:: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 - THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5 ::

🏳️‍🌈 REELING 2023: THE 41ST CHICAGO LGBTQ+ INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Reeling, the 41st Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, continues through Sunday, October 8. The in-person part of the festival, which takes place this weekend at Chicago Filmmakers, goes through Sunday, while the virtual portion starts Friday and continues through Sunday, October 8. Select reviews of films screening virtually are featured below. View the full schedule and more info here.

Theo Montoya’s ANHELL69 (Colombia)
Screening virtually here – This film can only be viewed in Illinois
As a camera slowly pans around what is assumed to be his childhood bedroom, filmmaker and narrator Theo Montoya states, “I fell in love with the movies because it was the only place where I could cry.” Combining documentary, experimental filmmaking, and personal essay, ANHELL69 is a mesh of styles, free flowing through time. The title references a science fiction B-movie Montoya was working on some years ago, and this contemporary version weaves emotional audition footage with newly shot, dreamlike images of his concept. Anhell69 is also the Instagram handle of Montoya’s intended lead for the film, who passed away very shortly after casting. The original film was about ghosts, as is this new iteration. Rather than the imagined setting of his dystopic fiction, Montoya reflects on the real-world dangers and hardships of being queer in Medellín, Colombia, and the many friends he’s lost due to suicide and drug overdose. ANHELL69 presents an audiovisual diary of his friends and their experiences, which pushes beyond the confines of a narrative feature into something more personal and reflective, particularly of the importance and impact of chosen family. Slow-moving apocalyptic yet contemporary shots of the city interrupt at times, the politics of the moment made completely present. Documentary footage of protests intercut with eerie shots of his red-eyed cinematic ghosts, directly addressing the folding in of reality and fiction. Imagining his own funeral procession throughout the film—the car carrying his body driven by his favorite director, Víctor Gaviria—Montoya reflects throughout ANHELL69 on the importance of documenting his culture and friends. There's a hope that their memory—pieced together through this wide variety of footage—is not a ghostly presence but a real, affecting one. Screening as part of the QuE3R FrAm3s Series, programmed by former Cine-File managing editor Patrick Friel and Levi Sierra. (2022, 74 min) [Megan Fariello]
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Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 SPECIES OF BEES (Spain)
Screening virtually here – This film can only be viewed in Illinois
Sofía Otero, who’s around 10 years old, won an acting prize at the Berlin Film Festival for this understated family drama, and one can appreciate why she was given the award: the whole movie hangs on her performance, which requires her to explore the most intimate aspects of her identity on screen. That’s a tall order for an actor of any age, let alone one so young, yet Otero is consistently graceful and unself-conscious in the role. 20,000 SPECIES OF BEES takes place over the course of a summer in which Otero’s character comes to realize she identifies as a girl during an extended visit to her grandmother’s home in the Basque country. Also along for the vacation are her mother (a sculptor who’s taking some time apart from her husband), two older siblings, aunt, and cousins. While the mother, brother and sister love Otero unconditionally from the start, the other members of her family are slower to accept her; the movie charts their development as well as Otero’s. The overall arc of the story recalls that of another recent European film, Emanuele Crialese’s L’IMMENSITÁ (2022), which also considered the maturation of a transgender child. The key difference is that Crialese observed his protagonist in early adolescence, when children are far more articulate about their needs than they are at eight or nine; the protagonist of 20,000 SPECIES reaches an understanding of her identity more through intuition. Sticking largely with this character’s perspective, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren (making her feature debut as writer-director) emphasizes her physical, immediate experiences—going swimming, playing with her siblings and cousins, learning about her grandmother’s bee colony—and presents the adults in her life mostly when she overhears their conversations. The filmmaker’s naturalistic approach has the effect of normalizing an experience with which many spectators remain unfamiliar; the movie serves as a reminder of how cinema can dismantle social taboos simply by refusing to acknowledge them as such. Co-presented with Instituto Cervantes of Chicago. (2023, 128 min) [Ben Sachs]
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Meghan Weinstein’s HEALED (US)
Screening virtually here 
Considering that so many people have willingly given over their lives to their cellphones, it doesn’t seem so outlandish that an evil cabal would use cellphone technology to control other people’s lives. That’s one of the premises behind HEALED, which contains enough narrative turns to hold your interest over the course of its breezy 92 minutes. Shantell Yasmine Abeydeera, who wrote the script, also stars as a former pop singer who had one hit song in the 2000s and has since relaunched her career as the host of a successful podcast. Her pregnant wife is also popular online in some way or another; both characters seem to enjoy flexible work schedules that give them plenty of time to reflect on the state of their marriage. In one moment of reflection, the couple decides to take part in an experimental therapy retreat in the hope of freeing themselves of stress before their child is born. Veteran indie screenwriter and actress Guinevere Turner plays the therapist of the retreat, and as always she’s a welcome onscreen presence, adding to her characterization a sense of mysterious yet suave sophistication. The early, vaguely flirtatious conversations between Abeydeera and Turner are nicely paced and well played; you kind of miss them when the movie takes a turn into allegorical horror, as the couple discovers that their experimental therapy retreat is a literal psychological experiment and they’re being experimented on. In this development, HEALED touches on the unholy alliances between big tech companies and right-wing political interests, which are plenty scary without the genre plotting. (2023, 92 min) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Abel Ferrara's THE DRILLER KILLER (US

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

Abel Ferrara, who has remained odd and interesting and resolutely independent as other so-called maverick members of his generation have begun collecting lifetime achievement awards, splattered onto the scene with this ultra-low-budget, ultra-stylish slasher film about a tormented artist (played pseudonymously by Ferrara) whose creative block leads him to murder derelicts with a battery-powered drill. New York here is obviously pre-Rudy Guliani (the streets are infested with picturesque winos) and post-Kitty Genovese (nobody notices or cares if you kill them). But it's also uniquely Ferrara's creation, a collection of shadowy doorways and deserted subway platforms peopled solely by male winos for Ferrara to murder. From its opening admonition that "this film should be played loud," it's a heady, kinetic experience that seldom allows breathing space. Sufficient reasons to watch it abound: Joseph Delia's brilliant Moroder-meets-Goblin score; its dead-on takedown of the bandwagons that creaked along behind punk music and pop art; delightfully stylized murder scenes; and possibly the finest ending ever filmed by anyone, anywhere. Also interesting, if more elliptical, is the film's more or less obvious presentation of Miller as a homophobe of the closeted homosexual variety. He lives with two voluptuous bisexual women but seems uninterested in them aside from an early-film makeout session, and there are offhand comments about him cross-dressing and how he should just let his homosexual art dealer sodomize him. More intriguingly, there are the murder scenes, which, separated from their slasher-movie context, would look like the furtive grappling of anonymous gay sex in shadowy doorways. One murder in particular, which I read as the artist symbolically murdering the artistic block that has plagued him, is modeled on the martyrdom of gay icon St. Sebastian. This is a once-in-a-generation chance to see one of the unheralded masterpieces of the 1970s in all its lurid glory on the big screen. Screening as part of Doc’s Thursday II series, Depths of the Grindhouse. (1979, 96 min, 35mm) [Michael W. Phillips Jr.]

David Byrne's TRUE STORIES (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 8:30pm

Among other things, David Byrne's film is simultaneously a satire of television and a celebration of television. Two musical numbers specifically appropriate TV. "Wild Wild Life" has various characters lip synching to the song in front of a giant bank of video monitors, which all show a seemingly endless mélange of stock footage. "Love For Sale" is even more direct, featuring Byrne's band Talking Heads interacting with actual 80's era TV commercials before eventually transforming into chocolate-coated, foil-wrapped treats. Byrne's obsession with capturing striking environmental details is perfectly matched with Ed Lachman's cinematography. Visually, TRUE STORIES evokes the shiny pre-fab face of Texas, where money from oil and microelectronics makes everything look new, as well as the dusty, weird Texas, a result of its funky ethnic mix. Yet, at least according to the film's distributor, it was framed for the 1.37:1 aspect ratio. Perfect for TV. Screening as part of the One and Done series. (1986, 90 min, 35mm) [Rob Christopher]

Three Films by Gautam Valluri (India/France/Experimental)

Chicago Film Society at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.) – Friday, 5pm, 6pm, and 7pm [Free Admission]

Back in the golden age of film blogging, Gautam Valluri and I were readers and occasional commenters on each other’s blogs, Broken Projector and Ferdy on Films. While I have continued to comment on film, Gautam has transitioned to making them as part of the Paris-based artist film lab L’Abominable. In this program of three of his experimental shorts, Gautam immerses the viewer in edifices of Muslim India and the absences that seem to define the country’s Islamic past. MIDNIGHT ORANGE (2018, 11 min, 16mm) depicts a Muslim tomb in his hometown of Hyderabad in southcentral India. Perhaps taking inspiration from his former blog name, the images cut in and out as a soundtrack that mimics a broken record frustrates the viewer’s comprehension. Slowly, both sound and image quiet as we see a close survey of the building’s interior, including its intricate patterns in stone and the graves and headstones of those it entombs, the former weathered but largely intact, the latter holding those long withered. DURBAAR (2019, 9 min, 16mm) is similarly intrigued by architecture. At first only the sound of a Muslim call to prayer can be heard under a black screen. Then, we get a brief look at the opulent, chandelier-dripped court of the last nizam of Hyderabad, whose empty throne Valluri emphasizes. The establishment of this seat of Muslim power is depicted with a painted scene of the Mogul conquest of India. A peacock strolling through the courtyard signals the ultimate power in India today. UL-UMRA (2022, 8 min, 16mm), a black-and-white silent film, flashes through images of a mosque built in Hyderabad by Viquar-ul-Umra, an aristocrat who dictated the design from memory. The film itself interrogates the faultiness of memory as the images seem to go off track, skip, and move backward through a projector. History itself seems on the chopping block. [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Želimir Žilnik: Short Films (Yugoslavia/West Germany/Documentary)

Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

“Novi Sad, Friday, January 29, 1971. It is 3am. These six people are homeless. In this film, we try to find them accommodation.” With this plainspoken address to the camera, lawyer-turned-filmmaker Želimir Žilnik begins one of the greatest, funniest shorts of all time. BLACK FILM (1971, 14 min, DCP Digital) is at once an inspired piece of cinema verité and a hilarious send-up of the genre, charting what happens when Žilnik invites the aforementioned six men to live in his apartment in a misguided attempt at do-gooding. The remainder of the film interweaves scenes of the guests making a mess of the filmmaker’s home (and frightening his wife and toddler in the process) and Žilnik approaching strangers on the street to ask what he should do about this problem he’s brought upon himself. No one has a solution to the men’s homelessness, but at least one thing is clear: Žilnik is a fool, and his implicit faith in cinema to bring about social justice has no bearing in reality. The subsequent shorts in this program are less bitter, but no less invigorating; Žilnik’s approach to the documentary form is consistently imaginative and surprising. In UPRISING IN JAZAK (1973, 17 min, DCP Digital), various members of Yugoslavia’s anti-Nazi resistance recount their wartime exploits in the forests where the events they’re describing took place. The interviewees are clearly proud of what they did, and the jaunty montage goes a long way in conveying their energy. As the subjects occasionally reenact what they describe, the film achieves a fascinating folding-in of past and present—we’re not seeing history, but rather how older adults remember the actions of their younger selves, which in turn color how we see them now. INVENTORY (1975, 9 min, DCP Digital) is even bolder in how its subjects present themselves. In this work, Žilnik parks his camera on the stairwell of an apartment building in Munich, then has a few dozen residents of the building take turns introducing themselves. The subjects are foreign guest workers and their family members, and they come from Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy; their short statements provide remarkable insight into the immigrant experience, particularly in the evident discomfort many of the speakers have in front of the camera. Žilnik’s self-consciously presentational approach anticipates a number of contemporary photographers and video artists (Reineke Dijkstra is one name that comes to mind), though there’s an ingratiating looseness to the proceedings as well. The program ends with MARKET PEOPLE (1977, 29 min, DCP Digital), a comparatively straightforward profile of a large circus and flea market in the Balkans; here, Žilnik interviews vendors and carnival workers and advances a pleasantly earthy portrait of their traveling environment. It climaxes with a few shots of people tramping through mud to reach a circus tent, set to the sounds of a traditional Yugoslavian brass band. This passage perfectly encapsulates Žilnik’s cinema: funny, upbeat, and completely aware of the ugliness of the world. Žilnik in person. [Ben Sachs]

Tim Hunter's RIVER'S EDGE (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, 10:15pm

When considering the teen movies of the 1980s, it is hard to deny the power of John Hughes’ comedies to capture collective cultural memory, driving a nostalgia that continues to be referenced. RIVER’S EDGE, winner of the Independent Spirit Awards for Best Feature and Best Screenplay, is an entirely different take on teen-hood as a true-crime that bends heavily into horror. After one of their own (Daniel Roebuck) murders his girlfriend, Jamie (Danyi Deats), and leaves her naked body by the river, a group of California teens grapple with what to do with the knowledge of their friend’s crime. RIVER’S EDGE handles themes of violence against women, drug use, and domestic abuse with stark realism. Tim Hunter’s direction presents a natural grey-toned world as the jean and plaid-clothed teenagers listen to thrash metal while they struggle to recognize the gravity of their peer’s actions and their own complicit silence. Addressing throughout the differing levels of apathy amongst the teens, Neal Jimenez’s disquieting script is excellent; it is decidedly dark but not nihilistic. The film features expectedly unsettling turns from Dennis Hopper and Crispin Glover, but it’s the other young actors from the time who deliver the most impressive performances, including Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, and a particularly remarkable Joshua John Miller. RIVER’S EDGE’s influence may not be as obvious as other 80s teen films, but its effect is felt nonetheless; the repeated and haunting visual of Jamie’s body is a clear predecessor of the more iconic image of another girl found dead by the water a few years later: Laura Palmer. Hunter went on to have a long career directing television, including three episodes of the original Twin Peaks series. The event kicks off at 8:30 pm in the Music Box Lounge with Metal Vinyl Weekend spinning records (and summoning spirits). The Metal Movie Night pre-show of Metal Videos and Classic Trailers starts at 10:15 pm. Feature preceded by John Heyn and Jeff Krulik's 1986 documentary short HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT (17 min, Unconfirmed Format). Presented by Brann Dailor of Mastodon and Metal Movie Night. (1986, 100 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

The Art of Memory (US/China/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

This week, Daniel Eisenberg's lecture series brings together three short experimental documentaries from three very different decades to showcase, as the title suggests, not only how memory applies to film but also what film can afford to memory. In search of the history of her own family as Japanese-Americans living through WWII and tolerating the unimaginable animosity and atrocity in the post-Pearl Harbor era, Rea Tajiri in HISTORY AND MEMORY (1991, 32 min, DCP Digital) collages family photographs and 8mm footage to materialize images for memories that confound or are on the verge of being erased. Splicing personal narrative, in text and in voiceover, into the representations of Japanese-Americans in postwar mainstream dramas such as THE WAY AHEAD (1944) and BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955), Tajiri effortlessly pulls a single thread that wrinkles the entire fabric of history for populations—not only Japanese Americans but also Native Americans—who have endured racism, oppression, and acts of violence. “God bless America and God bless Japan” is what Cecilia Cornejo’s daughter Gabriela drew on a piece of paper overlaid with a projection showing footage shot from Chicago’s elevated trains. In I WONDER WHAT YOU WILL REMEMBER OF SEPTEMBER (2004, 27 min, DCP Digital), the Chilean-American filmmaker pieces together the unforgettable through the portal of September 11, two events that happened on the same date but 28 years apart—the Chilean coup d’état in 1973 and the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Cornejo records her father puffing a cigarette and recounting his political arrest and fortunate release from the Trejas Verdes prisoner camp. She questions what it means to be a self-victimized American as she paints a public wall with "America is not the world but part of it." Through her unapologetically personal and honest lens, Cornejo alludes to us how one’s trauma becomes another’s amnesia. What is there waiting for the next generation? Ouyang Peixuan brings us to the present moment, to the place where memory and dream entangle in THE________WORLD (2021, 18 min, DCP Digital), a mesmerizing film equipped with an adept and innovative visual language to simulate a fragmented and disorienting experience of being somehow comfortably misplaced between cultures, languages, and realities. Using Window of the World—a deteriorating theme park in China once famed for its collection of human-size replicas of global tourist attractions—as a metaphor for the nation’s collective imagination of the world (with a Statue of Liberty possibly made of plastic and the Twin Towers that still stood) and as an umbilical cord that connects the different time-spaces the filmmaker resides, Ouyang also reckons with one’s own journey of identity building—a large part of which is beyond one’s control—in an unserious manner that leaves traces of humor between pixels and in redacted subtitles. [Nicky Ni]

Fernando de Fuentes’ THE PHANTOM OF THE MONASTERY (Mexico)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 7pm

Fernando de Fuentes is widely regarded as one of the first great Mexican directors of the sound era, having helmed formally and thematically ambitious movies across multiple genres. THE PHANTOM OF THE MONASTERY shows de Fuentes to be an early expert at cinematic horror—the film is a triumph of atmosphere and suggestion that remains pretty creepy today. Proceeding like a nightmare, PHANTOM begins with practically no exposition. Married couple Cristina (Marta Roel) and Eduardo (Carlos Villatoro), traveling with their friend Alfonso (Enrique del Campo), get lost in a storm and seek refuge in an isolated old monastery. They’re allowed inside by an order of monks, many of whom have taken a vow of silence. The monks seem to view these three with suspicion and hover about them ominously; even if they didn’t, the monastery would be enough to put the heroes on edge. The titular location is realized through fantastic production design that rivals anything in the horror classics that were being made at Universal Pictures around this time (e.g., THE BLACK CAT, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN), with cavernous, richly shadowed spaces that suggest traditional Mexican architecture by way of art deco. The plot may be slim, with most of the first half devoted to generating mystery about the strange location, but de Fuentes (assisted greatly by cinematographer Ross Fisher) does such a good job at this that you’ll probably be sucked in anyway. Also, when the movie does reveal why the monks are acting so strange, the twist is outlandish enough to be worth the wait. On a scale of zero to William Cameron Menzies’ THE MAZE (1953), I’d give it a 6.5. Screening as part of Bride of Music Box of Horrors and presented by Chicago film programmer Raul Benitez and Viviana García Besne of the Permanencia Voluntaria Film Archive. (1934, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 4pm and Sunday, 3pm

Martin Scorsese's run of films that began in the mid-70's with MEAN STREETS is unparalleled, and for many people it reached its pinnacle with TAXI DRIVER. Calling back in parts to the dream-haze of VERTIGO—echoed gracefully through Bernard Herrmann's gorgeously dark score—and the knotted excavations of American history in THE SEARCHERS, Scorsese's vision of New York City's underbelly is, simply put, one of the greatest movies about time and place ever put to celluloid. Former US marine-turned-cabbie Travis Bickle navigates through the city's midnight hour as though it were a boundless labyrinth; the film's perspective transcending its protagonist's and director's viewpoint as though it were directing itself, doomed to wander endlessly like Travis Bickle, Ethan Edwards, or Scottie. It's one of those films—like THE THING, ZODIAC, or its aforementioned influencers—that feels as though the movie itself is thinking, pulsating, re-evaluating, building up and tearing down, frame by frame. The power of TAXI DRIVER—which profoundly influenced some of the greatest filmmakers of the modern era, like Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, Claire Denis, and Quentin Tarantino—is ever-flowing, the kind of movie that makes people start to care about movies yet is consistently rewarding and perplexing with each repeated viewing. (1976, 113 min, 35mm) [Max Frank]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Kathryn Bigelow’s NEAR DARK (US)

Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9pm

The word “vampire” is never uttered in NEAR DARK, yet it remains my favorite film of the vampire genre: at times dreamy, consistently savage, and surprisingly grounded. That grounding perhaps comes from the film’s supporting genre, the western. Director Kathryn Bigelow juxtaposes gorgeous, empty landscape shots with the character’s constant need for dark, confined spaces; these vampires roam the West in a converted RV. While the teenage vampire romance at its center prevents full cynicism, NEAR DARK is visually impressive in its grimy gore and thematically focused on the extreme violence of the nomadic creature-of-the-night lifestyle, hostilely stripping romanticism from all its genres. After cowboy Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) is transformed into a vampire by his new girlfriend, Mae, he's forced to join her found family: leader Jesse Hooker (Lance Henriksen), the belligerent Severen (Bill Paxton), collected Diamondback (Jeanette Goldstein), and tortured child vampire Homer (Joshua John Miller). Caleb’s father (Tim Thomerson) and young sister (Marcie Leeds) determine to find him as he gets more involved in the exploits of Mae’s group. One scene in particular stands out among the horror genre both for its tense building of violence and its highlighting of the fantastic ensemble cast. All hell breaks loose when the group enters a dive bar, terrorizing the locals with their complete sense of dominance and apathy. Paxton’s memorable performance as Severen is on full display here, all deranged swagger. While Paxton is the rowdiest, the entire cast is electric as they attack the patrons, each in their own specific way. Bigelow constructs anxiety through her skillful use of the space, close ups of meaningful glances, and with the jukebox continuing to play, shifting from The Cramps to country music. Speaking of music, Tangerine Dream provides the film’s synth score, and it's just another noteworthy addition to a film full of excellent moments and performances. Screening as part of the Bride of Music Box of Horrors. (1987, 94 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

Charles Laughton's THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 5:30pm and Thursday, 8:30pm

Though now considered a classic, at the time of THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER's release in 1955 the American critics and public rejected it; Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester later remembered, "It just broke his heart." In 1954, the great author and film critic James Agee adapted Davis Grubb's bestselling novel The Night of the Hunter, which is loosely based on a series of actual crimes in rural West Virginia during the Great Depression.  In Laughton's Southern Gothic film, the dangerous Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) meets a condemned man named Ben Harper in prison, who accidentally reveals that he hid $10,000 in stolen money somewhere in his home. After he gets out of jail, the preacher seeks out Ben's widow Willa (Shelley Winters) and her children John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce); he even seduces Willa into marrying him. But Powell shifts his attention to John and Pearl when he suspects they know the money's location, and the children in turn flee in fear from their home. As Laughton crafted his story and its imagery, the work of the American cinematic pioneer D. W. Griffith primarily influenced him. For this new filmmaker, Griffith mastered a heightened, poetic melodrama, and Laughton aspired to recapture the power of his silent cinema. At the same time, Laughton and cinematographer Stanley Cortez also applied the techniques of German Expressionism to render this strange fairy tale of the Deep South. In his review of THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER in the Chicago Reader, critic Dave Kehr specified, "Laughton's direction has Germanic overtones—not only in the expressionism that occasionally grips the image, but also in a pervasive, brooding romanticism that suggests the Erl-King of Goethe and Schubert.  But ultimately the source of its style and power is mysterious—it is a film without precedent and without any real equals." Screening as part of the One and Done series. (1955, 93 min, 35mm) [Candace Wirt]

Barbara Loden's WANDA (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 8pm

Inspired by Jean-Luc Godard's BREATHLESS, the little-known, but very talented actress Barbara Loden wrote and directed her first and only film, WANDA, in 1970. Although she cast mostly nonprofessional actors for other roles, Loden herself stars as Wanda Goronski, a coal miner's wife who leaves her husband and children because she's "just no good." Put down as "Lover" and "Blondie" by other men she meets afterward, Wanda eventually takes up with a married bank robber (Michael Higgins) who tells her to call him Mr. Dennis, and they kill time on the road, running from the law through a landscape colored by distinctly American poverty. From a distance, the often expressionless, yet beautiful Wanda may appear like one of the lifeless mannequins that cinematographer Nicolas Proferes shoots in a department store; but Wanda is aware that she is a lost soul. Loden later described her partly autobiographical character: "She's trapped and she will never, ever get out of it and there are millions like her." Throughout this slow film of long takes, Wanda is always with some man or another, believing that she cannot take care of herself, that she is not a self. She finds herself in the hands of a criminal who only tolerates obedience, the same demand made of her by society. Loden's Wanda is both an impenetrable cipher and a fully embodied human being. She tells Mr. Dennis, "I don't have anything. Never did have anything, never will have anything." He bitterly responds, "That's stupid. You don't want anything, you won't have anything. You don't have anything, you're nothing. May as well be dead. You're not even a citizen of the United States." But while Wanda means nothing, it's not because she doesn't try. Society never gave her a chance. WANDA is a masterpiece of independent filmmaking that portrays what is rarely found onscreen—the true experience of a woman's life. Screening as part of the One and Done series. (1970, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Candace Wirt]

Jean Vigo's L'ATALANTE (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

There are movies that put you to sleep, and then there are movies that remind you that you are asleep: Jean Vigo's cryptically peerless L'ATALANTE, only somewhat recognizable as narrative cinema, sometimes seems as close a document as any of the inspired dreamlife of a modernizing Europe. Deliberately given an uninteresting screenplay by his producer, the literally feverish (he would die of Tuberculosis later that year) 28-year-old Jean Vigo orchestrated (and improvised) the playful and violent titular floating world (partially filmed on an actual barge in the Seine) which would magically transport its honeymooning, rural protagonist Juliette (Dita Parlo) into the strange crowds and technological chaos of Parisian urbanity. And in his legendary performance of the barge's old hand Jules, Swiss actor Michel Simon portrays the rage and kindness of the perpetually besotted with an empathy worthy of WITHNAIL AND I's Richard E. Grant. Meticulously restored in 1989 from Vigo's notes, the resultant ludic limbo—where the provincial certainty and simplicity of heterosexual kinship is perpetually thrown into doubt—will be either recognizable as The Way We Live Now, or as an explicitly political affront to the dozing apathy of cultural conservatism in all of its forms. Screening as part of the One and Done series. (1934, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Castelle]

Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor's SAFETY LAST! (US/Silent)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 6:30pm

From its very first gag, SAFETY LAST! teaches us in real time that lies and deceit are the name of the game. Our lead, the ever-expressive Harold Lloyd, is weepily saying goodbye to his loved ones, trapped behind bars, with a noose awaiting him in the background. Except the bars are not prison bars, they're bars on a ticket booth. The noose is actually a trackside pickup hoop. And the “prison” we’ve been led to believe is our first location is actually a train station, where Lloyd awaits his ride to the big city to claim his fortune, as any good American was set to do in the early 1920s. What we see cannot be believed, and that continues to be the case as our hero desperately tries to climb the corporate ladder in record time without his love (Mildred Davis) ever suspecting he’s living in relative squalor. Lacking the whimsical naivete of Charlie Chaplin and the stone-faced curiosity of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd is often positioned as the everyman of the silent film era, a moniker that translated to him becoming the highest-grossing of the silent comedy stars. His adventures in SAFETY LAST!—though based in solid emotional truths befitting a young man trying to make it big in a capitalist society are as gag-forward as they come, and they still come off as relatable to a contemporary audience. Lloyd and his best pal, “Limpy” Bill (Bill Strother), have numerous disastrous run-ins with the local police force; Lloyd has tantamount customer service frustrations working as a sales clerk; and his love for his girl back home makes him waste his money on jewelry rather than buy a good meal for himself. Delightful gags all, but gags rooted in the experiences of the "common man" and ones that have you howling along in recognition. This all of course leads to the film’s best-known set piece, and maybe one of the most renowned images in the history of cinema: Lloyd climbing the Bolton Building as a publicity stunt for his job, eventually finding himself dangling from a giant clock in a visual that’s equal parts astounding and gut-busting. Even this image, narratively, is built on deceit; it was “Limpy” Bill who was supposed to be pulling this stunt, but a mix-up behind the scenes leaves Lloyd with no choice but to commit to the act himself. If there’s anything that we can relate to in Lloyd, our perennial everyman, it’s that sometimes you’ve got to commit to the bit, no matter how ludicrous it is, especially when money’s involved. Screening in celebration of National Silent Movie Day, with live piano accompaniment by David Drazin. (1923, 73 min, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]

Jonathan Demme's STOP MAKING SENSE (US/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

In nearly every shot, STOP MAKING SENSE makes the case that Jonathan Demme was the greatest director of musical performance in American cinema. It isn't difficult to convey the joy of making music, but Demme's attention to the interplay between musicians (and, in some inspired moments, between the musicians and their crew) conveys the imagination, hard work, and camaraderie behind any good song.  And, needless to say, the songs here are very, very good. By this point (the performances are culled from three concerts from 1983), Talking Heads were the headiest American band to achieve their degree of success, and they made the most of it, doubling their line-up to include back-up singers and a few instrumentalists from the golden years of George Clinton's Funkadelic. It's never openly acknowledged that the five new members are Black and the Heads are white; the sheer creativity of the music, which fuses everything from soul to traditional African rhythms to then-advanced electronic effects, is fully utopian in its spirit. (1984, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s MAMI WATA (Nigeria/France/UK)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

The African water goddess Mami Wata is a staple of storytelling in its many forms throughout Western Africa. Her latest iteration, in Nigerian genre filmmaker C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s MAMI WATA, illustrates the tension between traditional beliefs and ways of life and the press for the material progress that such things as paved roads, electricity, and hospitals can provide. The action takes place in Iyi, a traditional village on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. In exchange for tributes of food and money, Mama Efe (Rita Edochie) acts as the intermediary who asks Mami Wata to protect and heal the villagers. But belief is waning, and when a man (Emeka Amakeze) washes up on shore, the villagers face the most dangerous threat yet. Obasi leaves no doubt as to his belief in Mami Wata and his disdain for Western progress; to put a point on it, Amakeze’s character wears a cross around his neck and declines to adorn himself with paint and sea shells. The film is quite beautifully shot in black and white, and Efe’s daughter Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) and especially adopted daughter Prisca (Evelyne Ily Juhen) help pull the plot taut. I’ve started to think of Western Africa as the folklore capital of the continent after having seen several films from that area traffic in myth—Salif Traoré’s FARO: GODDESS OF THE WATERS (2008, Mali), Alain Gomis’ TEY (2012, Senegal), and Mati Diop’s ATLANTICS (2019, Senegal). But perhaps this tendency can be traced to the films’ backers. All of these films, as well as the West African-inflected ADAMA (2015) from French director Simon Rouby, were partially or wholly French-produced or co-produced. Although this is a decidedly small sample, these films are the ones that have made it to Western audiences, suggesting that these creators and viewers may be more comfortable dealing with Africa at a fanciful remove. (2023, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Hal Ashby's HAROLD AND MAUDE (US)

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

Hal Ashby’s second film, HAROLD AND MAUDE, is a morbid black comedy about finding one’s own happiness and what that means across generations. Harold (Bud Cort) is a disaffected young man living with his wealthy widowed mother who craves her attention, staging elaborately gruesome fake suicide scene, which she ignores. Harold also attends funeral of people he does not know. One day while attending one of these, he meets Maude (Ruth Gordon), a nearly 80-year-old woman with an unusually strong zest for life and wisdom to match her years. The two strike up an unlikely friendship that leads to more, as Harold learns there’s more to life than what he’s known in his hermetic world. Ashby’s film received mixed opinions upon its initial release but has aged well and gained a strong cult following in the years since thanks in part to its zany unpredictability, engaging performances by Gordon and Cort, and its bright, upbeat score performed by Cat Stevens. Harold’s moroseness and seeming death wish, the film’s exploration of mother-son relationships through Harold’s relationship with Maude, and the extent to which that reaches add a dark undercurrent to this film about coming of age and living life to the fullest. Screening as part of the Amour Fou series. (1971, 91 min, 35mm) [Kyle Cubr]

Albert & David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin's SALESMAN (US/Documentary)

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

In recent years Mad Men has offered a sleek, sophisticated depiction of 1960s consumerism, romanticizing the art of the sell. By contrast, the people and places encountered in SALESMAN couldn't be further removed from the world of Don Draper and Madison Avenue. A quietly devastating study of door-to-door Bible peddlers, SALESMAN is at once a cinéma verité classic, a critique of commodification, and a portrait of the other 1960's America. Anticipating Jim Jarmusch's STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1984), the film captures an America that feels empty, from the blank winter landscapes of New England to the equally evacuated outskirts of Miami Beach. Though the film follows four salesmen, Paul Brennan (alias "the Badger"), the unsuccessful, disheartened cynic of the group, becomes the central focus. Despite encouragement from his successful colleagues/competitors, Brennan struggles to close a sale, constantly wallowing in his shortcomings. Conscious of the cage that confines him, he drifts further and further into a despondent, delirious state. Unlike Death of a Salesman's Willy Loman, Brennan's fate isn't death, but resignation to the futility of life in a consumerist culture. Today, as we live in an age of persuasion that is infinitely more deceitful, the salesman can seem charming, hardworking and respectable. However, the viewer is placed in a complex moral predicament: as the film progresses, the salesmen become increasingly sympathetic characters (Brennan is particularly pitiable). We root for their success but simultaneously acknowledge their agenda as predatory and duplicitous. Unlike a documentarian like Errol Morris, however, the Maysles reserve judgment, never attempting to undermine or snidely mock their subjects. Though SALESMAN is peppered with moments of humor and quirkiness, it's ultimately a heartbreaking look at the American Dream gone sour. Screening as part of the False Preachers series. (1969, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Harrison Sherrod]

John Carney’s FLORA AND SON (US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Of all of our actively working film directors in the 21st century, surely no one believes in the communal power of music more than John Carney. The Irish writer-director has spent the better part of the past fifteen years telling cinematic fables about how music and songwriting can bring us together, going all the way back to his Academy Award-winning breakthrough ONCE (2007). There are faint echoes of that early hit reverberating through Carney’s latest, FLORA AND SON, a film that consistently hits chords he’s insistent on playing anytime he makes a feature. Here, outside the thrown-together long-distance love story hiding in the B-plot featuring internet guitar teacher Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the real story of connection is between the eponymous pair: single mother Flora (Eve Hewson) and her teenage son Max (Orén Kinlan). From the moment the childish antagonistic relationship between mother and son pops up on screen, chances are you’ll be able to guess, beat by beat, how the rest of the film will follow. And you likely won’t be wrong! Flora picks up playing guitar as a new hobby and finds out that Max is making his own electronic music in secret on GarageBand. Their shared interest grows stronger over time, with the pair crafting songs, filming music videos, and finally finding a true bond as parent and child for the first time in their lives. And while there are some inevitable bumps in the road, there’s no denying that this will all end in a charming song that binds our characters together before the credits roll. Carney reunites with his SING STREET (2016) songwriter Gary Clark to whip up a handful of tunes; they don’t reach the heights of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová’s ONCE ballads, or even the tunefulness of SING STREET’s rocking “Drive It Like You Stole It,” but charming duets like “Meet Me in the Middle” and “High Life” could easily worm their way into your Spotify Wrapped by year’s end if you’re not too careful. (2023, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Nicole Holofcener's YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (US)

FACETS Cinema – Friday through Sunday, see Venue website for showtimes

There’s a painful, and somewhat hilarious, terror that accompanies the characters of Nicole Holofcener’s YOU HURT MY FEELINGS. Not the terror you’d find from watching a good horror film, but rather that curdling in your gut that accompanies encountering characters in fiction that far too eerily mirror people you recognize in your own life. Yes, Holofcener’s characters are primarily upper-middle class, middle-aged, predominantly white people living in New York City, whose problems are—in the grandest sense—as small stakes as they come. But it’s still entirely possible you’ve met someone like Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), an insecure writer who equates someone hating their art with hating them as a human being. Or someone like Don (Tobias Menzies), a therapist whose own baggage is slowly beginning to infiltrate his work. Or even Eliot (Owen Teague), an early 20-something managing a weed dispensary who keeps mentioning he’s a playwright but keeps procrastinating finishing that one play he keeps telling you about. You might have even found yourself in a situation like the one that thrusts Holofener’s film into motion: Beth eavesdropping on a conversation where her husband, Don, admits that he’s been lying about enjoying the latest draft of her novel (he thinks it stinks, even). Films have been built upon less dramatic tension than this, yet there’s an entirely relatable sense of trust being broken, an innately human breakdown of the clumsiness of building a relationship with someone that makes this particular story feel weightier than it has any right to be. Even when it feels like the world of movies keeps expanding and expanding, there will forever be a simple joy in spending time with a small group of characters navigating the intense banality of the day to day, especially when it’s as funny as this. (2023, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Tod Browning's THE UNKNOWN (US/Silent)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 6pm

Tod Browning's masterful THE UNKNOWN is a perverted and haunting hallucination of a film in which Lon Chaney plays Alonzo, an armless knife-thrower for a traveling circus whose obsession with Nanon, his assistant--played with electrifying sensuality by Joan Crawford--grows more intense with every flick of his toe-thrown blades. But she loves the strongman, and Alonzo is secretly a serial killer specializing in strangulation.  In roughly an hour's worth of runtime, Browning packs in a lifetime's worth of passion, bad life-choices, sexual fetishes, and unruly, dangerous bodies. Containing Chaney's greatest, most disturbing performance, the film is fatalistic, hopeless, and sublime. (1927, 63 min, DCP Digital) [Kian Bergstrom]

Fritz Lang's M (Germany)

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

Jonathan Rosenbaum regularly cites Fritz Lang’s M as one of the greatest films ever made. One of the film’s more remarkable qualities is how it masters the conventions of silent movies while creating new ones for sound cinema. The way that Peter Lorre’s unforgettable child murderer often whistles the same melody from Peer Gynt, for instance, makes his character as instantly recognizable as a visual cue would in a silent (think of Chaplin’s walk), but Lorre’s haunting monologue at the movie’s climax maximizes the actor’s voice as an expressive instrument. When he wrote about the film in 1997, Rosenbaum highlighted the social awareness behind Lang’s aesthetic inventions, noting that “[a]rguably, no other thriller has so effectively combined exposition and suspense with a portrait of an entire society, and M does this through a dazzling system of visual rhymes and aural continuities, spatial leaps and thematic repetitions that virtually reinvents the art of movie storytelling.” Screening as part of the Proto-noir: The Roots of the Film Noir Movement series. (1931, 99 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL (UK)

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

Terry Gilliam and Sam Lowry—two impossible dreamers haplessly lashing out against the powers that be—are the twin heroes of BRAZIL, one behind the camera and the other before it. The behind-the-scenes narrative of this dystopian masterpiece has attained mythic status, with Gilliam locked in heated battle against Universal over their insistence on a more audience-friendly cut of the film, all while the fate of put-upon office drone Lowry (played with beleaguered bafflement by Jonathan Pryce) hangs in the balance. In fairness, it's not hard to see how a studio would look askance at the film before them. Gilliam takes his budget and constructs what is essentially just a child's blanket fort on the largest scale imaginable; a bureaucratic quagmire built of tubes and cardboard, at times dangerously close to coming apart at the seams. It's a world where instability is constantly threatening to undermine the tightly wound internal logic that governs everything, where loose cogs in the machine like Sam Lowry become threats simply because the system isn't wired to accommodate them. Under these conditions, there's a very thin line between getting imaginative and getting mad, so it's little wonder Gilliam followed a similar path to his protagonist. BRAZIL, among the most fantastically dark and detail-rich science fiction flicks ever, was—and remains—a visionary work worth fighting for. Screening as a double feature with Ruben Östlund's 2022 Palme d'Or winner TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (147 min, DCP Digital). (1985, 131 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]

Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT (UK)

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

It took more than a decade’s remove from its initial release for audiences to finally begin to understand Kubrick's final film, which is set in a facsimile of contemporary New York but heeding closely to the psychology and sexual mores of Arthur Schnitzler's 1924 novella on which it is based. This discrepancy sparked incurious outrage in 1999—particularly among writers in the New York Times, who actually seemed offended by the lack of realism—but it's come to resonate as one of the deepest mysteries of the director's monumental career. For Martin Scorsese, who placed the film in his top five for the entire decade, it's about New York as it appears in a dream. "And as with all dreams," he wrote, "you never know precisely when you've entered it. Everything seems real and lifelike, but different, a little exaggerated, a little off. Things appear to happen as if they were preordained, sometimes in a strange rhythm from which it's impossible to escape. Audiences really had no preparation for a dream movie that didn't announce itself as such, without the usual signals—hovering mists, people appearing and disappearing at will or floating off the ground. Like Rossellini's VOYAGE IN ITALY, another film severely misunderstood in its time, EYES WIDE SHUT takes a couple on a harrowing journey, at the end of which they're left clinging to each other. Both are films of terrifying self-exposure. They both ask the question: How much trust and faith can you really place in another human being? And they both end tentatively, yet hopefully. Honestly." Kubrick arrived at this combination of mystery and exposure through singular working methods unlikely to be repeated in a major film. Reportedly the longest shoot in movie history, Kubrick spent weeks on individual scenes, running actors through conversations until they were no longer conscious of performing. He had pursued this sort of marathon process before—most notably on THE SHINING and FULL METAL JACKET—but never on material so explicitly psychological. As a result, even superstars like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (giving their finest performances as a wealthy married couple) seem unfamiliar and strangely vulnerable. But EYES WIDE SHUT is only truly unsettling on contemplation: on the surface, it's one of Kubrick's funniest (with some of the most eccentric supporting performances in anything he made after THE KILLING) and most luminous, capturing the allure of Manhattan in winter with remarkably simple lighting arrangements. (1999, 159 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Steven Spielberg's A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (US)

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

In many regards, A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE represents the inverse of Steven Spielberg's E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982). In this film, the alien creature is not from outer space but manmade, and the broken family he attempts to heal rejects his efforts. Adapted by Spielberg from a script he'd developed with Stanley Kubrick, A.I. imagines a dystopian future where rising water levels have rendered much of Earth uninhabitable; androids, who live like second-class citizens, mediate most human interactions. The film's first act focuses on a couple who adopt an android boy to take the place of their biological son, who's in a coma. After the couple abandons their adopted son (in one of the most upsetting passages in Spielberg's filmography), the android embarks on a search to recover his human family, discovering unwelcome truths about himself—and humanity—in the process. The movie divided audiences on first release with its conclusion, which imagines the end of humanity and the ironic fulfillment of the android boy's wish to be reunited with his mother. For some, Spielberg's handling of this development constituted a betrayal of Kubrick's cynicism; for others, it represented a strange and powerful conflation of Spielbergian uplift and Kubrickian ambiguity. That the ending has inspired so many readings confirms that A.I. is more in line with Kubrick's work than Spielberg's, despite the surface sentimentality. Spielberg has often said that he considers Kubrick the greatest director of all time, and A.I. is a moving and multifaceted tribute to his hero's career. The emotionalism doesn't detract from the Kubrickian themes of dehumanization and annihilation, but rather complicates them and renders them strange. (2001, 146 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Hayao Miyazaki's MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (Japan/Animation)

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

The seminal Studio Ghibli film MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO is one of director Hayao Miyazaki's most beloved and celebrated. Thought-provoking and poignant, Miyazaki's fourth feature is an enchanting, hand-drawn masterpiece that demonstrates his creative passion. Mei and Satsuki, the two female protagonists, are perfect vehicles to allow the viewer to see the world through the eyes of children. The film does not rely on traditional narrative structure, where conflicts arise and obstacles must be overcome. Instead, Miyazaki appeals to the viewer to live in the now much like a child would. Both the pain and elation that Chika Sakamoto (Mei) and Noriko Hidaka (Satsuki) emote through their voice acting is palpable in every scene. From this vantage point, a feeling of wonderment occurs, and the dazzling animation invites a sense of nostalgia. This perspective makes it easy to believe that the strange magical spirit Totoro, his band, and the soot spirits are all very real. While these creatures may only be symbolic of nature (the wind, why plants grow, etc.), they serve as a source of comfort and hope for the two girls. Miyazaki's animation is bright and vivid--an homage to rural life--and the mystical quality of the film is bolstered by Joe Hisaishi's uplifting score. MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO is a beautiful tale about love, family, and hope that makes for joyous viewing for people of all ages. (1988, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

Mark Waters' MEAN GIRLS (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Tuesday, 7 and 9:30pm

Set just a short drive away in nearby Evanston, the highly quotable MEAN GIRLS is a highly satirical look at the awkward, cliquish, hormone-crazed minefield that is high school. Sixteen-year-old fish out of water Cady Heron (Lindsey Lohan) moves to Illinois after spending the previous twelve years in Africa with her parents who were on a zoological research study. Upon her arrival, she enrolls at North Shore High School and quickly learns that making new friends is nothing like it was halfway across the world. During her first math class taught by the affable but down on her luck Ms. Norbury (Tina Fey), Cady makes friends with social outcasts Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damien (Daniel Franzese) who teach her about navigating the school's social hierarchy. At lunch, Cady is approached by The Plastics to join their group. Consisting of queen bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams), Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert), and Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried), The Plastics are North Shore's equivalent of teen royalty and have very strict rules on how to dress and act. As Cady becomes friendlier with them, Janis and Damien fear she will become one of them. They decide to have her pretend to join the group as a joke and destroy them from within as revenge for all the victimizing they have caused. As time progresses, Cady slowly goes from pretending to be Plastic to actually becoming Plastic and risks losing her only true friends. As the backstabbing intensifies and secrets are revealed, the whole school is turned upside down. This film is a perfect look at teenage cliques and the damaging effects they can have on everyone, school staff included. A cult classic with a lasting legacy largely thanks to Tina Fey's well-written script, MEAN GIRLS is a painfully accurate representation of how fun and cruel high school can truly be. (2004, 97 mins, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

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

⚫ 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. 

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Cinema/Chicago presents community screenings of two episodes of Young Love at the Hamilton Park Cultural Center (513 W. 72nd St.) on Friday at 4pm and Matthew Cherry’s 9 RIDES (84 min) afterward at 6:30pm. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Comfort Film Halloween at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Michio Yamamoto’s 1971 horror film LAKE OF DRACULA (81 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Damien Chazelle’s 2016 film LA LA LAND (128 min, DCP Digital) screens on Saturday at 7pm.

Leobardo López Aretche’s 1968 documentary EL GRITO (104 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 6:30pm, as part of the Open Veins: Postcolonial Cinema of the Luso-Hispanic World series. Introduced by Professor Tom Ginsburg of the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Professors Mauricio Tenorio and Tom Ginsburg. There will be food sponsored by the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression and the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse.

Ang Lee’s 2005 film BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (134 min, 35mm) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Films of Ang Lee series.

Josh and Benny Safdie’s 2019 film UNCUT GEMS (135 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the In the Club: 90s Electronic Music and Beyond series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
Cristian Natoli’s 2021 film THE JUNGLE (75 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday at 7pm. Screening as part of the Migrant Stories in Italian Cinema program presented by the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, which goes through Sunday, October 8. Followed by a post-screening conversation with Natoli and a cocktail reception. More info here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts)
Yasujiro Ozu’s 1930 silent film THAT NIGHT’S WIFE (65 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 7pm, in celebration of National Silent Movie Day and with a newly-commissioned guitar-based score performed live by Kent Lambert (performing as Whine Cave). Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
The new 30th anniversary 4K digital restoration of Chen Kaige’s 1993 Chinese film FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (170 min, DCP Digital)  begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Also screening as part of the One and Done series are Leslie Harris’ 1993 independent film JUST ANOTHER GIRL ON THE I.R.T. (92 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 5:30pm and Saul Bass’ 1974 film PHASE IV (84 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 7:45pm. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Brad Kofman’s 2023 comedy GOWLD (90 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 9:45pm. 

Billy Wilder’s 1943 film FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO (96 min, 35mm) screens Sunday, 11:30am, as part of the Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder Matinees Part 2 series.

Also screening as part of the Bride of Music Box of Horrors month-long series are Peter Medak’s 1980 film THE CHANGELING (106 min, DCP Digital) on Monday at 9:15pm, co-presented by Bloody Disgusting’s Halloweenies Podcast; Mark Pellington’s 2002 film  THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES (119 min, 35mm) on Tuesday at 9:15pm; and Teruo Ishii’s 1960 Japanese film HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN (99 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday at 9:15pm (free screening for Music Box Theatre members).

Stacey and Michael's Showcase of Shorts V (71 min, DCP Digital) screens on Wednesday at 7pm. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Sideshow Gelato (4819 N. Western Ave.)
The Sideshow Gelato shop presents Sideshow Sinema!, during which they will screen films connected to the shop theme, every Thursday. More info here.

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

🎞️ ONLINE SCREENINGS/EVENTS

⚫ VDB TV
The shorts program Germán Bobe: Dreaming in the Gardens of Love (1988 - 1991, 28 min) screens for free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: September 29 - October 5, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Michael Castelle, Rob Christopher, Kyle Cubr, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Max Frank, Tristan Johnson, Ben Kaye, Nicky Ni, Michael W. Phillips Jr., Harrison Sherrod, Candace Wirt