…’” Cabrera has referred to herself as “an ordinary woman, but a filmmaker,” and both programs convey the ability of so-called ordinary people—because, aren’t we all?—to see their life as the stuff of art, thereby rendering it extraordinary in transferring it from the internal to the external. Cabrera will appear in conversation with Bluher via Zoom. [Kat Sachs]
Block by Block: Short Films About Chicago (Shorts)
Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Friday, 7pm
Ask a Chicago denizen what they love most about their city, and chances are its plethora of neighborhoods will be among the top responses. Each has its own distinct personality, exhibited by way of its architecture, cuisine, and community landmarks; each also has its own issues, ranging from deeply entrenched segregation to the ongoing gentrification of once-affordable areas. The short films in this program exemplify this twofold phenomenon, revealing the joys and struggles of living in whichever neighborhood is its focus. Domietta Torlasco’s GARFIELD PARK, USA (2021, 32 min, Digital Projection) is an elliptical short essay film that considers the West Side neighborhood’s fraught topography as it relates to Chicago’s ongoing segregation crisis. Via onscreen text, silent voices implore unseen subjects or espouse provocative statements that trace connections between various themes. The Garfield Park Conservatory, an ostensible benefit to the community, here seems a privileged space from which the surrounding area is separated and which has been popularized as a destination for visitors from outside the neighborhood. A particularly affecting part features an interview with two young Black girls about the accessibility of their community. This concept—of people being displaced within their own cities and even their own personhood, unable to easily traverse either due to reasons both capitalist and societal—provides a through line in the otherwise jarring amalgamation of ideas. Inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry collection A Street in Bronzeville, Jazmine Harris’ SOME THINGZ NEVER CHANGE: MONOLOGUES FROM A STOOP IN BRONZEVILLE (2019, 12 min, Digital Projection) contains a series of monologues based on real-life testimonies that illuminate the disparate and accumulated experiences of people living on the 49th and Washington Park Court block of Bronzeville. Shot in hazy black-and-white with the performers sitting atop a re-creation of a stoop, the short is a contemporary ethnography obscuring the divide between past and present, performance and existence. “You are currently running an experimental version of Earth,” reads a computer screen in Christopher Harris’ DREAMS UNDER CONFINEMENT (2020, 3 min, Digital Projection). It’s referring, of course, to Google Earth, which Harris uses to follow along with Chicago police scanner broadcasts in the wake of the civil unrest that defined 2020. But if one considers Earth and the reigning species within it as an experiment, then Harris’ film reveals it as one that most certainly has failed. Focusing also on the egregiously expansive Cook County Department of Corrections single-site jail compound, Harris emphasizes the site’s imposed authority over the surrounding populations. It’s a neighborhood in and of itself, composed of an involuntarily relocated populace and overseen by a carceral behemoth, a monster sweeping the streets for its prey. Kristin Reeves likewise takes a broad view of community decentralization in CPS CLOSINGS + DELAYS (2017, 7 min, Digital Projection), where she documents, via 16mm, all 50 Chicago Public Schools closed in 2013, with sporadic scenes from around the schools’ respective neighborhoods shot on her digital camera. Lastly, Sasha Phyars-Burgess’ HAIL MARY (2021, 22 min, Digital Projection) is a stream-of-consciousness meditation on the Austin neighborhood and the abundance of creative expression that permeates it. Evocative black-and-white images à la Gordon Parks, presented as still photographs, are bluntly exhibited with no context, their stories conveyed by artistic implication. Music plays a crucial role; it might also be termed an extended music video of sorts, with the subjects themselves performing or with music playing above photographs and filmed sequences. The work invites viewers to read between the lines and take from these polysemous articulations a rousing message not easily put into words. The entire program asks that of viewers, to see beyond geographic limits and into the homes and hearts of a neighborhood’s people. [Kat Sachs]
Charles Chaplin’s CITY LIGHTS (US)
Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm
Orson Welles, Robert Bresson, and Andrei Tarkovsky all named CITY LIGHTS as their favorite film of all time—what further recommendation do you need? Here is one of the perfect movies, as well as the perfect Chaplin mix of humor and sentiment. That mix, incidentally, sometimes exists within individual scenes, such those depicting the Tramp’s sort-of friendship with the rich man who only knows how to be friendly when he’s drunk. We all have the potential for kindness, these scenes poignantly imply; some of us just require a certain stimulation before we realize it. (In vino veritas indeed!) As for the Tramp’s relationship with the blind flower girl, it is one of the most moving in cinema, as direct, funny, and heartwarming a depiction of love as one could imagine. Chaplin devoted years to CITY LIGHTS, spending roughly six months on the shoot alone. Bit players have described how Chaplin acted out their every move before he filmed them, then going through dozens of takes before they performed to his specifications. These stories are examples of directorial perfectionism, yes, but they also speak to Chaplin’s uncommon ability to put himself in anyone else’s shoes. Preceded by Matthew Hildy’s 2019 short LIGHT ISLE (4 min, 16mm). (1931, 87 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Clint Eastwood’s UNFORGIVEN (US)
Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm
What has made UNFORGIVEN the most unassailable entry in the Eastwood canon? You can’t say the man’s other movies are bereft of star power or that they aren’t as thrilling or dramatically engaging as this Best Picture winner. And you certainly can’t say that this treads different ground than his other films. It’s a curious case, trying to figure out what makes the general moviegoing public (and particularly viewers who love to measure Eastwood’s personal politics against the ideas embedded in his films) so stalwart in their appreciation for UNFORGIVEN. In many ways, it serves as the crystallization of everything that had been and would be communicated through his entire body of work. Beginning with an unusually touching introduction and finishing with a coda so heartbreaking as to challenge the torrents of tears brought about by THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (1995), the film's bookends almost make you forget the rest of the plot: a small-dick cowboy carves up a prostitute’s face, resulting in her fellow saloon gals putting out a $1,000 bounty on the micro-penis-ed assailant, which prompts a retired murderer to abandon his children for a Homeric odyssey of mournful regret and shockingly vengeful violence. Bolstering the film’s representation as a summation of Eastwood’s work to that point, Clint dedicated it to his two great mentors: Sergio Leone and Don Siegel (who arguably helped create "Eastwood the Artist" through such films as DIRTY HARRY [1971], THE BEGUILED [1971], and ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ [1979]). Around the time Eastwood had finished his last film with Siegel, he received the script for UNFORGIVEN (when it was still called The Cut-Whore Killings) and thought to film it in the '80s, but he remained patient, waiting for the right time to mount the film. UNFORGIVEN takes a remarkably bold position, as it wipes away the mysticism Eastwood had once given his gunslingers in films like HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973) and PALE RIDER (1985), along with the more digestible backstory elements that spurred the vengeful actions of THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976). It also provides a blueprint for a more hotly contested title of his, AMERICAN SNIPER (2014). William Munny (Eastwood) in UNFORGIVEN shares many traits with the rendering of Chris Kyle in SNIPER. Both of these guys hold serious loner status, along with shared pasts centered around the murder of women and children for blood money or bloody nationalism; yet Munny seems to understand the cost of his past as compared to Kyle, who appears castrated by the modern world in ways that hadn't existed in the Old West, unable to fully process his actions. UNFORGIVEN plainly reveals the hypocritical cowardice of the West's gunfighters and outlaws, while SNIPER relishes a certain Fordian cause-and-effect tactic that imbeds its critiques deeper into the movie’s construction, similar to what Ford did in THE LONG GRAY LINE (1955). SNIPER also does not contain much, if any, moments of comic relief, unlike UNFORGIVEN. Munny is as much a work of fiction as SNIPER’S version of Kyle who, in real life, was an across-the-board liar and cold-blooded murderer—much closer to someone like Munny—yet both of these characters have a foot in the real world. So, how are we to allow our sympathies for Munny but not Eastwood’s depiction of Kyle, who, yes, is based on an actual, once-breathing individual who was blasted through the skull by a fellow wannabe-mercenary? My point is, Munny and Kyle are renderings of the same character, though UNFORGIVEN has the benefit of being set in the distant past while the crimes of AMERICAN SNIPER are a lot closer to home. The strength of UNFORGIVEN has to do with how it can still provide insights into Eastwood’s increasingly murky later career, which includes films much-deserving of UNFORGIVEN’s solidified status. Eastwood’s main characters—like Harry Callahan, Chris Kyle, and William Munny—represent "constants in a changing world," one that was never meant to embolden meat-headed machismo or state-sanctioned violence, but instead challenge what lies inside the hearts of people raised in a country forever haunted by its own brutally violent past, present, and (most likely) future. Screening as part of the “Hell on the Homestead: Surviving the Frontier” series. (1992, 130 min, 35mm) [John Dickson]
Lou Ye’s SATURDAY FICTION (China)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
The local premiere of SATURDAY FICTION marks director Lou Ye’s welcome return to Chicago screens, where none of his films have shown since SUMMER PALACE (2006) came to town about 15 years ago. If this latest feature is any indication, Lou spent the intervening years becoming a master—SATURDAY FICTION delivers an immersive, labyrinthe vision of the past comparable to those Aleksei German created in such landmarks as MY FRIEND IVAN LAPSHIN (1985) and KHRUSTALYOV, MY CAR! (1998). Lou frequently stages action in both the foreground and background or else moves the camera unpredictably between separate events; moreover, the film is edited in a staggered pattern that resists any comfortable narrative rhythm. You never know where to direct your attention, and whenever you think you do, Lou jostles you again. German once said that he couldn’t understand why, given their historical and cultural specificity, anyone outside of Russia would want to see his films, and one can imagine Lou saying the same thing about SATURDAY FICTION, which burrows so deep into a particular historical milieu (namely, the overlapping worlds of professional theater and international espionage in Shanghai in the first week of December 1941) that some viewers may find themselves gasping for air. But if you feel overwhelmed, imagine what the heroine is going through. Jean Yu (played by Gong Li in an astonishing performance) is a popular actress who returns to Shanghai with the nominal intention of appearing in a play, but as virtually everybody knows, she’s really there to make the necessary connections to get her ex-husband out of prison; she also gets involved in spying for the Allied Powers. Lou never makes it clear what any of the characters’ intentions are, though as you might expect from a movie about an actress, it is clear that everyone’s always playing a role. Adding to the sense of complexity, the dialogue comes at you in Mandarin, English, French, Japanese, and German (and possibly a few others I missed)—watching SATURDAY FICTION is a bit like scaling the Tower of Babel. But for all the intellectual energy it demands, the film is also sensuous and exhilarating; Lou’s command over cinematic form is spectacular from the first shot to the last. (2019, 127 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Hanna Bergholm’s HATCHING (Finland)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Part gross-out horror creature feature, part dark fairy tale, Hanna Bergholm’s HATCHING is primarily an evocative coming-of-age story. Shy Tinja (Siiri Solalinna in an astonishing performance) lives in a highly controlled world; her family—led by her mother (Sophia Heikkilä)—are bloggers who meticulously record their curated lives for the internet. This means, too, that Tinja is forced by her mother to achieve no less than the highest standards, especially as a gymnast. Their fraught relationship and themes about parenthood and control drive HATCHING. When a bird crashes into the family home and dies, Tinja takes in an abandoned egg, hiding it in her room. The egg grows abnormally large, and what eventually hatches is a strange bird-like creature that doesn’t quite stay that way. As Tinja and the creature become increasingly linked, its evolution takes on a horrific twist. HATCHING is, overall, an impressive first feature from Bergholm. It's shot much like an advertisement, with the cinematography reflecting the unrealistic sense of perfection that haunts Tinja. The look of the film provides an arresting juxtaposition throughout between the overwhelming pastel florals of Tinja’s immaculate home and the grotesque creature. The creature's design effectively mixes the cartoony and the unsettling. It’s a throwback to 80s family creature films like E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL, including in scenes where Tinja’s younger brother Matias (Oiva Ollila) is terrorized by the monster; it’s generally much less heartwarming, though. Like the creature itself HATCHING is creepy, comical, and strange, and confidently conveys its themes until its final disturbing moments. (2021, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Ramon and Silvan Zürcher’s THE GIRL AND THE SPIDER (Switzerland)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
Nine years after their debut, THE STRANGE LITTLE CAT, the Zürcher twins have returned with a second feature. THE GIRL AND THE SPIDER’s first shot shows an architectural blueprint, setting the stage for their clinical yet anxious film. Beginning with Lisa (Liliane Amut) moving out into her own apartment, the first few minutes unfold simply enough, with Lisa's roommate Mara (Henriette Confurius) standing around as Lisa’s mother drops by to help and family, friends, and neighbors haul in a new couch and scrape away mold. But the Zürchers' style stands out. Their camera gets closer to objects than it does to people, who are shown in medium- or long-shot. The relationships between the characters turn increasingly enigmatic. The audience gets more information about them, but the film feels odder as a result. While Lisa and Mara were likely lovers and Lisa’s move spurred by their breakup, THE GIRL AND THE SPIDER never quite spells out their connection. The film repeats costume or makeup details--as different as a blue wig and herpes sore--passing them along from character to character. (A joke about wine pouring from Mara’s pierced lip is made literal through the image of wine spilling out from a cup when a pencil is removed.) The Zürchers’ direction gestures at the Kuleshov effect: one scene is edited to suggest a boy staring a topless woman, even though if one pays close attention, it becomes clear that the actors were filmed apart. THE GIRL AND THE SPIDER could’ve been a simple story of a breakup, but it establishes the difficulty of understanding other people’s emotions as its baseline. It revels in finding mystery and tension in the everyday, denying the audience a fully fleshed-out narrative. (2021, 99 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]
Howard Hawks' GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (US)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am
Howard Hawks' glitzy sing-along of consumerism on tour is headlined by the hottest of commodities, Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe. GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES is, of course, far most interested in what these ladies prefer—which may be love or may be diamonds, depending on whom you ask—as opposed to the gents, here occupying a grand range of caricatures from buffoonish millionaires to meddling private investigators to rigidly-disciplined muscle men. Russell and Monroe are Dorothy Shaw and Lorelei Lee, two showgirls fresh out of Little Rock and adrift on an Olympian-infested ocean liner bound for Paris. Both women give career-defining performances here, with Monroe playing up American extravagances to hyperbolic heights, and Russell as the lovelorn straight woman, a term infused with entirely new meaning during the great "Ain't There Anyone Here For Love" number. Here's a film that is an equal-opportunity objectifier, a carefree capitalist musical as essential for piecing together American identity in the 1950s as any film by Nicholas Ray or Douglas Sirk. Screening as part of the weekend “Anchors Aweigh Matinees!” series. (1953, 91 min, 35mm) [Tristan Johnson]
David Mirkin's ROMY AND MICHELE'S HIGH SCHOOL REUNION (US)
Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight
ROMY AND MICHELE'S HIGH SCHOOL REUNION, which pairs an Oscar-winner (Mira Sorvino) with a lead (Lisa Kudrow) from one of the most popular sitcoms in history, has aged like fine wine. Even though they were at the height of their careers filming it, the stars' mixed backgrounds and subsequently declining careers give it the feel of a pre-fame cult classic, with low dramatic stakes and lots of DIY style. The film follows two dim and broke longtime best friends who decide to go to their 10-year high school reunion under the false pretense that they became incredibly successful for inventing Post-It notes. Split between the present and the characters’ high school years, the film collapses the teen clique comedy with the high school reunion subgenre, a choice that feels necessary for the specific purgatory the main characters inhabit: they've always been valley girls whose fashion meets or exceeds the looks of the popular and successful, but the cruel bullying they received as high school outcasts has given way to a listless and isolated adulthood. The film also sketches out a sort of equivalent purgatory in its Gen X milieu; the information age has not progressed enough for most people to automatically know via social media what their former classmates are up to, but it has gone far enough that the leads are quickly disproven when try to claim status as famous inventors. It makes sense that in Robin Schiff’s play The Ladies Room (on which the film is based), Romy and Michele were modeled on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; as in Tom Stoppard’s take on the characters, the protagonists actively come to terms with the fact that they are, basically, unremarkable blips in the memories of others. And while their ultimate success at the end undercuts this more low-key and bleak observation, the heartwarming takeaway is that even if we’re unspectacular, we’re all main characters to somebody. Kudrow and Sorvino, along with supporting players Janeane Garofolo and Alan Cumming, feel like a group of adults tailormade as grown versions of high school stereotypes. One can see Garofolo as a bitter punk who wised up and Cumming as a dweeby nerd who grew fabulous. But the stars are the revelations, doing expert comedic work and reminding us why they were some of the most popular actresses of the 1990’s. The way Kudrow emotes her scattered thought process, or the look Sorvino has whenever she’s sure she has a great idea are evidence that they both should have had longer careers in the limelight. Just because they’re so good at elevating broad stereotypes doesn’t mean they should have been relegated to them. Featuring a pre-show vinyl DJ set by Gaudy God starting at 11:30pm. (1997, 92 min, 35mm) [Maxwell Courtright]
Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm
Spike Lee's long and prolific career has been maddeningly uneven but he is also, in the words of his idol Billy Wilder, a "good, lively filmmaker." Lee's best and liveliest film is probably his third feature, 1989's DO THE RIGHT THING, which shows racial tensions coming to a boil on the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Lee himself stars as Mookie, a Black deliveryman working for a white-owned pizzeria in a predominantly Black community. A series of minor conflicts between members of the large ensemble cast (including Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito, and John Turturro) escalates into a full-blown race riot in the film's incendiary and unforgettable climax. While the movie is extremely political, it is also, fortunately, no didactic civics lesson: Lee is able to inspire debate about hot-button issues without pushing an agenda or providing any easy answers. This admirable complexity is perhaps best exemplified by two seemingly incompatible closing-credits quotes—by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X—about the ineffectiveness and occasional necessity of violence, respectively. It is also much to Lee's credit that, as provocative and disturbing as the film at times may be, it is also full of great humor and warmth, qualities perfectly brought out by the ebullient cast and the exuberant color cinematography of Ernest Dickerson. Screening as part of 50/50, the Film Center’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (1989, 111 min, 35mm) [Michael Glover Smith]
Elaine May's A NEW LEAF (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Wednesday, 7pm
Cine-File co-managing editor Ben Sachs, also my husband, once wrote for this site that F.W. Murnau’s SUNRISE is “probably one of the greatest [movies] ever made about love.” I disagreed, arguing that I didn’t think it was very loving for a husband to try to kill his wife. It was my opinion that, at the bare minimum, romance should be free of attempted murder, something I expect as much from my auteurs as I do my spouse. But Elaine May’s A NEW LEAF has swayed me, at least in the filmic sense. (Ben and I are eight years into a murder-free marriage, and I don’t foresee myself altering those preferences.) May was the second woman after Ida Lupino to direct a major Hollywood feature; she was the first to both write and direct one, and she also stars in this woefully underappreciated black comedy. Walter Matthau plays Henry Graham, a seemingly asexual playboy who decides to marry after exhausting his inheritance. He sets his sights on May’s character, Henrietta Lowell, a wealthy heiress who teaches botany and dreams of discovering a new species of fern. Such a description should provide an insight into why Henry picks her as his intended target. Except he doesn’t intend just to marry her, but also to kill her, so that he can assume her riches and continue his life of leisure. A few critics have described the film as cockeyed, a sentiment May would likely agree with for different reasons. The original version was a whopping 180 minutes, and she fought to have her name removed from it after Paramount edited it down to its current length. I can only imagine that it seemed as lopsided to her as the present iteration might seem to some. Still, the brilliance of May’s careful direction and Matthau’s subtle dramatics are fully evident by the film’s end. Just as the set-up recalls SUNRISE, the climax is reminiscent of Roberto Rossellini’s JOURNEY TO ITALY. But instead of a religious procession inspiring a romantic miracle, it’s a fern that prompts Henry’s characteristically supercilious epiphany. Screening as part of Doc’s Wednesday series: They Thought I Was a Nice Girl: The Films of Elaine May. (1971, 102 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
Rob Christopher’s ROY’S WORLD: BARRY GIFFORD’S CHICAGO (US/Documentary)
The Wilmette Theater (1122 Central Ave., Wilmette) – Saturday, 7:30pm
If the name Barry Gifford rings a bell to Cine-File readers, it’s likely for his contributions to what you might call “David’s world”: David Lynch’s, that is. Lynch’s WILD AT HEART (1990) was an adaptation of a Gifford novel, and they co-wrote LOST HIGHWAY (1997) together. Until I saw ROY'S WORLD: BARRY GIFFORD'S CHICAGO, a dreamy, immersive documentary by Cine-File contributor Rob Christopher, I was unfamiliar with his Roy stories. Roy is the character Gifford invented as an alter-ego as a boy, a movie-loving street kid whose coming-of-age adventures Gifford has been chronicling in works of autobiographical fiction for nearly 40 years now. “Roy’s World” is a specific time and place—Chicago, mostly, in the 1950s and early ‘60s. This documentary celebrates these writings by adhering to a strict no-talking-heads policy. Christopher eschews entirely the standard on-screen interview in favor of voice-over narratives: reminiscences from Gifford himself provide context for readings from the work. For these, Christopher and producer Michael Glover Smith (also a Cine-File contributor) scored a coup: they got Willem Dafoe, Matt Dillon, and Lili Taylor to read, and their distinctive timbres and tough-but-tender personas embody the texts. Gifford/Roy’s Chicago is a wintry, working-class world. His father ran an operation called Lake Shore Pharmacy, across from the old Water Tower. It was a 24-hour joint, ostensibly a drug store; showgirls would drop by on their breaks and repair to the basement, where he’d administer some kind of pep shot. The people who hung around the store, including Gifford’s own family, were “not people to mess around with”; some had been gangsters during Prohibition. The film pulses with the seamy romance of the town’s jazzy nightlife, enhanced by a cool, atmospheric score by jazz vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz. Still, a young boy experienced the corruption of organized crime—and the intertwined iron fist of Richard J. Daley’s machine—as just part of the atmosphere. Hard-boiled as it was in attitude, the town nevertheless seems like it must have been a hell of a place to grow up. Gifford’s mom was from Texas, a former beauty queen, 20 years younger than his dad. The marriage didn’t stick, and her struggles—during an era when being a “divorcee” was still a scandal—are poignant. In fact, Gifford confides in us that one of his chief motivations for creating Roy was to remember the time he had with his mother. The story “Chicago, Illinois, 1953” recalls a humiliating incident when a shopkeeper mistook his mom, bronzed from a season under the tropical sun, for a Black woman, and refused to serve her. It is illustrated by shimmering black-and-white animated drawings. When young Roy later asks his shaking mom why she didn’t simply tell the man she was white, she replies, “It shouldn’t matter, Roy.” The story “Bad Girls,” set during the early ’60s and illustrated by rotoscoped footage from Graceland Cemetery, nicely evokes the feeling of teenage discovery, as Roy and a new female friend roam our fabled “city of neighborhoods.” Christopher’s design also includes found footage in striking black-and-white and eye-popping saturated color, and archival materials ranging from Gifford’s home movies to neighborhood newspapers. Zooming carefully into photographs from a bygone world, patiently waiting for them to reveal their secrets, Christopher encourages us to imagine the individual lives and stories spilling outside the frame. For locals, the film transforms Chicago into a fascinating palimpsest, allowing us to trace the former lives of buildings and neighborhoods behind our contemporary cityscape. While the film is deliberately unhurried, its open-all-night vibe will cast a spell on anyone open to its urban jazz-noir mood. Gifford’s Roy stories work as history and as autobiography, but above all they’re a form of make-believe. It required almost an equivalent act of imagination for Christopher to conjure up a world that opens up as richly as his inspiration, but that’s what he’s done with ROY’S WORLD. I emerged from this sensory experience as if from a waking dream, blinking and momentarily disoriented, though with a heightened alertness. It was as if I’d visited a land of phantoms—but of course, these were really only the shades of men and women just like us. ROY’S WORLD made me feel as if the past never really goes anywhere, if only we look for it closely enough. Director Rob Christopher and producer Michael Glover Smith (both of whom are also Cine-File contributors) in-person for a post-screening Q&A. (2019, 75 min, DCP Digital) [Scott Pfeiffer]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s MEMORIA
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
I generally don’t like to talk about presentation and distribution when reviewing films because it’s generally a secondary, or even tertiary, aspect of the film that merits no discussion. Yet I feel that here these things not only need to be addressed, but they're so crucial to MEMORIA that they need to be mentioned at the top. For those who don't know, this film was originally released as a kind-of roadshow museum piece. The plan was for MEMORIA to have a single print circulate through the US as a “never-ending” release; it would be available to see at only one city at a time. This idea was met with both intrigue and ridicule, though I would fully recommend that people see this in the theater—after all, the entire distribution system is intended to create a viewing experience that's unique to each screening. At the same time, there's a cynical side to me that wonders whether the whole thing was a P.T. Barnum-esque grift to get eyes on the kind of slow cinema that 99% of moviegoers wouldn't usually care about. After only two January stops on its “never-ending release,” the distributor, Neon, pulled the plug on this high art concept and decided in April that MEMORIA would have a standard multi-city, multi-screen release. Was this a kowtow to public perception of elitism? A tacit admission of failure? Or simply the re-evaluation of the desire to get MEMORIA in front of as many eyes as possible? I can’t say and won’t speculate. All this being said, I’ll let people decide for themselves what they think of the plan and simply move on to the film itself as a story, not as an artifact or performance. In MEMORIA we have Weerasethakul’s methodically meditative take on slow cinema that's so much warmer than many other filmmakers in this style. Tilda Swinton, naturally, gives a spectacular performance. As a Scottish emigre living in Colombia, Swinton's Jessica finds herself slowly questioning her sanity; it seems that she is the only person who can hear a loud, booming sound. In an attempt to explain the sound, she calls on a sound engineer, Hernán, to artificially recreate it. The two manage to approximate it, but when Jessica goes to see Hernán afterward, no one at the sound lab seems to have heard of him. Between this and her straining relationship with her sister, Jessica leaves the city for the countryside where she meets a quiet fisherman that also happens to be named Hernán. From there, things get weird. For such a slowly paced film, Weerasethakul took a giant risk taken by making so much of it sound-based. With Jessica’s mystery boom being the engine of the story, much of MEMORIA revolves purely around sound, or the lack thereof. As in such movies as THE CONVERSATION (1974) and SOUND OF METAL (2019), sound plays a character itself. There are more than a few scenes where sound is practically the only thing that moves. The frame will be stock-still, actors looking almost artificially frozen, and the sound design carries the story. It’s a simple idea but executed brilliantly. With this in mind, I can see why the distributor wanted to have this be approached as a heightened theatrical experience. The wind, the sound of memories, birdsong—all these things begin to overwhelm you as the movie progresses. Eventually, all you really have left is sound and you have no choice but to give in fully to it. It really is a beautiful thing. MEMORIA commands submission to one’s ears in a way that film rarely does. People talk about the immersive quality of action films, as if the average person has ever found themselves anywhere near an actual explosion, as opposed to a film like this that draws you in so totally with your senses, seducing the eyes and ears as opposed to pummeling them relentlessly. You’ll find yourself lured in without recognizing that it happened. To find yourself in a dark room, slowly getting lost in another world is what any good movie should do. And this film does it far better than most. Knowing the story of this film, and the weird hype it’s created, it’s so satisfying to see that MEMORIA lives up to all its accolades. (2021, 136 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Wong Kar-wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Michelangelo Antonioni’s EROS (Hong Kong/US/Italy)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm
Most discussions of the omnibus film EROS focus on Wong Kar-wai’s exquisite (and exquisitely ironic) contribution, THE HAND, and those that don’t usually emphasize Michelangelo Antonioni’s contribution, THE DANGEROUS THREAD OF THINGS, because it was the master director’s final work (and by general consensus, an atypical creative failure). So let’s set those aside for a moment and consider Steven Soderbergh’s segment, EQUILIBRIUM, which is of interest for being one of the last things to date for which the director also took a writing credit. Soderbergh’s most underrated quality may be his sense of humor, as any fan of his cult classic SCHIZOPOLIS (1996) will tell you, and this half-hour work trades in the non sequitur comedy that colors nearly all his films to some degree. (A personal favorite moment: the end credit of LOGAN LUCKY [2017] that reads “No one was robbed in the making of this movie. Except you.”) The overarching joke of EQUILIBRIUM is that Soderbergh decided to make his contribution to a film about love and sex a dialogue-driven conversation between an ad man (Robert Downey Jr.) and his therapist (Alan Arkin) that’s neither particularly amorous nor sexy. Tangentially related to the subject of desire, it concerns the ad man’s effort to decipher a dream he has before waking up every morning, with the distractible therapist providing help only intermittently. In a weird way, it feels like the work of a man in love—it’s loose yet graceful, bemused yet uncynical. Soderbergh (working, as usual, as his own cinematographer) shot this mostly in black and white, perhaps to suit the 1955 setting, and it looks more seductive and less mannered than his black-and-white feature of two years later, THE GOOD GERMAN. He also makes the most of two very talented comic actors, who deliver the brainy, off-kilter dialogue (which anticipates that of Soderbergh’s THE INFORMANT! [2009]) with commanding verbal dexterity. It makes for a nice change of pace between the more visually driven segments that precede and follow it. Premiering the same year as Wong’s official sequel to IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000), THE HAND is just as much a follow-up to that touchstone, expanding on the earlier feature’s fetishistic approach to the 1960s and its theme of unrequited longing. Containing few characters and locations (though spanning a number of years), it’s a chamber drama in which every gesture carries great weight. The story charts the relationship between Zhang (Chang Chen), a timid tailor’s apprentice, and Ms. Hua (Gong Li), a confident, high-class courtesan. Zhang idolizes the courtesan from the moment he sees her, though she mocks him on their first encounter, making a joke of his sexual desire. Over time, however, she comes to rely on him—first for fancy dresses, then for companionship when she falls from her social station. Their second and final sexual encounter is a bittersweet reprise of the first, with the power dynamic between the two having been inverted. Working with his usual production designer William Chang and the great cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Wong constructs a complex past environment where even the effect of fluorescent light on a grease-stained wall exudes mysterious power. The sort of heavily atmospheric art cinema at which Wong excels probably wouldn’t exist if not for Michelangelo Antonioni’s innovations of the 1960s, as THE DANGEROUS THREAD OF THINGS reminds us here. Though it’s extremely minor by Antonioni’s standards, DANGEROUS THREAD still exudes aesthetic ripeness in its winding camera movements, luscious natural imagery, and painterly appreciations of the naked female form. The story is silly stuff about a man and woman who are unhappy in love; they briefly part ways, and the man has a tryst with a mysterious new woman. To say it feels like something Zalman King may have imagined is to dismiss Antonioni’s careful visual artistry, which is always worth admiring on a big screen. Screening as part of Doc’s Friday series: In the Mood for Wong Kar-wai. (2004, 107 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Halfway to Halloween
Facets Cinema – Through Sunday
David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME (Canada)
Friday, 7pm
Since his first feature, 1975's SHIVERS, David Cronenberg has focused on the concept of "body horror"—the idea that the human body is not a self-sustaining entity, but rather a portal capable of being penetrated by both physical and metaphorical "diseases" that reduce the human to his basic animalistic desires for sex and power. VIDEODROME is the culmination of the theme of sexual frenzy interlaced with violence that Cronenberg had explored in both SHIVERS and his subsequent film, RABID (1977). While both of those earlier works deal with "real" events (disease epidemics), VIDEODROME takes a more metaphorical and overtly intellectual approach. James Woods stars as Max Renn, the owner of a sleazy cable station that specializes in hypersexual and violent programming. Renn has discovered a low-fi broadcast feed of a show called "Videodrome," in which women are tortured and killed by cloaked men. Renn decides that "Videodrome" is exactly what his audience craves and sets out to find the producer. Although warned by his assistant that "Videodrome" is much more sinister than it seems, Max continues his search and becomes obsessed with watching the show. Soon the world of "Videodrome" starts to become all too real, and Max's body begins to undergo a series of changes, including developing a VCR in his stomach. The film was released a year before the home video craze swept North America, but it serves as a haunting prediction of how video would revolutionize home entertainment and, more importantly, the way in which people would become increasingly dependent on audio/video technology. Video became the first organic technology; it allowed for personalized "controlled viewing" (stop, pause, rewind) and thus the perfect device for Cronenberg to exploit. The same video could be watched in completely different ways by different people, making it a wholly different experience for each viewer. The video itself would become a literal extension of the viewer's interests. Cronenberg's use of this concept in VIDEODROME is both obvious (Max literally becomes the VCR) and subversive: Cronenberg's criticism doesn't lie with a general dislike or fear of how video can impact the sense of the individual; rather that the connection that is able to be forged between man and machine disconnects him from the conscious linear world. The technologies in his films (such as the teleport machine in THE FLY, the video game system in eXistenz, and the videotape in VIDEODROME) all represent a late 20th century obsession with excess and escapism; his horrors are the dangers that come from living in a "reality" that is a product of technological obsession. Renn's transformation into a piece of technology, whose only purpose is to execute commands programmed into him by the insertion of a videotape, is a modern-day cautionary tale; the audience is forced to reflect on Renn's failure to distinguish between "Videodrome" as a product and "Videodrome" as life. Cronenberg cleverly confuses those two opposites to the point that they become fused. The hope is that the audience can again separate them. (1983, 89 min, Digital Projection) [Joe Rubin]
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s PULSE (Japan)
Friday, 9pm
Like Olivier Assayas’ DEMONLOVER (which was released the following year), PULSE gives poetic expression to anxieties of the early internet era. The film imagines an army of ghosts taking over the world wide web and influencing living users to commit suicide. It’s an eerie scenario that reflects how many of us recognized the internet’s potential at the dawn of the millennium but were uncertain of what that potential would give rise to. Viewed two decades later, the film’s conceit seems to anticipate how many people now give over their lives to online activity, losing sense of their bodily form in the process. Kiyoshi Kurosawa foregrounds this sense of displacement through his detached view of the film’s characters and through his quirky, unpredictable mise-en-scene, often placing the camera in the corner of a room or behind a stack of objects—you might feel like you’re spying on the action rather than simply watching it. These odd perspectives are a hallmark of Kurosawa’s work, and they command attention even when PULSE doesn’t seem to be advancing on a narrative level. What other director can conjure up such a vivid air of dread around an empty college computer lab? The film’s abandoned warehouses (which harken back to Kurosawa’s 1998 diptych of SERPENT’S PATH and EYES OF THE SPIDER) feel no less menacing. Kurosawa’s scrupulous manipulation of mood makes his early horror films the true heirs to those produced by Val Lewton, who famously overcame his low budgets by suggesting horror instead of showing it. The most frightening image of PULSE may be that of a door with its frame sealed with red tape: Kurosawa leaves it to the audience to imagine what lies on the other side, making the forbidden room a repository for all sorts of fears about what the future has in store. (2001, 119 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
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Karyn Kusama’s JENNIFER’S BODY (US)
Saturday, 7pm
Much has been written about the unfairly harsh criticism JENNIFER’S BODY received on its original release; it's been considered a failing of studio marketing executives, who couldn’t figure out who exactly the film’s target audience was. Reassessments have deemed it a feminist, queer, late-aughties cult classic. The film cleverly combines the horror genre with the dark teen comedy. Director Karyn Kusama and writer Diablo Cody create a self-contained world; the visual aesthetic, the characters, and their relationships feel completely lived-in, so that it’s easy to want to go along for the wild ride. Self-proclaimed dork Needy (Amanda Seyfried) has always been best friends with popular cheerleader Jennifer (a fantastic Megan Fox)—their close bond is at times mystically uncanny. A catastrophic night in their small town of Devil’s Kettle results in a conspicuous change in Jennifer; she’s suddenly hungry for flesh, namely the high school boy variety. As more guys from school end up dead, Needy must decide whether to stay loyal to her friend or stop her. At its core, the film is a sincere portrayal of the intensity and angst of female friendships. It’s also been noted that Jennifer’s transformation is a timely and powerful portrayal of sexual violence against women and the aftermath of abuse. The film shrewdly packages these themes into the teen horror comedy. Its imagery, especially of the demon-possessed Jennifer has become iconic. I could discuss the aught fashions on display here for days – so many layers and low rise. Also, very 2009, JENNIFER’S BODY features a relentless pop punk soundtrack, which plays a notably twisted role in the film’s plot. (2009, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Jordan Peele's GET OUT (US)
Sunday, 5pm
Between the post-racial and the colorblind, evil festers in GET OUT. Released at the beginning of 2017, no film more effectively and immediately tapped into our cultural moment or provoked more conversation throughout the year than Jordan Peele’s feature film debut (now an Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay). Its frequent revival suggests its breakthrough significance and continued importance as a cultural object. GET OUT is a horror story about cultural appropriation, gaslighting, and—most cleverly—the weaponization of social norms and etiquette to enforce strict hierarchies. It also followed an intriguing trend from 2017 of love stories that uneasily shift between scenes of intimacy and scenes of horror, where sentimental attachments are used to manipulate and ensnare (PHANTOM THREAD, MOTHER!, and THE SHAPE OF WATER are other titles that come to mind). GET OUT is also highly successful as a comedy (as the Golden Globes controversially categorized the film, to Peele’s dismay), and yet it is reductive to describe the movie merely in those terms. While it is irreverent, blistering, and funny in a way that frequently stings, a deep strain of melancholy runs throughout it. What story about the pernicious lasting effects of human hate could be otherwise? The film’s premise is simple but compelling: Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young photographer, goes to meet his girlfriend Rose’s parents at the Armitage family estate in the country. Chris is nervous from the start—he is Black, the Armitages are white, and Rose has neglected to fill her parents in on this (to her, inconsequential; to him, crucial) detail. (Note the stroke of brilliance in casting the Armitage clan: are there any actors more recognizable as “good white liberal” indie stars than Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford?) The weekend begins for Chris with an initially warm, if awkward, welcome from the parents, followed by uncanny run-ins with the Black household help. But Chris’s visit becomes increasingly hostile as the weekend wears on, and more guests arrive at the estate for the Armitages’ annual garden party. From there, Chris is made to suffer a series of small indignities and becomes the center of an increasingly uncomfortable attention. White partygoers insist on giving him their uninvited opinions about the African-American experience, cast objectifying glances over his body, and make fetishizing remarks about his “genetic make-up.” Like another horror film from 2017, Aronofsky’s MOTHER!, horror here is brilliantly imagined at first as simply the nightmare of having to deal with people who don’t understand social cues, and grows into the danger of not seeing the right time to get out of someone’s house. If the horror in GET OUT feels stark, real, and vivid, it is because of the way the movie builds this gradually from small moments of disquieting tension. The film’s important intervention is in showing how seemingly little instances of casual racism are never really little, but rather are stepping-stones to bigger, uglier transgressions to come. Seemingly small slights, off-hand remarks, and micro-aggressions are already toxic because they pave the way for larger, suffocating patterns of dehumanization like slavery, lynching, or the mass incarceration of Black men—all of these initial thoughtless actions are already symptoms of a failure to recognize another person as fully human. “Sometimes, if there’s too many white people, I get nervous.” This decisive line of dialogue is delivered as just a whisper in the film, but it expresses an intensely personal, un-PC, and painful truth. There are many things left unsaid in GET OUT, too, but the conversations that the film has started and the contemporary racial tensions it has helped bring to light are well worth revisiting. Wherever monsters and mold grow, sunlight is the best disinfectant. (2017, 104 min, Digital Projection) [Tien-Tien Jong]
Sebastian Meise’s GREAT FREEDOM (Austria/Germany)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:15am
Until 1969 there existed in the German Criminal Code a provision (known as Paragraph 175, which was made even harsher by the Nazis before the war) that prohibited sexual activity between men. Though this facet of the code was later repealed, it wasn’t until 1990, following the reunification of West and East Germany, that it was abolished altogether. This isn’t too shocking, considering similar laws existed in the United States up to just a few decades ago (even if they were not as specifically targeted and sparsely enforced, sodomy laws were only fully abolished in 2003); truly galling, however, is the fact that, when the concentration camps were liberated following the end of World War II, German survivors who had been deported because of their sexual orientation were sent back to prison to finish out the remainders of their sentences. Such is the case for Hans Hoffmann, the main character of Sebastian Meise’s staggering second feature, GREAT FREEDOM—he’s played by Franz Rogowski, who turns in as complex and nuanced a performance as he did in Christian Petzold’s 2018 masterpiece TRANSIT. The film begins with Super 8mm footage of Hans and several men engaging in sexual activity in a public bathroom; it’s then revealed that the footage comes from various sting operations and is being used to prosecute Hans under the aforementioned provision. He’s sent to prison, a place that seems familiar to him. It soon becomes clear via a clever narrative structure that this isn’t Hans’ first time in jail: presumably he’s been in and out of prison since the 40s, when his first sentence had been disrupted by his deportation to a concentration camp. The film cuts between that episode and two of Hans’ other prison stays, including one in the late 50s and another in the late 60s, with little explanation as to what he did in between. Each period of imprisonment is distinguished by its own unique drama. A through line, however, is Viktor (Georg Friedrich, impressive in his almost childlike severity), a surly prisoner serving a long sentence for murder. He and Hans are cellmates at first, with Viktor initially shunning Hans for his homosexuality. Viktor warms up to Hans upon realizing, by way of the tattoo on the latter’s arm, that he’d been in a concentration camp; Viktor offers to cover the marking, an activity that brings the two into a tentative understanding, if not exactly a friendship. Hans’ second detainment, in the 50s, revolves around his relationship with his partner, who’d been arrested with him. Hans’ radical tenacity is evident here, as he refuses to apologize for who he is and whom he loves. During Hans’ final stay (scenes of which are stitched throughout), he becomes closer with Viktor as he helps his avowedly heterosexual cellmate contend with the physical horrors of drug addiction. Gradually the pair begins to express both physical and emotional affection, and the story evolves beyond one of queer love to one of just plain love, between two people struggling against a merciless world. The deft narrative framework aside, it’s a strikingly simple story (almost oversimplified at times, the film’s one deficiency); the work of cinematographer Crystel Fournier, a frequent collaborator of Céline Sciamma, is stunning, further conveying via evocative imagery the tale of these maltreated souls. Sporadic inclusion of 8mm footage, of Hans in the midst of sexual acts and, later, during a relaxing sojourn with his partner, reveal the freedom, illusory and otherwise, inherent to the sensation of privacy. The motif of confinement persists throughout, and Hans’ ultimate, antithetical embracement of it as sublime as it is bewildering. (2021, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
John Carpenter's THE THING (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 7pm
John Carpenter has always been a minimalist when it comes to framing, using his preferred format of widescreen to create a pronounced sense of negative space and, with it, a pronounced sense of dread. Similarly, he tends to sculpt performances that are understated and direct, much as they are in the work of his favorite director, Howard Hawks. THE THING is a remake of Hawks’ foray into sci-fi horror, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), and one can sense Carpenter’s reverence for the original in his Hawksian depiction of the professional community that makes up the principal characters. Yet where Hawks’ film was a portrait of heroism, showing how a group of scientists bands together to fight off a hostile extraterrestrial life form, Carpenter’s is a pessimistic work that shows a community coming apart in the midst of an alien invasion. (It’s widely suspected that the film was a commercial flop on first release because it came out only a few months after E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL, which presented a much rosier view of human-alien relations; Carpenter’s pessimism just wasn’t welcome at the time.) That breakdown is presented in exquisite, gory detail: Rob Bottin’s special make-up effects are some of the most lauded of their kind in movie history, depicting people and animals as they mutate into hideous half-alien creatures. This was Carpenter’s first major studio film, and he took full advantage of the resources available to him. In addition to the first-rate effects, THE THING features a brilliant mix of studio sets and location shooting (with British Columbia standing in for Antarctica) and an appropriately chilling Ennio Morricone score. Screening as part of Doc’s first Thursday series: Projecting Paranoia. (1982, 109 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Hayao Miyazaki's SPIRITED AWAY (Japan/Animation)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:45pm
For evidence that Hayao Miyazaki works from a different playbook than his Disney counterparts, look no further than the dynamic, kaleidoscopic world of SPIRITED AWAY. In this coming-of-age story set in a modern-day wonderland, the animation grandmaster creates a detail-rich realm of the spirits where the only rule seems to be that the rules can always change. Here, physiologically impossible characters shape shift through various forms, villains quite suddenly prove themselves to be friends, and the plot itself refuses to settle into a groove, redefining the boundaries the moment we become aware of them. What begins as a spectral plunge down the rabbit hole takes an abrupt shift the moment young Chihiro lands on her feet, and it's not long before she is neck-deep in the politics of the magical bathhouse at the center of this world. She is tugged at in all directions by the denizens therein, including the disproportioned governess, Yubaba, the dragon-boy, Haku, and the ghostly No-Face, whose part in the story temporarily takes us into horror movie territory, and lest we think the world of SPIRITED AWAY is confined to this singular, vibrant location, the final chapter opens the world even further, allowing neither Chihiro nor the viewer to grow too complacent. The film, like any great imagination, knows no bounds, and its scope and soaring ambition have rightly marked it as Miyazaki's masterpiece. Presented by Ramona Slick and Rated Q - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema. Enjoy pre-show drinks and a DJ set in the Music Box Lounge at 9pm. (2001, 125 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]
Céline Sciamma’s PETITE MAMAN (France)
AMC River East 21 – See Venue website for showtimes
An old woman fills out a crossword puzzle with the help of an 8-year-old girl. After they fill in the last word, the girl, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), says good-bye. She moves to the next room down the hall and says good-bye to the elderly woman in that room and then does the same in a third room. When she reaches the fourth room, a 30ish woman is packing up some belongings. The woman is Nelly’s mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse), who gives her assent when Nelly asks if she can keep a walking stick. This brief, skillfully rendered sequence tells us all we need to know about the circumstances that will dominate the remainder of the film—Marion’s mother has died, and she, Nelly, and Nelly’s father (Stéphane Varupenne) will go to Marion’s childhood home to pack up the old woman’s belongings. French director Céline Sciamma expands her examination of women’s lives by turning to their generational connections and, specifically, the formative moments of girlhood. Marion encounters artifacts from her childhood—books, drawings, old wallpaper. She tries to answer Nelly’s questions about her youth, but overcome by grief, she leaves the house. Left to her own devices, Nelly searches for remnants of a treehouse Marion built in the woods and encounters her mother at the age of 8 (Gabrielle Sanz). It is sheer genius for Sciamma, who also wrote the screenplay, to level the playing field by bringing mother and daughter together as peers to talk about the things that really matter to them—young Marion’s fear of an operation she is to undergo in three days’ time and Nelly’s worry that she is the cause of her mother’s melancholy (young Marion reassures her as only the honesty of a child can that “you didn’t invent my sadness.”) Nelly, who confesses to her older mother that she wishes she had given her grandmother a proper good-bye, gets a chance at a do-over, albeit with a younger version (Margot Abascal). Sciamma brings her camera down to a child’s eye level and favors close-ups that match the curiosity the girls have for each other. Perhaps Nelly is simply tapping into the ghosts of Marion’s past, but whether actual time travel is involved is somewhat beside the point. The simple, but never childish dialogue, the rapport and generosity of spirit between the girls, and the willingness to believe each other in a way that is so true of girlhood is the real miracle in this film. Sciamma has given us a story we all would like to believe in and imagine for ourselves in our own way. (2021, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Robert Eggers’ THE NORTHMAN (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Vikings are having a moment in pop culture, but Robert Eggers is less than thrilled. Saying that "recent television, film, and video game representations of Viking mythology and Old Norse culture are romanticized and made to look flashy and cool," he decided to make the ultimate Viking film, aiming for historical accuracy. But THE NORTHMAN plays more like an '80s action movie, full of macho masochism à la Mel Gibson and sporting a revenge-driven plot influenced by HAMLET that could be set in the present day—of course, with some major details changed. Prince Amleth (played by Alexander Skarsgard as an adult) watches his father (Ethan Hawke) murdered by his uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang), leading to a lifelong vow of revenge. Years later, he disguises himself as a slave and arranges to be sold into servitude in Iceland, where Fjolnir rules. Toiling on Fjolnir’s farm, he bides his time till he can enact his revenge. But that conflict takes place in a world where reality and fantasy blend together and the worlds of humans and animals seem very close. For all the period research that went into it, THE NORTHMAN, like Eggers’ THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019), boils down to a conflict between two men; and like the earlier film, it risks succumbing to making the extensive world-building a background for that struggle. Yet THE NORTHMAN has a far more seductive look, embracing blatant artifice—if the crows in the first scene aren't CGI, they're giving the film's best performances—and monochrome tones through which a fire’s golden glow bursts. (Tinted silent cinema is a touchstone for this film's cinematography.) Like Eggers’ first two films, both period pieces, THE NORTHMAN combines a trippy tone with extremely detailed production design. It’s most intriguing when Eggers’ direction hints at a world where reality and fantasy blend together, with the style rejecting the rationalist tendencies of contemporary Europe. THE NORTHMAN tries to embody Viking culture instead of merely depicting it. The sound design is purposefully overwhelming, with music blending into foley effects. Eggers still hasn’t topped his debut, THE WITCH (2015), but he’s made the leap from A24 folk horror to a $90 million studio project without watering down or changing his aesthetic. (2022, 136 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]
Jacques Audiard’s PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT (France)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 6pm; Saturday, 3:30pm; and Sunday, 1pm
Though it’s adapted from three works by American cartoonist Adrian Tomine, Jacques Audiard’s generational portrait PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT couldn’t feel more French in terms of its filmmaking. The exacting black-and-white photography frequently recalls Philippe Garrel’s films, while the drift-like narrative structure, which reflects the way the characters float in and out of sexual relationships, resembles those favored by André Téchiné. (The second similarity can’t be coincidental; Céline Sciamma, who cowrote this, also worked on the script of a recent Téchiné feature, BEING 17 [2016].) This isn’t to say that Audiard’s film is derivative; it just falls into a very French tradition of movies that comment or expand on other movies. Audiard marries his creative reference points to his own ongoing concerns—principally, the makeup of contemporary, multicultural France—and in this regard the film plays like a follow-up to A PROPHET (2009) or DHEEPAN (2015). One of the main characters, Camille, is of African descent; another, Émilie, is Chinese. Audiard regards their intense, short-lived affair as a sociologically fascinating, only-in-Paris phenomenon, and the sex scenes manage to be erotic in spite of this. After the two protagonists split up, the plot shifts focus from Camille and Émilie to consider another character who lives in the neighborhood: Nora, a thirty-something woman just entering law school who discovers she resembles a popular webcam sex performer. How Nora’s story intersects with the other characters’ is best experienced without reading about it first; this is the sort of movie where half the fun is watching the puzzle pieces of the script fall into place. Audiard and his cowriters are interested in how the sexual habits of a particular generation reflect their general ideas about love, responsibility, and social engagement—somewhat like what director Mike Nichols and cartoonist-cum-screenwriter Jules Feiffer did in CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (1971), although PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT feels much less tormented by comparison. (2021, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Jane Schoenbrun's WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Here in 2022, it seems we’re finally shedding some well-worn tropes about how to depict the internet on film. At a stage when webcam horror has been played out for a number of years (and considering there are only so many ways to dramatize message notifications), how does a filmmaker hope to capture the omnipresent role of the internet in our lives without resorting to the usual cliches? Enter Jane Schoenbrun’s WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR. Schoenbrun has been a mainstay of independent film for the last six years, heading up projects like experimental TV show The Eyeslicer and dreamy anthology COLLECTIVE: UNCONSCIOUS (2016) and also lending their talents as a producer to indie oddities like CHAINED FOR LIFE (2018) and TUX AND FANNY (2019). WORLD'S FAIR, their debut feature, continues Schoenbrun’s creative hot streak by flipping the script on internet horror, exploring the ups and downs of the digital world in all of its mess. Newcomer Anna Cobb anchors the film as Casey, a lonely teenager who spends most of her free time (and much of the film’s runtime) running a small YouTube channel. In the opening scene, Casey begins the "World’s Fair Challenge," where the participants repeat "I want to go to the world’s fair" on camera several times à la CANDYMAN, wipe a bit of their blood on their monitor, and wait for strange things to start happening to them. It’s clear that Casey is seeking a sense of community by participating in the post-capitalist hellscape of the internet, where self-expression is rewarded mostly by how well one fits themselves into established memes on established platforms. Casey’s view counts suggest she has been shouting into the void for a while now, which is taking its toll on her mental health and setting her up to be a living creepypasta. The film doesn't repeat the usual “Is this real or inside my head?” question; both possibilities are equally scary, since most of the depersonalization that Casey describes is consistent with severe depression. Whether or not the supernatural elements come to bear, someone still develops a double-consciousness about their problems, coping with the difficulties of life by turning them into objects of horror. The approach is a sort-of corrective for the preponderance of trauma-plot horror films—here is a character who exists in our world, where trauma can sell quite well if you know how to package it. Schoenbrun’s skills as a director are numerous, but maybe the most significant derives from their experience as a producer. Their penchant for editing anthologies comes to bear on the fake viral video collages that break up Casey’s increasingly disturbing video diaries, with material coming from a diverse list of collaborators that includes filmmakers Theo Anthony and Albert Birney as well as ASMR artist Slight Sounds. While the variety of approaches to the subject is refreshing on its own, Schoenbrun’s editing rhythms heighten the material, expertly re-creating the real-life discomfort of seeing a timeline where shitposts and footage of war crimes pop up back-to-back. Perhaps more important is Schoenbrun’s empathy toward Casey, a young and confused woman with a codependent relationship with the internet. Eschewing moralistic didacticism, Schoenbrun lets the conflicts play out ambiguously, particularly when an anonymous older man begins contacting Casey about her videos. On the one hand, any grown man reaching out to a teenager online should send up immediate red flags. On the other, he seems to be the only one actually concerned about Casey’s health. Will the internet be Casey’s savior or downfall? Schoenbrun asks, why not both? (2021, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Nicolás Pereda’s 2020 film FAUNA (70 min, DCP Digital) screens on Wednesday at 7pm, along with Pereda’s 2021 short film DEAR CHANTAL (5 min, Digital Projection); Pereda will appear in a post-screening conversation with J.P. Sniadecki, Associate Professor and Director of the MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern. Free admission. More info here.
⚫ Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
The First Nations Film and Video Festival screens indoors at Comfort Station on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission. More info here.
⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Edgar Wright’s 2021 horror film LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (116 min, DCP Digital) screens on Saturday at 7pm as part of the New Releases series.
Gabriel Axel’s 1987 Danish film BABETTE’S FEAST (102 min, Digital Projection) screens on Sunday at 7pm as part of the “Food, the Common Tongue: Loves, Rages, and Delights of Gastro-Cinema” series.
Shari Frilot’s 1995 experimental documentary BLACK NATIONS/QUEER NATIONS? (52 min, Digital Projection) screens on Monday at 7pm, along with four short films by Cheryl Dunye, as part of the “An Open Window: Black Female Directors Across the Diaspora” series.
Tim Burton’s 1992 film BATMAN RETURNS (126 min, 35mm) screens on Tuesday at 7pm as part of the “Neo-Noir ‘92” series.
Lukas Moodysson’s 2013 Swedish film WE ARE THE BEST! (102 min, DCP Digital) screens on Thursday at 9:30pm as part of the “Punks Behind the Camera” series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s 2022 French film GAGARINE (97 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.
“Alternative Takes,” a program of nine short films screening as part of the Midwest Film Festival’s First Tuesdays series, screens on Tuesday at 8pm, with a 7pm social/networking hour and a filmmaker Q&A following the screening.
Miloš Forman’s 1975 film ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (133 min, DCP Digital) screens on Wednesday at 6:15pm as part of the Haskell Wexler Centennial series.
Norman Jewison’s 1968 film THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (102 min, 35mm) screens on Thursday at 7pm, also as part of the Haskell Wexler Centennial series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Ross Lipman’s 2021 film THE CASE OF THE VANISHING GODS (70 min, Digital Projection) screens on Saturday at 1:15pm, preceded by a live performance by Theater Oobleck/Mickle Maher’s new short play, Break Room, featuring Diana Slickman and Colm O’Reilly, and followed by a Q&A moderated by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum with the director, puppeteer Audrey Densmore, and actors David Isaacson and Jeff Dorchen.
Music Box of Horrors presents Danny Boyle’s 2002 British horror film 28 DAYS LATER (113 min, 35mm) and Bruce McDonald’s 2008 Canadian horror film PONTYPOOL (93 min, 35mm) on Sunday at 7pm for a Halfway to Halloween celebration.
Sam Raimi’s 2022 film DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS (126 min, 35mm) screens on Thursday at 7pm before officially opening with more showtimes on Friday. More info on all screenings here.
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
HELD OVER/STILL SCREENING/RETURN ENGAGEMENTS
Hong Sang-soo’s VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS (South Korea)
Available to rent through Facets Cinema here
Hong Sang-soo’s films oscillate between different versions of reality. Often showing the same scenes with slight changes multiple times in his films, he distorts our perception of what’s playing out onscreen. Each character morphs into someone a little different, a new perception brought forward. His third feature, VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS (titled after the Marcel Duchamp artwork The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even), finds the director honing this skill. Following a love triangle between a TV news director, his assistant, and his wealthy friend, the film examines the exploits and advances, both wanted and unwanted, of these two men toward this young woman. Much colder than Hong’s later works, this film, cut into two nearly equal parts, examines fleeting, realistic relationships, placing them in contrast to the expectations of each party involved. It also serves as a showcase for Lee Eun-ju, who plays the titular virgin and whose film career was cut short by suicide in 2005. She’s fantastic as a woman gliding through these relationships, forced into moments and actions she’d rather avoid, mediating the foolish and abusive actions of her would-be romantic partners. The two men swirl around her, acting like grown children, confused why they aren’t getting what they want, and entranced by the idea of her virginity. As in many of Hong’s films, these men spend their days eating, drinking, and hoping to have sex, their sensual natures on full display. It contains an air of exploitation as well as a sense of disdain that Hong has for how these people treat each other; the director looks at these relationships with a keen, yet unsympathetic, eye. (2000, 126 min) [Michael Frank]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING
⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
As part of Chicago Filmmaker's "Masterwork: Industry Conversations" series, award-winning sound mixer Scott Smith will appear in conversation via Zoom on Saturday at 3pm. More info here.
⚫ Video Data Bank
“Spring with Mike Kuchar” is available to stream for free on VDB TV. The program includes Kuchar’s SUNLIT SORCERY (2022, 34 min), composed of his works ECHO’S GARDEN (2010), A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE (2008) and THE VERNAL ZONE (2008), and Oscar Oldershaw’s AN AFTERNOON WITH MIKE KUCHAR (2014, 32 min). More info here.
CINE-LIST: April 29 - May 5, 2022
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, John Dickson, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Tristan Johnson, Tien-Tien Jong, Raphael Jose Martinez, Scott Pfeiffer, Joe Rubin, Michael Glover Smith