:: FRIDAY, JANUARY 19 - THURSDAY, JANUARY 25 ::

🎉 Year-End Lists

Here at Cine-File we like to wait until the year actually ends to publish our “best-of” lists, which abide by whatever rules the contributor chooses. View them on our blog here.

📽️ Crucial Viewing

Jean Renoir's THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH (US)

Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm

Jean Renoir was compelled to re-edit and even reshoot parts of THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH after a calamitous preview screening in Santa Barbara, the result of which is this 71-minute release version that Renoir himself described as being "neither flesh nor fish." As Pauline Kael noted in her review, he had said he was trying to make "a love story in which there was no love," the attractions being "purely physical," but that its raison d'etre was lost in the mangling. Still, that hasn't stopped critics from making the best of a bad situation. Jacques Rivette declared it a masterpiece, and Andre Bazin said that "however mutilated it is in comparison with the original, it can still be as fairly judged as, say, von Stroheim's GREED." It centers on a US Coast Guard officer who becomes enamored with a woman married to a famous artist whom she accidentally blinded during an argument. Plotwise, it's lacking, and a thematic analysis seems fruitless in light of the disparities. The motivations of Lieutenant Scott (Robert Ryan) and his paramour, Peggy (Joan Bennett), are straightforward enough, so it's just the blind artist husband (Charles Bickford) whose intentions are unclear and therefore more interesting. Bazin succinctly stated that "Renoir puts forth facts, one after another, and the beauty stems from the inexorability with which they follow each other." Aesthetically, "it looks like a film made by Fritz Lang" (Bazin again), with hints of both surrealism and the poetic realism that Renoir helped establish. (A synopsis on the MoMA website says that he intended the film to be a return to that movement.) This critic mostly agrees with Kael that his last Hollywood film is "an over-aestheticized, interesting failure," but one could argue that's even more reason to see it on the big screen. Of course, Bazin's defense of it as being "pure cinema" doesn't hurt either. Preceded by a 1957 episode of Schlitz Playhouse, Paul Henreid and James Neilson’s “Bitter Parting” (30 min, 35mm). (1947, 71 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Siddiq Barmak’s OSAMA (Afghanistan)

Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm

OSAMA was the first movie shot entirely in Afghanistan after the Taliban was overthrown in late 2001; appropriately, it tells a harrowing story of how girls and women have suffered under the Taliban’s rule. It centers on a prepubescent girl whose male relatives have all been killed in civil wars. When the Taliban shuts down the hospital where her mother works, her family faces starvation because none of the living members are allowed to hold jobs. The girl’s grandmother decides that the only solution to this crisis is to disguise her as a boy so she can go to school and hopefully find work; unfortunately, this decision will have tragic consequences for everyone. OSAMA was funded in part by the great Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf (who also lent Siddiq Barmak his camera in order to shoot the film), and it recalls his work in how it maintains an air of gentle curiosity no matter how upsetting the narrative becomes. The sequence detailing the heroine’s transformation feels almost like magic realism, as the grandmother persuades her to disguise herself by invoking a folk tale about a boy who became a girl after passing under a rainbow. Indeed, the whole film feels folkloric; as in many of Makhmalbaf’s features, the naturalistic performances by the nonprofessional cast exude a sort of innocence. This is true even of the men who represent the worst of the Taliban’s policies—they seem like they’re acting on behalf of a system beyond their control, just like the rest of the characters. As a window into another culture, OSAMA remains crucial viewing, especially now that the Taliban has returned to power and the sorts of tragedies depicted here have only proliferated. (2003, 83 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Deborah Stratman's LAST THINGS (US/Experimental)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Chicago-based filmmaker Deborah Stratman is one of the most accomplished and diverse experimental filmmakers of the 21st century. Her new film LAST THINGS exists at the edges of possibility, an essay-doc that mostly removes humans from the equation to consider a geological record-sized narrative. The film collects images of chondrules, some of the oldest known geological formations that scientists use to measure the age of the universe itself. They’re primitive objects that haven’t changed since the early solar nebula days. Stratman pairs these rocks with a voiceover that draws from texts by Clarice Lispector and J. H. Rosny as well as nature writing from Eliot Weinberger; they all work together in a speculative sci-fi swirl. The words contextualize the rocks as a link to the past and as maps to other worlds. If other Stratman films have explored the distorting effects of surveillance (IN ORDER NOT TO BE HERE) and the archive (VEVER), this takes passing interest in our systems of observing and categorizing. The full extent of these complicated forms is only conceivable through advanced imaging, augmented technology, and more rudimentary forms of videotaping and drawing. Our relationship to the rocks is always mediated by our present optical and technological means of knowing them. Stratman revels in information, in using these unique and extensive classifications to invent former and future selves. Like the voiceover’s vintage sci-fi narration, the images encourage us to fill in the blanks with our own fictions, expanding our minds regarding what constitutes life, what the core materials that make up our world could do in parallel-world permutations. It’s beautiful work that never gets boring to look at thanks to Stratman’s spoils of colorful and geometrically complicated images. She links diagrams and enhanced microscope footage with more natural settings, including shore lines and homes constructed out of rocks. The beauty exists on a spectrum, it seems, a fluid combination of what we can see and what we can theorize. Stratman’s work is all the richer for these jumping-off points, inviting intellectual flights over the imagery that take the mind in more directions than possible in more straight-ahead narrative work. Though it’s rigorous, it’s likely to be among the most compelling sci-fi this year, period. (2023, 50 min, 35mm and DCP Digital [check website for format]) [Maxwell Courtright]

Robert Zemeckis’ THE POLAR EXPRESS (US/Animated)

Doc Films (at the Logan Center for the Arts, Room 201, The University of Chicago, 915 E. 60th St.) – Saturday, 7pm

Now a Christmas classic, THE POLAR EXPRESS gained fame on its somewhat underperforming release for its revolutionary approach to animation. The brainchild of Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks, this story of a boy who regains his belief in Santa Claus through a trip to the North Pole was the first feature film to be created entirely through the use of motion-capture animation. In this adaptation of the 1985 children’s book of the same name by the film’s co-screenwriter, William Broyles Jr., Hanks plays six disparate roles (hero boy, hero boy’s father, hobo, conductor, Santa Claus, and Scrooge puppet), providing facial movements and voices that are remarkably distinct. The film, a musical that includes traditional Christmas tunes and original material written by Alan Silvestri, lacks truly memorable songs, but a recurring instrumental theme that laces through the film is both beautiful and heroic. One dance number, “Hot Chocolate,” is quite cleverly choreographed given the constraints of the train car aisle marked on a soundstage for motion capture that the dancing waiters must negotiate. Santa’s world shows great imagination that fully exploits the possibilities of animation to make the impossible possible and populate the workshop with the massive elf workforce needed to service all the Christian children in the world. It was refreshing to have a Black hero girl (Nona Gray) take the lead in many scenes, but the film still revolves around hero boy and is overwhelmingly white and male. I found the film’s action sequences in keeping with the hyperactive filmmaking techniques that have been overtaxing kids’ adrenal glands for far too long; in fairness, however, they are very well rendered and should look great in stereoscopic digital 3D on offer from Doc Films for this screening.  Part of the Computer Vision: Experiments in Digital Cinema series. (2004, 100 min, 3D DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

David Fincher’s THE GAME (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am

Sandwiched in his filmography between the more fanatically received SE7EN (1995) and FIGHT CLUB (1999), David Fincher’s THE GAME may lack pointed In-Yer-Face macho sensationalism, but it more than makes up for that in its cinematic reckoning with masculine expectation and capitalist isolation. Fincher’s focused and industrial aesthetics (often lazily labeled as "cold" or "mechanical") are used here as tools of mystery-box worldbuilding, constructing an ever-shifting reality to confound both the viewer and the personal psyche of one Nicholas Van Orton, a character filled with such malice, greed, and dread that one assumes the casting of Michael Douglas was a contractual requirement for the film to get financed. Nicholas lives a life of uncomplicated upper-class drudgery, the monotony of his days a feature more than a bug; his lifestyle of binge-watching financial news television and dining at beige-toned expensive restaurants becoming so weary as to threaten to swallow him up in bourgeois malaise, just as it did his father, a similarly well-off man who jumped off the roof of his home at the age of 48. It’s no coincidence then that this story begins on Nick’s 48th birthday, when his miscreant younger brother Conrad (a weasly-as-ever Sean Penn) gifts him an invitation to become a part of the eponymous Game, a real-world immersive "experience" pitched as a "vacation" from one’s life. The thread of what is “real” and what’s not starts to fluctuate wildly, with Nick finding himself unsure whether a passerby or a hotel manager or a taxi driver is a willing participant in the Game. It’s not long before the limits of reality get pushed even further—frequent gunfire, drowning taxis, and mysterious trips to Mexico all come into play in this mind-bending tale of deception. Things come to a head in an ending of deep reflection that is best left unspoiled for the uninitiated. Perhaps the attempt at catharsis at the film’s ending might ring hollow to some (“Men will literally play The Game instead of going to therapy!”), but perhaps you’ll feel some dark twinge of empathy for Nick as he seems fated to follow in the doomed steps of his father before him, until the question “what do you get for the man who has everything?” gets answered in a most shattering fashion. Screening as part of the Hitchcock and Friends series. (1997, 129 mins, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]

George Sherman’s THE SLEEPING CITY (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm

In this week’s session of Advanced Studies in George Sherman, Doc Films revives THE SLEEPING CITY, a terse quasi-noir that’s at once highly realistic and fairly ludicrous. The film comes on a wave of post-war American crime pictures that incorporated aspects of documentary realism, with Jules Dassin’s THE NAKED CITY (1948) often cited as the first major example. THE SLEEPING CITY (the Dassin film’s influence is evident in the very title) was shot on location at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and at times it feels proto-Wisemanesque in how it considers the hospital as a functioning institution. The best sequence appears early on, when about a dozen new interns get a tour of the hospital and, for a few minutes, the film turns into an earnest documentary about operations ranging from the heroic to the menial. (For some reason, I keep thinking about how the Bellevue Cafeteria served 9,000 meals a day circa 1950.) Richard Conte stars as an medical student-turned-cop who goes undercover as an intern to find out who among the staff murdered one of the physicians. There are some nice low-key suspense scenes when the hero almost blows his cover, and Sherman handles the central mystery in a terse, straightforward manner one associates with quality genre fiction. But the film is most alive when it addresses the specificities of its setting. Sherman and cinematographer William Miller achieve some memorable shots of Bellevue’s imposing architecture, while screenwriter Jo Eisinger captures some poignant emotional dynamics between Conte and the other interns. The scenes of doctors practicing medicine are realized with great seriousness, which suggests a respect for the medical profession, though I cannot speak to their accuracy. In any case, they clash so loudly with the pulpy murder mystery plot that THE SLEEPING CITY feels like two movies in a fight with each other. At the same time, this conflict ends up giving the movie a lot of its vitality. Screening as part of the A Brief Intro to George Sherman series. (1950, 86 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's MACUNAÍMA (Brazil)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 7pm

Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's MACUNAÍMA is an absurd and orgiastic amalgam of high camp and leftist agitprop. Funneling its satirical rage into the form of the mock epic, it follows the eponymous antihero from the moment he is born fully-grown (to an elderly woman played in drag by the same actor who will later portray the film's villain) to his death at the hands of a cannibalistic mermaid. Andrade based the film on the classic novel of the same name by the great modernist polymath Mário de Andrade (no relation) and borrowed heavily from both the spirit and the letter of the seminal "Cannibalist Manifesto" of Oswald de Andrade (again, no relation). Despite its barely concealed anti-government message, the film passed censors with almost no alterations (some of the nudity was excised) and met with enormous critical and commercial success. The allegorical substructure relating to 1964 military coup and the 1968 hardline "coup-within-the-coup" will likely be lost on most American viewers, but Andrade's flashy and fleshy kitsch mania is unmistakable and irresistible. (1969, 110 min, Digital Projection) [Peter Raccuglia]

Azza El-Hassa’s KINGS AND EXTRAS: DIGGING FOR A PALESTINIAN IMAGE (Palestine/Documentary)

Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm

Most of what we know about history is because of some sort of archive. Even informally, anything preserved in time becomes a de facto archive, but concerted archiving has been around for millennia. It seems to be just human nature to want to document our existence, to ensure that our descendants can bear witness to what the world was like before they were in it. Sometimes, though, those archives are lost to time. Materials dissolve, natural disasters occur. And sometimes it’s a result of efforts to erase not just a people but all that comes with them. In Palestinian filmmaker Azza El-Hassan’s documentary KINGS AND EXTRAS: DIGGING FOR A PALESTINIAN IMAGE, the filmmaker is searching for the archives of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Media Unit after it had moved to Lebanon; the group’s films about the Palestinian people and their struggle that went missing when Israel invaded Beirut in 1982. The overall, journey-like structure of the film and the whimsy of select sequences recalls Agnès Varda’s documentaries, such as when El-Hassan asks random strangers in Syria and Lebanon if they’ve ever lost anything, eliciting confused and amusing responses. But when she pointedly asks a group of women on the street in Palestine if they think it’s worth it to look for the missing archive, one of them remarks, “No. Now is not the time to be thinking about cinema.” It’s a sobering moment, bringing into question the necessity of cinema in such dire circumstances. El-Hassan persists nevertheless, visiting many people who either illuminate the situation of the missing archive or speculate as to its whereabouts. She gives each person she interviews a moniker, such as The Child, who’s the daughter of Palestinian photographer, cinematographer and Palestinian Film Unit (PFO) Hani Jawharieh. Dubbed a “cinema martyr,” he was killed while filming during the Lebanese Civil War, an event that recalls the moment in the first part of Patricio Guzmán’s THE BATTLE OF CHILE when a cameraman is shot and killed during the onset of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. The Believers are a divorced husband and wife involved in the PFU who detailed trying to move the archive, a task that the man says was like “someone trying to sing at a funeral,” something no one else was worried about.” This speaks to how the act of archiving can be a fleeting concern, but then its loss becomes another problem altogether, further erasing a people. Ultimately El-Hassan doesn’t find the archive in KINGS AND EXTRAS, perhaps because it was hidden in the grave of a martyr, as a Palestinian film collector suggests. It was later learned that “38,000 films, 2.7 million photographs, 96,000 audio recordings and 46,000 maps and aerial photographs [had] been gathered into Israeli military archives since 1948, including the contents of the PLO’s Beirut archive,” according to the Electronic Intifada. El Hassan told a student writing for a blog on the Institute for Palestinian Studies’ website, “I knew that the archive was most likely with the Israelis, nevertheless, I continued the search because the truth is, I wasn't looking for the archive as much as I wanted to document [its] loss. The Palestinian narrative is full of loss; the loss of loved ones, the loss of the homeland, and the loss of the archive.” In 2018 El Hassan started The Void Project, for which she seeks to recover lost images and films and restore them where possible. El Hassan’s 2019 short film A REMAKE OF A REVOLUTIONARY FILM (7 min, DCP Digital) examines the footage shot during the last five minutes of Jawharieh’s life, which was also included in Mustafa Abu Ali’s 1977 documentary short PALESTINE IN THE EYE, which El Hassan restored through The Void Project. Screening as part of the Open Classroom series. (2004, 62 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Sergio Martino’s TORSO (Italy) and THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (Italy)

Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm (TORSO) and Tuesday, 7pm (MRS. WARDH)

The cinema is made from dreams and plays on our most fundamental desires. Every movie genre exploits these attributes of the medium to some extent, but gialli go further than any other, save pornography and snuff films, in offering the pleasures of onscreen sex and violence outside any discernible moral framework. To cite a couple of prominent examples, the erotic thriller THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971, 100 min, DCP Digital) and the early slasher film TORSO (1973, 94 min, DCP Digital)—both directed by Sergio Martino, who will be in attendance for each of these revivals—often switch perspective between that of the heroine and that of an unidentified sex killer, thereby allowing spectators to experience both the “dream” of victimizing others as well as the nightmare of being victimized. This strategy doesn’t suggest a classically omniscient narrator so much as a highly selective one who’s drawn only to the most lurid details in the characters’ lives. Yet one rarely stops to question the guiding logic of a Sergio Martino giallo, where life proceeds a series of set pieces and no event is too hideous to be elevated by an sensuous camera movement. Indeed, it’s possible to enjoy Martino’s better films on a purely formal level—an approach the director seems to endorse in TORSO when some of the principal characters get into a surprisingly serious discussion about art history. THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH, for that matter, plays like a dressed-down art film whenever it considers the title character’s tortured inner life. Played by giallo queen Edwige Fenech at her most alluring, Julie Wardh remains haunted by a years-old love affair with a sadist, from which she retreated by marrying a staid American diplomat. When her husband is stationed in Germany, she enters into another affair, this time with a charismatic playboy, and all the while a serial killer preys on the women in her social circle; both developments force the heroine to question what she truly wants. Her “strange vice” is that she’s both attracted to and repelled by the sight of blood—is she any different than the film’s spectators, who go to gialli for just this reason? Screening as part of the January Giallo 2024 series. [Ben Sachs]

Yann Gonzalez's KNIFE + HEART (France)

Leather Museum & Archives (6418 N. Greenview Ave.) – Saturday, 7pm

KNIFE + HEART, the second feature by French filmmaker Yann Gonzalez, is surprisingly gorgeous and tender for a horror film about gay porn. Anne (Vanessa Paradis), a porn director in 1979, is balancing her recent breakup with editor Lois (Kate Moran) with the production demands of her new film, one hitting increasing roadblocks as her film’s men are knocked off one at a time by a masked killer who stabs people with a huge dildo-knife. Anne is the type of movie-character creative who’s addicted to making autofiction, so naturally both the murders and her breakup start to inspire material for the film, an alternately silly and gorgeous erotic police procedural of sorts. While KNIFE + HEART is categorically a horror film, that’s largely because that genre tends to swallow everything around it; it really operates in several modes, splitting time equally being a breakup movie, hangout movie, and slasher. Reducing KNIFE + HEART to just a horror film does a disservice to the specific formal take Gonzalez has on his material, pushing back on the momentum usually mandated by the genre and letting things breathe like a much gayer Larry Fessenden. It’s rare to find a slasher this leisurely and unconcerned with scaring you (on purpose, at least), and the killer tends to disappear from the film for long stretches. When the kills do happen, the movie luxuriates in the moment and lets the lush score by M83 (Anthony Gonzalez, brother of the filmmaker) guide the viewer toward a softer landing. The film’s milieu with its leather gear, sex clubs,  and porn sets contributes to this destabilizing quality, with things that are often scarily branded in genre work presented more ambiguously. The first victim invites the leather-masked and extremely killer-coded killer over to tie him up, despite him screaming “bad news” by most horror conventions. But within the cruising bar he’s less distinct, another lonely soul offering a chance for transcendence for the night. Every character’s actions and gaze are clouded by desire; the various risks of a loose murderer and a gay life under capitalism are all mitigating factors, but not things that zero out someone’s need for love and fulfillment. By the end of the film, you’re not even annoyed that you’ve spent so much time watching a breakup drama in your slasher. Gonzalez’s specific and pleasurable approach to the slasher rests in his emotional investment in characters and their jumbles of motivations, with pleasure and pain always existing as two sides of the same coin. Or dildo, as it were. Screening as part of the Fetish Film Forum. (2018, 103 min, Digital Projection). [Maxwell Courtright]

Jim Henson's LABYRINTH (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 7pm

LABYRINTH is one of the few movies I can quote from start to finish, given the number of times I watched it as a kid. It’s not hard to see why it was so compelling: a coming-of-age story about a girl with a big imagination who finds herself within the fictional world she dreams about. Add in Jim Henson puppetry and David Bowie and it’s not a hard sell. I still watch this movie often as an adult, and its deeper meaning has become more pronounced. This film both reflected and shaped my understanding of my own girlhood, of fantasy and desire, in ways that I’m still processing. Not as explicitly dark as other '80s coming-of-age fairy tales like RETURN TO OZ or THE COMPANY OF WOLVES, but it still contains themes of the tragic transition of growing up. Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is a teen more obsessed with escaping into her romantic fantasy world than a social life. When her stepmother and father request that she babysit her baby brother, Toby, Sarah feels completely put upon. Dramatically she calls out to Jareth (David Bowie), the Goblin King, to take the baby away. And to her dismay, he does, stealing away Toby to his castle at the center of a magical labyrinth. Jareth gives Sarah a chance to get him back by solving the labyrinth within 13 hours. Along the way she meets a helpful group of friends as Jareth creates dangerous obstacles. LABYRINTH’s tone is often light and funny, alerting that this may be just a fantasy. But it also takes some stark turns, particularly in respect to Sarah’s struggle to move on from childhood, and her relationship to Jareth, who is both perilously controlling and completely alluring. Bowie’s performance here is dazzling, and he also provides the catchy songs heard throughout the film. The creature designs are memorable, too, so visceral and expressive—the Wiseman, performed by Frank Oz, stands out as one of the most impressive despite only appearing once. There are a lot of reasons LABYRINTH has become a cult classic, but the allowance of Sarah to be a melodramatic teenage girl, to indulge in her fantasies and decide for herself how or when to move beyond them makes the film resonate. Screening as part of the Revising the Musical series. (1986, 101 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA (Sweden)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:30pm

Along with CITIZEN KANE (1941), PERSONA remains the one of the most written about films in the canon (Raymond Bellour, Jacques Aumont, Robin Wood, Roger Ebert, Paisely Livington, P. Adams Sitney, Susan Sontag, Andrew Sarris, to name a few, all waxed famously on it). In a career of countless theatrical productions and 48 feature films, PERSONA remains Ingmar Bergman’s crowning achievement. After his trilogy (THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, WINTER LIGHT, THE SILENCE), the Swedish auteur had plans for a major work titled THE CANNIBALS, but the project fell through. The image of two women sitting together comparing hands became the seed for his next film, with a working title of "Kinematography." Recruiting the striking Bibi Andersson and not-yet legendary Liv Ullman, the director collaborated to make a new vision with constant experimentation and evaluation (three quarters of the film would be reshot). At this point in the '60s, directors across Europe were wading in the cinematic revolution brought on by Godard and others of the French New Wave. The then-48-year-old theatre director affirmed the developments of the cinematic revolution to further build his craft. To paraphrase Susan Sontag, the film opens in darkness before the arc light of a projector is kindled and a rapid progression of images overwhelms the viewer: an erect penis, a silent film cartoon, or nails driven through hands, images that were deeply personal to Bergman’s psyche. The chamber drama begins in a hospital. A nurse, Alma, is assigned to care for a now mute stage actor, Elisabet. For her recovery, the two travel to an isolated cottage on the sea. Alma regales the mute with her life story, speaking of her darkest regrets. Elisabet writes a note to the doctor, telling of all Alma has disclosed. When Alma reads the letter, tensions begin to rise. The more time spent together, the women’s identities intertwine. “Persona” translates to mask, a hiding of the face. In the film, only through time do the characters reveal their true selves. Alma uses her supposedly normal life to mask her past traumas and fears while Elizabet hides behind her illness. As is often the case, neither use their mask for malicious reasons, but for survival. Alma can pursue a happy life by way of a bright deposition. Because of her condition, Alma never has to reveal herself directly and confront her past. Although muteness takes her away from the stage, the malady becomes her haven. Bergman asserts, “She finds she can no longer use words. She becomes violently disturbed; loses her ability to express herself.” In cinema, language does not have to be trusted, nor should it be. As spectator, the quest for truth is scaled through an index of image, sound and edit to measure against "the word." As an auteur who kept a day job as a theatre director, Bergman often depended on the spoken word in his work. While there is some cinematic experimentation in his trilogy (monologues addressed to camera, long sequences of silent images, and the infamous "Bergman close up"), PERSONA is a slap in the face from the get-go. By way of a conversation started by Jean-Luc Godard, he ascends the form for both the New Wave and himself. Screening as part of the Mirroring series. (1966, 84 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]

Lamberto Bava’s DEMONS and DEMONS 2 (Italy)

FACETS Cinema – Friday, 7pm and 9pm

In the meta-tradition of films about film, the first DEMONS (1985, 88 min, Blu-Ray Projection) takes place in a movie theater, where an assorted group of spectators are transformed one by one into ravenous, red-eyed creatures—portended by the very film they’re there to see. DEMONS 2 (1986, 92 min, Blu-Ray Projection) moves the setting to a high-rise building, where each individual apartment’s television set airs another film all about the contagious demons. The referential nature works slightly better in the sequel, as the insidiousness of the demon film infiltrating the domestic space through broadcast is more unnerving. The apartment building itself is a dynamic setting, filled with iconic '80s paraphernalia like multiple neon signs as indoor décor, in addition to a new batch of impeccably dressed victims. Nothing, however, bests the architectural space of the first film’s movie theater setting: the Metropol in Berlin. Bold in design and color, the '80s style architecture of the interior spaces are canted and severe, illuminated by reds and blues. In tandem with the pandemonium of characters being pursued by demons, Lamberto Bava's inclusion of shots of empty spaces is not disquieting so much as stunning; these are dreamscapes that could be ripped from an '80s magazine. Bava renders the theater as a beautiful, elaborate monster, soundtracked by heavy metal and post-punk. The melodramas of the many characters take a back seat to these films’ overall dazzling design; this includes the impressive, at times cartoonish, gross-out demon special effects from Sergio Stivaletti. That’s not to say the unruliness of the plot and numerous characters aren’t a hoot—the mixture of highly stylish visuals and eccentric plots make both DEMONS essential horror viewings. Screening as the SUPER-HORROR-RAMA! - Double the Demons double feature. [Megan Fariello]

Edward Yang: Cities and Souls - Encore Screenings (Taiwan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes

Edward Yang’s A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY 
Friday, 6:15pm
Edward Yang’s fourth feature—as well as his longest—is effortlessly lived in, to the point where spending four hours in this world almost feels like too little time to plumb the depths of feeling at play. As with many works of truly great cinema, Yang’s film focuses on the life of one character—an early teenage schoolboy struggling to find himself at his night school—in order to explore an entire world. The protagonist, Xiao Si’r, exists as an entangled ball of confusion and loneliness, and he easily acts as a vessel for feelings of displacement and isolation for a generation dislocated from China to the island of Taiwan, families grasping at cultural straws to establish their own identity. But here, establishing one’s own self often seems to come in the form of enjoyment of Japanese food or devotion to American pop music (the movie’s title even comes from a lyric in Elvis Presley’s "Are You Lonesome Tonight?," which would be an equally fitting alternate name). Yang recognizes the anger that bubbles up under such conditions of discomfort and displacement, but on screen, this rage only shows up in spurts throughout, his camera preferring to languish, and beautifully so, on large encompassing shots capturing classrooms, fields, restaurants, and other hangouts across Taipei, where Si’r finds himself dragged between romantic entanglements and petty gang warfare. That things end with a grand act of violence should come as no surprise to anyone slowly dragged in by the tendrils of Yang’s bubble, a deep and thorny look at the lives of a youth culture struggling to escape daily despair, be it through school work, mindless brutality, or a classic Elvis tune. (1991, 237 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
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Edward Yang's TAIPEI STORY 
Saturday, 5:30pm
Hou Hsiao-Hsien had an extraordinary year in 1985. Not only did he direct one of his greatest films, the autobiographical A TIME TO LIVE AND A TIME TO DIE; he also co-wrote and starred in Edward Yang’s second feature, TAIPEI STORY. These are two of the crucial films of the Taiwanese New Wave, signaling the movement’s twin interests in history and modernity. If TIME TO LIVE is the great historical film of the Taiwanese New Wave (at least until Hou made A CITY OF SADNESS in 1989), then TAIPEI STORY is the great modern film, a consideration of what it means to be Taiwanese when the identity of Taiwan is always changing. Hou plays a former baseball star now running a fabric store in Taipei and stuck in a contentious relationship with his long-time girlfriend. Pop singer Tsai Chin plays the girlfriend in one of her only film roles; she and Yang married in the year TAIPEI STORY was made, despite the fact it’s a spectacularly unromantic movie. Like his hero Michelangelo Antonioni, Yang employs inquisitive mise-en-scene that renders the characters part of the urban design, alienating them before we come to understand that emotional alienation. “Before studying engineering and gradually finding his way to cinema, Yang contemplated attending Harvard for architecture, a field that would have exercised some of the native gifts that became so evident in his films,” wrote Andrew Chan for the Criterion Collection in 2017, “his methodical approach to structure, his sensitivity to how people interact with (and within) built landscapes, his understanding of how place becomes a conduit for emotionally charged ideas about history and identity. The influence of this abandoned profession is nowhere more pronounced than in TAIPEI STORY, his second feature, which reflects the worldly skepticism of a man who was born in Shanghai and raised in Taiwan, and had studied and worked in the U.S. for more than a decade... As in almost all of Yang’s work, the central tensions arise out of what lovers, friends, and family do not know—and do not care to know—about each other. And the more we see of Chin and Lung in their private moments together, the more bewildered and embarrassed they seem that, despite having known each other since their school days, they’ve spent so many years calling something relationship that now barely merits the name.” (1985, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Edward Yang's YI YI
Sunday, 11:30am
Edward Yang’s final film—one of the indisputable masterpieces of the Taiwanese New Wave, if not the culminating achievement of the entire movement—contains one of my favorite moments of any narrative film. It occurs during a business dinner between the film’s hero, middle-aged businessman NJ (Nien-Jen Wu, a key figure of the New Wave who collaborated on numerous screenplays with Hou Hsiao-Hsien), and a Japanese entrepreneur named Mr. Ota (Issei Ogata). Prior to this scene, Yang had presented Mr. Ota as something of a caricature, a nerdy computer whiz with limited social skills. But as the character opens up to NJ about his personal philosophy, something extraordinary happens: Mr. Ota transforms before one’s very eyes into a three-dimensional human being worthy of sympathy and respect. It’s an exemplary use of the long-take—not flashy, but wise, playing on duration to manipulate the audience’s understanding of character and interpersonal relationships. It also represents in microcosm what Yang accomplished with his small, but extraordinary body of work, employing a rigorous sense of form to better understand people, the social structures they inhabit, and how they can transcend those structures through a shared sense of humanity. YI YI is full of humanist epiphanies akin to the one at the business dinner, whether Yang is following NJ, his wife, his teenage daughter, or young son. (Many have commented on how this last character, pointedly named Yang-Yang and who’s interested in taking pictures, serves as an autobiographical stand-in for the director.) The accumulation of these assorted character portraits feels literary, as one comes to understand the family’s problems both intimately and on a societal level—their feelings of loneliness, disappointment, and aspiration speak to universal human experiences as well as the anxieties felt by many urbanites at the end of the 20th century. “At first glance,” wrote Kent Jones for the Criterion Collection in 2011, “YI YI appears to be a serene and becalmed film, in pace and spirit, a movie made by a director who has shed his youthful anger and made peace with the assorted confusions of ‘late capitalist’ Taiwanese life. On close scrutiny, it becomes something else again. Yang has set his city symphonies in a variety of emotional keys—the doleful lament of TAIPEI STORY (1985), the grid-like coolness of THE TERRORIZER (1986), the comic hysteria of A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION (1994), the carefully modulated fury of MAHJONG. In YI YI, he brings all of these moods together, never allowing any one of them to take precedence over another. Which is to say that this is a grand choral work, with a panoptic majesty and an emotional amplitude worthy of George Eliot or late Beethoven, whose ‘Song of Joy’ is quoted with the greatest delicacy in Kaili Peng’s piano score.” (2000, 173 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Edward Yang’s A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION
Monday, 7:45pm
Experiencing the satire of Edward Yang’s A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION is akin to being a kid and watching a movie or TV show about young urban professionals trying to make it in the big city. The self-containment of the world feels at once representative of the purported reality yet in stark opposition to it, a deceptive microcosm that invites engagement while reveling in its knowing artifice. A surprising turn for the Taiwanese filmmaker, whose previous movies considered the rapid development of the island’s economy (otherwise known as “the Taiwan Miracle”) during the back half of the twentieth century in rather dour terms, A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION presents almost like a run-of-the-mill urban comedy of its time, though it’s no ambitious because of that. The film centers on an interconnected group of Taiwanese yuppies and their respective (yet still enmeshed) professional and romantic predicaments. The affluent Molly owns a media company, gifted to her by her similarly well-off fiancé, Akeem; she’s pragmatic and hyper-focused on her flailing enterprise, while he yearns for a genuine romantic connection (it’s implied the two’s relationship was arranged by their families). Meanwhile Molly’s having an affair with Akeem’s second-in-command, who’s having a tryst with Molly’s best friend, Qiqi (played by Tsai Ming-liang regular Chen Shiang-chyi), who comforts her after she’s unceremoniously fired by the suspicious executive. Of course the movie is less about what is happening exactly amongst the characters and more about what each individual relationship represents in the context of Yang’s postmodern appraisal. The film’s title comes from the estranged writer husband of Molly’s older sister, who married the scribe for love rather than money; his latest manuscript is about a reincarnated Confucius who comes back to find that in the society he helped create, people admire him not for his ideas but for his successful “put-on” job, as if the ancient Chinese sage were Tony Robbins and not a revered philosopher. In contrast to the writer husband is Birdy, a playwright friend of Molly and Qiqi’s, who, in opposition to the writer, has recently transitioned to comedies (the sister’s husband having begun writing more serious novels after a spate of lighter, albeit more lucrative, fare). The film opens with Birdy at a press conference, rollerblading around a table of reporters at a press conference. In a question that could have been directed at Yang himself, one of them asks, “Why are you doing comedy now?” “Because I’m an optimist,” the playwright replies. “Everyone’s having a good life, why spoil it?” The metatextual irony sets the tone, the film’s apparent vapidity it’s very consideration. At sporadic intervals intertitles with a phrase in both Taiwanese and English—there’s one at the beginning of the film as well, though it more so establishes the connection between Confucius and contemporary Taiwan—break up the narrative; the text is an idea or line that hasn’t yet been said but will be introduced in the following section. They become dictums of this self-contained world, a logic unto themselves. “Why are you suddenly taking me to lunch?” one asks. The titular confusion lies in what meaning may be ascribed, either where it’s undue or unrealized. Yang’s uncharacteristic entry into the Taiwanese New Wave confounds in its dizzying promulgations, widening that divide between the perceptions of one’s self in relation to it. (1994, 125 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
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Edward Yang’s 1996 film MAHJONG (121 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 8pm.

Justine Triet's ANATOMY OF A FALL (France)

FACETS Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes

Like John Cassavetes, Justine Triet makes movies that feel like they’re constantly trying to catch up with their own characters; one consistent pleasure of both of their films is never knowing how the tone will adapt to how the subjects behave. Unlike Cassavetes, who started as an actor, Triet began her career making documentaries, so it’s likely that she allows her characters such liberty because she cut her teeth on observing real people. In her fiction features, the sense of directorial fascination extends beyond what the characters do and into the worlds they inhabit—another surprising quality of Triet’s IN BED WITH VICTORIA (2016) and SIBYL (2019) is how they at first resemble bourgeois lifestyle comedies but end up having a lot to say about law and psychoanalysis, respectively. ANATOMY OF A FALL, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, also has a lot to say about the law, in addition to fiction writing and marriage; befitting a movie about a novelist, it feels novelistic in its breadth and depth. But that doesn’t mean it ever feels less than cinematic—Triet makes as many engagingly eccentric decisions behind the camera as her characters make in front of it. ANATOMY OF A FALL is noteworthy for its deliberately graceless zooms and pans, which suggest the perspective of a curious insect, and its low-angle closeups, which evoke a sense of nervous intimacy before the characters even do anything. Triet also shifts enigmatically between objective and subjective perspectives, creates chilling ellipses through editing, and covers staggering amounts of emotional territory within individual scenes. If she weren’t such an exceptional director of actors, her ambitions as a storyteller might seem show-offy; yet ANATOMY OF A FALL (like Triet’s previous two features) is worthy of Sidney Lumet in how it glues your eyes to the performances. Sandra Hüller deserves all the praise she gets for her lead performance as a successful novelist who stands trial after her husband dies in a suspicious accident, but the whole cast is mesmerizing, down to the bit players. Special mention goes to young Milo Machado Garner, who plays Hüller’s 11-year-old son and exudes an emotional maturity well beyond his years. Yet another surprise of ANATOMY OF A FALL is how much it comes to be about his character in the final act; his story vaguely recalls Ozu’s early masterpiece I WAS BORN, BUT… (1932) in its stinging evocation of the moment when we realize our parents are flawed individuals like everyone else. It speaks to the effectiveness of Triet’s maximalism that even the revelations of secondary characters carry the weight of entire separate films. (2023, 152 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Andrzej Żuławski's POSSESSION (France/Germany)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 7pm

Originally hacked down for American release to a schlocky—and downright absurd—ninety-minutes, POSSESSION has been restored to Zulawski's original cut, showing in a new 4K digital restoration. The added footage doesn't necessarily make the infamous tentacled-monster sex thing any less nuts, because it still is a shocking sight to behold. But its purpose is more nuanced and creepy when the film really goes off the rails. Drawing from his own divorce, Zulawski's film follows the collapse of Mark and Anna's marriage and the impossibility of Mark ever fully knowing, or possessing, his wife in love. Largely set in an apartment near the Berlin Wall, Mark is confronted with divorce and descends into severe depression. He emerges in a near-psychotic state intending to reclaim Anna and their son. He soon becomes aware of Anna's lover, but after confronting him, both men realize Anna is seeing someone—or something—else. Zulawski keeps the camera in almost constant motion, pushing in and pulling back during confrontations between Mark and Anna as their fights escalate to bloody moments that are somehow both expected and completely terrifying. In one scene, Anna grinds meat as Mark maniacally berates her. The noise of the kitchen rises with the tension and Anna, tired of the diatribe, takes an electric knife to her neck. Paired with scenes of their individual genuine tenderness toward their son, POSSESSION is filled with mirrors. Mark meets his son's school teacher, a benevolent doppelganger for his wife, and a double of Mark appears with Anna at the end. Even the setting is exploited for an otherworldly nothingness and an exactness in East and West Germany, itself perversely mirrored. The unrestrained acting—Anna thrashing hysterically could describe many scenes—adds to a heightened reality where Anna's possession is not demonic, but love can be. Screening as part of the Mirror series. (1981, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]

Takashi Miike's AUDITION (Japan)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Monday, 7pm

AUDITION may have been Takashi Miike’s international breakthrough, but it’s an uncharacteristic work in several respects. When Miike is at his freewheeling best (as in DEAD OR ALIVE 2: BIRDS, THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS, or DETECTIVE STORY), he’ll change a film’s tonal register repeatedly over the course of the running time; AUDITION, on the other hand, contains only one significant shift in tone. Many of Miike’s other features abound with outlandish humor as well as gruesome violence, but (save for a humorous montage that occurs fairly early) AUDITION abounds only with violence. In terms of style, Miike often likes to alternate between long takes and brisk montage; this film favors the former over the latter. AUDITION is also one of the only Miike features (of which there are now over 100) that can be said to tackle issues of sexual politics and gender roles; his work is usually too absurd to connect to real-world concerns. Still, AUDITION is thoroughly Miike-esque in the devilish glee with which it provokes its viewers. That big shift—from muted drama to grisly horror—is one of the great surprises in modern movies, and it plays like a tramcar veering wildly in a dark funhouse. Miike restrains himself for the movie’s first half, seldom moving the camera and developing a gentle (albeit occasionally wry) tone. The movie promises to be a subdued, if eccentric tale of a 60-ish widower, Aoyama, who gets persuaded to look for a new wife—until the story becomes something totally different. Aoyama pretends to be a producer holding auditions for a fake movie, videotaping women talking about themselves under the assumption they’ll be cast in the lead role. He comes to pay for this ruse and then some, experiencing emotional manipulation and ultimately torture at the hands of the woman he picks to be his bride. His comeuppance is excruciating, yet also bleakly funny, representing an ironic reversal not only of the audience’s narrative expectations, but also what they might think a straight man can get away with. (1999, 115 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Hong Sang-soo’s IN WATER (South Korea)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm and Sunday, 4pm

Spoiler alert: IN WATER is drenched—and I mean it literally: everything is blurry and might go slightly more out of focus as the film progresses, even into the end credits. Non-diegetic subtitles reassure that your eyesight is intact. It is a film that, upon finishing, you reflect back and wonder if you have really seen it at all; you might simply have dreamed it up. It’s probably Hong Sang-soo’s most intimate, experimental take yet—so intimate that he produced, wrote, directed, photographed, edited and composed for the film. It is also a meta-film, a film about filmmaking with its distress, boredom, and serendipity. Young actor Seoung-mo (Seok-ho Shin) has decided to make a short film true to his heart; he brings young actress Nam-hee (Seung-yun Kim) and cinematographer Sang-guk (Seong-guk Ha) to the chilly seaside of the Jeju Island, chewing up his personal savings as days go by without a concrete idea of what to shoot. He explores his surroundings but not without some anxiety about the cost of idling, until he sees a lone stranger by the sea and decides to talk to her. And everything starts to make sense. Hong has the talent of flattening every concept—however mundane, awkward, complicated or difficult to articulate—through unhurried conversations that are sprinkled with polite aloofness but can give punches of honesty. The discussion about whether to have sashimi for dinner is treated in the same way as when Seoung-mo talks about how he wishes he was never born. When images retreat to the back seat, sound takes command. The sounds of the waves, the wind, and the voice of Kim Min-hee (who never shows her face but only voice-acts as Seoung-mo’s possible former love interest), will absorb you into this film like soft, impressionist reverie. Preceded by Pedro Costa’s THE DAUGHTERS OF FIRE (9 min, DCP Digital). (2023, 61 min, DCP Digital) [Nicky Ni]

Hayao Miyazaki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON (Japan/Animated)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 8pm and Wednesday, 5:45pm & 8:15pm

The anticipation of seeing a new film directed by Hayao Miyazaki is two-fold: there is a set expectation of whimsy, magic, and complex thematic exploration inherent in his work, but this is tied to the mystery of not knowing how specifically these traits will play themselves out. So it is with his (seemingly) final film, THE BOY AND THE HERON, a film rooted in familiar themes that Miyazaki has been dwelling on for decades of artistry. As with many of his works, Miyazaki provides another story of a youthful protagonist; here, the teenage Mahito—buried within heavy emotional armor to navigate the grief of losing his mother in a hospital fire the year before—finds himself navigating an unknown mystical world that sits somewhere between the afterlife and his own subconscious, after he's lured there by a deliriously antagonistic gray heron. The fantastical elements of Miyazaki immediately float to the surface, from new imaginative creatures like the Warawara—adorable floating balls that ascend to the heavens to be born as humans—to the bizarre amass of pelicans and parakeets that threaten to swallow up any frame they inhabit. Mahito‘s quest to find closure for his mother’s death results in a journey, ever joyous and sumptuous to watch, that ponders the nature of a world built upon loss, destruction, and chaos. Without spoiling too much, the film leaves us on something of an abrupt note, left to ponder the work of an undisputed master of cinema who was unafraid to bare his mortality before us, letting us sit in the knowledge that to live with the chaos of grief is still a beautiful life in and of itself; to know that there is no escaping pain, and there is something beautiful to carry on towards. Maybe a book your mother left behind for you, maybe a new, unknown journey waiting on the other side of a doorway. (2023, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Robert Zemeckis' BACK TO THE FUTURE (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm

Back in the mid-1980s, the white, suburban, heterosexual American male was in crisis, threatened on all sides: globally, by the Middle East's control of oil production; culturally, by the emergence of chart-topping R&B and rap that imperiled the perceived hegemony of heavy metal and unspirited blues-rock; and locally, in the unrelenting crime waves of urban gangs, emerging from a dissolved patriarchy and reportedly expanding ever-outwards from the city centers. The successful reconstitution of this masculinity was produced primarily by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale's BACK TO THE FUTURE, an admittedly glorious genre-crossing inversion of the Oedipus mythology (protagonist Marty must overcome not a present, unconscious desire for his mother and rivalry with his father, but instead must overcome his mother's desire for him and actively facilitate the transformation of his milquetoast father into a confident figure of authority). The conflict is enacted in the oneiric space of small-town 1955 California, primarily through the repeated ritual humiliation of the seemingly-invincible Teutonic drive-creature Biff, but also through Marty's requisition—on behalf of wimpy caucasians everywhere—of the heritage of both civil rights (encouraging the local malt-shop busboy to become mayor) and rock n' roll (producing, for Chuck Berry and an audience of bewildered squares, "the sound you've been looking for"). All of this (including the role of the Benjamin-Franklin-esque Doc Brown) is then not simply in the service of some trite, individualist Protestant ethic ("if you put your mind to it, you could accomplish anything": murmured mantra-like from start to finish); for those voters still baffled by the persistency of conservative politics, why look any further? Screening as part of the Mommy Issues: Freudian Relationships in Film series. (1985, 116 min, 35mm) [Michael Castelle]

Béla Tarr's SÁTÁNTANGÓ (Hungary) – SOLD OUT

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 11am

Béla Tarr's transfixing saga of the idling state of humanity is nothing less than a master work from a master filmmaker. Running more than seven hours, SÁTÁNTANGÓ is a filmic event that still shatters us nearly three decades after its release. Adapted from Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai's 1985 novel, the film blends allegory with tightly constructed, oppressive reality in his depiction of an isolated farming collective as its miserable inhabitants cope with despair. Tarr uses extremely long takes, meticulously staged and choreographed, to tell and retell the events of two plodding and rainy autumn days from varying characters' perspectives. SÁTÁNTANGÓ's unforgiving, almost apocalyptically bleak setting is populated by adulterers, drunkards, cowards, and backstabbers; people at a standstill, whirling mirthlessly in an alcohol-fueled dance in a pub or slogging aimlessly across the muddy compound. Tarr's mobile camera allows for languid, shifting compositions that create rich and haunting tableaux vivants. His precise post-sync soundtrack of resonant voices, creaking floors, and one tortured cat's mew has the inescapable effect of drawing the viewer deep into a heightened reality. The film evokes a sense of dread that reminds us of our mortality, though there is also a strain of gallows humor that is both subtle and mordant. While the people of the collective wait for Irimias, their charlatan savior, they move six steps forward and six steps back in a standstill tango with time and progress. This back and forth is mimicked in the film's structure of twelve intertwined chapters, some of which are paired through their titles. This sense of stasis, or impossibility of progress, is also seen in the charismatic Irimias' role in a vague bureaucracy that clearly is reminiscent of communism, but actually feels universal. Tarr sarcastically depicts society as a weak, ineffectual construct meant to provide structure and purpose in a purposeless world. SÁTÁNTANGÓ is a brilliant, haunting opus that knows more about us than we know ourselves. This rare opportunity to see it on the big screen should not be missed. Screening as part of the Settle In series. PLEASE NOTE THIS SCREENING IS SOLD OUT. (1994, 439 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, called we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station and will run day and night through mid-March. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
Chicago Seen, Volume 17: What Do You Carry?, including seven short films from local, Chicago-based artists, screens Friday at 7pm. Arrive 15 minutes early to ensure seating. Pre-orders for this show are almost sold out. In the event of a sell-out show, limited seats will still be available for rush ticketing. More info here.

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Digging Deeper Into Movies with Nick Davis considers “Great Things in Small Packages” on Saturday, 11am, at the Alliance Française de Chicago (810 N. Dearborn St.). Davis will be discussing Independent Spirit Award nominees MAY DECEMBER (Todd Haynes) and EARTH MAMA (Savanah Leaf), both of which are recommended viewing in advance of the discussion. Tickets are free. Doors open at 10:30am. Please use the Dearborn St entrance for admission. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Don Chaffey’s 1966 remake ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (92 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 4pm, as part of the ​​Dinosaurs Plus! on Film series.

Werner Herzog’s 1982 film FITZCARRALDO (158 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Conquistador of the Useless: The Films of Werner Herzog.

Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s 1998 film THE LAST BROADCAST (86 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday, 9:30pm, as part of the Computer Vision: Experiments in Digital Cinema. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s 2023 film THE SETTLERS (97 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week and Steve McQueen’s 2023 documentary OCCUPIED CITY (262 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes. 

Charles de Agustin’s 2023 experimental essay film MISSION DRIFT (90 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday at 6:15pm. Includes an interactive audience experience, with de Agustin in attendance. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Media Burn Archive
A Media Burn Archive fundraiser, with a screening of John Davies and Brian Kallies’ newly updated 2020 documentary LINCOLN IS BURNING: THE GRIFTERS, GRAFTERS & GOVERNORS OF ILLINOIS, takes place Wednesday, 6pm, at the Film Row Cinema at Columbia College (1104 S. Wabash). The reception begins at 6pm and the screening at 7pm. At 8:30pm there will be a  post-screening discussion with some of Chicago’s top political pundits and media veterans, including Mike Flannery, Phil Ponce, Delmarie Cobb, Tom Weinberg, and John Davies, and a special appearance by writer/actor Tim Kazurinksy. Media Burn’s founder, Tom Weinberg, and executive director, Sara Chapman will introduce the event. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
İlker Çatak’s 2023 German film THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE (98 min, DCP Digital) begins and Andrew Haigh’s 2023 film ALL OF US STRANGERS (105 min, DCP Digital) continues screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Tommy Wiseau’s 2023 film BIG SHARK (99 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at midnight.

Gary P. Cohen’s 1988 film CAPTIVES (84 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at midnight. Programmed and presented by the Front Row and Terror Vision.

Jim Sharman’s 1975 cult classic ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) screens Saturday, midnight, with a shadowcast of the film (that’s actors acting in front of the screen) performed by Midnight Madness.

Professor O’s Producing Festival #1 - Make a Short!, featuring Cine-File contributor Michael Glover Smith and Alyssa Thordarson’s 2023 short film PAPER PLANES, takes place Sunday at 11:45am. Gain insight into the process of producing a narrative fiction short from the producers and filmmakers who made them. Screening and discussion with Q&A, thoughtful questions encouraged. Presented and hosted by Orange Chair Productions. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Find more information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its larger screening and workshop schedule, here.

CINE-LIST: January 19 - January 25, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Castelle, Maxwell Courtright, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Ben Kaye, Nicky Ni, Peter Raccuglia, Brian Welesko