:: FRIDAY, JUNE 9 - THURSDAY, JUNE 15 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

The Films of Maya Deren (US/Experimental)

Chicago Film Society at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) – Wednesday, 8:30pm

This program of short films by Maya Deren showcases both commonly and rarely screened silent experimental meditations by this force of nature who practiced in the American avant-garde scene and greatly influenced the future of experimental filmmaking. As an artist, the Ukrainian-born Deren explored movement, time (especially rhythm), the subconscious, voodoo, and the very possibilities of the medium of film outside of Hollywood. In addition to influencing so many filmmakers to follow in the movement of "New American Cinema," Deren was influenced herself by her work assisting choreographer Katherine Dunham. Many of Dunham's dancers appear in Deren's work, including Talley Beatty in A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR THE CAMERA (1945, 3 min, 16mm), and choreography plays a large role in Deren's meditations in each of these films, excepting the whimsical THE PRIVATE LIFE OF A CAT (1946, 22 min, 16mm), which explores the subjectivity of her and husband Alexander Hammid's decidedly less graceful household felines. Deren's films are unique in their ability to put viewers into a trance-like state of rapture and absorption, even as they refuse to synthesize or resolve dialectical disturbances or contradictions. Her skill with every element of the films is evident: editing, acting, choreographing, directing, and cinematography are stunning and razor sharp. She uses many techniques to explore the possibilities of film and probe the viewer to understand time and movement in a new way: cuts to match action across multiple settings, reversing positive and negative images, speeding up or slowing down actions, and freezing frames, just to name a few. Deren was also unique in that she was as much a film theorist as a practitioner, and it shows in the small body of work she left behind as she died, all-too-soon, at the age of 44. The Chicago Film Society brings us quite a treat with this program, which will be screened outside the Comfort Station, under the stars, as THE VERY EYE OF NIGHT (1959, 15 min, 16mm) was truly meant to be viewed! Also screening on this program are MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943, 14 min, 16mm), AT LAND (1944, 15 min, 16mm), and RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME (1946, 15 min, 16mm). [Alex Ensign]

Spike Lee's CROOKLYN (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am

CROOKLYN is Spike Lee’s contribution to a rich cinematic subgenre, the autobiographical memory film. Like Tarkovsky’s THE MIRROR (1975), Fellini’s AMARCORD (1973), and Davies’ DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES (1988), the film is based on the director’s childhood, and, like them, it’s designed to feel less like a story than a series of memories. It takes place in Brooklyn over the spring and summer of 1973, and for the first half-hour or so, Lee (who collaborated with siblings Cinqué and Joie Lee on the script) just rejoices in recreating this time and place. The weather is nice, kids play in the street, the music on the radio is killer, and people of all races more or less get along (the white neighbor played memorably by David Patrick Kelly is at worst an uptight weirdo). Lee’s filmmaking is as exuberant here as it was in SCHOOL DAZE (1988), with the director trying out all sorts of cinematic devices as though he were a kid first discovering the medium. At the same time, CROOKLYN is as vivid a depiction of poverty as you’ll find in mainstream American cinema of the 1990s—one memorable episode revolves around the main character (a nine-year-old girl presumably based on Joie) experiencing embarrassment over having to pay for groceries with food stamps. Alfre Woodard and Delroy Lindo play the parents of five children, and they do a good job of playing parents as children see them—their performances are warm but also a little larger than life. Critics writing about this are all but forced to mention that Lee shot one scene in widescreen without anamorphically adjusting the image to create a disorienting effect. Used to convey the young heroine’s feelings of displacement when she visits her religious, socially aspirational cousins in suburban Virginia, the device is—at least from this writer’s perspective—one of the more successful formal experiments in the director’s accomplished body of work. (1995, 115 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Costume designer Ruth E. Carter will appear at the Music Box Theatre on Sunday at noon for a moderated discussion with Jacqueline Stewart and a book signing. Presented by the Chicago Humanities Festival. More info here.

Ingmar Bergman's THE MAGICIAN (Sweden)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 6pm

Ingmar Bergman had the world in the palm of his hand. His consecutive films SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (1955), WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957), and THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957) brought international acclaim, catapulting the once-impoverished script editor financially crippled by multiple child support payments into creative notoriety. Already a highly accomplished theater director by the 1950s, Bergman had achieved the perfect balance with his talent in both mediums. Much like this critic, Bergman studied theater at university, where he began writing plays and discovered his cinephilia. During his final years of school in the late 1930s, a talent scout attended one of his plays and hired him as a script editor for the film studio Svensk Filmindustri. Throughout his rough first years in the film business, Bergman started his own theater company, directing multiple productions throughout the year while maintaining a 9-to-5-day job that consisted of churning out screenplays. The first decade of his film career was unsuccessful, with an audience indifferent to his work (even films like SUMMER WITH MONIKA [1953]). By 1955, convinced another unsuccessful picture would force the studio to fire him, he wrote his two options in diary: either he could take his own life or write a comedy. From that creative desperation would emerge SMILES. By THE MAGICIAN, the then-40-year-old director knew the full spectrum of artistic rejection and praise. THE MAGICIAN comes at the tail end of his explorations as a young director fighting to leave his mark. Along with THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960), on the brink of the transition into his next phase, one that was more experimental with form and structure. Moreso, this film is one of his last to feel like a stage director making a movie. Bergman, taking the world stage, delivers a parable outlining the relationship between artist and audience. Originally titled Ansiktet—“The Face”—the story follows a traveling mid-19th century magician, Albert Volger (Max Von Sydow), and his troupe consisting of his wife, an assistant, a young carriage driver, and his grandmother. As they make their way through the Swedish countryside, they find an ill vaudevillian actor who dies in their company. When they arrive at a town with affluent citizens interested in the occult, they agree to perform. The town’s man of science, a skeptic named Dr. Vergerus, accuses the magician of falsehood and imposture, creating a rivalry. In their magic act, Albert’s wife, Manda, plays a trouser role of his assistant, Mr. Aman. In the film’s climax, Bergman flexes his filmmaking muscles with a horror sequence; a decade later his cinematic approach to horror would grow for HOUR OF THE WOLF (1968). Retrospectively open about his intentions when writing, Bergman explained that Volger is the magician who is tired but repeats the same trick over and over. Manda believes optimistically in the holiness of human beings. Tubal is Bergman as a salesman of the art, trying to convince the studio about his next picture. With many personalities within the artist, there’s a searcher, the despairer, and a purser who makes sure the show goes on. In his 1990 book Images, Bergman explains “The words mirrored my longing for pure artistry. I had an idea that one day I would have the courage to be incorruptible, perhaps even leave my intentions behind. I had often felt that I was involved in a continuous, rather joyous prostitution. My job was to beguile the audience. It was show business from morning till night. It was good fun, no question about it. But underneath it all prevailed a violent yearning.” Few directors have had the privileged perspective on success and failure in this way. With the full backing from a film studio and state sponsored theater, the Swede develops the voice and the ideas that concocted this allegory and inspired aspiring artists for generations to come. “The Magician: Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain” is presented as part of the Science on Screen series. Followed by a bit of abracadabra and magical demystification from Luis Carreon, magician and founding member of the Chicago Magic Lounge. (1958, 101 mins, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]

Nightingale Projects: SPORTS MYSTICISM (US/Experimental)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

Sportsball. Referring to this year’s Super Bowl as a Rihanna concert. Hoping both teams just have fun! These are things that people like myself say. People who have neglected sports in favor of more creative endeavors. Which is not to say that this is the definitive Way of Things. Of course there are many creative people who enjoy sports and vice versa, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a perceived binary between the two in popular discourse. Despite this, sports as a high concept is prevalent in the arts, including experimental cinema. It manifests in a variety of ways, as evidenced in this Nightingale Projects program, titled Sports Mysticism. Firstly, court (pun intended) jester and local experimental gadabout Jesse Malmed will present a live performance, called “A National Anthem.” What could it entail? Knowing Malmed, it likely won’t be the National Anthem—or, maybe it will be. Either way, it’s doubtful to be the mawkishly reverent occasion that precedes traditional sporting events. Ben Stone’s HIGH FIVE (1999, 1 min, Digital Projection) at first appears to be a joyful romp depicting three people as they gallop around a chalk-drawn grid in the grass giving one another a high five, something anyone might remember having done as a kid at school; however, as Stone notes in an accompanying statement, it “comes across as absurd and silly, and generally gets a laugh when shown. I appreciate this response and agree it is quite ridiculous on the surface. However few know the true dark meaning of the piece, which was my personal contribution to a ceremony commemorating the twentieth anniversary of my mother's suicide.” The people in the video are Stone and his two sisters. Sport as ritual, as an outlet for catharsis, is considered here, giving new meaning to things like races and other types of sport for charity, as physical activity proves to be a tangible action one can take against the unknown. If cinema is truth 24 times per second, then perhaps sports could be quantified as 700 continuous 16mm photographs of a gymnasium? Takashi Ito’s influential film SPACY (1981, 10 min, Digital Projection) realizes just that. “My major intention is to change the ordinary everyday life scenes and draw the audience (myself) into a vortex of supernatural illusion by exercising the magic of films,” he told Image Form in 1984. Indeed, he uses the aforementioned photographs to beguiling effect, making it appear as if a camera is moving around a gymnasium, zooming in on a photograph of that very school gymnasium, then going into it and again restarting the loop, the film becoming a metaphorical Möbius strip. I couldn’t find any explanation as to why Ito chose a gymnasium for its setting, but viewers may sense an uneasiness provoked by the suggestion of infinite gym class. Kara Ditte Hanson’s UNSPEAKABLE HEAP (2023, 13 min, Digital Projection) centers on wrestling, which has provided a multitude of meanings in cinema, from the homoerotic to just about anything that can be connected to ideas around masculinity. Hanson’s film considers two Danish biological brothers who it sounds like have different adoptive parents; one was a rather successful wrestler, something into which he’d channeled his energy fueled restlessness as a kid. Using archival materials and present-day conversations between the two, Hanson emphasizes the ways a person might use their physicality to exorcise something within themselves. Paige Taul’s TOO SMALL TO BE A BEAR (2020, 5 min Digital Projection) considers the reverse, when what one is exorcizing is the sport. Taul’s grandfather had been a baseball player, hoping to make it to the Negro leagues. As Taul’s mother (his daughter) recounts, he’d been on his way to try out but had missed the bus (something Taul’s grandmother seems to dispute when saying that neither he nor any of his teammates had done well at tryouts). Still, Taul’s mother suggests that whatever the truth may be, this experience is what drove him to alcoholism. None of the people talking are shown on screen. Rather, Taul presents old footage of a man I assume to be her grandfather, goofing around good-naturedly on the field. The hope often placed in sports is evoked here; for many, it’s the only way out, and to have missed out on that is to have missed out on a different life altogether. Chip Lord’s BALLPLAYER (1986, 13 min, Digital Projection) has a proto-Seinfeld vibe that, frankly, aided in my understanding of its intent. In the video a man, looking directly at the camera, recounts getting dumped in an airport. The monologue, adataped in part from a short story by Garrison Keillor (“How Are the Legs, Sam?”), soon becomes about baseball; he considers the precarity of team loyalty and then his role in a recent pick-up game, where he eventually wins the admiration of his teammates through a couple good plays. A meditation on the sport and its restorative qualities, Lord’s straightforward proposition is oddly engrossing. Similarly so is Anne McGuire’s JOE DIMAGGIO 1, 2, 3 (1991, 11 min, Digital Projection), wherein McGuire covertly films baseball legend Joe Dimaggio walking around a spot in San Francisco. McGuire makes the most of this chance encounter by serenading the ball player—unbeknownst to him. The song she makes up is bizarre and entrancing, and one begins to imagine that he might hear it, an oblique commentary on the parasocial relationships between average people and star athletes here on display. At least one “team” was having a lot of fun. Also screening, but not available for preview, is Brett Kashmere’s WHEN CANADIANS ATTACK (2005, 4 min, Digital Projection). [Kat Sachs]

John McNaughton’s WILD THINGS (US)

Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm

Sometimes WILD THINGS feels like the id of classic American film noir, presenting brazenly the sorts of things only suggested by the likes of THE POSTMAN ONLY RINGS TWICE (1946), GUN CRAZY (1950), and ANGEL FACE (1952). The story, which revolves around various diabolical characters plotting to steal millions from a rich widow, is rife with archetypal noir elements (reckless behavior motivated by lust or greed, shady lawyers, whodunnit plotting, sharp observations about America’s class divide, expressionist lighting, etc.) but also memorably filthy dialogue and sex scenes so sleazy that only Zalman King’s regular composer, George S. Clinton, could have scored them. The classic noir trope of betrayal between lovers is repeated so many times that the nihilism becomes a self-referential joke; the narrative excess reaches its zenith in the final half-hour, which may set a land speed record for plot twists. Like many a superior noir, WILD THINGS features a stellar supporting cast; the standouts include Theresa Russell (as the widow), Bill Murray (as the lawyer), and Robert Wagner (as some rich douchebag). Their scene-stealing performances border on camp, but like the film as a whole, never cross the line. Credit John McNaughton’s steely direction for the tonal control. As demonstrated by HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (1986), MAD DOG AND GLORY (1993), and NORMAL LIFE (1996), this native Chicagoan can evoke the toughness of classic noir without grandstanding about it; more importantly, he knows to flesh out major and minor characters alike so that the film doesn’t feel like a mere genre exercise. The twists are effective because McNaughton (directing a script by Stephen Peters) generates enough interest in the characters to create genuine shock when they’re betrayed or bumped off. The movie is plenty shocking before that due to the frankness of the carnality. Prior to there being any onscreen sex in WILD THINGS, the characters are still all but dripping with it—as in Paul Verhoeven’s BASIC INSTINCT (1992), another major neo-noir of the ‘90s, people talk about sex so much that it seems like one of the only hobbies anybody has. The sensual atmosphere is enhanced by the southern Florida locations and the neon green that dominates the lighting schemes. Preceded by Barbara Hammer’s 1981 short POOLS (8 min, 16mm). Followed by a post-screening conversation with McNaughton and Cine-File contributor Dmitry Samarov. (1998, 108 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Antonio Giménez Rico's DRESSED IN BLUE (Spain/Documentary)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Wednesday, 7:30pm

While historical uniqueness doesn’t define quality, it’s hard to think of a more remarkable film for its time than DRESSED IN BLUE. Shot at the peak of Madrid’s La Movida Madrileña (the post-Franco punk explosion of the early 80’s that birthed, most famously, Pedro Almodovar’s career), the documentary interviews drag queens and trans women sex workers in their own milieu, with six subjects describing their experiences both in and out of their line of work. Director Antonio Giménez Rico uses a fluid style that prioritizes authenticity over reality, with the verité footage of conversations, performances, and even surgery blending with more obvious recreations. We see one subject talking with her “doctor” about beginning hormone therapy, and another whose reflections are cut with staged footage of her "younger self," a boy in a classroom. Putting any version of these stories to screen would have been radical for the time, but it’s this casual docufiction blend that allows for a potency that neither approach could achieve on its own. Even though they touch on the traumas of their lives and all the things they don’t want to be seen as, each subject frames themselves how they want to be seen, turning what could have been an aspirational fiction into reality on film. Like some of its subjects, DRESSED IN BLUE finds itself as it goes, letting form follow function to capture the messy whole. Giménez Rico and his subjects aren’t content with positive representation, though. They also argue and put each other down, sometimes letting pride get the best of them when it comes to questions of money and appearance. It’s in these conversations where the political context becomes clearest, the women's relative optimism about their profession correlating with age. Those who have only known a working life post-Franco have decidedly more optimism and self-regard than some who worked through the worst of the regime and its brutal anti-gay policies. But this context is largely kept to the background, the film prioritizing the present and the future as sites of queer self-actualization. For all these reasons, it’s basically an act of public service that Altered Innocence made this restoration of the work, especially in how it preserves the many spectacular outfits. As discursive as they get, Rico and the subjects never forget to foreground glamor and sex appeal, keeping at least one dazzling look onscreen at all times. It’s essential viewing for this month or any other. (1983, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]

Akira Kurosawa's IKIRU (Japan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Opening with an X-ray of the doomed protagonist Watanabe, the film's very modern satire of postwar Japan's urban bureaucracy quickly becomes overwhelmed with as coherent an exegesis of the French existentialism then in vogue as has ever been committed to film. Takashi Shimura's performance as Watanabe exemplifies the Sartrean protagonist: His character's stomach cancer (or, shall we say, nausea) brings him face-to-face with the possibility of nothingness, and correspondingly grants him his freedom, consciousness, and sense of responsibility. IKIRU's masterstroke is the severing of this narrative at the midpoint of the film, beyond which the tale is told by Watanabe's drunk, bickering, eulogizing co-workers; and it is here that Kurosawa does Sartre one better, suggesting that death is not the end of a man's possibilities, but that those possibilities can continue to refract and extend themselves in the social actions and interactions of others. Roger Ebert has said that IKIRU is "one of the few movies that might actually be able to inspire someone to lead their life a little differently"; we can conclude that IKIRU screenings themselves provide a practical demonstration of Kurosawa's theory. Presented as part of the Science on Screen series. Followed by a post-screening presentation on the power of joy, from Judith T. Moskowitz, PhD, MPH Professor of Medical Social Sciences and Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, who was recently featured in The New York Times piece, “A Positive Outlook May Be Good for Your Health.” (1952, 143 min, 35mm) [Michael Castelle]

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Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck, and Heiko Lange's B-MOVIE: LUST & SOUND IN WEST BERLIN (Germany/Documentary)

Goethe-Institut Chicago (150 N Michigan Ave, Suite 200) — Tuesday, 6pm

A disclaimer at the start of this irreverent video love-letter to the long-gone underground art and movie scene in West Berlin just prior to the fall of the Wall reads, "ALL EVENTS AND PEOPLE ARE FICTIONAL. SIMILARITIES WITH PEOPLE ALIVE ARE ACCIDENTAL AND PURELY INTENDED." Perhaps this is a bit of slapdash German-to-English translation but it is also a good indicator of the filmmakers' intentions when it comes to factual accuracy and provenance of filmed footage. Narrated by the ever-chipper Mark Reeder—who moved from his dreary hometown of Manchester, England to Berlin as an emissary of British punk rock to chase his own music and romantic dreams—this isn't so much a documentary as a kind of hyper-personal moving scrapbook. The free mix-and-match of archival and reenacted footage might be frustrating to viewers hoping to gain hard knowledge about a creative scene that burned bright and flamed out in under ten years, but those who want a whiff of what it might've been like to be there will be well satisfied. Music and art luminaries including Nick Cave, Tilda Swinton, and Martin Kippenberger flit past but it's only Reeder who gets a proper portrait. Everything from his penchant for military attire to his varied CV—including a stint doing porn voice-over—is gleefully detailed. He makes a likable Virgil for this short-lived circle of Hell but the shot of a triumphant David Hasselhoff serenading the demolition of the Berlin Wall in a leather jacket embedded with blinking electric lights made me long for a squat filled with desperate junkies. Everyone's idea of freedom is different, I guess. (2015, 92 min, Digital Projection) [Dmitry Samarov]

Alexandre O. Philippe’s LYNCH/OZ (US/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Perhaps every cinematic experience is like a trip to Oz, as we travel from reality to fiction. That notion certainly pondered in Alexandre O. Philippe’s LYNCH/OZ, a documentary that is as much about the power of cinematic storytelling as it is more specifically about director David Lynch’s obsession with THE WIZARD OF OZ. The film is divided into six parts, each featuring a focused voiceover essay by a critic or filmmaker (or, in one case, two filmmakers: Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson). Philippe skillfully transcribes the aural essays in edited images that not just reflect the words being spoken but expand and complicate them—his work reflects the unique visual and aural relationships of Lynch’s work. Each essay stands on its own, but themes begin to run throughout, particularly about representations of trauma, the earnestness of Lynch’s filmmaking, as his grappling with distinctly American mythologies. This construction is powerful, allowing each participant extended time to discuss their theories, analysis, and even personal relationship to Lynch, THE WIZARD OF OZ, and cinema more broadly. In so many ways, LYNCH/OZ is a reflection on our own individual relationship to film; as pointed out, THE WIZARD OF OZ is so often a “first favorite film,” so it is wholly informative to our understanding of cinema and storytelling. That’s as much true for Lynch as it is for all the essayists, making this an incredibly self-reflexive documentary. It forced me to think about my own relationship to THE WIZARD OF OZ, my obsession with it as a very young child, and the well-worn out VHS which had the film recorded from television, complete with commercials. I never thought that my early constant rewatching of that film might be why I’m such a Lynch fan as an adult, why WILD AT HEART with its overt references is my personal favorite of his. It’s illuminating to dive deeply into Lynch’s preoccupation with THE WIZARD OF OZ and its dream spaces, not because they’re a unique fascination of his, but because it is a fascination for all of us cinephiles. (2022, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Read Megan Fariello’s interview with Philippe on the blog here.

Léa Mysius’ THE FIVE DEVILS (France)

Chicago Filmmakers – Friday, 7pm

Léa Mysius is one of the most in-demand screenwriters in French cinema today, having worked with Arnaud Desplechin, Jacques Audiard, André Téchiné, and Claire Denis between 2017 and 2022. On the basis of the two films she’s directed, AVA (2017) and THE FIVE DEVILS, it’s easy to see why she’s so popular: here is an artist with a boundless imagination who balances an enthusiasm for genre storytelling with a sensitive understanding of the lives of young people. In THE FIVE DEVILS, these concerns are perfectly in tandem—it’s a coming-of-age story in which the young heroine gains understanding of the world through the help of some unique superpowers. Vicky (newcomer Sally Dramé) is an eight-year-girl who lives in the south of France with her mother (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and father (Patrick Bouchitey); she has a curiously advanced sense of smell, which allows her to re-live experiences when she’s stimulated by distinctive scent. She finds new use for her talent when her aunt Julia comes to visit for the first time. Vicky’s parents haven’t seen Julia since before Vicky was born, and her arrival leads Vicky to ask questions about the pasts of all the adults in her life. Through time travel, our heroine witnesses the events leading up to her birth and discovers that her parents are not exactly the people she assumed them to be. THE FIVE DEVILS recalls David Mamet’s play The Cryptogram in that it shows an adult world gradually coming into focus for a child, employing a creative device to dramatize this process. The movie doesn’t feel schematic, however, because Mysius as a director displays such interest in random moments—the movie has a living, breathing quality. Interspersed with the primary narrative are winning scenes involving a teenage gymnastics team, the cooking of an octopus, and the view of a mountainous terrain from a helicopter. These moments don’t always advance the story, but they give the movie a flowing, expansive quality that suggests a fully inhabitable world. Screening as part of the Reeling Pride Month film showcase, presented by MUBI. (2022, 96 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

Sara Vos' WHITE BALLS ON WALLS (Netherlands/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Filmed fly-on-the-wall style at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in the wake of BLM and pushes for cultural institutions to reflect racial and gender diversity, Sarah Vos admirably leaves the seams and scars of an epic debate showing. Faced with the incontrovertible statistic that their collection is 90-plus percent by white men, the director and staff grapple with ways to radically remedy the situation. Many awkward, uncomfortable exchanges ensue between these cultural gatekeepers, artists of color, staff, and the viewing public. Art museums are hardly the key venue to witness cataclysmic societal upheaval, but they provide a unique perspective as art workers tend to see themselves as more broad-minded than average citizens. It's clear that this particular museum has opened a Pandora's Box by questioning the hegemony of the white Western perspective on the walls; where the debate leads may well threaten the very entity they're employed by. A museum is a kind of secular temple, a place to exalt in and reflect on the highest humanity achievements. Is this still possible when the circumstances and context of what were previously considered masterpieces is questioned? The film doesn't provide a ready answer because there isn't one. (2022, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]

Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s PARTY GIRL (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 11am

PARTY GIRL is the mid-90s incarnate. The first person on screen is legendary New York City drag queen, Lady Bunny, seen as the camera wobbles up the stairs in a point of view shot to the entrance of a rave; it’s an immediate demonstration of the sincere homage to the downtown queer club scene in NYC in the 90s. Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s independent classic is also known for being the first ever film to make its premiere on the internet. Its costume design, too, is a bold exemplification of 90s aesthetic, all layered outfits of tights and jackets, with clashing colors and metallics. These fashions, never settling between grounded and whimsical, work so well because of Parker Posey’s iconic turn as carefree Mary, who spends her time clubbing and throwing house parties. When she’s thrown in jail for helping to organize an underground rave, Mary reaches out to her godmother, Judy (Sasha von Scherler), a librarian. Judy gets Mary a job as a clerk in exchange for posting her bail. At first, Mary is annoyed by the work, but slowly starts to dedicate herself to the Dewey Decimal System. The eventual clash of her two worlds, however, threatens her place in both and Mary needs to decide which path to take. Filled with engaging side characters, von Scherler Mayer spends enough time with each to build out a lived-in and complex world surrounding Mary and her journey. PARTY GIRL, with humor and sincerity, ingeniously celebrates career club goers and librarians alike. (1995, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser’s RED SHOES (Mexico/Italy)

Cinema/Chicago at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.) – Wednesday, 6:30pm [Free Admission, Rush Tickets Only]

A close-up of a pair of red, patent-leather sandals. A pan to the profile of a woman holding those shoes on her lap as she rides in a car. Eventually, we see other women in the car. A dusty, mountainous vista and an old, weather-beaten man roaming through a field of dying cornstalks looking for a few remaining ears. What do these people have in common? Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser’s directorial debut, RED SHOES, gives up its secrets slowly, almost wordlessly. It would be giving away too much to reveal the reason for the old farmer’s need for money to make a trip to Mexico City, but in simple words dropped here and there, his mission becomes clear. First-time actor Eustacio Ascacio portrays a very self-contained man, somehow not at home either in his rural hovel or in the big-city streets and, therefore, fairly competent to navigate both. An unlikely companion attaches herself to him (Natalia Solián)—young, a runaway and sometime sex worker, fearing for his safety as the obvious fish out of water that he is. Both of them have sad and troubled stories that both define Eustacio’s short stay in Mexico’s capital and reflect in very subtle ways violence against women. The shooting by master cinematographer Serguei Saldívar Tanaka is painterly and evocative—almost its own character as it defines the worlds of the film’s protagonists. RED SHOES provides less of a story arc than a slice of life—one that offers its subjects a dignity that life has often denied them. (2022, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

John Cameron Mitchell's HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Sunday, 11am

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH is a magnificent, glam rock, genderbending film adaptation of an off-Broadway musical by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask. Mitchell and Trask co-wrote and produced the songs together, and the soundtrack is electric, emotive, cinematic, and unforgettable. Mitchell wrote, directed, and starred in HEDWIG as the titular transgender woman from East Berlin. Hedwig grew up daydreaming about David Bowie and Lou Reed in dreary communist housing with her single mother. A failed misfit at university, Hedwig (then Hansel) is swept off her feet by American Sgt. Luther Robinson, a smooth-talking man who convinces Hansel to leave a little...something...behind in order to get married and emigrate to the US, which had been Hansel's dream. One botched sex change operation and failed relationship later, Hedwig finds herself in a singlewide trailer in the midwestern prairie wondering just what to do with her life. The number "Angry Inch" describes her operation to the extreme discomfort of unsuspecting patrons at the seafood restaurant chain where Hedwig regularly performs with her band, followed by "Wig in a Box," a fantastic number about the iconic women who inform Hedwig's feminine persona as she picks herself back up again. Hedwig's life changes dramatically when she begins babysitting an angsty 17-year-old who becomes Tommy Gnosis under her careful tutelage. They fall in love, Tommy catapults to fame, and he leaves his co-writer and lover in the dust. Hedwig has to pick herself back up once again, re-examine her Platonic ideals (her obsession with Greek and German Idealist philosophy shines through the song "The Origin of Love" and her dissertation title: "You Kant Always Get What You Want"), and figure out what she really wants to do with her life and career. HEDWIG shifts from comedy to pathos with masterful ease, despite this being Mitchell's first movie. He workshopped the script at the Sundance Labs and went on to win a string of awards, including three at Sundance Film Festival. It's not difficult to see why, with the fabulous score, cinematography, acting (Miriam Shor is especially wonderful as Yitzshak, Hedwig's disgruntled, scruffy present-day husband who yearns to don drag himself), and a beautiful animation sequence by Emily Hubley. In the 17 years since I was in high school, when I drove two hours away to Madison, Wisconsin to see HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH and left the theatre feeling exuberant, understood, thrilled, and wonderfully alive, this movie has shaped my understanding and appreciation of the film musical. I am happy to say that it still holds up. After seeing many more musicals since HEDWIG, I am convinced that it is one of the most skillful, gorgeous, and effective film adaptations of a stage musical ever made. This may seem ambitious, but I would count this wacky cult classic alongside FUNNY GIRL and CABARET as successful adaptations that use elements specific to the medium of film to amplify powerful moments within the drama and intensify the intimate connection we as audience feel with the protagonist. Like Barbra Streisand's first semi-sarcastic look in the mirror ("Hello, gorgeous!"), Hedwig's semi-panicked-but-pleased look in the mirror after she dons her Farrah Fawcett wig speaks to something tentative and tenacious in us as we don tenuous personas to tackle our quotidian lives. Though Hedwig's experience is strange and unusual and a general audience may not relate to her particular gender odyssey, the intimacy created by the most cinematic and theatrical moments of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH makes her quest for self-realization magnetic and compelling. Much like Minnelli's musicals, HEDWIG even seems to veer into the protagonist's mind in the final sequence, bringing an actualized self to life through music. I dare you to watch the final number of this movie and not feel chills. (2001, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]

György Fehér’s TWILIGHT (Hungary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Aesthetically, there’s much to commend about Hungarian filmmaker György Fehér’s newly restored theatrical debut, a longtime cult classic in his home country: Fehér was a protege of Bela Tarr, having served as a producer on SÁTÁNTANGÓ (1994), and TWILIGHT—renowned in Hungary as something of a “lost” masterpiece and only just now receiving its stateside release—was shot by Miklós Gurbán, who also did Tarr’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES. The sum total of this influence is evident. It’s a dark movie, and not just narratively. Sometimes one can hardly make out what’s happening on screen, as the darkness of all its elements congeal to create a murky void into which the viewer is drawn. (This is one of those films I highly, highly recommend seeing in a theater. On a television—or, worse, a computer—the subtlety of its chiaroscuro lighting is all but lost.) It looks beautiful, but what most strikes me portends amid the hazy surface. At various points, either in extreme close-up or framed abstractly within the composition, people act extraordinarily awkward in the face of tragedy. A near-retired detective and a junior colleague are assigned to investigate the grisly murder of a young girl. The colleague questions a friend of the girl as the camera focuses on her face from behind his shoulder. The opacity of her expressions is captivating; what she’s saying—details that inform the mystery of who murdered the little girl, which soon evolves into a MacGuffin of sorts—is less important, or at least less intriguing, than how she’s saying it. That encapsulates the nuance of Fehér’s vision, an adaptation of Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1958 novella The Pledge (subtitled “Requiem for the Detective Novel,” a lamentation of the genre’s penchant for tidy resolutions, the book a reworking of his rejected screenplay for Ladislao Vajda’s IT HAPPENED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT; Sean Penn adapted it in 2001, with Jack Nicholson playing the main detective). The details of the crime and how it’s being investigated are, for anyone even remotely familiar with the form, very rote: seasoned detective close to retiring, “one last case,” fingering the wrong suspect, et cetera, et cetera. Even the detective’s obsession with solving the case is de rigueur, except for Dürrenmatt’s (and, subsequently, Fehér’s) existential considerations of unknowingness set against the natural world. “I want to show to what extent the search for justice stands in ridiculous contrast to the eternity of nature,” Fehér said roundabout the film’s release. “Meanwhile, it is precisely this search that I am so fascinated by.” Bleak stuff, the idea that justice is not just arduous but perhaps meaningless as well. It makes sense, then, why a Hungarian filmmaker might be drawn to such philosophical ponderings over justice, the treatment having been doled out and withheld in spectacularly arbitrary fashion for much of Hungary’s 20th-century history. The conspicuously noirish schema is further compressed by a visual motif at the beginning and end of the film consisting of aerial shots of densely wooded terrain, the joys and tragedies of humanity nothing but mites among the flora. There’s a certain Lynchian quality to it—sans any levity whatsoever—and in much the same way that Angelo Badalamenti’s score is so crucial to, say, Twin Peaks, composer László Vidovszky's haunting refrain adds a spiritual quality that complements the existential reverie. Fehér utilizes all aspects of the medium to draft this metaphysical tome, which prompts only more questions even as it attempts to answer the one at its generic core: whodunnit. (1990, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
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 now playing 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, which has a runtime of approximately 48 minutes, 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. 

⚫ FACETS Cinema
“Nostalgia & Memoria: Journeys: Where We Go,” the second of a three-part Chicago/Mexico City Filmmakers Exchange, screens Wednesday at 7pm. Filmmakers scheduled to attend.

Opening night of the African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF) takes place on Thursday starting with a reception at 6pm. Edson Jean’s 2021 film LUDI (81 min, DCP Digital) screens at 7pm, with a filmmaker Q&A at 8:30pm. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Francisca Alegría’s 2023 film THE COW WHO SANG A SONG INTO THE FUTURE (99 min, DCP Digital) begins this week. See Venue website for showtimes. 

John Mossman’s 2023 Chicago-made thriller GOOD GUY WITH A GUN (109 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2pm; and Wednesday at 6pm. Mossman plus cast and crew scheduled to attend all screenings. Film Center members will receive a complimentary drink with admission for Movie Club at the Wednesday screening.

“Nostalgia & Memoria: Lo Que Dejamos Atrás,” the first of a three-part Chicago/Mexico City Filmmakers Exchange, screens Monday at 8pm. Filmmakers scheduled to attend. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
It’s officially Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for films and showtimes. 

Manuela Martelli’s 2022 film CHILE ‘76 (95 min, DCP Digital) begins this week, and Nicole Holofcener’s 2023 film YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (93 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes. 

David Twohy’s 2000 film PITCH BLACK (104 min, 35mm) screens Friday and Saturday at midnight. 

Wakefield Poole’s 1972 queer fantasia BIJOU (88 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at midnight, preceded by Poole’s 1974 short film FREEDOM DAY PARADE (11 min, DCP Digital). Programmed and presented by Henry Hanson and the Front Row. 

Pete Herzog’s 2023 documentary UMPHREY'S MCGEE: FRAME X FRAME (90 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday, 6:15pm, featuring a post-screening Q&A with cast and crew.

David Hogan’s 1996 film BARB WIRE (98 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday at 7pm. Programmed and presented by the Abhorrent Cinema; hosted by Chicago cabaret artist and film buff Noah Grey and accompanied by an opening act of genre-inspired burlesque numbers from a roster of guest performers. More info on all screenings here. 

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

CINE-LIST: June 9 - June 15, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Castelle, Maxwell Courtright, Ray Ebarb, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Dmitry Samarov