:: FRIDAY, APRIL 7 - THURSDAY, APRIL 13 ::

🧅 ONION CITY EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL

The 33rd edition of Onion City completed its in-person screenings (with the exception of one installation, see the next line), but all competition programs are now streaming online through Sunday. The program About Life screens three times daily at Mana Contemporary (2233 S. Throop St.) in Pilsen, also through Sunday. For more info, visit the festival website here.

Machine Perspectives
With “Machine Perspectives,” the Onion City programmers find a productive sweet-spot between the navel-gazing of films about cameras and the nebulousness of work about technology. Each film looks, in its own way, at the intimate connections between humans and machines, in terms of both the Frankensteinian creations we’ve made and the ways we’ve changed ourselves. On the Frankenstein tip, Stéphanie Lagarde’s MINIMAL SWAY WHILE STARTING MY WAY UP (2021, 15 min) anchors the program with an elevator’s interior monologue. Footage both real and animated taken from moving elevators makes up most of the material; the omniscient elevator moves out into space and miles into the earth, with technology paving the way both for the physical motion and the augmented, imagined versions of the same. Other bot-personas on the program include the sinister and ever-expanding terms of service agreement in (DE)VICE GRIP (2022, 3 min), and Kita, a chipper VJ rendered in blocky 3D animation in SOLILOQUY (2021, 7 min). They’re a study in contrasts: Kita is a benevolent cultural guide that seeks to teach us about ourselves, while the service agreement seeks to extract as much humanity as it can for itself. Between them and the more neutral and transient elevator, the machines of this program are all responsive to their purpose, extensions of the human impulses that built them. The other half of the program has more transhuman concerns. Avant-garde luminary Christopher Harris uses his Google Earth-set miniature DREAMS UNDER CONFINEMENT (2020, 2 min) to rapidly map out Chicago, all while highlighting the topographical black hole of the Cook County jail. Cameras and the technology we’ve invented to expand them have brought our vision to almost-omniscient levels, Harris suggests, but not enough to extend humanity to the most disenfranchised. Lisa McCarty’s SEEING SPACECRAFT EARTH (2021, 6 min) works as a sort of inverse, using NASA archives to consider the reported “overview effect” that astronauts get upon seeing Earth from space. The omniscience here is saved for a select few, and even the version of earth we get is visibly reconstructed and incomplete. The acts of seeing and speculating are further intertwined in Leonardo Pirondi’s VISION OF PARADISE (2022, 16 min), a wide-ranging essay film centering on the mythical Atlantic island of Brasil. Pirondi, like Lagarde, uses mixed methods and threads of narrative in the film, discussing a group of Brazilian explorers who went on a fruitless journey to discover the island along with reflections on the observer effect and computer simulations. He links these cross-centuries developments as part of the same history, that of people trying to find or create a utopia and spoiling it the closer they get. The associated “effects” of tech-assisted perception have changed our understanding of reality in deep ways, but it wouldn’t be a program of experimental films without at least one solipsistic work about the tech that allows us to see 24 frames per second in the first place. Less political and more psychotronic, Ramey Newell & Niccolò Bigagli’s INTERFERENCE PATTERN (2022, 9 min) rounds out the program as a reflection on perception itself. Quotations play on the audio track from physicists and experimental mainstays like Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren as they wax about the granular details of image-making and seeing, with the images playing like a highlight reel celebrating the ways film can sculpt with points of light. It’s a sentiment that many fans of this type of work will doubtless be familiar with already, but it feels especially comforting on a program with some ambivalence about technology’s effects. If we’re careful, film can change our perception for the better. [Maxwell Courtright]
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The Land Folds
The longer of the two pieces in this program, Fred Schimdt-Arenales’ COMMITTEE OF SIX (2022, 40 min), is a must-see for Chicago history aficionados. It considers the south side’s shameful legacy of redlining, with much of the dialogue taken directly from minutes of committee meetings of the “Urban Renewal Program” of 1955, which effectively launched the gentrification—and segregation—of Hyde Park. Schmidt-Arenales structures the re-enactment around lines from the minutes that most explicitly convey the racism inherent in the rhetoric of organizing communities by economic class. Despite what one might expect from that description, the committee isn’t played by a bunch of old white men, but rather a diverse group made up of (per the artist’s notes) “performers, academics, residents, and activists,” who vary in gender, race, and age; the nontraditional casting adds a layer of meaning to the already interesting proceedings. Between the reenactments, Schmidt-Arenales interweaves scenes of the cast reflecting on the text and discussing what it means in light of current affairs, both in Chicago and the United States at large. The film’s methods recall those of Peter Watkins’ LA COMMUNE (PARIS 1871) (2000), but it plays out in distinct Chicago-ese. In its thematic concerns, COMMITTEE OF SIX pairs nicely with A FIELD GUIDE TO COASTAL FORTIFICATIONS (2023, 24 min), which considers various constructions built on the coast of the San Francisco Bay over the past few hundred years. Tijana Petrović employs various devices, from onscreen text to archival footage, to reflect the changing nature of history, while the winsome narrator places us at a cool, philosophical remove from the events she describes. The history lesson is organized around physical structures: the encampments built centuries ago by Native Americans, the fortress-like walls erected by the first white settlers, the bunkers developed during the Cold War. It’s these last structures that get the most screen time, and Petrović explains their dramatic irony thusly: “As symbols of military might, the bunkers were tasked with protecting the coast from ‘perceived threats.' Constructed, reconstructed and updated over time, these structures stood and waited for the enemy that never came.” The film delivers this sort of existentialist poetry for most of its duration, and the mood of sweet despair can be surprisingly endearing. [Ben Sachs]
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Late Night
In Alisa Berger’s RETRODREAMING (2022, 17 min), a woman’s voice describes a failed experiment to create dreams in the minds of test subjects. The manufactured dreams were intended to evoke the subjects’ memories of their Japanese hometowns, but the algorithm went rogue, birthing images and effects that seemed to belong neither exclusively to the dreamer nor the machine. Such a formulation could very well describe the sensory phenomena of film spectatorship, especially in films that experiment as rigorously with form and perception as the ones included in this program. Many are kinetic, audiovisually overwhelming works of abstraction, like HC Gilje’s RIFT (HD) (2017, 6 min), which consists of a ceaseless horizontal movement across icy blue lines and flickering shapes, its speed escalating in accordance with a percussive soundtrack. The hallucinatory effects of the film are irreducible to language. Similarly hypnotic are Lindsey Arturo’s GLITCH WALL (1 min), an EDM-scored scherzo evoking old CRT visual phenomena; Luis Carlos Rodríguez’s ABSTRART 23 (2022, 5 min), which features shifting liquid blobs arranged in a grid pattern; and Onyou Oh’s PYROTECHNICS (2021, 11 min), a tripartite journey through increasingly psychedelic and stroboscopic imagery, also with a pulsing club beat. The remaining two films in the program take place within the realm of representation, but still emphasize intense perceptual a/effects. Kalil Haddad’s THE TAKING OF JORDAN (ALL AMERICAN BOY) (2022, 7 min), which concerns the tragic fates of young men involved in sex work and gay porn, uses edited archival footage, jarring sounds, and true-crime captions to create an unnerving portrait of bodily exploitation. In contrast, Patrick Müller’s INTO THE REALM OF THE NIGHT (2022, 5 min) is a mellow city symphony charting the transition from day to night in Copenhagen, Denmark. Shot on black-and-white 8 mm stock and employing multiple exposures, the film glitters with the myriad lights of the city, suspending us between the materiality of the urban environment and its phantom glow, waking life and cinematic dream. [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Sipping Solitude
The COVID-19 pandemic is the reality the filmmakers of the “Sipping Solitude” program confront as they try to make sense of the loneliness, loss, and boredom of their forced isolation. Alice Avery’s FUNTOWN JOURNEY INTO THE LIVING LAND (2023, 12 min) uses psychedelic animation and live action to explore the journey of a being who has been separated from the world in which they belong by a malevolent creature who wishes to take them back in time. The film overlays its images with large text that both explicates and complicates an ultimately joyful return. In BIGGER ON THE INSIDE (2022, 12 min), director Angelo Madsen Minax teases that our interior lives and virtual connections can bring an ecstasy that exploring the cosmos and natural environment can’t approximate. Shots of snow-covered expanses and a man looking at the night sky through a telescope alternating with abstract images and a YouTube tutorial on the nature of desire foreground the sexting of the barely glimpsed protagonist and the object of their affection. In AND SO IT CAME ABOUT (A TALE OF CONSEQUENTIAL DORMANCY) (2022, 12 min), Charlotte Pryce narrates a folk tale of a healer who works to free a girl from an enchantment that draws her into the woods beyond the village common. Images of nature in all its beauty and savagery recall the pandemic period during which the film was made and provide a cautionary lesson about meddling in affairs beyond ordinary human capacity. CONDUIT (2022, 5 min), a mesmerizing animated short by Lynn Kim, contemplates a solitary runner who moves through different states of being as traditional Korean music powers his stride. In the end, he loses a bit of himself, as he must, through this kinetic ritual. In SOME TROPICS OF CANCER (2022, 10 min), T.J. Blanco mourns the loss of their father to cancer with a metaphysical contemplation of the eternal and a down-to-earth reckoning with the damage human beings do to the earth in their acquisitiveness. Their voiceover narration is poetic, and their kaleidoscopic images mix with signposts of their father’s life and death, ending with the only footage that exists of him. Rachel Ferber’s JOKES ON EVERY WRAPPER (2021, 11 min) seems to have been born from the boredom of sheltering in place. Green screen projections—green everything, for that matter—reference her home projects, including trying to make butter, that seem to have been abject failures. She likens her busy work with the riddles and jokes on the wrappers of Laffy Taffys, but with no end to her isolation in sight, the final joke cannot be written. Om, as a word, represents the sound of the divine, and sound is an important element of Yanbin Zhao’s OM (2022, 13 min). Zhao, who lives in Los Angeles, intersperses news coverage of the pandemic with video phone calls with his grandfather in China. He films and records the sounds of the natural environment, devoid of human beings (though not of their detritus), and conjures the Buddha in image and language. Dead leaves, cut flowers, and algae blooms stand in for the devastation occurring outside his isolated suburb. [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Suspended Masses
As it explores the nebulousness of being, the “Suspended Masses” program is aptly titled. These expeditions into states of emotional ambiguity proceed loosely, with no clear questions and thus no clear answers. Kishino Takagishi’s THE EDGE OF A HOLE (2022, 18 min) embodies this diffused conviction. Three people ruminate on different experiences pertaining to the gift of life and the reality of death. They do this casually, even languidly, the general atmosphere of each intertwined vignette similar to that of a film by Lynne Sachs or Apichatpong Weerasethakul; the insights and meditations are captured in such a way that simple thought is transformed into curious wisdom. The filmmaker notes that the subjects “are haunted by an evolutionary ghost,” a concept obliquely expressed through their stories about family members: their mothers, their kids. Deceptively modest, Takagishi’s film conveys a world of thought and experience in its brief runtime. Along these lines, to lose someone is to be left only with fragments, memories and ephemera marooned in the physical realm. Alexis McCrimmon’s HERON 1954-2022 (2022, 4 min) is a tribute to a loved one who passed away due to an accidental opioid overdose. It’s a bleary homage with rhapsodic images, some of which were transformed experimentally, while others—such as a beautifully staged arrangement of items special to the deceased person—evince an emotional significance via their staticness. It’s a stunning eulogy for what looks to have been a beautiful life. There’s the banality of evil, then there’s the occasional banality of living through evil. In the case of Saif Alsaegh’s BEZUNA (2022, 8 min), this occurs in the experience of fleeing an active war zone. A wry voiceover details what items not to bring when leaving home, while later split-screens provide a seeming neutral background over which a woman describes the cat (and later her plethora of kittens) who hung around her house in Baghdad. A rather mundane logistic, what to pack, what to do with the animals around your home that you’ve come to begrudgingly appreciate; but when positioned in the context of wartime, these can become the most important question of all. So much experimental film is about the images. It’s also about sound, too, of course, but in Italian filmmaker Chiara Caterina’s L’INCANTO [ENCHANTMENT] (2021, 20 min), it’s the elliptical voice-overs that one is compelled to follow, an assortment of recordings of women speaking about subjects that somehow pertain, even if indirectly, to death. One of the voices belongs to Donatella Colasanti, a victim of a crime (she and a friend were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and tortured by three men; her friend, sadly, died) in the 1970s that was then considered one of the worst in modern Italian history. Another of the women was accused of murdering four people. Between these extremes are three other women who provide their unique perspectives on life and death. The accompanying imagery is seemingly random, though at times it aligns with whatever the woman is saying. When one woman talks about a ghost, the footage—often made to look like a film strip—is of an eerie house; when Colasanti discusses her attack, a ripped Italian flag blows in the wind. The womens’ voices are themselves suspended masses, echoes reverberating across the ages, telling, like all of the films, beautiful and tragic tales as old as time. [Kat Sachs]
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Mediating Desires
“A lonely doodler forges an intense emotional bond with a horse.” Whatever expectations I had of Allison Radomski’s I HEART HORSE (2022, 6 min) when reading this description were certainly exceeded. A horse, indeed, is “hearted” in this visual and sonic deluge of appreciation for the majestic creature. Images of horses in all shapes and forms—grainy film footage, crude drawings, the word horse written over and over, sometimes a combination of these modes—and an incredibly catchy song are combined to create a veritable testament to the omniscient singer’s adoration of them. The concept of horse girls is evoked, naturally, and that’s where depth is among the fun and froth; its seeming ingenuousness renders palpably the intensity of this obsession and what it says about girlhood and desire, this latter sensation being at the heart (no pun intended) of the program. Sam Taffel’s LOOKING FOR LOVE (2022, 11 min) is an examination of how this concept intersects with media representation. The description notes how the disparate sketches “investigate… the materiality of image-producing devices [and how it] activates practices of personal memory and longing.” I need not investigate further; from the second an audio clip from the finale of Bob Fosse’s ALL THAT JAZZ sounded, I was enthralled, memories from my past evoked and a sense of longing—in this case for that film’s singular exquisiteness—activated. A sequence wherein a bright blue bob appears to be giving a monologue about looking for love is oddly emotional, though abstractions like this temper any potential obviousness in Taffel’s premise. Desire is often as much about what isn’t realized as about what is. In Iran, after the 1979 revolution, cinematic depictions of men and women touching were forbidden. In NAZARBAZI (2022, 19 min), a word that means the play of glances, filmmaker Maryam Tafakory edits together scenes from post-revolutionary Iranian cinema in which a sense of desire or longing is conveyed through everything but physical contact. Touch can be forbidden, but not looking and lingering. Sporadic interstitials show poetic text (credited at the end to the likes of famed Iranian poets Forugh Farrokhzad and Ahmad Shamlou, as well as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida), fitting not just because of the importance of poetry in Iran, but also as it mirrors the evasive longing of lovers—specifically women, whose desire was really the thing being regulated—unable to touch. Something of a palate cleanser, Zhen Li’s FUR (2022, 7 min) is a short animated film that, through a rough-hewn illustration style, depicts “a crush gone moldy.” It’s bizarre and surrealistic, and thus a perfect way to represent the inherent peculiarity of attraction. Also screening is Marius Packbier and Aïlien Reyns’ SKIN PLEASURE (2022, 36 min), which, per the film’s description, is “a video essay that investigates the different functions of the skin in relation to the reception of internet pornography.” [Kat Sachs]
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High Points of Our Intimacy
“High Points of Our Intimacy” is, as the title suggests, about intimacy, specifically as an extension of memory, something that memorializes moments in time and stretches it to infinity. Most crucially for this type of work, each selection uses its particular filmic interventions to explore intimacy in a way unique to its form. Gülce Besen Dilek’s animation KOLAJ (2022, 8 min) uses dichromatic drawings to portray the varied faces we see on one another day to day. As the short’s protagonist moves through her neighborhood, we see her perception of faces shift, some lending their identities to be “read” more easily than others, some growing increasingly ornate and abstract with their distinguishing lines. Intimacy, says Dilek, is a process, relying on ongoing learning as our self-concept and perceptions shift. Dilek’s bouncy style keeps the film from being weighed down by these complex themes, lacing his simple 2D style with fluid linework that emulates A SCANNER DARKLY’s scramble suits to a more charming, lo-fi effect. STRING THERAPY (2022, 16 min) keeps up this playful energy, staging a couples therapy appointment between the members of filmmaking duo Considered to be Allies (Mie Frederikke Fischer Christensen and Margaux Parillaud) moderated by a fleshy mouth-like protrusion from a chair. As the two artists explain their symbiotic, twin-like connection, they become literally entwined as endless hair sprouts out of holes in their stomachs, the two strands braiding and entering the mouth of their therapist-flesh-chair, which grows gradually. Body-horror-inflected as it is, this alternately silly and visceral short seems like a genuine stab at reflecting on a uniquely co-dependent creative relationship, like Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye’s stuck in Pee-wee’s Playhouse. The duo, like Dilek, has expertly used their medium to create the terms upon which they want to reflect on intimacy. Through fleet drawings and practical creature FX, they’ve all created in filmic reality the emotional worlds where their intimacy exists. The program’s masterwork, Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s MOUNE Ô (2022, 17 min), applies these flights of fancy directly to the archive to reclaim a complicated piece of Guyanese history. Jean-Baptiste appropriates video from a parade in Guyana following the shooting and release of the 1990 French film JEAN GALMOT, ADVENTURER, a valorizing account of the French explorer who began living in Guyana in the early 20th century. In the onscreen text, the filmmaker’s blistering reflections play out and clarify, in the face of ruthless imperialist pollution, the need for a project exactly like this one, which can highlight the national talent and pride even within colonialist projects like JEAN GALMOT. This is a filmmaker using the medium to reconfigure affinities across time and strengthen a sort of one-way intimacy that can read between the lines of exploitative work. The footage is edited in a hopscotch fashion, jumping two frames forward and one frame back, drawing out each moment of joy to its breaking point and making sure that each moment of grainy video is given its due. In a program devoted to intimacy, the film demands maybe the most intimate relationship with its viewers, pulling your eyes over each jerking pixel. Also screening in the program, but unavailable for preview, is Jingyuan Luo’s THE YELLOW GHOST (2022, 18 min). [Maxwell Courtright]
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Enchanted Environments
This program scrutinizes human interactions and their effect on the environment, as filmmakers highlight the way we tend to see nature as fragmented. We consume and change things; nature that we perceive as relatively slow-paced starts to move too fast, forced to keep up with our hasty human stride. These films examine the ways in which we tend to collapse nature, flatten the space between the air and the earth, and suggest ways to find community within these now variegated environments—technological and natural. Dave Rodriguez’s PICTURE A FOREST (2022, 4 min) captures a wooded landscape through strobed images. The trees become pixelated, suggesting an encroachment of technology into the environment as unintelligible, robotic-sounding voices shout over the distorting trees. Everything becomes more and more warped until the simple images of trees become unrecognizable. In OUR NON-UNDERSTANDING OF EVERYTHING 02 (2022-23, 15 min), filmmakers eteam (Franziska Lamprecht and Hajoe Moderegger) focus, too, on the derezzing of nature. They center on a body of water in a wooded area and the creatures that reside there; dazzling pixelated colored discs seem to intrude rather than illuminate, suggesting the reflective mirrors of modern technology—this is solidified by the appearance of smartphones floating amongst the trees and the shift from nature to a cityscape with its pixelated, irradiated windows. In Erin Weisgerber’s DANS LES CIEUX ET SUR LA TERRE (2022, 12 min), the filmmaker takes us through Montreal, the camera interested in the stone architecture of the stoic buildings. Impressively shot, the camera moves from black and white to overlays of color with strobic effects, bringing energy and movement to still buildings and spaces. The effects also create a kaleidoscopic texture, as nature, art, and architecture combine. In LANGUAGE UNKNOWN (2022, 6 min), Janelle VanderKelen creates images of detached human body parts—eyes, an ear, a tongue—as they sensorially explore nature within the domestic space. Set within a house, the film explores not just nature, but the representation of nature. It suggests that nature is rebelling against the idea that it exists only for the pleasure of humans as it dominates the small pieces of the human body. Animated shapes of colorful coagulated landscape planets are featured in Diane Christiansen’s SPECK (2022, 3 min). As an anthropomorphic hand runs around the shapes, they begin to be infested by industry—smokestacks and cell towers—until it seems there is no space left. In Kelly Sears’ PHASE II (2022, 6 min), a voiceover explains that sonic weapons are being used to drive out people from the city to make ways for high-rise development. Large, imposing amplifiers dot seemingly bricolage-collaged images of the cityscape. Finally, Yannick Mosimann’s SUNSPOTS (2022, 9 min), shot in 16mm, graphically layers shots of the sun over landscapes. Sounds of crackling burning, suggesting heat, play over the entire film. Some of these sounds are in fact solar oscillations from NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The sensory experience of nature is often highlighted in these films, and SUNSPOTS especially suggests a connection between the natural spaces of earth and those much further away. Also screening in the program, but unavailable for preview, are Oona Taper’s THE FALCON CANNOT HEAR THE FALCONER (2023, 8 min) and Wen Pey Lim’s LDN 51.5072N 0.1276W (2022, 3 min). [Megan Fariello]
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About Life
Mana Contemporary – Through Sunday, 2pm, 4pm & 6pm
The works in this program showcase the personal, even confessional, side of experimental cinema. In all of them, the filmmakers proceed from the questions, “Who am I? Where do I belong?” In AS/IS (2022, 11 min), Natasha Woods starts with family, placing herself in a chain with other women and girls she loves: her grandmother, her mother, her sisters, and her sisters’ daughters. The film presents short portraits of each subject, shot on 16mm without sync sound, pairing shots of mundane behavior with reflections from the onscreen subject about family, femininity, and personal aspirations. The language is generally prosaic and the tone is understated, yet what emerges is sunny, even celebratory. THE SKY’S IN THERE (2022, 11 min), the latest from noted experimental duo Dani Leventhal ReStack and Sheila Wilson ReStack, explores similar themes to AS/IS and it places a comparable emphasis on the mundane. But the ReStacks are filmmakers in hyperdrive, editing disparate footage together in a rapid flow that feels attuned to our internet-driven times. In THE SKY’S IN THERE, the ReStacks give us impressions of their day-to-day life, which involves spending time with their daughter, hanging out around the house and yard, having sex, and watching other movies. Sometimes the filmmakers employ a dance-y, bass-heavy beat on the soundtrack that invokes a flashy online popup ad, and it serves as a funny counterpart to the decidedly un-flashy stuff that’s happening on screen most of the time. There’s a similar wry humor at play in WHY DO ANTS GO BACK TO THEIR NESTS? (2022, 12 min), which begins (after a faux-bombastic introduction) with director Alex Lo confessing to the camera that he’s currently digging a hole between Toronto and Hong Kong. This promises a film about Lo’s identity as a Hong Kong-born individual currently living in Canada, but WHY DO ANTS is more a collection of impressions and formal shenanigans than it is a fully formed consideration of anything in particular. One characteristic sequence finds Lo cutting together various shots with the camera spinning around over a free jazz freakout; Lo follows this up on the soundtrack with the pithy observation, “There’s nothing photogenic about Toronto. When I leave, I’ll remember people as landscapes.” Like WHY DO ANTS, Sarah Ballard’s THERE, WHERE SHE IS NOT (2022, 7 min) offers a mélange of images and filmic textures as it circulates around a central idea, in this case the life of actress Frances Farmer. Most of the soundtrack comes from an episode of This Is Your Life on which Farmer appeared, and Ballard samples enough of the episode to create a sense of how difficult Farmer’s life was. The misty black-and-white imagery feels appropriate to the subject matter. In contrast to the domestic scenes offered by the four shorts discussed above, Amina Maher’s WHERE THE FRIEND’S HOME? (2022, 11 min) and Fernanda Pessoa’s SOLIDARITY (2022, 9 min) operate on a consciously political scale. Provocatively named after the Kiarostami masterpiece, Maher’s short finds the filmmaker talking with a friend about notions of gender, queerness, and personal expression. Maher, who’s a transgender woman, seems comfortable discussing subjects that might make some people uncomfortable, but it speaks to the trust she has with her friend that she’s able to speak so openly. In the upsetting final minutes, Maher goes shopping on streets of Berlin and has to suffer casual abuse from transphobic passersby; the sequence is a sad reminder that not everyone you meet will want to be your friend. SOLIDARITY, on the other hand, is a tribute to strangers coming together. Shot on Super-8 during Brazil’s anti-Bolsonaro protests of 2021, it’s a rousing political film about the countless people it takes to make a movement. Pessoa took a cue from a Joyce Wieland film, also called SOLIDARITY (1973), that focuses on people’s feet; in this film, the emphasis is on hands. By not showing faces, Pessoa underscores the collective humanity that brought people out on the streets during a pandemic to protest an evil government. Also screening in the program, but unavailable for preview, is Yup Nakayama’s LOOKING FOR LOVE (AND JOB) (2021, 19 min). [Ben Sachs]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Jon Jost’s TOURISTS (US)

Chicago Filmmakers – Friday, 7pm

TOURISTS isn’t a free adaptation of Raymond Carver stories à la Robert Altman’s SHORT CUTS (1993); rather, it’s something like a conversation between Carver, who died in 1988, and legendary independent filmmaker Jon Jost, working during the 2020 lockdown and staying as vital as ever. The film is a collection of vignettes shot in small-town Washington state that consider Carver from several perspectives: as a product of his environment, as a prose stylist, as a chronicler of everyday American despair, as an influence on other artists. Some sequences seem taken directly from Carver, like an early long-take landscape shot accompanied by the text of a short story written in Carver’s unmistakable, Lish-honed brusqueness. (Jost also includes an extended shot of Carver’s poem “Gravy” as etched in the author’s grave.) Other sequences seem like pure Jost, like the climactic two-hander (carried out over Zoom) that’s as disturbing as anything in LAST CHANTS FOR A SLOW DANCE (1977) or THE BED YOU SLEEP IN (1993). I haven’t read enough Carver to say which sequences were written by whom, but I don’t think it matters. The stuff that seems most faithful to Carver is still inflected by Jost’s cinematic style, while the stuff that Carver clearly didn’t write (like the references to life during the COVID-19 pandemic) still communicates his fascination with the undiscussed feelings within blue-collar and lower-middle-class Americans. TOURISTS goes one step further to address Carver’s own dark side, with documentary interludes about the author’s history of alcoholism and abusive behavior. Jost doesn’t come to the trite conclusion that Carver turned his unhappiness into art but instead meditates on the troubling symbiosis that can exist between creative and destructive tendencies. Remarkably, this doesn’t detract from the film’s celebration of Carver’s writing, as Jost captures his themes and literary voice impeccably. Like Carver, Jost works in miniature in TOURISTS, mostly developing just one character per scene through sharp, carefully chosen details. Some sequences feature the same actor superimposed over himself so as to play different versions of the same monologue; these moments effectively convey the sort of racing thoughts that literature is typically better at conveying than cinema. Jost in person for a post-screening Q&A moderated by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. (2021, 99 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

Tomorrow’s Promises: The Restored Films of Edward Owens (US/Experimental)

Chicago Film Society at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 8pm

Edwards Owens was never granted a place in the pantheon of experimental filmmakers of the 1960s, that massive mountain of work in those canonized hagiographies of the era. No. Instead he holds a place in the much more interesting realm of sometimes-forgotten, sometimes-ignored, often marginalized filmmakers from that era that still possess the power to seduce and surprise. He's a filmmaker whose work could hit you in the gut as easily as it could frustrate the next person over. He was a gay Black man who made work in an era when there were no other gay Black men in the scene. And he's from Chicago. And locally born experimental film artists are as rare as a hen's tooth. All thanks to the Chicago Film Society for making new preservation prints of Owens' work so his name can continue to resonate with new audiences with these beautiful new prints. Owens began studying at SAIC in the mid-60s, went off to New York to make some films and live in the scene, then returned to Chicago to finish his degree at Columbia, whereafter he never made a film again. There's plenty to be seen of the influence from his mentor Gregory Markopoulos, but Owens' work possesses a depth of his own. Dramatically lit portraits, poetic superimpositions, and keen still-frame interludes dominate the work. AUTRE FOIS J’AI AIME UNE FEMME (1966, 24 min, 16mm) is his earliest 16mm film made when he was still 17. It shows an amazing level of confidence, and an equally amazing level of angst. PRIVATE IMAGININGS AND NARRATIVE FACTS (1968-70, 9 min, 16mm) is a short, silent, tinted, portrait of costumed and posed figures. It's a gorgeous film that continues the work he began (and perfected?)  in REMEMBRANCE: A PORTRAIT STUDY (1967, 6 min, 16mm). This movie is something else—an unequivocal masterpiece: a dimly lit revelry of pop tunes, drinking, and celebratory immersion. The final superimposed still images tear to the core. It's a film buzzing with energy and discovery that has absolutely retained its power 50+ years after it was made. TOMORROW'S PROMISE (1967, 42 min, 16mm) comprises the bulk of the running time and is his most accomplished work. It contains all the elements of the other films, sustained and controlled over near-feature-length. Watching it you might say it's a shame these films have gone unseen for so long, or you might be simply overjoyed you are getting to see them now. [Josh B Mabe]

Nightingale Projects: THE INFERNAL GROVE (Shorts/Experimental)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

A multitude of perspectives surrounding opioid use and addiction are represented in the second screening of the Nightingale Projects series, inspired by the Infernal Grove, an interactive, multimedia project started by filmmakers Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby whose work, also titled THE INFERNAL GROVE (38 min, Digital Projection), is the crux of the program. (Additionally, they host User and Study Groups under the project’s auspices.) All of the films may technically be termed experimental documentaries, focused as they are on real people, places and things, but the style of filmmaking and insight conferred are unique to each. In FORMER SINNERS OF THE FUTURE (2019, 8 min), Drew Durepos contemplates a lifelong friend who’s struggled with drug addiction, using the 8mm footage he shot of the friend’s son as a thematic focus around which to consider the complexities of life upon the occasion of birth. It moves effortlessly, with seemingly discrete ruminations—Durepos regards a worn-out vintage leather jacket that he bought at a film festival some years back—languidly connecting with the film’s larger intent. Durepos’ voiceover narration is particularly thoughtful, especially as he interweaves his friend’s story with his own. Alexis McCrimmon’s HERON 1954-2022 (2022, 4 min) is similarly a tribute, but instead to a loved one who passed away  of an accidental opioid overdose. It’s a bleary homage with rhapsodic images, some of which were transformed experimentally, while others—such as a beautifully staged arrangement of items special to the deceased person—evince an emotional significance via their staticness. It’s a stunning eulogy for what looks to have been a beautiful life. Liz Roberts interrogates her own life, albeit a particularly troubled part of it, in MIDWASTE (2021, 24 min), an essayistic examination into the several years she was addicted to drugs, including interviews with people from her social circle during this time. Divided into sections named after the person, place or concept she’s focusing on, MIDWASTE also includes old film and video footage Roberts shot as a student and images of artifacts related to her drug use, such as an ID used to access methadone and an old, empty box of buprenorphine. As the overarching goal of the Infernal Grove is to provide “an unsystematic structural analysis of drug use, addiction and recovery” that “is anti-carceral, anti-prohibition and seeks to amplify the voices of radical harm-reductionists and their coalitions,” Roberts’ film also includes references to how society is failing those impacted by drug use and addiction. In a particularly chilling clip from a local news station in Ohio, a councilman details how he’s proposing a plan to arrest people who suffer drug overdoses and compel them to pay for their emergency medical care, eventually hoping to build a case for no longer providing those services to them. The crux of Duke and Battersby’s film is a focus on services and experiences pertaining to harm reduction and society’s acceptance of drug users in geneal; interviews with various parties, from members of Vancouver’s Drug Liberation Front, which distributes free drugs that have been tested for harmful additives, and the first drug-users union in North America to a young Black man reflecting on his experiences as a weed dealer in juxtaposition to white entrepreneurs thriving now that it’s legal to a drag artist discussing their joyful experiences with chemsex. Duke and Battersby don’t forsake their whimsicality, however, employing an enveloping motif of upbeat contemporary music and time-lapse imagery mostly involving natural life that conveys a message of celerity and thus the concerns of those opposed to the harm reduction and acceptance of drug users being senseless in opposition to life’s furious momentum, against which we’re all defenseless. Curated by Caitlin Ryan; followed by a post-screening discussion. [Kat Sachs]

Night Owls presents Dan Sallitt x 2

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) with Sallitt in person!

Dan Sallitt’s THE UNSPEAKABLE ACT (US)
Monday, 7pm
In the day and age of such impersonal forms of communication as social media and texting, verbal discourse is an apparent taboo: the phone is reserved for holidays and special occasions, while friending on Facebook can convey any number of meanings, from outright mockery to subtle flirtation. Oftentimes, honest communication takes place more on-screen then off, and that sad fact is humorously illuminated in Dan Sallitt's fourth feature film, THE UNSPEAKABLE ACT. The act in question is incest, and even though it's ironically referred to as being of an unspeakable nature, the film revolves around 17-year-old Jackie's unapologetic romantic affection for her older brother. It is presented within a cloistered family dynamic as being obvious but unspoken by everyone but Jackie herself, who alludes to her feelings with her mother and sister while outrightly discussing them with the brother in question. In the film, incest is neither scorned nor glorified, and the benign representation never dwells on the moral implications of such attractions. Instead, incest is used as a parallel for emotional growth as Jackie transitions to adulthood; even as a glaringly self-aware teenager, her incestuous yearning is rooted in a state of suppressed arrested development. Sallitt's refined yet humorous approach to the subject matter is distinctly European, a comparison which he invites with his dedications to masters of French cinema. As he dedicated one of his previous films to Maurice Pialat, this one is dedicated to Eric Rohmer, whose influence is apparent within the context of unrealized desire. Sallitt's European-inspired sensibilities combined with his flair for anti-climactic drama create a film full of "plausible moment[s] of existence" (a phrase he used in a Mubi.com interview to describe lead actress Tallie Medel's acting abilities, which is also applicable to his own directorial talent), even with the taboo of incest looming overhead. In the aforementioned interview, Sallitt also said, "Filming two people sitting in a room talking is the ultimate in cinema." This is apparent not only in the scenes that take place in a therapist's office, but throughout the entire film. The essence of pure cinema can be found in Sallitt's portrayal of pure communication and self-introspection. (2012, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Dan Sallitt's FOURTEEN (US)
Tuesday, 7pm
Have you ever felt a sense of responsibility to a friend in the present because of feelings of indebtedness you may have had to that person in the past? Have you ever anguished over whether to provide emotional or material support to someone you once cared about because you thought they might no longer deserve it? Does the process of growing up with someone necessarily entail growing apart? These are just some of the ethical questions you might find yourself contemplating while watching Dan Sallitt’s remarkable new movie FOURTEEN, which features two of the best performances I expect to see all year: Tallie Medel plays Mara, a 20-something woman living in Brooklyn who goes from being a preschool teacher’s aide to a full-time teacher while simultaneously navigating the complicated world of adult dating; and Norma Kuhling plays Mara’s childhood friend Jo, an emotionally unstable social worker who has difficulty keeping any one job, boyfriend, or fixed place of residence for very long. The chemistry between these actresses is phenomenal: Through subtle body language, pointed glances, and rat-a-tat-tat line readings (in which they frequently seem to be collaborating over the heads of whoever else may be in the room with them), Medel and Kuhling always manage to suggest a rich and complex history between their characters. Sallitt, in his fifth and best feature to date, deserves credit for directing the pair to underplay even the big dramatic scenes: These women are in many ways temperamentally similar while being presented in stark contrast to one another visually (Medel is short and dark-haired with an open, honest face while Kuhling is tall, fair, angular and more guarded), suggesting that they are meant to be seen as doppelgangers. While it is probably going too far to say that Mara and Jo represent two halves of a single personality, there is a lingering sense that each of these women, while on opposite narrative trajectories, could have easily ended up on the path of the other. The way Sallitt charts the evolution of their relationship over a span of several years in his uniquely quiet and de-dramatized fashion only makes the drama that is present all the more affecting. Scenes take place primarily indoors in modest apartments, restaurants, and bars, unfolding in long takes that feature practical lighting, with the dialogue and performances always taking center stage. But what makes FOURTEEN not just a stirring experience but an exquisitely cinematic one is the daring nature of Sallitt's elliptical editing. He tends to end scenes without ceremony, often straight-cutting from one seemingly unimportant moment to another, making it seem as if no time has passed. Then, all of a sudden, the abrupt appearance of a new boyfriend or even a new offspring in a scene dramatically contradicts this prior impression. The cumulative effect of Sallitt structuring his deceptively simple 94-minute film this way is that he impressively conveys a sense of the ebb and flow of life as it is actually lived, felt, and remembered—and provides a devastating reminder of how time gets away from us all. (2019, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]

Robert Zemeckis' DEATH BECOMES HER (US)

Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:45pm

My first exposure to DEATH BECOMES HER, which came long before watching the film itself, was from seeing images in a coffee table book about the history of Industrial Light & Magic. Directed by the special effects-attentive Robert Zemeckis, it holds up as a visual marvel 30 years after its release: a stunning combination of practical and groundbreaking digital effects. It remains relevant as a camp classic, however, from its shrewd blending of genres and over-the-top performances; all combined, DEATH BECOMES HER, while maybe not flawless, is like the best of Zemeckis’ films, a perfectly satisfying watch. A biting commentary on aging in Hollywood, the film stars Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as frenemies waging war for the attention of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon played by Bruce Willis. Driving their rivalry and need for revenge is a desperation to find the secret to everlasting youth. They each discover a mysterious socialite (Isabella Rossellini) who claims to have a magic potion to reverse the aging process, but its side effects come at quite a disturbing cost. DEATH BECOMES HER’s combination of dark comedy and body horror is balanced seamlessly by the added melodrama of the four main performances—it's hard to argue a standout when they're all so great. The clever, slow-revealing camerawork and giant set pieces never let the iconic special effects scenes fall completely into the cartoonish, balancing the absurd and the grotesque. The film’s fun is in its constant teetering on the edge; DEATH BECOMES HER manages to express complete uninhibitedness with precise visual filmmaking. Co-presented by Ramona Slick and Rated Q - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema. (1992, 104 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
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This is the first night of Crackerjack Compass: The Works of Robert Zemeckis, co-programmed by Cine-File contributor John Dickson. In addition to DEATH BECOMES HER, Zemeckis’ FLIGHT (138 min, 35mm) screens at 7pm. More info on the series here. 

Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne’s TORI AND LOKITA (Belgium/France)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Two children who meet on a migrants’ ship from Africa to Belgium form a family bond to withstand a cold, predatory world that only values them as chattel in the Dardennes’ latest hyperrealist fiction feature. Their uncanny knack for making actors—whether professional or untrained—portray lived situations naturally is on full display in a story that might strain belief in less capable hands. The nerve and ingenuity of two young people who sense the precariousness of their every interaction with a society that’s looking for any excuse to send them from whence they came—or not bat an eye when they disappear—is so visceral, so immediate, that I felt my own heart rate quicken just taking it in from the comfort of my very secure home. Through a very specific story of two migrant kids, the Dardennes are able to explore themes of economics, culture clash, racism, family dynamics, and more without ever spelling them out didactically. More than their great skill in nailing place and everyday human behavior, perhaps this is their greatest skill: to reveal the universal through the personal. They pull no punches and rarely traffic in the kind of wish-fulfillment that is the meat and potatoes of most movies. They make the viewer fall in love with their characters but don’t let that love turn the movie into a fairy tale. If your heart doesn’t break at the end, you might not have one. (2022, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]

Louis Malle's MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 5:30pm and Sunday, 4pm

Despite their obvious differences, Louis Malle's MY DINNER WITH ANDRE has something in common with computer science in that both attempt to solve the "dining philosophers" problem. If each philosopher must alternate between eating from a communal bowl and thinking great thoughts, how can they concurrently do so while being unawares of their companion's own eating-and-thinking habits? Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory provide their interpretation of this existential algorithm as two friends meeting for dinner on a random New York evening. Shawn is a downtrodden playwright, while Gregory was once a very successful theatre director. Their dinner conversation ranges from Gregory's professional adventures to Shawn's humanistic cynicism. The conversation is not especially enlightening, and for the most part, it could resemble a discussion between any two creatively-minded intellectuals. But the simplistic nature of the premise and the complexity of its inner-workings present a diametric opposition that applies not only to the film's characters, but to its director and the viewers as well. Malle is just as much a spectator as his audience; Shawn and Gregory had developed the script before seeking a director, and Malle's involvement was situational rather than integral. His eclectic style of filmmaking lends itself to the unusual concept as he toes the line between documentary-style voyeurism and a narrative structure that includes voice-overs and a three-part construction. Just like Malle, the viewer is also left on the outside looking in, a relationship that is reflected in Shawn and Gregory's discourse. As Gregory recalls tales of exotic creative feats and spouts philosophical rhetoric, Shawn repeatedly asks, "What happened next?"—though he concludes the dinner by defending the contented existence of the Everyman. Much like those involved in making a film and the audience who consume it, Shawn expresses amusement over the interludes, but also relief that his life does not resemble the theatrics. Gregory, on the other hand, lives an exciting life but is driven to tears by this telling line from Ingmar Bergman's AUTUMN SONATA: "I could always live in my art, but never in my life." Screening as part of the All in a Day’s Work series. (1981, 110 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Gregg Araki's THE DOOM GENERATION (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday – Thursday, 9:30pm

I loved this film when I first saw the incomprehensible Blockbuster Video cut when I was 13. I had no idea it had been destroyed by Hollywood, and I probably wouldn't have cared if I did know. THE DOOM GENERATION is lab-made for angsty teens in the 1990s. A propulsive industrial/shoegaze soundtrack. Stunt casting featuring Skinny Puppy, Perry Farrell, and Heidi Fleiss. Sex, leather jackets, drugs, blood, and the kind of socio-political messaging and metaphors tailormade for punk teens first reading Chomsky by way of hardcore punk record liner notes. Queer, but not too queer. Like Kurt Cobain wearing dresses on TV queer. It is "A Heterosexual Movie by Gregg Araki," after all. This is a quintessentially American film: a road trip filled with romance, danger, crime, and cases of mistaken identity. The logical end of film noir nihilism at the end of the American Century. And now I love this 4k restoration with the proper letterboxing (finally!) and extended scenes that haven't been seen since its first festival screenings. Originally bought by MGM out of Sundance, it was dropped when Goldwyn himself saw it and was personally disgusted. After it was picked up and brutally butchered by its next distributor (not counting the aforementioned insanely confusing Blockbuster version), who didn't even fix the letterboxing for the film's DVD release, Araki basically left THE DOOM GENERATION to rot until he personally ended up with the rights again. The definition of a cult film, it was barely released in theaters initially, only gaining infamy via word of mouth and VHS rentals—and the absolutely crucial film soundtrack. Thankfully, this time around Araki was able to team up with his old friends at Strand Releasing (who released his previous features THE LIVING END and TOTALLY FUCKED UP) and finally got his film the way he always wanted it. This is the perfect time for THE DOOM GENERATION, and Araki's work in general, to get re-released and reappraised. At a time when American cinema seems bifurcated between mainstream movies of sexless, mindless, puerile frivolity for adult children and indie, eat-your-vegetables, gimme an Oscar, "this is capital-A Art" dryness, THE DOOM GENERATION is the perfect reminder of the halcyon days of '90s American Indie films—when you could have an exciting, sexy, pulpy, dangerous, offensive, action-driven film that still had something to say. In retrospect, the bleak, almost nihilistic, hopelessness of Gen X seems to have been more of a Cassandra curse than bored, apolitical, slacker malaise. Younger millennials and Gen Z understand this on a fundamental level. While us Xennials and Gen Xers saw the world get slowly fucked, they were born into one that was already, well, totally fucked up. I have a feeling (and hope) this film will resonate with them the way it did with us nearly 30 years ago. THE DOOM GENERATION is a powerful film, and we're lucky to finally have it in all its intended glory. (1995, 83 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (US)

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

Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's self-reflexive musical about the introduction of sound and, soon thereafter, singing, in Hollywood feature films is, hands down, one of the most inventive Hollywood musicals ever made. Sure, it's brash and brightly colored but, as far as mainstream Hollywood studio musicals go, it's not simply a rote number. To begin with, it preempts the popularity of post-modern strategies in Hollywood cinema even before Jean-Francois Lyotard had diagnosed the condition and it was also heavily inspired by Powell and Pressburger's THE RED SHOES (1948); the surreal and fantastical dream sequence for the song "Gotta Dance" undoubtedly borrows from the 15-minute long production of the Red Shoes ballet. Although SINGIN' IN THE RAIN is in many ways inferior, Donen and Kelly's desire to bring some of Powell and Pressburger's inventiveness to Hollywood was a courageous move. Comparisons aside, SINGIN' boasts its own impressive repertoire of brilliant performances, particularly Donald O'Connor's incredible physical comedy routines, sure to make even the most griping curmudgeon crack a smile. Although the most widely remembered scene in the film is Gene Kelly splashing around in the puddles and singing the title song, Debbie Reynolds' steals the show from him on more than one occasion—particularly her performance of "Good Mornin'" (which contrary to popular rumor she does sing herself). Throw in the fact that the Technicolor is stunning and the jokes still pack a punch 50 years later, and you have a clever, comic masterpiece. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN is a theater-going experience not to be missed—watching it on TV just doesn't do it justice. Screening as part of Doc’s Friday series, “Sight & Sound: The Greatest?” (1952, 102 min, 35mm) [Beth Capper]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Stanley Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (US/UK)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2pm

There’s an old saying that Americans have never had a knack for satirical comedy. DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB not only busts this myth; it achieves a groundbreaking level of glorious pandemonium that only Kubrick could produce and only Peter Sellers could perform. It remains timeless in a world frightened by macho warmongers, nuclear armament, and the advancement of weapon technology. In 1961, the Soviet Union attempted to expand into Berlin’s Western Bloc, NATO territory. At the time, the stated nuclear policy of the United States and NATO were that any military aggression by the Soviet Union would justify the Americans initiating a nuclear exchange. In retrospect, many Washington advisors allegedly knew how dangerous the policy was and warned a young President Kennedy to never follow the protocol under any circumstances; to do so would cost millions of casualties. Some of Kennedy’s top advisors went on the record stating it was a miracle nuclear weapons were never deployed, whether on purpose, through a glitch, or because of any one man’s stupidity. Concerned by the escalating nuclear arms race and possibility of World War III, Stanley Kubrick went to work. Reading over 70 books on nuclear weapons and nuclear agreements, the then-35-year-old director fell in love with Peter George’s novel Red Alert: a serious dramatization of a military hiccup leading to the nuclear apocalypse. After musing over the story, Kubrick decided to make this contemporary existential anxiety into an absurd comedy. In the film, B-52s planes fly around Soviet airspace armed with hydrogen bombs, ready to deploy within 2 hours of notice. After suffering a psychotic break, General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) puts an army base on red alert, taking the British Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers) as a hostage. Confiscating all means of communication, Ripper forces the captain to issue “Wing Attack Plan R” for bombers flying just outside Soviet airspace. When this news reaches Washington’s higher authority, there’s a War Room meeting called for the President (also played by Sellers), his advisors, a Soviet diplomat (Peter Bull), and former Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove (played by Sellers as well). The clock ticks as the men in power flounder in a Kafkaesque screwball nightmare. In his only farce, Kubrick captures some of the greatest comedic performances ever put on film. In addition to Sellers, there's George C. Scott as the eccentric General Buck Turgidson and Hayden as the brooding psychotic General Ripper. While all listed actors give a level of comic physicality that rival Chaplin’s Tramp, Sellers steals the show as the title character (in fact, other actors break character by laughing during his scenes). Kubrick gives the actor all the space he needs (of which there’s never enough) to deliver an unforgettable performance. There’s an unwritten rule in theater that if you’re having fun, your audience will too. Despite the subject matter, the viewer can tell it was a blast making this picture. There’s a deleted scene involving a pie fight in the War Room between international foes. It didn’t make final cut because the joy from the actors was visible in the daily rushes. Although endlessly entertaining, STRANGELOVE is bitingly critical of American postwar policy, and it laughs at the incompetence of a system intended to protect. The existence of Strangelove as a character epitomizes American hypocrisy, as he's a former Nazi hired by the American government to assist against the Soviets (Strangelove would have been one of the more than 1600 Nazi scientists who took part in the real-life US military action, Operation Paperclip). At the core, all Kubrick films have a pessimistic view of humanity and the future of the world. DR. STRANGELOVE seems the most thinly veiled in its pessimism and yet has influenced generations of filmmakers; the Coen Brothers watch the film during preproduction of every project. Kubrick regards structures of power as something ugly. He emphasizes bloodlust with phallic imagery: guns, warheads, and cigars. These men are convinced that the size of brute force equates to the size of their member. Alone in Kubrick’s filmography, STRANGELOVE stares into the abyss of existential panic and chuckles. Screening as part of the All in a Day’s Work series. (1964, 95 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]

Lisa Cortés' LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING (US/Documentary)

Doc10 Film Festival preview at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 7pm

Rock-and-roll has many parents but one who's received less credit than some of the others is Richard Penniman. The reasons for the slight include racism, homophobia, unethical business practices, and the man's own conflicted personality. Raised in a large churchgoing family in Macon, Georgia, Penniman was born with one leg shorter than the other and had a flamboyant, queer affect from a young age. His authoritarian father rejected him, even putting him out of the family home for a time; he only took him back once his son was bringing in money from performing. Taking cues in stage presentation from pioneering queer icons like Esquerita and Billy Wright and in musical style from Sister Rosetta Tharp and Louis Jordan (among others), Penniman fused church and juke joint, male and female, to forge a vision that would influence generations. A series of talking heads pay tribute and attempt to place Penniman atop the pyramid of innovators that birthed rock-and-roll but the trouble with hagiography is that it often polishes away the imperfections that make the idol most compelling. The idea that the only way a Black man could be acceptable to white America is by putting on outlandish costumes and drag make-up is a provocative and compelling one, but the film would have benefited from a deeper examination of his lifelong conflict about his own sexuality. The man's unapologetic flamboyance appears decades ahead of his time and is clearly echoed by Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Prince, and so many others; the notion that his music was as singular and groundbreaking as his stage act is less convincing. The filmmakers could have employed a tighter structure and cut out the unnecessary dramatic reenactments, but as an introduction to a unique mid-20th century performer who suffered abuse and degradation so succeeding generations of queer artists could thrive and express themselves without reservation, it does the job. (2023, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]

Francois Truffaut’s STOLEN KISSES (France)

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

One of two films Truffaut released in 1968, STOLEN KISSES is worlds apart from his Hitchcockian revenge thriller THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. Not only was STOLEN KISSES a step back into the introspective whimsy of his films from '50s and early '60s; it was a return visit to his favorite creation, Antoine Doinel. The second feature-length film in the story of Truffaut's fictional analog, it represents the aesthetic and passion of the French New Wave at its most accessibly entertaining. Picking up where his cinema-changing THE 400 BLOWS (1959) left off (if you don’t count the interim short film ANTOINE & COLLETTE), it finds the formerly despondent poster child for the anguish of troubled youth now as a lackadaisical, aimless, socially bumbling young adult. We see him get booted from the military, lose a series of jobs, and, because of his infatuation with an older woman, take for granted the one girl who seems to be romantically interested in him. The idea of Truffaut, or anyone, creating a sequel to a coming-of-age drama seems ludicrous— yet STOLEN KISSES is nearly as perfect as a film can be. A second installment that does not require any knowledge of the previous films in order to be understood, enjoyed, or appreciated. I would go so far as to say that while THE 400 BLOWS is inarguably the most influential of all the Doinel films (and possibly of all of Truffaut's), STOLEN KISSES is a far better film. It's better crafted and realized; quite possibly my favorite of his. There is a retention of contemporaneous French sensibilities in this film indebted to classic Hollywood that is an almost magical balancing act. You can tell that in the intervening 7 films between THE 400 BLOWS and STOLEN KISSES Truffaut was finally able to seamlessly weave his love of American and French cinema with his desire to investigate the world around him. His ability to express quiet introspection about the Vietnam era in the banality of day-to-day listlessness—as opposed to the sloganeering of his peers like Godard— gives STOLEN KISSES an almost revolutionary tenderness. This barely heightened slice-of-life film is the perfect type of film to see in the theater; it’s a warm weighted blanket of celluloid comfort—cinema as it should forever be. Screening as part of Doc’s Wednesday series, “Delphine Seyrig, More Than a Muse.” (1968, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Fred Zinnemann’s HIGH NOON (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 12pm

Reportedly Ronald Reagan’s favorite film, HIGH NOON marks a critical moment in the history of Hollywood cinema. The story begins with the wedding of the newly retired Marshal, Will Kane (Gary Cooper), to Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly). As they prepare to leave from the wedding to ride off into the sunset, word arrives that the outlaw Frank Miller, whom Kane arrested, has finished his prison term and is returning to town on the noon train. His wife, a pacifist, begs him to leave with her, but he quips that Miller’s gang would hunt them down wherever they’d go. She makes an ultimatum that she will leave forever on the noon train with or without her newlywed. He makes rounds amongst old friends and townspeople to find deputies to fight his foe, but no one enlists. Finally, Miller’s gang arrives in town and our hero is forced to face the long-awaited villain alone. Based on John W. Cunningham’s short story "The Tin Star," HIGH NOON took 28 days to shoot and was set to a final budget of a little over $800,000. Austrian-born director Fred Zinnemann has a filmography of characters’ standing alone in the face of adversity. Kane embodies the experiences of a director like Zinnemann, who pushed back against the standards expected of Hollywood directors at the time. Known to sketch, annotate shot lists and perform extensive research for projects, Zinnemann wanted to direct on his own terms and experiment with new approaches to filmmaking. Carl Foreman, a former member of the American Communist party, wrote the script. During production, he was summoned during production to testify for HUAC and refused to name names. Any affiliate of the Communist Party faced being blacklisted and didn’t have a prayer for working in Hollywood again. Recounting the experience, Foreman stated he was on his way to directing his own picture. Despite their ideological differences, Gary Cooper (Hollywood Conservative and member of MPAPIA) became very close with Foreman. When producer Stanley Kramer wanted to fire Foreman for the revelations on his communist ties, he told the producer, “If Foreman goes, Cooper goes,” before storming out. Cooper won an Oscar for his portrayal of Kane, but his health and career were not in a good place at the time; the studio first offered the role to Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Montgomery Cliff, Gregory Peck, and Charlton Heston. Although seen by conservatives as a condemnation of McCarthyism, the story of HIGH NOON says nothing regarding Communism. It works as almost a Western version of the Everyman play. As “a simple Western”, it can be appropriated to any context. Some audiences interpreted it as a comment on the ongoing Korean War. Even the Soviet state didn’t even like the film for its emphasis on the individual saving the day. Howard Hawks disliked the film so much that it partly motivated him to make RIO BRAVO (1959). Regardless, you can’t aim higher in terms of tight, intense filmmaking. Zinnemann’s compositions, photographed by Floyd Crosby, passively push the audience into the emotions of Kane and the other characters. Dimitri Tiomkin’s musical score pounds on awaiting the inevitable trial our hero will have to face. Like a locomotive, HIGH NOON moves at a set anxiety inducing pace to its climax. Screening as part of the All in a Day’s Work series. (1952, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]

Stephen Frears' HIGH FIDELITY (US)

Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

Now that Stephen Frears has retreated into middle-brow British heritage filmmaking (THE QUEEN, PHILOMENA, etc.), his director credit on HIGH FIDELITY, the all-American SubPop rom-com, is all the more mysterious and unaccountable. Transplanting Nick Hornby's London-set novel to Chicago with the assistance of star/producer/writer John Cusack and his boyhood friends from Evanston, HIGH FIDELITY succeeds largely on the basis of its slippery but firmly committed command of local detail. Cusack's record store, Championship Vinyl, is located at the intersection of Milwaukee and Honore in a Wicker Park that's post-Liz Phair but still pre-gentrification and consequently overrun with over-achieving Charlie Brown crust punks. All the aspiring grown-ups live in one of those lovely old apartment buildings in Rogers Park or Lakeview, where the rain washes away your tears as you stomp through the unkempt courtyards. The hyper-specific observation always wins out, even when it's purely invented. (There's a moment when Cusack hops onto the Purple Line at Armitage. The train enters a tunnel and goes underground. Now, every CTA rider knows that the Purple Line remains elevated for the duration, but that's banal. HIGH FIDELITY implicitly suggests something better: a Purple Line ride that retains the ecstatic promise of coming out again on the other side in a blast of sunshine.) You always feel grounded in the film's crowded chronology, calling up personal memories that are inevitably intertwined with pop signposts: we had that conversation the week that "The Boy with the Arab Strap" came out; we went on that date the same night that THE DREAMLIFE OF ANGELS opened at the Music Box. It's all of a piece with the incessant list-making, the encyclopedic editorializing, the ever-fragile mantel of expertise. "This is a film about—and also for—not only obsessed clerks in record stores," suggested Roger Ebert upon HIGH FIDELITY's release, "but the video store clerks who have seen all the movies, and the bookstore employees who have read all the books. Also for bartenders, waitresses, greengrocers in health food stores..." Yes, HIGH FIDELITY speaks to all these people fine, but let's be real: this is a movie that is deeply, specifically, and unmistakably about the culture of record stores. It uncannily contains a piece of every single record store in which I've ever stepped foot. And if they all vanished tomorrow, the species could be genetically reconstituted purely on the basis of the collected side-eyes, chortles, guffaws, growls, and straight-up asshole moves in HIGH FIDELITY. It's anthropology, but it's also a superlative romantic comedy—an up-to-date ANNIE HALL purged of Allen's misogynistic impulse to crack all the jokes at the woman's expense. No matter how small the role, everybody here from Iben Hjejle to Todd Louiso is a three-dimensional presence. (In the closing reel, Jack Black gets elevated to a crowd-pleasing four-dimensional plateau.) It might not be in my Top 5, but it's damn close. Co-presented by the Second City Film School. (2000, 113 min, 35mm) [K.A. Westphal]

Mike Judge’s IDIOCRACY (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

In an America that is just, Mike Judge would have received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor before, well, at least Will Ferrell. Judge has proven himself to be one of the sharpest wits of American socio-political satire over the past 30 years. From his Swiftian meta-take on MTV/Gen X culture, Beavis and Butt-Head, to his exaltation of the bumbling nobility of blue-collar America, King of the Hill, to his excoriation of corporate white-collar life, OFFICE SPACE (1999), to his critique of the pathological vapidity of hyper-capitalist tech culture, Silicon Valley, Judge has always eyed American society with a sniper’s glint, waiting for the perfect shot. However, as brilliant as all those are, none of his work was as darkly prescient as IDIOCRACY. A slapstick take on a future gone mad, this film pulls no punches at what Judge saw then as the unfortunate future of American society. And how we all now wish he wasn't so goddamn right. Much like how John Carpenter has publicly referred to his THEY LIVE (1988) as "a documentary," IDIOCRACY is as close to documented soothsaying as there ever has been. If I could, I would call Mike Judge for lotto numbers. And I would only need to do it once. IDIOCRACY takes place in 2505 by way of 2005. Luke Wilson, the most average man in the US Army, is selected for a cryogenic experiment, only to be forgotten by the government and freed in the distant future. The world he emerges into is covered in mountains of garbage. Plants have ceased to grow because agriculture has given way to big business. You can get a law degree from Costco. And the president is a former TV star-cum-porn star. Intellectual liberals have wrung their hands out of existence and all that are left are the scions of the moronic dregs of society. Average by all intellectual and physical metrics in 2005, in 2505 Wilson's character is now by far the smartest person in the world. And it's up to him to save it from itself. Buried by 20th Century Fox when it came out (it screened in 7 cities and had no trailers), IDIOCRACY became a word-of-mouth hit with over $9 million in DVD sales alone. It's not shocking, though, that the corporate behemoth of its studio wouldn't want to promote a film that has some of the most egregious corporate placements in the history of mainstream Hollywood—especially so since every one of them makes the companies look, well, idiotic. Back in 2007 I would frequently program IDIOCRACY as a double feature with Alfonso Cuaron's CHILDREN OF MEN. Two films, that despite the prima facie fantasticalness of their conceits, show a very possible future by simply amplifying and extrapolating on the world they were produced in. A wonderful balance of hope in the face of the grim and hope in the face of the stupid. Considering Judge is not known for his genre work at all, IDIOCRACY is surprisingly masterful sci-fi though you can see the messy zippers and seams due to Fox's total lack of financial support. So even if it kinda falls apart in the final reel, your stomach will be so sore from laughing by then that it won't really matter anyway. This review was brought to you by Carl's Jr. Screening as part of SAIC professor Daniel R. Quiles’ Gore Capitalism lecture series. (2006, 84 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Masaaki Yuasa's THE NIGHT IS SHORT, WALK ON GIRL (Japan/Animation)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm

The animated romcom THE NIGHT IS SHORT, WALK ON GIRL hits many of the marks familiar in Masaaki Yuasa’s work: infatuated men bordering on pathetic, complexly interwoven threads of fate, musical sequences, and an idiosyncratic narrative logic that feels like a flow of (un)consciousness. Yet the film feels just as fresh, funny, and inspiring as any of his other masterworks. The story is really hard to pin down; as the title suggests, a girl has a short night out and makes the most of it, either by her own determination or merely by chance. We meet an amusing cast of characters, including an unnamed young man desperately chasing after the main character (as he attempts to turn their “coincidental” encounters into fate itself) and Don Underwear, a man who refuses to change his underwear until he can track down the lost love of his life. Yuasa takes us along for the ride as he lays out charming, seemingly random encounters that eventually come full circle to impact at least one other person. This motif in Masaaki’s work is a force that battles against the characters' self-loathing. Every action creates a butterfly effect that binds lives together irrevocably. This allows the characters to find a certain serenity, even if they don’t act on it for good, like our protagonist does in her short, yet grand night. Screening as part of the All in a Day’s Work series. (2017, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]

Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret’s THE WORST ONES (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

When the Cannes Film Festival bestowed the 2022 Un Certain Regard award on THE WORST ONES, it fulfilled its purpose in recognizing both young talent and innovative and daring filmmaking. First-time film directors Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret and their cast of first-time actors from the working-class, Channel-hugging town of Boulogne-sur-Mer have produced a work of dizzying metafiction that is as sly as it is affecting. Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh), a Belgian director in his mid-50s, is making his first film in the town—the bizarrely titled “Pissing into the North Wind.” He and Judith (Esther Archambault), his production assistant, audition teens at the local school and cast “the worst ones,” in the words of one townswoman who worries that the film will further cement Boulogne’s reputation as a miserable place to live and visit. The film Gabriel is making is as pretentious as his auteurist outbursts are comical in their unearned entitlement. A sex scene he is trying to film with Jessy (Loïc Pech), a greasy JD, and unfairly slut-shamed Lily (Mallory Wanecque) is wince-inducing and a challenge to Gabriel’s control over his production. The real interest in THE WORST ONES is in the film outside Gabriel’s film. The stories of the cast and crew members are wonderful slices of life, from Lily’s grief over the loss of her kid brother to cancer to the difficulty Ryan (Timéo Mahaut) has controlling his temper and his torn feelings about his unstable mother, who has lost custody of him to his sister. Akoka and Gueret avoid clarifying the line between the “real life” film and “North Wind,” which is confusing. But the film’s exhilarating, go-for-broke attitude hooked me from the get-go. THE WORST ONES owes much to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne both in its subject matter and documentary-like execution; indeed, Mahaut reminded me in appearance and performance of Thomas Doret, the child star of A KID WITH A BIKE (2011). Mahaut and Wanecque are major talents who could have acting careers if they so choose, but all of the players in the film impress. At the last, Akoka and Gueret pay tribute to their French artistic forbears with a final frame that asserts the wonder of the movies. Highly recommended. (2022, 99 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Hong Sang-soo’s WALK UP (South Korea)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Speaking about Hong Sang-soo’s fifth feature WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN (2004) in the mid-2000s, Martin Scorsese asserted that one of the gifts of Hong’s films lies in how they pare away narrative events to consider simply “a way of being.” Two dozen features later, that remains true of Hong’s work, if not truer now than it was then. The relatively recent GRASS (2018) was virtually plot-free, and in THE NOVELIST’S FILM (2022), Hong cheekily divulged nothing about the titular project, focusing instead on the events that lead to its creation. Yet the way of being presented in these films is distinctly different than that of Hong’s early work—it’s calmer, more reflective, and often wistful. Gone are the resentment and passive-aggressive anger that fueled the first dozen or so Hong movies; in their place are contemplation and a sense of acceptance. This may be a reflection of how Hong has aged or it may derive from his ever-growing comfort in making films, which seems to come to him as naturally as breathing. In any case, a movie like WALK UP (Hong’s second feature of 2022) unfolds so gently and mellifluously that you may not recognize the sadness at its core until after it ends. Set in just one location, it observes a filmmaker (Hong regular Kwon Haehyo) as he moves into an apartment building in Seoul and settles in over time; he develops a sort-of friendship with his landlady, enters into a sort-of romance with the restauratrice who occupies the second floor, and occasionally considers retiring from cinema. As usual, Hong dramatizes the relationships through low-key scenes of hanging out and drinking (in a new twist for the writer-director, the characters’ preferred drink is neither soju nor beer, but rather wine), allowing their unspoken feelings to steer the course of their encounters. Hong also obscures how much time passes between scenes—it could be weeks, months, or years—and this forces viewers to guess based on how much the characters have changed. It would be a mischaracterization to reduce WALK UP to a guessing game, however; by eliminating interstitial events from the narrative, Hong attunes the audience to the everyday moments in which people reveal their true natures. (2022, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Alex Heller's THE YEAR BETWEEN (US)

FACETS Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes

Who knew a missing tube of shortcake-scented Chapstick could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Clemence (writer-director Alex Heller, in a bone-dry comic turn) accuses her entirely innocent college roommate of pilfering said item from her disaster area of a living space. College isn’t working out for Clemence. In the next scene, her weary but warmhearted mother, Sherri (J.Smith Cameron), is driving her daughter back to their small-town Illinois home. A kind elderly psychiatrist diagnoses Clemence with bipolar disorder and puts her on a regimen of meds to try to regulate her erratic behavior. It’s clear that neither her parents nor her two younger, “normal” siblings—still in high school and living at home—know quite how to deal with Clemence, who wonders aloud to a therapist whether she just has a bad personality. It would be hard to argue with her, considering the trail of destruction she leaves in her wake everywhere she goes. She's a powerful person who passes her days in a rage because she's unable to channel that power. But when her family must for once grapple with a crisis that has nothing to do with Clemence, she surprises everyone by rising to the occasion rather than falling back into the caustic misery which is her resting state. This is a surprisingly funny movie in view of the very serious mental health issues at play. Heller either knows the conditions she pokes fun at firsthand or has remarkable insight. No matter how selfish and bullying Clemence’s behavior becomes, she’s never a caricature. Her friends and family hate her and love her because she’s impossible, but they don’t give up on her, and that makes the moment she gets her head above water that much more moving. (2022, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]

Todd Field's TÁR (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 4pm and 8pm

Writer-director Todd Field (IN THE BEDROOM, LITTLE CHILDREN) returns to the screen after a 14-year absence with this towering drama about a lionized classical music composer-conductor (Cate Blanchett, in a role written for her) whose brutal control of the people in her professional orbit comes back to haunt and finally destroy her. Lydia Tár is a former protégé of Leonard Bernstein, and like her mentor she has won popular stardom through her talent for precisely articulating the emotional force of music; her own emotional life is one of praise and privilege, and her power as an international celebrity and longtime conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic extends to her domestic partnership with one of its players (Nina Hoss) and their school-age daughter. When Tár stands at the podium, trying to get her arms around the violence of Mahler’s Fifth, Field shoots Blanchett from a low angle so extreme you feel as if you’re craning up a cliff. But like so many celebrities intoxicated by adoration, Tár has developed an appetite for it, and her romantic attraction to young women in her orchestra pulls her along a trajectory that many men have traveled before her. Her 21st-century fall from grace is terrifying in its speed and steepness, yet as the final scene reveals, Tár must always submit to the music’s power, just as so many others have submitted to hers. Screening as part of Doc’s Saturday series, “Dóc: New Releases.” (2022, 158 min, DCP Digital) [J.R. Jones]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

 ⚫ Asian Pop-Up Cinema
The extensive Asian Pop-Up Cinema series continues its sixteenth season. Their in-person and virtual offerings are too many to list; visit here for more information.

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
A Synesthete’s Atlas, which is described as “real-time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise, in live collaboration with Ben Zucker’s multi-instrumental transformations,” takes place Friday at 7pm.

Urania and the Asclepiades, a magic lantern performance by Artemis Willis, takes place on Thursday, 7pm, as part of the “Science on Screen” series. Both events are free and open to the public. More information on all events here.

⚫ 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 now playing at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, known as we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video, which has a runtime of approximately 48 min, will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station. The video will run day and night through mid-March next year. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Latino Film Festival
This annual festival (one of the best in town) begins Thursday at 6:30pm at AMC River East 21 with a screening of Claudia Sainte-Luce’s 2022 film LOVE AND MATHEMATICS (84 min, DCP Digital). This event includes a post-screening party at Chez (247 E. Ontario). Admission includes the film screening and reception. Cocktail attire is strongly encouraged. Please note that the film screens again on Saturday, April 15. Check next week’s list for coverage of the rest of the festival. More info here. 

⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
A screening of five short films by Andrew Paul Davis, along with a musical performance, takes place Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission. More info here. 

⚫ Doc Films
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2010 film BIUTIFUL (148 min, 35mm) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the Three Amigos, Doc’s Thursday I series.

David Cronenberg’s 1983 film THE DEAD ZONE (103 min, 35mm) screens Thursday, 10pm, as part of Skin Under Skin: A Retrospective of David Cronenberg, Doc’s Thursday II series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago)
James Cameron’s 1986 film ALIENS (137 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the Open Classroom series for Clint Froehlich’s course “History of International Cinema Part III: 1960-Present. Includes a special pre-show program of 35mm trailers for the films in the ALIEN franchise, courtesy of Enjoy the Film. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Tom Tykwer’s 1998 German film RUN LOLA RUN (80 min, 35mm) screens Friday at 6pm and Saturday at 8pm; Spike Lee’s 2002 film 25TH HOUR (135 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at 2pm. Both are part of the All in a Day’s Work series. 

A sneak peek screening of Larissa Behrendt’s 2022 documentary YOU CAN GO NOW (82 min, Digital Projection) takes place on Wednesday, 5:30pm, presented with support from and in collaboration with OSMOS and EXPO CHICAGO. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Louis Garrel’s 2022 French film THE INNOCENT (99 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week, and Mark Jenkin’s 2023 horror film ENYS MEN (96 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.

Raphael Sbarge’s 2022 documentary ONLY IN THEATERS (94 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 4:30pm, with a post-screening Q&A with Greg Laemmle, President of Laemmle Theaters. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ South Side Home Movie Project
The live premiere Spinning Home Movies, episode #18: A Pocket Universe, featuring a new mix of home movie footage from the South Side Home Movie Project, scored and performed by multi-hyphenate artist Mykele Deville, accompanied by interdisciplinary multimedia artist, composer and performer [jef]Frey Michael Austin, takes place on Friday, 7pm, at the Green Line Performing Arts Center (329 E. Garfield Blvd.). More info here. 

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema
Find information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.

CINE-LIST: April 7 - April 13, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Beth Capper, Maxwell Courtright, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, J.R. Jones, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Josh B Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Dmitry Samarov, Michael Glover Smith, Drew Van Weelden, K.A. Westphal