:: FRIDAY, AUGUST 19 - THURSDAY, AUGUST 25 :

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📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Ayoka Chenzira’s ALMA’S RAINBOW (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

While all Black filmmakers need more recognition, independent producer, director, and animator Ayoka Chenzira has been particularly in need of rediscovery. Visual media have been made richer by her focus on developing stories of Black life and educating the next generation of Black filmmakers, including her daughter HaJ, her collaborator on HERadventure, an online, interactive fantasy film posted on Chenzira’s website and YouTube channel. Now, Academy Film Archive, The Film Foundation, and Milestone Films have produced a 4K restoration of her only feature film, ALMA’S RAINBOW, in which a teenage girl, her mother, and her aunt all come of age in different ways. Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) is a tomboy whose hip-hop dance crew comes apart as her two male partners become more interested in chasing girls than in rehearsing. Her mother, Alma (Kim Weston-Moran), gave up her sister singing act to make a living for the two of them by opening a beauty salon in the Brooklyn home she inherited from their mother. On the tenth anniversary of the founding of Alma’s salon, her long-absent sister, Ruby (Mizan Nunes Kirby), returns. Rainbow is fascinated with her flamboyant, larger-than-life aunt and hopes to follow in her footsteps as a singer-dancer, setting up a clash between Ruby and Alma, who wants Rainbow to seek a secure future. ALMA’S RAINBOW is itself a festive rainbow of color and community, loaded with discrete scenes loaded with humor and humanity. The beauty salon (Chenzira has spent large chunks of her creative life making films about hair) is the wonderful gathering place for the neighborhood women, all of whom are deeply involved in getting the all-business Alma together with Blue (Lee Dobson), a handyman who clearly is sweet on her. Another plot point is Alma’s work for William B. Underdo III (Sydney Best), the local undertaker who funded her business and would like more than a professional relationship with her. His mint-condition classic car says so much about his character as a respectable older man who, like Alma, just needs to let his hair down. The one character who has no trouble letting loose, Ruby, provides the manic energy that shakes up the Golds’ straitened life while revealing her almost desperate restlessness. Her flamboyant costumes contrast the darkly rich wood and traditional furnishings of Alma’s home and the funeral home where a smitten Underdo allows her to perform “Beautiful Blackness in the Sky,” a rather morbid song written by Chenzira, for her family that is a uniquely weird experience. The excellent score by Jean-Paul Bourelly mixes jazz and contemporary sounds in much the same way that cinematographer Ronald K. Gray intersperses sexy dream sequences and black-and-white memories with the bright, crisp present. In the end, all of the Gold women confront themselves and their desires for a truly satisfying multigenerational coming-of-age story. (1994, 85 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Bill Sherwood's PARTING GLANCES (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 2pm

About a week before the 78th Academy Awards in 2006, when Ang Lee’s BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN would famously lose its anticipated Best Picture sweep to not-David Cronenberg’s CRASH, The Advocate budgeted its cover space to “The Brokeback Phenomenon.” But in his letter from the editor, Bruce C. Steele dedicated a little over half the allotted space to writing about another film, Bill Sherwood’s PARTING GLANCES, which, he proclaimed, “for those of us living in New York City in the mid 1980s… was revolutionary,” continuing that “[f]or the first time we saw on film gay men like us. We saw the ravages of AIDS—and the painful humor we squeezed out to help us cope. We saw young people coming out without the baggage of the older generation. We saw gay men in love and in bed and in turmoil.” Steele also noted that he’d frequently go so far as to recommend Sherwood’s modest independent endeavor “as the movie that best conveys the emotional truths of gay life.” While I’m not qualified to confirm or deny that particular claim, there’s certainly no denying its place in the queer film cannon as one of the first movies to convey gay life as the completely normal existence it is and to consider the AIDs epidemic (all during the Reagan years no less). Michael (Richard Ganoung) is an editor in his late 20s living with his boyfriend, Robert (John Bolger), in New York City, the latter of whom is leaving the next day for a two-year work assignment in Africa. Taking place over 24 hours, the film centers on Michael’s conflicting feelings about his boyfriend’s departure and the feelings he has for his best friend, Nick (Steve Buscemi, in an early turn as an unlikely heartthrob), a new-wave rocker with AIDS. He’s thus preoccupied with his eventual demise, albeit in a quippy, self-aware kind of way. Over the course of the night, the couple attends a bizarre dinner with Robert’s boss and a farewell party for Robert at their artist friend’s apartment (the friend is played superbly by Kathy Kinney in her first film role, years before she starred as Mimi on The Drew Carey Show), with sporadic visits to and from Nick. Sherwood started out studying composition at Juilliard, so it follows that his script and direction are nicely cadenced, compacting into a relatively short runtime various considerations of queer and day-to-day life, as well as nuances respective to the plot. (In his book The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo said about the film that in it, “nothing happens and everything happens,” a phenomenon that often occurs in a piece of music.) Buscemi’s performance is striking, in large part for the humor and pathos he brings to a character grappling with what was then a death sentence. This is sometimes referred to as the first theatrical feature to address the AIDS epidemic, though it came out after the TV movie AN EARLY FROST and Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.’s BUDDIES (both 1985). Still, it advances a uniquely buoyant viewpoint in this realm; the film eschews the militancy of David Wojnarowicz’s output or something like Gregg Araki’s THE LIVING END (1992) in its approach to the AIDS crisis, yet there’s something equivalently radical about showing people living their lives, reveling in love and attempting to find happiness in a world dead set against them having it. This was Sherwood’s first and only film; he died from AIDS-related complications in 1990. The film itself is a parting glance, an unfortunate goodbye that should have been an auspicious greeting, an eventuality that in retrospect tinges the otherwise temperate probe with a sadness of what was lost. Preceded by Nikolai Ursin’s 1967 short BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN (8 min, Digital Projection) and Todd Haynes’ 1993 short DOTTIE GETS SPANKED (30 min, Digital Projection). Screening as part of the Pioneers of Queer Cinema series. (1986, 90 min, DCP Digital) (1986, 90 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Rob Epstein's THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK (US/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2pm

Rob Epstein (WORD IS OUT) didn't even know Harvey Milk when he shot the first footage that would later compose the rising action of this 1984 Best Documentary Feature Oscar winner. Epstein intended to make a documentary about California's Proposition 6, an ordinance designed to eliminate gay teachers from the state's public schools, but switched course upon seeing Harvey Milk in action. One of the most inspired (and inspiring) documentaries ever made, this telling of Harvey Milk's rise to city government amidst a burgeoning gay rights movement in San Francisco, cut short by his tragic assassination, is one of the touchstone episodes of queer acceptance in America. With frank and fond interviews from those associated with Milk, gorgeous, candid footage of the late '70s Castro, and an unforgettable original score by then emerging composer Mark Isham (recorded in his garage), this doc does everything right. The infectious nature of Harvey's personality shines through the memories of his friends and colleagues, and the city of San Francisco, one of the movie's most important characters, does too. Preceded by Pat Rocco's 1970 short CHANGES (17 min, DCP Digital) and Arthur J. Bressan Jr.'s 1972 short COMING OUT (10 min, DCP Digital). Screening as part of the Pioneers of Queer Cinema series. (1984, 88 min, 35mm) [Christy LeMaster]

Steve Miner’s FRIDAY THE 13TH Part III 3D (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight

Despite getting ripped apart by critics, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III was a huge success, unseating E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL from the number-one box office spot and grossing way beyond its budget to become one of the more successful entries in the slasher franchise. It’s noteworthy too as the film in the series that introduces Jason Voorhees’ infamous hockey mask, something so intrinsically connected to the franchise that it’s hard to believe it didn’t arrive earlier. Beginning with a good five minutes of reused footage from PART II, PART III takes place the morning after the events of the last film. Glacial-paced killer Jason Voorhees lives and continues wreaking havoc on a group of mostly unsuspecting teens at a lake house—our Final Girl, Chris (Dana Kimmell), is returning to face a trauma she suffered at Crystal Lake years ago. Predictably, everyone eventually gets picked off by Jason (Richard Brooker), but in the mix this time is an antagonist biker gang and memorable teen prankster, Shelly (Larry Zerner), the owner of the hockey mask that becomes Jason’s most iconic accessory. PART III is the only film in the series released in 3D, which, according to behind-the-scenes accounts, was the most important aspect of the filmmaking process, putting this technical challenge above anything else—including performances. This is evident from a 2D viewing of the film; the brightly colored cinematography guides the eye to obviously absent visual tricks, making it a surreally intriguing watch. Not surprisingly, FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III is rarely screened in its original theatrical format, making it a not-to-miss watch in gloriously gory 3D. Presented by Metal Movie Night for the film’s 40th anniversary. (1982, 95 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

Pen Tennyson’s THE PROUD VALLEY (UK)

Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 7pm

A noted athlete, concert singer, stage actor, and political activist, Paul Robeson was one of the Renaissance Men of the 20th century, yet his contribution to cinema comprises only about a dozen films made over two decades. THE PROUD VALLEY was Robeson’s personal favorite of these films, in part because it allowed him to play what he considered a three-dimensional Black character and in part because the script’s pro-worker stance aligned with his own radical politics. Inspired by a true story, the movie concerns a Black miner from the United States drifting around the UK in search of work. Fate leads him to a mining community in southern Wales, where he ingratiates himself with the locals in short order, first by lending his booming bass-baritone to the miners’ choir, then by proving himself a commendable worker in the coal pits. It’s delightful to watch the provincial, working-class town accept and even come to cherish Robeson’s character—significantly, THE PROUD VALLEY was an early production by the Ealing Studios, whose later, most famous titles (KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS, THE LAVENDER HILL MOB, THE LADYKILLERS) teem with sweet-tempered, idealistic developments like these. The film offers more than a lesson in tolerance, namely in the second half, when Robeson joins his Welsh coworkers on a march to London to petition the mine owners to reopen the pits and put their town back to work. The original ending of THE PROUD VALLEY, shot in September 1939, had the workers seizing control of the pits when the owners refuse to comply with their demands; but shortly after production wrapped, the producers received pressure to change the ending to match the UK’s newfound patriotic mood, which had spread after the country declared war on Germany. The final version may be compromised when compared to the filmmakers’ original idea, but it still feels in keeping with the rest of the film, given how important the theme of solidarity is throughout. Two years after the release of THE PROUD VALLEY, Robeson would retire from screen acting, blaming the lack of roles for Black actors that weren’t demeaning. This film represents a rare (for its time) triumph of the kind of cinema Robeson wanted to see; it also marks the auspicious beginning of another screen career that wouldn’t be: director Pen Tennyson (a great-grandson, incidentally, of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson) would die in an airplane crash in July 1941, not long after he directed his third feature. Screening as part of the as part of the Black Actors in Foreign Cinema series presented by the Blacknuss Network. (1940, 76 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Robert Greenwald's XANADU (US)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 7pm

Called "stupendously bad" by Variety and panned when it premiered, XANADU is... not good. It really is bad. Stupendously bad. But it boasts much to enjoy, as long as you don't expect a coherent script or quality acting. What you can expect is Gene Kelly cutting a rug and roller skating through Xanadu, the hottest roller disco in Beverly Hills. The plot doesn't matter enough for a recap, although it's somewhat based on a similarly campy celestial-themed musical called DOWN TO EARTH from 1947. Rita Hayworth stars in DOWN TO EARTH as a muse who descends to earth to fix a terrible, lowbrow play that has slandered the classy name of Terpsichore. XANADU mirrors that plot with Kira descending to earth to inspire an artist who has given up on his inspiration to paint large-scale album covers for a record company. Playing Kira Olivia Newton-John shines (quite literally, with some very primitive neon special effects) in roller skates and legwarmers. Her ribboned barrettes launched an '80s fashion craze, and her breezy outfits (the original cottage core) were imitated by teens everywhere. Played by Michael Beck (from another cult classic, Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS [1979]), Sonny Malone falls immediately for Kira and she leads him into a beautiful friendship with Danny McGuire—a nod to Gene Kelly's character in COVER GIRL, a much better Rita Hayworth musical. The music of XANADU is what really stands out in an otherwise bad film, and in fact, the soundtrack to the film fared much better commercially, with several tracks becoming hits. Written by John Farrar (a long-time ONJ songwriter) and Electric Light Orchestra, the album went double platinum, which was good news for Olivia Newton-John, because she made only a few other movies in the 1980s and focused instead on her music career. Gene Kelly also never made another film (perhaps out of shame!), although he appeared in a few small-screen affairs. At 68, he is absolutely charming and still a fabulous dancer, and he embodies the nostalgia the film harbors for the golden era of musicals. One of my favorite sequences of XANADU is a fantasy depicting Sonny and Danny's different visions of what a big band stage would look like in their future nightclub. Sonny imagines a neon, sexy spectacle of rock and roll with gratuitous synthesizers and keytars. Danny envisions a classier big band scene with an Andrews Sisters-style trio and a hearty brass section. Both songs and dance sequences alternate and then form a perfect mashup as the stages intertwine in one shared fantasy. In Cinema 2, Gilles Deleuze wrote of the magnificent role that musicals play in actualizing dream as reality through spectacle, which is quite evident in this sequence. XANADU represented a strange time of disco-era optimism and bad taste, but also of nostalgia for the past. That ambivalence and generational divide manifested in the mashup sequence like a fever dream. Top the movie off with an animated musical number by Don Bluth and you have a completely vapid, mesmerizing, utterly artificially-colored-and-flavored confection of a movie. You may hate it, but you have to see it at least once. It's a camp classic. (1980, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]

Jeannie Livingston's PARIS IS BURNING (US/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 7pm

Almost three decades have passed since the release of PARIS IS BURNING and Jennie Livingston’s poignant documentary is still deeply relevant. Following drag queens and performers in the New York City ballroom scene, Livingston gives her subjects the space to do the bulk of the talking, walking, and posing. It’s both intimate and unobtrusive—managing to strike an exceptionally difficult balance for a debut documentary feature. PARIS IS BURNING captures the enthusiasm and character of “house” balls: from the many kinds of performance competitions, to the costumes, and the energy that exudes from everyone in front of the lens. But PARIS IS BURNING does not paint an overly gaudy portrait, either. There is glitz and glamour, sure, but there is also immense pain—often from the loss of loved ones to the AIDS crisis and transphobic, homophobic violence. While PARIS IS BURNING has been critiqued over the years, it is still a fundamental text in the queer cinematic canon; both as an authentic documentation of queer life and as an introduction to vital fragments of queer history and culture that should not be forgotten. Preceded by Connie B. Demille's 1962 short ALWAYS ON SUNDAY (10 min, DCP Digital) and Michelle Parkerson's 1987 short STORMÉ: THE LADY OF THE JEWEL BOX (21 min, DCP Digital). Screening as part of the Pioneers of Queer Cinema series. (1991, 71 min, DCP Digital) [Cody Corrall]

Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s CLARA SOLA (Costa Rica)

Facets Cinema – Saturday and Sunday (Check Venue website for showtimes)

People who are fans of Stephen King’s novel Carrie or the film versions of it may recognize something familiar in director/co-screenwriter Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s debut feature CLARA SOLA. Clara is a repressed woman whose religious mother has turned her into an object of worship for the devout people in her isolated Costa Rican village. The pain she suffers from a spinal curvature could be easily corrected by surgery, but her mother refuses her the operation, perhaps believing that a mark of the divine is physical pain. She also refuses to allow Clara to express her sexuality, keeping her a wallflower and thwarting her frequent masturbation with hot pepper juice and fire. When she decides to sell Clara’s horse to pay for her granddaughter’s quinceañera, that is the last straw. Clara’s rebellion becomes destructive in a setting similar to Carrie’s. Álvarez Mesén’s direction of her cast of first-time actors is controlled, preferring observation, particularly of Clara, to create believable relationships and actions. First-time actor Wendy Chinchilla Araya gives a phenomenal performance as Clara, suggesting that her stunting may have been manufactured by her assigned role. She is not unloved—for example, her niece is sympathetic and a genuine companion to her—but her boundaries are as defined as the rope paddock that keeps her horse from straying. This intense film is both visually rich and an intense experience with magical, metaphorical overtones. (2021, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Teinosuke Kinugasa's A PAGE OF MADNESS (Japan/Silent)

Comfort Film at Comfort Station – Wednesday, 8pm

Also known as A PAGE OUT OF ORDER or THE CRAZY PAGE, this is, regardless of the title, a madhouse riot of a movie. Traumatic and nauseating, it's easily the most horrifying movie made during the silent era, a weird and queasy dance of death directed by former female impersonator/future Oscar and Palme d'Or winner Teinosuke Kinugasa and written by future Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. Part avant-garde suicide finale, part Lynchian creepshow, this unhinged Japanese contemporary to German Expressionism (a movement A PAGE OF MADNESS's makers were apparently unaware of) would be considered a seminal film if anyone had actually seen it, but it was forgotten and believed lost until the 1970s. The film's simple-yet-somehow-indescribable plot involves a janitor working at the asylum where his wife is a patient. Everything about this movie is borderline insane. Screening as part of the Silent Films and Loud Music series featuring a live score by local trio Trash to Kilowatts. Screening will be out on the Comfort Station lawn, weather permitting. Free admission. (1926, 78 min, Digital Projection) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Payal Kapadia's A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING (France/India)

Facets Cinema – Thursday, 7pm

Payal Kapadia is emerging as something of a mainstream experimental filmmaker, creating poetic collage films that have won prestigious international film awards. Her latest , the Golden Eye-winning A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING, is a documentary that uses a box of letters and diaries found at The Film and Television Institute of India as its source text. The writings are from a student identified as “L”; some are addressed to her lover, a student of a higher caste who is away from school for an unidentified reason. Context places them around 2015-2016, in the aftermath of student protests and a 139-day strike following the appointment of several Modi-friendly figures to the school’s governing council. Reading the texts in voiceover, Kapadia collects archival footage from the 2015 student protests to mix with original footage from unidentified years. While the intellectual basis of the film is clear, the mixed materials and poetic nature of the narration create a more complicated portrait of the inner life of a very public and politicized student body. The personal and political merge as Kapadia tries to understand a person as an amalgamation of her external conflicts. The film thus has a sense of remove, trying to understand recent history through the lens of an incomplete primary source, and that adds a layer of nuance to an already complex portrait of political discord. Where Kapadia sacrifices some sense of directness to marry the narration and images, she takes poetic license to create a more evocative collage, which allows the film’s inevitable descent into police brutality to be calibrated along L’s own increasing sense of despair and nostalgia for her lost love. The film is a more complicated philosophical document for this reason, raising questions about the nature of subversive filmmaking in a cinematic ecosystem that relies so heavily on state-funded institutions. Kapadia, educated herself at the Institute, is in a prime position to provide answers. (2021, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]

Hayao Miyazaki's HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (Japan/Animation)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

Hayao Miyazaki’s films were one of the first things my brother and I bonded over. He’s just shy of a decade older than me, so when I was growing up I desperately wanted his seal of approval. I often found myself spending hours on end watching animated movies and cartoons with him in an attempt to know what the cool older kids were talking about. He first showed me Miyazaki’s folklore-heavy SPIRITED AWAY, albeit at far too young an age for either of us to really understand it. But even still, we both knew that there was something about it that was magical. Every time I watch a Miyazaki film, I feel like a kid again. Wide-eyed and brimming with a child-like wonder as I marvel at the distinct worlds he’s able to create time and time again. The one that sticks with me the most in adulthood, though, is HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE. Sophie, a young and soft-spoken hat-maker, gets swept up by a charming wizard named Howl. A vengeful witch jealous of Sophie’s beauty and newfound relationship with Howl turns her into her worst fear: a 90-year-old woman. Howl and Sophie then embark on a journey to reverse the curse, a journey filled with kitschy side characters and a magically mechanical moving castle, and set against a backdrop of a kingdom at war. In many ways Sophie feels like an audience surrogate, falling into Miyazaki’s weird and fantastical world with the same curiosity as those watching. In addition to its intricate beauty, HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE is a deeply political work, with strong anti-war sentiments directly inspired by Miyazaki’s opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Miyazaki’s films cover a lot of ground, and HOWL’S may be especially hard to keep up with at times, but it would be a mistake to pass up the chance to revel in all of its complexities. Screening as part of 50/50, the Siskel’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (2004, 119 min, DCP Digital) [Cody Corrall]

Rodney Ascher’s THE NIGHTMARE (US/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 7pm

Shadow figures. Oval-eyed humanoids. Metal claws. Voices. Pain. These are all complaints associated with stories of alien abduction. Bright colors. Buzzing noises. Inky blobs. These could come from taking hallucinogens. All these phenomena and more are what people experience when they are in the throes of sleep paralysis, a strange affliction in which the sufferer is caught between waking and dreaming, unable to move or breathe normally even as they believe they are doing so. For those who suffer from sleep paralysis, going to bed is a terrifying experience. And while it’s possible to speculate about why sleep paralysis occurs, its cause is still unknown. Documentarian Rodney Ascher (ROOM 237, A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX) has made it his mission to explore the fearsome and uncanny. In THE NIGHTMARE, Ascher interviews several people who suffer from sleep paralysis. Some have experienced it since childhood (one even claims to have had an episode while a baby in his crib), while others seem to have been “infected” by it simply by hearing someone else talk about their own sleep paralysis. Through reenactments, Ascher makes their terrors visible and substantial to the moviegoing audience. It isn’t exactly scary to watch these reenactments, but hearing these sufferers tell their stories left me aghast at their torment and their desperate strategies for getting through each episode. It is particularly sobering when one sufferer says he has come to terms with the idea that one day he will stop breathing during an episode and never start again—and that’s the real horror. Screening as part of the Music Box of Horrors Presents series. (2015, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Jon Favreau’s CHEF (US)

Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

Jon Favreau is a name you're likely familiar with at this point, as his acting, directing, writing, and producing credits are continuously piling up. He’s recently found great success with Disney’s IPs like Marvel and most notably the beloved Star Wars series The Mandalorian. But big budgets and high concepts aren’t the finish line that some seem to think they are. Following the tentpole films IRON MAN (2008), COWBOYS & ALIENS (2011), and IRON MAN 2 (2010), Favreau felt the urge to scale things back and made CHEF, writing, directing, producing, and starring in it. The film more or less mirrors his personal experience. A high-profile chef is in a creative rut and doesn’t spend enough time with his kid; eventually they find themselves traveling the country on a food truck. The film is a bit basic, but like the mouth-watering Cubano sandwiches that Favreau’s Chef Casper whips up on the truck, it’s made up for with a boatload of soul. The cast meshes well and feels like a family in its own right, and by the time they hit the road you’ll wish you were in the truck with them. While Favreau did return to big-budget film making, films like CHEF continue to reinforce that sometimes less can be more. This film is one I'm always happy to revisit—it helped spark an interest in food I never had before. Now my fridge is packed with various pickled goodies, and kefir milk ferments on my counter top. Screening as part of the Good Taste Tastes Good series. The Bumbu Roux food truck will be serving food before the screening. (2014, 115 mins, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]

Wong Kar-wai's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Hong Kong)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 8pm

Taking place in 1960s Hong Kong or in the memory of 1960s Hong Kong—that city deemed too modern, many of the film's exteriors were shot in Bangkok, after all—Wong Kar Wai's film is a beautiful rumination on its title. Much has been made of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE's restraint, and there is that: a couple, married to other people who are themselves having affairs, become intimate in every way but physical—save for slight, loaded gestures and tight spaces. The film is pregnant with the overwhelming feeling of infatuation, executed in a lusciousness that recalls something from a dream. But for every restraint there is a counterpoint in excess: Maggie Cheung's many gorgeous dresses are as flamboyant as they are confining; the musical score is both pitch-perfect and overwhelming, familiar and foreign; the cinematography is so rich and meticulous that its multitude of color is evocative of Douglas Sirk's melodramas. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE has hit upon such acclaim because of its local particularity—a commemoration of sorts for Hong Kong's transfer of sovereignty that had not yet happened—as well as its thematic universality as a transnational melodrama. As characters move through Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Cambodia, and the film shifts forward and backward in time, we are reminded of the fluidity of borders, time, and memory. The moment is paramount, and Wong Kar Wai gives us a series of beautiful, sumptuous moments that we can live in forever. Encore screening! Originally screened as part of 50/50, the Siskel’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (2000, 98 min, 35mm) [Brian Welesko]

John Patton Ford’s EMILY THE CRIMINAL (US)

Music Box Theatre, Landmark Century Centre Cinema, AMC River East 21, et al. – See Venue websites for showtimes

Emily (Aubrey Plaza) is a transplant to Los Angeles, an art school graduate carrying $70,000 in tuition debt, a hothead with a DUI and a criminal assault conviction on her record, and virtually no prospects for landing a decent job in her chosen field. Welcome to American capitalism in the 21st century and the devaluation of the arts, higher education, and people who work for a living. In his feature film debut as director and screenwriter, John Patton Ford has taken the contemporary social landscape in the United States and used its inequities to turn out a boots-on-the-ground crime thriller that does an admirable job of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. We understand Emily’s righteous indignation at being sandbagged by job interviewers, her contracting employer at a food catering company who denies her the rights of a full-time employee, and a friend who has “made it” and dangles prospects of a job in front of her without being able to deliver. No wonder she gets involved in credit card fraud—it’s a better living than the straight world will ever offer her. Plaza is incredibly good as she climbs carefully, then recklessly down the stairs to the underworld. But then who wouldn’t follow the handsome, charismatic leader of this criminal enterprise, Youcef (Theo Rossi), who praises her and mentors her for the advantages her young, pretty, white face can offer. Emily may have thought she was an artist when she started out, but there’s no question that her real life’s work is as a criminal. If you start rooting for her because you can relate to her story, remember that little fact. (2022, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS – ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Chicago Film Society
Michael Schultz’s 1991 film LIVIN’ LARGE (96 min, 35mm) screens on Wednesday, 7:30pm, at the Auditorium at NEIU (3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.). Preceded by a production featurette Sam O’Steen’s 1976 film SPARKLE (8 min, 16mm). More info here.

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Eran Korilin’s 2021 Israeli film LET IT BE MORNING (101 min, Digital Projection) screens on Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.). Free admission with online registration. More info here.

⚫ Facets Cinema
Partake in Facets Trivia on Thursday at 7pm, hosted by critic, programmer and Cine-File contributor Raphael Jose Martinez and local programmer Mike Vanderbilt. More info here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Alli Haapasalo’s 2022 Finnish film GIRL PICTURE (100 min, DCP Digital) continues and Nana Mensah’s 2021 film QUEEN OF GLORY (78 min, DCP Digital) begins this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund’s 2002 Brazilian feature CITY OF GOD (130 min, DCP Digital) screens on Saturday at 5pm, an encore screening that was originally part of 50/50, the Siskel’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open.

Barbara Hammer’s 1992 documentary NITRATE KISSES (67 min, 16mm) screens on Tuesday at 7pm as part of the Pioneers of Queer Cinema series. Preceded by the following short films: Kenneth Anger’s FIREWORKS (1947, 13 min, 35mm); Mike Kuchar’s SEASCAPE (1984, 10 min, Digital Projection); and Zackary Drucker’s AT LEAST YOU KNOW YOU EXIST (2011, 16 min, Digital Projection). More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Music Box Theatre
The Music Box Garden Movies continue. See Venue website for films and showtimes.

Danny Cohen’s 2021 documentary ANONYMOUS CLUB (83 min, DCP Digital), about musician Courtney Barnett, opens for a full run after last week’s preview screening. Dean Fleischer-Camp’s 2022 animated feature MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (89 min, DCP Digital) continues this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film MARIE ANTOINETTE (123 min, 35mm) screens on Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am, as part of the Music Box Staff Picks! Series. 

Nick Cassavetes’ 2004 film THE NOTEBOOK (110 min, DCP Digital) screens on Monday at 7pm. Co-presented by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and followed by a post-screening discussion with singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson and playwright Bekah Brunstetter about their world premiere musical adaptation based on the bestselling Nicholas Sparks novel that inspired this film, which opens at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in September.

Destroy Your Art, this year featuring short films made to be destroyed by Dinesh Das Sabu, Lena Elmeligy, Christopher Rejano and Yanyi Xie, returns this year to the Music Box Theatre on Thursday at 7pm. More info on all screenings here.

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS

Andres Veiel’s THE SURVIVORS and BLACK BOX BRD (Germany/Documentary)

Available to stream for free through the Goethe Institut Chicago website (registration required); SURVIVORS is available through Sunday and BLACK BOX is available starting Monday and ends Sunday, August 28

These two documentaries represent a highly cerebral (and unmistakably German) approach to cinema; both come highly recommended to fans of Harun Farocki and Alexander Kluge. Andres Veiel has a way of presenting his subjects so that one recognizes how they’ve been shaped by various social and historical forces. The director employs this analytical perspective to tragic effect in THE SURVIVORS (1996, 89 min), his second feature-length documentary. In this film, Veiel, who was born in 1959, considers three of his high school classmates, all of whom committed suicide in their 20s. On the one hand, THE SURVIVORS characterizes these young men as victims of a generational apathy, not unlike the protagonists of Robert Bresson’s THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (1977); on the other, Veiel humanizes his colleagues so that they also emerge as individuals. Unfortunately, their individuality wasn’t strong enough to withstand the conformist culture they were born into, and therein lies the tragedy of their lives. Yet by studying these men as case histories, Veiel suggests that we might learn from their deaths and try to refashion society to be more sympathetic. It’s more difficult to extract a lesson from Veiel’s subsequent doc BLACK BOX BRD (2001, 101 min), and this may explain why it feels more unsettling on the whole. In BLACK BOX, Veiel alternates between biographical portraits of Wolfgang Grams (born 1953), who was a member of the far-left terrorist group the Red Army Faction, and Alfred Herrhausen (born 1930), a chairman of the Deutsche Bank who led the institution through tremendous economic growth, international political affiliations, and philanthropic efforts. Both men came to grisly ends: Herrhausen was assassinated by the RAF in 1989, and Grams died in a shootout with police in 1993. Veiel doesn’t render either subject more sympathetic than the other (or more monstrous, for that matter). In cool, academic fashion, he shows that both were motivated by Germany’s rapid redevelopment in the decades following World War II, even though they were inspired to act in opposite directions. As in THE SURVIVORS, Veiel humanizes his subjects through thoughtful testimonies from people who knew them; though these anecdotes are frequently moving in themselves, the impact of going between the two different biographies is to feel a strange symbiosis between authority figures and anti-authoritarian figures, a theme explored in movies as varied as Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s THE THIRD GENERATION (1979) and Michael Mann’s HEAT (1995). [Ben Sachs]

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING

⚫ Video Data Bank
“This Must Be the Space: A Video Conversation on Artist-Run and Artist-Inhabited Spaces,” curated by Emily Eddy, is available to stream for free on VDB TV through Wednesday. The program includes Videofreex’s ME’S AND YOUSE (1971, 4 min) and LAINESVILLE TV NEWS BUGGY (1972, 16 min); Nazli Dinçel’s UNTITLED (2016, 12 min); Glenn Belverio’s BAD GRRRLS (1993, 29 min); George Kuchar’s VERMIN OF THE VORTEX (1996, 22 min); Anne McGuire’s ALL SMILES AND SADNESS (1999, 7 min); and Tom Rubnitz’s FROM THE FILES OF THE PYRAMID COCKTAIL LOUNGE (1983, 6 min). More info here.

CINE-LIST: August 19 - August 25, 2022

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Cody Corrall, Maxwell Courtright, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Christy LeMaster, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Drew Van Weelden, Brian Welesko