🎉 THE 59TH CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The 59th Chicago International Film Festival continues this weekend at multiple venues (noted below) and ends Sunday. See below for reviews of select titles (chosen in part based on pre-screening availability), and check back next week for our coverage of the final weekend. For more information, including all titles, venues, showtimes and ticket prices, check out the festival website here.
Bas Devos’ HERE (Belgium)
AMC NEWCITY 14 – Friday, 3pm
A lithe and hushed film, HERE is refreshing to watch and bittersweet to think about. Plot generally takes a back seat to mood, though that isn’t to say the film is plotless—in fact, it’s quite sophisticated in how it interweaves two distinct narrative threads. In the first, a construction worker from Romania visits various friends and family members around Brussels as he prepares to make a visit home between assignments; in the second, a Chinese botanist, also living in Brussels, navigates her daily life as she studies mosses, teaches college classes, and hangs out at her aunt and uncle’s restaurant. The principal characters don’t cross paths until halfway into HERE, and their one meaningful interaction doesn’t occur until 20 minutes before it ends. You leave the film wondering (as the characters might) what could have been if they had met each other sooner, what they could have done with more time together. You may also start thinking about the transient nature of contemporary life or the international makeup of European cities today. Writer-director Bas Devos doesn’t force these concerns; he’s more interested in observing how they play out in individual moments and shape the atmosphere of Brussels. That atmosphere is rendered vividly, thanks to an immersive sound design and 16mm images with a pronounced sense of height and depth. In its patience and tactility, HERE is often redolent of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s work (the fact that one of the main characters is a botanist specifically evokes MEMORIA [2021]), though Devos’ concerns are more social than spiritual. He also advances a strong romantic sensibility in spite of the film’s beatific quietude. (2023, 84 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Juan Sebastián Torales’ CARNAL SINS (Argentina/Italy/France)
AMC Newcity 14 – Friday, 5:00pm and Saturday, 2:15pm
What good is an ideology based on guilt, punishment, and unquestioning obedience? That’s a question pondered by CARNAL SINS / ALMAMULA, a folk-horror film about a gay teenage boy coming of age under the menace of Christian fundamentalism. Following a vicious homophobic attack in his hometown, Nino moves with his family to his father’s farm in rural Argentina. There, after a local boy goes missing in the woods, Nino learns about the myth of Almamula, a young woman who was punished by God for her promiscuity by being turned into a forest-dwelling monster. When someone has impure thoughts, the legend goes, Almamula comes to claim them. But Nino isn’t particularly afraid; in fact, as his same-sex desires grow stronger and his church becomes more hostile toward him in response, he finds himself only more compelled by the allure of Almamula, pursuing the creature with something like a death drive. In his debut feature film, Sebastián Torales creates an atmosphere feverish with irrepressible libido and the attendant threat of persecution. The director often frames Nino through the gnarled tree branches of the forest where he seeks covert erotic pleasure, masturbating to a picture of Jesus on the cross next to a painted depiction of Almamula, the divine and the profane combined in an act of liberating transgression. After all, who was a greater transgressor than Jesus himself? CARNAL SINS unravels the punitive, dogmatic inventions and hypocrisies of Catholicism, offering the rejoinder, via Nino’s own pointedly gay-friendly phrasing, that "God loves all men.” Sebastián Torales scheduled to attend. (2023, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Marco Bellochio’s KIDNAPPED: THE ABDUCTION OF EDGARDO MORTARA (Italy/France/Germany)
AMC NEWCITY 14 – Friday, 5:15pm and Saturday, 3:15pm
Since his feature film debut, the incendiary épater le bourgeois fable FISTS IN THE POCKET (1965), Marco Bellochio has made a career out of excoriating authoritarian systems of power. He returns to the subject of perhaps his most reviled social institution, the Catholic Church, in KIDNAPPED, a dramatization of the notorious Mortara scandal. In 1858 Bologna, in what was then the Papal States of Italy, six-year-old Jewish boy Edgardo Mortara was seized from his family by Pope Pius IX’s military police. The head inquisitor of the Holy Office was informed that the boy had been secretly baptized, and was thus for all intents and purposes Catholic. Because the Papal States forbade non-Christian parents from raising Christian children, it was mandated that Edgardo be raised and educated by the Church in a boarding school for boys of converted Jewish parents. Thanks in part to the tireless advocacy efforts of the Mortara parents, the incident caused an uproar around the world and was seen as a contributing factor to the dissolution of the Papal States and the unification of Italy in 1870. Bellocchio and co-screenwriter Susanna Nicchiarelli cover a lot of history here, but they do it with a brisk, at times didactic straightforwardness that keeps the film from feeling overburdened by plot. Aided by Francesco Di Giacomo’s often painterly cinematography and Fabio Massimo Capogrosso’s melodramatic orchestral score, Bellochio directs with a formal classicism considerably removed from the more iconoclastic stylings of his earlier features. But within the conventional trappings of his storytelling, he dwells on intriguing ambiguities. How, and what, did Edgardo Mortara feel about the Church and his religious captors? Why did he embrace Christian doctrine? As the young Edgardo, Enea Sala gives a provocatively sullen, inscrutable performance, his doe eyes betraying acquiescent contentment at one moment and despondency the next. The character’s ambivalence only grows as he ages into priesthood, and Bellochio shows us a young man wrestling with an identity that might not even be his. Whatever the real Edgardo felt, KIDNAPPED makes it clear that his clerical life was the result of forced assimilation under the name of Christianity. For Bellochio, it’s a patent example of the effects of one of the world’s most historically tyrannical institutions. (2023, 133 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Hong Sang-soo’s IN WATER (South Korea)
AMC NEWCITY 14 – Saturday, 12:30pm
Spoiler alert: IN WATER is drenched—and I mean it literally: everything is blurry and might go slightly more out of focus as the film progresses, even into the end credits. Non-diegetic subtitles reassure that your eyesight is intact. It is a film that, upon finishing, you reflect back and wonder if you have really seen it at all; you might simply have dreamed it up. It’s probably Hong Sang-soo’s most intimate, experimental take yet—so intimate that he produced, wrote, directed, photographed, edited and composed for the film. It is also a meta-film, a film about filmmaking with its distress, boredom, and serendipity. Young actor Seoung-mo (Seok-ho Shin) has decided to make a short film true to his heart; he brings young actress Nam-hee (Seung-yun Kim) and cinematographer Sang-guk (Seong-guk Ha) to the chilly seaside of the Jeju Island, chewing up his personal savings as days go by without a concrete idea of what to shoot. He explores his surroundings but not without some anxiety about the cost of idling, until he sees a lone stranger by the sea and decides to talk to her. And everything starts to make sense. Hong has the talent of flattening every concept—however mundane, awkward, complicated or difficult to articulate—through unhurried conversations that are sprinkled with polite aloofness but can give punches of honesty. The discussion about whether to have sashimi for dinner is treated in the same way as when Seoung-mo talks about how he wishes he was never born. When images retreat to the back seat, sound takes command. The sounds of the waves, the wind, and the voice of Kim Min-hee (who never shows her face but only voice-acts as Seoung-mo’s possible former love interest), will absorb you into this film like soft, impressionist reverie. Preceded by Pedro Costa’s THE DAUGHTERS OF FIRE (9 min, DCP Digital). (2023, 61 min, DCP Digital) [Nicky Ni]
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Noora Niasari’s SHAYDA (Australia)
AMC NEWCITY 14 – Saturday, 7:30pm
Violence against women is one of the most common plot devices in the entertainment industry, a situation that always strikes me as being as perverse as it is entrenched. Now, Iranian-born, Australian-bred Noora Niasari has chosen the topic for her debut feature film, SHAYDA. She comes by her interest honestly, having based the screenplay on her mother’s memoir and her own memories of living in a women’s shelter while her mother sought a divorce from her abusive Iranian husband. What others peddle for cheap thrills, Niasari recalls with such truthful understanding that SHAYDA is a little bit of a miracle. We feel the edge on which Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) lives with her young daughter, Mona (Selina Zahednia), in the small oasis in Brisbane where the shelter “mother,” Joyce (Leah Purcell), keeps them safe until Shayda’s divorce from Hossein (Osamah Sami) can be finalized. Shayda and Mona’s sense of displacement, fear, and lack of control come through even as they try to make the best of their circumstances and hang onto their culture. Farsi, not English, is the first language of SHAYDA, and we get an unexpectedly deep dive into Iranian culture not only through Shayda’s celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, but also through the disapproval of the Iranian community of which Shayda is a part. There are several harrowing scenes, but also ones of joy and hope that complicate the stereotypical view of abuse victims. SHAYDA is a deeply affecting film that benefits greatly from the chemistry between and stellar work of Amir Ebrahimi and Zahednia, the latter giving the best performance by a child actor that I have seen in many a year. By marrying the personal with the societal, SHAYDA underscores the widespread tragedy of violence against women that is deforming so many civilizations of the world. (2023, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Radu Jude’s DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (Romania)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 8pm
DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD is completely unhinged with an overwhelming sense of immediacy; it also feels impressively controlled in its chaos. It’s humorous, in large part due to its main performance, but also wholly serious. It’s generally a biting political satire of the current state of things, but it focuses on the struggle of everyday people, the horrors of modern technology, and the damaging effects of work culture. Overworked and suffering from lack of sleep, Angela (a compelling Ilinca Manolache) is a PA working on a multinational corporation’s video about work safety; her task is to drive around Bucharest interviewing potential participants. She spends most of her time in her car—she also works for Uber on the side—and Jude parallels this with moments from ANGELA MOVES ON, a 1981 film by Romanian director Lucian Bratu. The earlier film is about a taxi driver also named Angela (Dorina Lazar), also driving the streets of Bucharest. It’s an interesting internal comparison, but it becomes profound when Bratu’s Angela, played by the same actress, shows up as a relative of one of the current Angela’s participants; their interaction makes for the sincerest and most illuminating moments of the film. It's also the most striking example of how DO NOT EXPECT travels across time, challenging the audience’s ideas about fiction, non-fiction, and the filmmaking processes in general. Current Angela also creates TikToks as an Andrew Tate-inspired persona using an AI filter, streaming the crudest of material from her phone; the streams are presented in full color, while our dystopian present is in black and white. She’s also not afraid to question the state of things around her, shining a light on how those in power place the blame for any injustices on the workers, leaving them to deal with the fallout of unsafe work conditions. DO NOT EXPECT ends with a nearly 40-minute uninterrupted shot of the filming of the work safety promotional video. It’s impossible to fully flesh out everything this film presents, just as it contains so many instances of screens within screens, stories within stories, reflected and refracted, asking “to what end?” (2023, 163 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Shorts 1: City & State – Revelations (US/Japan)
AMC NEWCITY 14 – Sunday, 1:30pm
This program is available to stream here through Sunday, October 22 at 11:59pm CDT
This year's City & State shorts program starts strong, with Dustin Nakao-Haider’s ETHAN LIM: CAMBODIAN FUTURES (17 min). This documentary follows Chicago chef Ethan Lim as he explores the intersection of food, culture, and memory. Both touching and informative, the short presents Ethan working with Cambodian cuisine while also delicately navigating the tragedy inseparably linked to its history. McKenzie Chinn’s A REAL ONE (16 min) focuses on the lives of two high school girls as they struggle with approaching adulthood. Things get a bit turbulent between the two, and Chinn manages to achieve moments of sentimentality in a taboo situation, which can be a tough tightrope to walk. The success here is in no doubt thanks to the great performances Chinn elicited from all the talent on screen. In VIDEO FUNERAL (21 min), Linh Tran impresses again with a short that shows both growth and confidence. Here we have two sisters grappling with the death of their father, one being unable to attend the funeral due to it being back in their home country. Tran successfully navigates the fringes of slow cinema, a feat that requires a certain intuition of the unique language of the medium. In BEFORE ANYONE ELSE (20 min), Tetsuya Mariko uses tracking shots and a variety of formats like security cameras and cell phones to make a world that feels truly lived in. In the film, two delinquent skaters find an abandoned child in a car, which causes issues for everyone involved. The 20-minute runtime is used carefully as every scene is packed with compelling developments that deliver a fully formed experience. Finally, there is SOFT LIGHTS AND SILVER SHADOWS (15 min), an animated film that beautifully commemorates filmmaker Ian Kelly’s grandfather. Through use of archival footage and audio interviews, Kelly takes old memories and makes new, not to erase or replace but rather uplift and preserve. The sound design here must also be called out; I certainly felt transported to another place and time. At the end of these City & State programs, I’m always struck by the talent here in the Midwest, and I urge festival goers to seek out the important work being done by our community members. Also screening: Brian Zahm’s PHOTOSYNTHESIS (7 min). Various guests scheduled to attend. (2023, Total approx. 95 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Luis Buñuel’s LOS OLVIDADOS (Mexico)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 7pm
Writing about Luis Buñuel’s documentary LAND WITHOUT BREAD (1933), André Bazin once argued that the point of the film wasn’t to show that humanity was debased, but rather, that humanity could become so debased and that this reflected the inherent unpredictability of our species. Buñuel’s Mexican masterpiece LOS OLVIDADOS teaches a similar lesson in its portrait of juvenile delinquents in Mexico City. Perhaps the most pitiless film ever made about childhood, it presents its young protagonists as violent, impulsive, and deceitful and doing the most shocking things. Buñuel creates sequences that burn themselves into your memory: the attack on the blind street musician, the robbery of the paraplegic (during which the young assailants steal the cart the man had used to push himself around), Jaibo’s murder of the former friend he thought had betrayed him to the police. This may be one of the least surreal films in Buñuel’s canon, yet what makes it so powerful as a realist statement lies in the director’s surrealist preoccupation with the perverse. Beginning with a voice-over introduction explaining that every modern city contains its blighted underbelly, LOS OLVIDADOS goes on to explore how blighted life can be. Buñuel is most attentive to detail, studying the precocious manner of the film’s delinquent boys and how it inures them to criminality. His mise-en-scène, a sort-of minimalist squalor, is memorable as well. The cinematography is by Gabriel Figueroa, one of the most respected cameramen in the history of Mexican cinema; the movie brilliantly undercuts its documentary-style realism with subtle stylization. (“It’s real life, only more so” is how Dave Kehr described it.) Buñuel sometimes cuts away from the delinquents to look at animals (perhaps the film’s most overt reminder of the director’s surrealist pedigree), and his approach to delinquency might be described as zoological. He’s interested in the tribalism, survival instincts, and mating habits of his characters; to realize that societies create conditions in which human beings can be studied like animals is deeply unsettling. Screening as part of the Open Veins: Postcolonial Cinema of the Luso-Hispanic World series. (1950, 80 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Screening with Jorge Sanjinés’ 1969 film BLOOD OF THE CONDOR (70 min, Digital Projection).
NIGHTINGALE PROJECTS: AN EVENING WITH SAIF ALSAEGH (US/Experimental)
Gene Siskel Center – Monday, 6pm
The five video works screening in this program are variations on a theme. Saif Alsaegh is a US-based filmmaker from Baghdad, where he grew up in the 1990s and early aughts as part of the Chaldean minority (described as being Aramaic-speaking, Eastern Rite Catholics). His work pirouettes on a tightrope between identities and places; with accordant grace, Alsaegh oscillates between the enforced dualities, sometimes putting his foot down in one, sometimes the other, sometimes moving so fast he lands in both equal times with equal ferocity. A literal binary—one of images—is present in BEZUNA (2023, 7 min, Digital Projection), where split-screen is used to seem almost intentionally distracting. The images, sometimes bifurcated unevenly and ostensibly random, include a stunning klipspringer contrasted against a manicured hand holding a cigarette and an extremely fragmented collage of images including a close-up of a horse and a wider shot of a horse galloping around, carved at an angle underneath a non-image of black void. On top of these, Alsaegh’s mother recalls the story of a cat who’d taken up residence near the family’s home in Baghdad, lamenting how the cat would have litters of kittens, some of which would get “chopped up” after seeking warmth inside the family’s car. Bezuna, as a title card at the end tells us, is an Iraqi-Arabic word for cat, the feline here a symbol for what’s left behind when one must leave a place suddenly. Another voice, Alsaegh’s, lists things not to pack, among them your hairbrush, your rough but oddly comfortable towels, the actual way you pronounce your name, your older sister. The more banal items assume greater significance in total but also serve to emphasize the more important things that get sacrificed to the ravages of war. Images of migrants and refugees toward the end cohere everything that came before it, illuminating the cyclical nature of this global trauma. Juxtaposition is at the heart of BITTER WITH A SHY TASTE OF SWEETNESS (2019, 9 min, Digital Projection), in which Alsaegh considers his formative years in Baghdad in contrast with his current life in California. In this one information is conveyed on screen via title cards; from the coffee grounds in which his mother reads his fortune—seeing a plane, as to portend escape—to the dust conjured up by war in Baghdad to, finally, the sandy pink beaches of California, the film is a tactile evocation of his journey. Alsaegh’s use of color (or the lack thereof) and composition articulate this as much as his words, complementing the sentiments with physical realizations of their potency. “How strange it is to survive!” reads one title. That which follows seems hypnagogic in its beauty, freshness and uniformity, with only that epiphany to temper the acridity of displacement. Alsaegh’s work deals in portraits—of himself, his family, and others impacted by war and deracination—and landscapes of the places where people flee in search of peace. It’s fitting, then, that vertical and landscape orientations, on phones and in pictures, compose 1991 (2018, 12 min, Digital Projection), a love letter to his mother, who lives in Turkey awaiting permission to immigrate to the US and whom the filmmaker hadn’t seen in years at the time this film was made. It’s also a personal reflection on displacement and involuntary disunion. Alsaegh narrates his mother’s story giving birth to him in war-torn Baghdad, a harrowing tale beyond the reach of one’s wildest imagination; in other sequences she appears on Alsaegh’s phone, in the device's standard vertical orientation, later helping him to cook a meal at his then-home in Milwaukee. Later, with a drink in hand, Alsaegh dances around his living room to Iraqi music, the sound of which is soon obscured by sirens, like those in a war zone, alerting as to imminent danger. This is the loosest, formally, of the works, and thus it feels even more intimate. Like the best artists, Alsaegh can look around and see the most mundane elements as ripe for symbolic interpretation. Through dust, rust and wind, he again explores the tactility of memories vis-à -vis materiality in ROSA (2018, 17 min, Digital Projection). He again utilizes voiceover, some of it in Arabic, with the images being mostly abstract and easily manipulated, such as pictures printed onto acetate sheets and gobs of paint that are smeared, reformed and transformed. This suggests the metamorphic capability of the aforementioned elements. Dust, in Baghdad, converts a Virgin Mary statue into an American pop singer as the sun reflects off the accumulated particles. The dust in Montana, however, the location here being contrasted against his native Iraq, is “like a quiet Tom Waits song.” Rust echoes the passage of time, and wind creates illusions of both safety and danger. Co-directed with his brother, Fady Alsaegh, ALAZEEF (2016, 21 min, Digital Projection) is the least explicitly personal of the works, steeped more in a poetical narrative from the viewpoint of an Iraqi soldier in the week leading up to Desert Storm. Tableaus constructed in sand help to tell the story, with icons—toy soldiers, a picture of Saddam Hussein, an image of Batman and Superman, an issue of Playboy—painting broad strokes refined by the soldier’s account. It may not be personal, in the traditional sense of the word, for the Alsaegh brothers, but it’s nevertheless personal for its narrator, fictional though he may be. There’s an undeniable connection between this program and what’s happening in real time, as wars continue to impact innocent people, forever disrupting their lives. Perhaps everything is just a variation on these themes. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Alsaegh. [Kat Sachs]
Richard Brandt’s DEATH CAMP SACHSENHAUSEN (West Germany/Documentary)
Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm [Free Admission]
The first documentary by Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA, the state-owned film studio of the German Democratic Republic and the first of the country’s film entreprises following World War II) about concentration camps and the Holocaust, Richard Brandt’s DEATH CAMP SACHSENHAUSEN (TODESLAGER SACHSENHAUSEN) was not available for preview but is undoubtedly crucial viewing. For one reason, it’s never been shown in the US, though, per the event description, it “[p]remiered in a makeshift courtroom at a Stalinist show trial [and was] shown to tens of thousands of global visitors at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial near Berlin, recycled in one of the most critically acclaimed East German films, Konrad Wolf’s 1968 film I WAS NINETEEN, and embroiled in national controversy after the fall of the Berlin Wall.” Furthermore, per another account of the film in Cinema and the Shoah, it’s a “detailed account of the mistreatment of concentration camp prisoners, using documentary footage and reconstructed scenes, filmed by Russian soldiers. The Russian secret services forced their prisoners to portray the roles of concentration camp victims. The film only mentions Soviet prisoners of war and German communists as concentration camp victims, but never the Jews.” It was commissioned, says the DEFA Film Library website, by the Soviet military administration in Berlin in preparation for the Sachsenhausen trial. Programmed by Cinema and Media Studies and German graduate student Danny Pinto, the event also emphasizes his recent archival work which has “revealed [the film] to be, despite its dogmatic Communist register and failure to mention Jewishness, the first Holocaust film to be written by a Jewish concentration camp survivor.” Pinto will discuss his research, which should be illuminating; upon being recently bestowed with the 2023 DEFA Film Library Graduate Student Essay award, the selection committee noted that his work has been a “fascinating study of the many incarnations of what was initially presented as a factual documentary [and] opens our eyes to the lives of films in the real world. Just as interesting is the socially and historically situated reception of the film over time.” Another reference to the film, in Marc Silberman’s German Cinema: Texts in Context (alluding to what parts of the film are featured in Wolf’s film), elaborates more on what’s in it, specifically a “camp executioner respond[ing] to questions by a commission of Soviet officers, explaining impassionately and in excruciating detail exactly how prisoners were gassed at the camp.” Adding to the crucialness of the screening, it’s been shown on a rare 35mm print loaned from the Bundesarchiv, otherwise known as the Federal Archive of Germany. (1947, 37 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
Emilio Fernández’s VICTIMS OF SIN (Mexico)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 3:45pm and Wednesday, 8:15pm
Emilio Fernández, a prolific director and screenwriter of Mexican cinema’s Golden Age, won world fame when his tragic melodrama MARIA CANDELARIA (1944) won the Palme d’Or at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. Today, that film is more famous than seen, a fate that has befallen a large number of his films. Fortunately, a new 4K digital restoration of his VICTIMS OF SIN, made with his regular collaborators, screenwriter Mauricio Magdaleno and legendary cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, is making the rounds. Set among the nightclubs and red light district of Mexico City, VICTIMS OF SIN centers on the fortunes of Violeta (Ninón Sevilla), a former sex worker hired as a dancer by nightclub owner Don Gonzalo (Francisco Reiguera) upon the urging of his star singer, Rita (Cuban singer and actress Rita Montaner). Violeta is hugely popular, but her downward slide begins when she rescues and adopts a baby boy whose besotted mother (Margarita Ceballos) puts him in a garbage can on orders from Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta), her pimp and the baby’s father. To say I have never seen a film like this would be an understatement. From its beginning, when Rodolfo carefully examines his oil-flattened hair in a barber’s mirror, calculates how much he should pay the barber, dons the hat and coat that complete his zoot suit, and strolls to meet his stable of whores at Don Gonzalo’s nightclub, VICTIMS OF SIN is a nonstop entertainment that mixes comedy, melodrama, and most especially music and dance. The film is frontloaded with singing and dancing. Montaner sings as a bevy of chorus girls in swinging peasant dresses swirl on the dance floor. When Sevilla enters for her star turn in her revealing frilled skirt and frilled show pants, we get the first of many tastes of her sensual style as she moves to the orchestra’s African, Caribbean, and Cuban rhythms. “Nightingale of the Americas” Pedro Vargas, a ubiquitous presence in Mexican cinema, also offers a song from his seat in the audience that seems to foreshadow Violeta’s fortunes. This scene, which mixes Cuban and Mexican characters, shows how Cubans moved freely to Mexico to work and live—and just as freely moved back in a snit! Fernández, of course, doesn’t forsake his story for the pleasures of musical comedy. He rouses anxiety in the audience with such moments as Violeta snatching the baby from the garbage can just as workers reach its location with their garbage truck or a gang of men crossing some railroad tracks with a real train bearing down on them. One hilarious scene depicts Violeta standing with a long line of prostitutes as Santiago (Tito Junco), another pimp and nightclub owner who becomes Violeta’s common law husband, walks in front of them with a mariachi band trailing behind him. Another odd moment is when Santiago and Violeta go to a church to have their boy christened—but we never learn his name at this or any point in the movie. Figueroa’s black-and-white cinematography is, as usual, stunning and inventive, and the sets and costumes add flair and a degree of authenticity to the story. VICTIMS OF SIN races to its melodramatic conclusion, which offers Fernández’s signature sentiment—a prayer for all the unfortunates of Mexico. (1951, 84 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Michael Curtiz’s DOCTOR X and MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (US)
Chicago Film Society at Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7:30pm
These two pre-Code films were among a handful of features that Warner Bros. produced using two-strip Technicolor, an early version of color cinematography whose limited spectrum cast everything in shades of orange, green, white, or brown. At worst, the format makes everything look like it’s made out of cheap newsprint; at best, it evokes some sort of mysterious cartoon otherworld. By their very titles you can tell that DOCTOR X (1932, 76 min, 35mm) and MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933, 78 min, 35mm) are keyed into the better nature of two-strip Technicolor: they’re comic-strip mysteries filled with lurid revelations and imposing, unrealistic architecture. Both films were directed by Michael Curtiz, designed by Anton Grot, shot by Ray Rennehan, and star Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill, so you’ll notice plenty of similarities when you watch them back-to-back. (For what it’s worth, DOCTOR X has the better plot, while WAX MUSEUM has the more interesting cinematography and sets.) The earlier film suffers from the presence of Lee Tracy, a character actor who really mugs it up as the journalist who uncovers the central mystery. Curtiz deserves some of the blame for this shortcoming too; for all his strengths, he was no James Whale—the film’s herky-jerky shifts from laughter to depraved frights are more in keeping with popular horror movies of the silent era and nowhere near the graceful interactions between genres that Whale was executing around this time. Still, it’s pretty wonderful how seriously the director plays the most grotesque stuff in both films. It would be a shame to hint at what they are, since these movies are best experienced like fun houses—you go in expecting ghoulish things to jump out at you. Suffice it to say, DOCTOR X and WAX MUSEUM might both be described as early entries in the body horror subgenre, given their fixation on bodies being mutilated in novel ways. Screening as part of Bride of Music Box of Horrors. [Ben Sachs]
The Short Films of Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (Puerto Rico/Experimental)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm
At one point in her short documentary MARCHÉ SALOMON (2015, 16 min, DCP Digital), Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s camera follows a young man as he walks around the titular location, an open-air market in Port-au-Prince where he works as a butcher, carrying a portable radio up to his ear. The shot is paired with voiceover narration that intones, “The Market is our galaxy… The meat cutters, they are the sun. Each time they cut a piece of meat, energy flies around the universe.” Cut to a basket of leafy greens. “The women, with their vegetables, they are the planets.” This sequence nicely sums up the appeal of Santiago Muñoz’s work, with its strong sense of place, philosophical bent, and poetic associations. Indeed, all the works in this program demonstrate how one’s place in the world shapes their view of the world (or maybe even the galaxy): this comes through in the way the thwack of the protagonist’s butcher’s knife sets the meditative rhythm of MARCHÉ SALOMON or how Haitian writer Guy Regis Junior, speaking in the opening short EL CUERVO, LA FOSA Y LA YEGUA (2021, 16 min, DCP Digital) about how he translated Proust into Creole, riffs on the importance of slang in the communication of his compatriots. These reflections set the tone for EL CUERVO, which contains other people speaking on the nature of time, documentary footage of a robotic arm extracting something from the bottom of the ocean, and abstractly pretty shots of milk dispersing in an aquarium. Santiago Muñoz doesn’t try to force connections between these various points of reference, though they succeed at hinting, in an agreeably plainspoken way, at the vastness and complexity of the universe. Originally designed as a two-channel video installation, EL OMBLIGO DEL SUEÑO/LAJAS (2022, 6 min, DCP Digital) and EL OMBLIGO DEL SUEÑO/CANTERA (2022, 6 min, DCP Digital) present short sequences shot off the southern coast of Puerto Rico and in the rocky southern region of the island. There are no people in these works (though there are some cows, birds, and statues), and their absence, coupled with the birdsong on the soundtracks of the films, grants the forbidding landscapes a sense of calm. NOCTURNE (2014, 31 min, DCP Digital), the longest work in the program, is a reverie on Haitian culture that opens with a Godardian sequence of a man and a woman reciting lines of poetry that touch on Haitian identity; from this theatrical passage, Santiago Muñoz transitions to a narrator speaking on Voodoo ritual as a form of “pre-theater.” The images that accompany this second sequence aren’t explicitly connected to the words, but rather shots of people sitting outdoors in Port-au-Prince—it’s as though the filmmaker is inviting us to see the roots of the culture in the present-day world. NOCTURNE earns its title with beautiful shots of city streets at night that are scored to a consistent low-level hum of motors on the soundtrack. You can practically smell the gas fumes. Also screening in the program: LAUREL SABINO Y JAGUILLA (2019, 11 min, DCP Digital). Filmmaker in person. Screening as part of Eisenberg’s fall SAIC lecture series, the Times, the Chronicle, the Witness, and the Observer: Three Decades Of Film/Video Inquiry. [Ben Sachs]
Antonia Bird’s RAVENOUS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Monday, 9:30pm
A cult classic for its effervescent tone—fluctuating between gruesome horror and a dark sense of humor—Antonia Bird’s RAVENOUS is also a successful metaphor for American colonialism and expansion. In part through the sharp script by Ted Griffin, who draws on the oft-used myth of the wendigo, RAVENOUS presents Manifest Destiny as gluttony. It doesn’t just devour and destroy but cannibalizes; the insatiable need for more and more is itself violent. Despite being a decorated veteran of the Mexican-American War, Boyd (Guy Pearce) survived by playing dead, which his superiors view as an act of cowardice. As a result, he’s sent to a remote military post in the Sierra Nevada mountains—by no coincidence the same location where the Donner Party was snowbound. One night an odd stranger named Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) stumbles into camp with a horrifying story: after running out of food, his traveling party was forced into cannibalism, and then murder— Colqhoun himself barely escaped. To save the one innocent remaining party member, Boyd and a few others from the outpost plan a rescue. The threats of cannibalism and murder don’t end there, though, as Colqhoun’s story is not the entire truth of the macabre situation. RAVENOUS is a quite grisly tale, but Bird manages to find a levity in the gore; through the excessiveness of it all and the unrelenting critique of American frontierism, she cleverly bends the line between horror and comedy. This would all be noteworthy enough, but the film’s soundtrack stands out as one of the most unique. A collaboration between musicians Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn, it pokes fun at familiar-sounding Americana—namely through a repeating bouncy banjo‚ as it simultaneously unnerves in its insistent strangeness. As disorienting as it is intriguing, it’s key to the film’s successfully shifting tones. Screening as part of Bride of Music Box of Horrors. (1999, 101 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
William Castle's THE TINGLER (US)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 7pm and 9:30pm
THE TINGLER is, on the surface, a serviceable 50s B-horror, but there’s an abundance to enjoy about the film’s wacky plot and, especially, how it directly engages the audience. Vincent Price stars as a doctor with very questionable morals, who’s discovered that every human has a parasite within them—the tingler. This tingler feeds on fear, attaching itself to the spine and growing larger the more frightened the person becomes. Screaming can send the creature into retreat, something made perfectly clear to the audience as director William Castle introduces the film by urging the viewers not to hold back their fright—or else. With a final set piece in which the creature is set loose in a silent movie theater, THE TINGLER completely immerses viewers in the experience happening on screen. Castle, well-known for his gimmicks, also promoted the film with “Percepto,” a buzzer wired to select theater seats that would go off at corresponding moments, causing a tingling sensation for the audience member. The film also has some bizarrely entertaining performances and subplots—I’m particularly obsessed with deciphering the confusing familial relationships surrounding the doctor and the wife (Patricia Cutts) he seems to inexplicably despise. It’s reminiscent of another Castle-directed Price vehicle released the same year, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. The film is also often cited as the first to depict an LSD trip. THE TINGLER is primarily, though, a classic example of Castle’s work as a producer and director. His gimmicky and meta-approach to filmmaking and the theater-going experience are beloved by directors like Joe Dante (his MATINEE is largely a homage to Castle’s work) and John Waters (who got to portray Castle in FX’s Feud). Presented by Percepto (!) screening as part of Bride of Music Box of Horrors. (1959, 82 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Margaret Byrne’s ANY GIVEN DAY (US/Documentary)
Northwestern University (Annie May Swift Hall, Helmerich Auditorium, 1920 Campus Dr.) – Thursday, 6pm
For me, the most difficult part about having a mental illness is not the low periods themselves, but the anticipation of those descents when things are generally going well. At some point it becomes a learned anxiety, dreading the inevitable downturns that follow weeks, months, and even years of relative contentment. This is further compacted by such factors as addiction and socioeconomic misfortune; I’ve been privileged not to experience these things, but many people with mental illnesses do. With her 2016 documentary RAISING BERTIE (produced by Kartemquin Films), Margaret Byrne distinguished herself as a likely successor to KTQ’s own Steve James in how she interacted with and subsequently documented a marginalized community; with her second feature-length documentary, ANY GIVEN DAY, Byrne solidifies that connection. She comes into her own as a non-fiction filmmaker adept at blending the stuff of documentary with distinctly personal elements, which uplift the content above just facts. But the facts are certainly harrowing: Byrne focuses on three people, all of whom had recently been in jail because of crimes committed in the throes of their respective mental illnesses. Each subject also participated in a voluntary two-year probation program through mental health court that provides a treatment plan in lieu of typical penalties, one of the last vestiges of state-funded assistance after Mayor Rahm Emanuel unceremoniously closed half the city’s mental health clinics in 2012. Two of the subjects are Black: Angela has several children, including a few younger kids who had been removed from her custody upon her arrest; and Daniel has long-term struggles with substance abuse in addition to mental illness. The Bulgarian-American Dimitar, who’s white, endures intense, schizoid-like episodes and contends with other vices. The film follows the subjects toward the end of the program and afterwards, showing with remarkable compassion the journey, rife with setbacks, of those suffering from mental illness. Byrne herself has had to fight similar demons and includes references to her own breakdowns and hospitalizations, one of which occurred while she was making the film. Her use of graphics to mimic the text messages she exchanged with the participants, about details of their lives and her own, aids in probing the dark crevices of mental illness and the shame and secrecy that often surround it. Also included are scenes of the participants at what might be considered some of their darkest depths; Byrne and her subjects, who generously allowed her to include this footage, don’t shy away from the aspects of mental illness that go overlooked either in abject ignorance or overcompensating acknowledgement. Filmed over the course of several years, Byrne’s film shines a light on issues related to the experience of mental illness, including our flawed justice system; lack of treatment, community support, and stable housing; and the intersection of these issues with substance abuse. The film also implicitly advocates for treatment over incarceration. I wish I could say it has a happy ending, but, even though it’s subjectively positive, there still lingers a sense of melancholy that’s part and parcel of our dire social landscape. It’s difficult to say, on any given day, how a person existing with these illnesses may feel. Let’s just hope that, at some point, our system stops mirroring that volatility and becomes a source of stability instead. Preceded by a reception with light refreshments at 6pm and followed by a post-screening Q&A and talkback with Byrne moderated by PPSL Director and Associate Professor of Instruction Ines Sommer. Presented by the Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab for the Promotion of Mental Health via Cinematic Arts. (2021, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Errol Morris’ THE PIGEON TUNNEL (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
In 2011 I saw Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John le Carré’s seminal spy novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and hated it. I hated it so much that I went to see it three more times. Not only did I actually end up loving the film, but it inspired me—in an airport bookstore, no less—to purchase the book from which it was adapted. I was hooked. In the decade since I’ve embarked on an effort to read all his books in chronological order, a rather slow endeavor as my to-read list is already extraordinarily long (and, I suspect, if I focused too much on it I would be happy to read nothing else). So engrossed in his world and so enamored with his prose, I couldn’t help but to revere the man (born David Cornwell; John le Carré was his pen name) as much as his myths. So while I won’t go to bat for Errol Morris’ documentary THE PIGEON TUNNEL as being a great film (Orson Welles himself would suggest the filmmaker take it easy with the flamboyantly askant shots), it’s certainly edifying for anyone with an interest in le Carré, his life and his creative process. Le Carré died in 2020, so the several-hour interview between him and Morris in 2019 was his last. It’s a good note to end on, as, though not an exhaustive one, as it finds le Carré in a reflective state, looking back in a passive sort of way that one might advance when they’ve acquiesced to contentedness or at least an acceptance of what came before. The documentary was inspired by le Carré’s 2016 memoir of the same name, and the phrase is elucidated in the film. Morris deploys somber reenactments to complement le Carré’s ruminations; a particularly expressive one shows how, as a boy, Le Carré’s family stayed in a Monte Carlo casino where he witnessed the process by which an adjacent shooting club would be facilitated with live pigeons for targets. The birds would go through a tunnel after which they’d fly into the air, either to be killed or escape back onto the roof where they were bred and housed. It’s a devastatingly apt metaphor for much of le Carré’s work and makes sense as having been the working title of many of his novels. Espionage, for le Carré, was always an exercise in futility, the search for truth as bleakly cyclical as the pigeons’ finite odyssey. Much of the film considers this through both Le Carré’s work and his short time as an intelligence worker for MI:5 and MI:6. The rest centers on his childhood and relationship with his con-artist father, who, it would seem, inspired le Carré’s lifelong fascination with betrayal. With regard to his work, his imagination—never to be considered as truth, but not fully a “lie,” either, as le Carré ultimately questions the purported objectivity of any supposed truth—served as a rather ingenious coping mechanism through which to filter life’s bitter truths, passed along to the reader in lyrically beautiful prose. Parts of the film, like the principal interview and the reenactments, are unnecessarily dramatized, like at the beginning when le Carré’s poses the meaning-laden question “Who are you?” to Morris, the start of a thread that’s never properly pulled through to any meaningful conclusion. But if you have any admiration for or even interest in le Carré as a writer, a spy, or even just a person with an unusually colorful life, this will certainly satisfy. (2023, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Bill Gunn's GANJA AND HESS (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm
Any screening of GANJA AND HESS is cause for celebration, not least because it almost never existed in the first place. Its original producers, Kelly/Jordan Enterprises, were eager to capitalize on the commercial viability of BLACULA, which was released the year prior. Gunn, who was a fixture in the NYC theater scene, and had written the screenplay for Hal Ashby’s THE LANDLORD, was tapped for the project. Though he was leery of working in the Blaxploitation genre, Gunn saw an opportunity to use studio resources to bring about his own audacious vision. The result, despite winning the Critics Prize at Cannes in 1973, was a wholesale departure from the script approved by Kelly/Jordan, who subsequently sold the film, which lead to it being cut from 112 to 78 minutes and re-released under the guise of a handful of other titles like BLOOD COUPLE, DOUBLE POSSESSION, and so on. The original version was virtually unavailable for decades until MoMA restored a 35mm negative several years ago, enabling a Kino-Lorber re-release. If the producers were expecting anything resembling a formulaic Blaxploitation movie—or, for that matter, something with any semblance of a conventional narrative—you can see why they were dismayed by the final product. GANJA AND HESS is less campy B-movie and more Ingmar Bergman or David Lynch, with a plot that’s deliberately enigmatic and driven by poetic symbolism. The film centers on Dr. Hess Green, an anthropologist stabbed by his deranged assistant (played by Gunn) with a diseased dagger from an ancient civilization, thereby causing him to metamorphose into a vampire (although the term “vampire” is never explicitly used throughout the film). The titular Ganja arrives not long after and is infected with the vampiric germ, prompting the couple to spend the rest of the film attempting to satiate their newfound bloodlust. It’s not hard to read vampirism in GANJA AND HESS as a thinly veiled metaphor for drug addiction, an interpretation that has been confirmed by producer Chiz Schultz, but there are deeper valences here. Tasked with making a Blaxploitation film, Gunn instead opted to use the trope of the vampire—a creature that’s all about sucking up human life force—to tell a story about the actual exploitation of Black people throughout history. Gunn’s film is not didactic, though. Instead, his thesis is embedded within the visual syntax of the film, which employs elaborate montage editing techniques to subliminally display signifiers—including nooses, body bags, and copious amounts of blood—that conjure up the atrocities of racism throughout American history. Along the way, he interpolates surreal (flash)back to Africa imagery, religious symbolism, and shots of various artworks from the Brooklyn Museum (a commentary, I think, on the reification of living people into things). Moreover, the half-human/half-other hybridity of the vampire is used here by Gunn as an analog to decry the ways in which Black people are systematically treated as less than human—put simply, GANJA AND HESS is a horror film made by a director who knew that reality is much more horrific than fiction. Screening as part of the Depths of the Grindhouse series. (1973, 112 mins, DCP Digital) [Harrison Sherrod]
Terrence Malick's BADLANDS (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm and Sunday, 3pm
[Plot Spoilers] Terrence Malick's first feature film remains as opaque and seductive as it must have been for audiences upon its release in 1973; none of the four films he's made in the intervening 38 years has given us a Rosetta Stone to de-code his unique language of deadpan narration, breathless romance, horror (BADLANDS is screening as part of the Siskel's Psychological Horror series), and whispering tall-grass. Later films have tinkered with the proportions (more romance in THE NEW WORLD, more grass in DAYS OF HEAVEN), but never the unsettling combination of ingredients. In BADLANDS, Sissy Spacek (as 15-year-old Holly) provides the flattened voice-over that suggests both teenage sass and PTSD. As Kit (a full-bore Martin Sheen) seduces her, murders her father, and takes her on the run, it's Holly's voice that pulls the viewer by the nose so deep into their world that conditioned reactions don't work. Playfully sexy shots of Spacek in short-shorts and Sheen in his Canadian Tuxedo block efforts to moralize about their ages (Kit is 25). The weapons and traps Kit builds to defend their forest hideout are as cartoon-stupid as they are dead-serious. We aren't shocked because there's no room for shock under this heavy blanket of affectless style; if Kip is Holly's captor, Holly and Malick are our captors, and we all have Stockholm Syndrome. Screening as part of the Amour Fou series. (1973, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Josephine Ferorelli]
Godfrey Reggio & Jon Kane’s ONCE WITHIN A TIME (US)
Gene Siskel Center – See Venue website for showtimes
After shifting the landscape of arthouse cinema with his montage epic, KOYAANISQATSI (1982), Godfrey Reggio emerges again to share an abstract cinematic hodgepodge of stirring visuals and earnest social commentary, wrapped in an excitingly bewildering package. Working with co-director Jon Kane, and with the stamp of approval from none other than Steven Soderbergh as executive producer, Reggio’s latest is intellectually on par with his previous output—he is forever creating grand treatises on the nature of humanity and the tectonic realignment of society—though here, his visual vocabulary is as distant from anything before in his storied career, trading in documentary-style footage of the real world for elaborately fabricated theatrics and grandiose spectacle. ONCE WITHIN A TIME is a film of dynamic contrasts: the visual palette primarily uses the iconography of works from the silent film era, but uses them to address contemporary issues like climate change and smartphone addiction. It oscillates between moments of visual abstraction alongside didactic narrative storytelling. It stars relative unknowns in the majority of the roles, and also Mike Tyson shows up as a character known as “The Mentor.” The film even ends with a dual question: “What age is this; the sunset or the dawn?” Reggio leaves us to do the heavy-lifting with that question, while remaining rather blunt about the rest of his imagery, including apes smashing televisions and rejecting VR technology, a giant hourglass amid a sea of oil rigs, and emojis popping up in villainous settings. This late career iteration of Reggio is fervently grappling with the ever-changing cinematic and political landscapes that have shifted in seismic ways since his film debut more than forty years ago, resulting in a grand experimental reckoning that starts as a vibrant interpretation of the Creation Myth, before devolving into further shifting imagery, a Hieronymous Bosch painting come to life in the form of storybook theater as cinema, while remaining a desperate plea to look out for our shared humanity. It’s inspiring to see such vivid playfulness from Reggio, daring to paint on new artistic canvases, still as ever working to tackle everything that is chaotic and hopeful about the human race. And all in less than an hour, even. (2023, 52 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
William Friedkin's BUG (US)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Sunday, 4pm
Multitalented playwright/actor/director Tracy Letts has been most visible lately in smallish, scene-stealing roles in films as varied as LITTLE WOMEN (2019), FORD V FERRARI (2019), and THE POST (2017). Through much of the ’90s and ’00s, however, he spent his time writing plays and acting on stage. His 1996 play Bug was workshopped at Chicago’s A Red Orchid, with the theater’s cofounder Michael Shannon starring, before its world premiere at London’s Gate Theatre. It seems only natural that the Chicago-based Letts and Shannon would turn to another Chicagoan best known for a little horror movie called THE EXORCIST (1973) to turn Letts’ screenplay of Bug into a film. While THE EXORCIST was a shock-and-awe kind of horror film, in BUG director William Friedkin shows his mastery of psychological horror as well. BUG uses an unseen threat to terrorize its female protagonist, Agnes White (Ashley Judd), a depressed, drink-and-drug-addled bartender who lives in a seedy motel kitchenette in Oklahoma. Her days are spent sleeping off the night before, which generally involves partying with her friend R.C. (Lynn Collins). Agnes spends a typical night in her room getting drunk and high with R.C., while a man R.C. brought spends an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom. R.C. leaves. When Agnes learns that the man has no place to go, she invites him to sleep on the couch. In the morning, Agnes wakes to the smell of coffee and an empty room. The shower is going. When she goes to the bathroom to thank her guest, she is greeted by the tattooed, threatening figure of her ex-husband, Jerry Goss (Harry Connick, Jr.), only weeks out of prison. Just then, Agnes’ guest returns with breakfast in hand. Jerry confronts him, slaps Agnes, and leaves. Before doing so, he learns that the man’s name is Peter Evans (Shannon). This is the first time we’ve heard it, too. Agnes sits down to a bran muffin and vodka and coke with Peter, feeling protected and cared for. Her contentment is shattered when Peter announces that people are after him because he is an escapee from military biological experiments and that he has to leave to protect her. Agnes, moved by his desperate story, runs into his arms. They make love in a psychedelic scene, interspersing naked bodies with microscopic views of blood flowing through veins and arteries. Afterward, Peter says he has been bitten by an insect. He examines her sheets with a table lamp and finds an aphid. He instructs her about the power of this tiny bug. We will see exactly how powerful as the film moves through Peter’s paranoia and Agnes’ dependency to a chilling, almost apocalyptic end. Agnes is a borderline personality dealing with a tragedy and is hopelessly lonely, perfect prey for a parasite like Peter. Because of the episodic nature of the film, we don’t watch Agnes move slowly into Peter’s delusions, and this creates the shock Friedkin mined so effectively in THE EXORCIST. But the shock is more like meeting someone you haven’t seen for a while and finding them skeletally thin or filthy and deranged. Letts adeptly taps the mania of American conspiracy theories with some ideas many audience members may wholeheartedly believe or at least find somewhat plausible. Thus, he shines a light on our own gullibility and distrust. Ashley Judd gives this role her all. She looks extremely unglamorous in the beginning, softening upon experiencing some kindness from Peter, and descending into self-loathing and delusion by the film’s climax. Having said that, Letts clearly wrote an actors’ showcase; at times, I felt lost in the zeal with which Judd struts her stuff. Shannon plays his role as an oddball from the word go, but modulates his descent into madness at an even pace. His focus on Agnes is total and mesmerizing, a Svengali for the self-destructive. Lynn Collins and Harry Connick Jr. are both wonderful, creating fully fleshed supporting characters who seem more in control than Agnes, but are in way over their heads when dealing with Peter. And what about us? The ride BUG takes us on is as exhilarating as it is absurd. Watching Peter and Agnes examine their blood for bugs using a toy microscope is ridiculous, but we can’t stop them from seeing what they want to see. Reduced to almost a primitive state at the end, Peter and Agnes horrify us as much as they sadden us. (2006, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdnand]
Clive Barker's HELLRAISER (UK)
Leather Archives & Museum (6418 N. Greenview Ave.) – Saturday, 7pm
“Jesus wept,” utters Frank Cotton as hooks and chains manifest from a hellish dimension and tear his body to scraps of flesh and fiber. With HELLRAISER, Clive Barker made his feature film directing debut, and he certainly did not hold himself back. Barker, adapting his 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart, knew exactly what he wanted to do here—and that's an extremely undervalued quality. This is a fabulously disgusting, funny, and erotic film. HELLRAISER presents what happens after Frank comes into possession of a mysterious puzzle box that summons the grotesque Cenobites, who describe themselves as “Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others.” The Cenobites are demonic-looking beings whose flesh is mutilated in horrific ways. The most recognizable one is Pinhead—a giant, ghostly white being with nails protruding from all over his head. Pinhead has transcended the HELLRAISER films, being featured in popular video games among the likes of the other horror icons like Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, while the HELLRAISER IP has stagnated and declined. The good news is that HELLRAISER will be receiving a reboot with Barker closely involved, something that hasn’t happened since he received a “Story By” credit on HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II (1988). While the disdain towards remakes and reboots is understandable, let's hope the makers of the new one can take some cues from the originator of the series and produce something equally fun and filthy. HELLRAISER is full of amazingly gory practical effects that will leave horror aficionados pondering the techniques that make everything look so slimy. The film also contains a healthy blend of corny dialogue and sexual tension that round this out as a horror classic. Screening as part of the Fetish Film Forum. (1987, 93 minutes, Digital Projection) [Drew Van Weelden]
Julia Ducournau's RAW (France)
Alliance Francaise de Chicago (810 N. Dearborn St.) – Thursday, 6:30pm
In Julia Ducournau’s RAW, 16-year-old Justine (Garance Marillier) is the last of her vegetarian family of four to enroll in veterinarian school. This particular school has a rite of passage wherein the older students (including Justine’s sister, Alexia) haze the incoming students by dumping buckets of blood on them and forcing them to consume a raw rabbit kidney while taking a shot of liquor. This latter rite awakens a deep and primal hunger within Justine that not only acts as a catalyst in her coming of age but also triggers more predatory instincts. RAW is as visceral as they come. It takes bold chances with its script and subject matter that pay dividends to the viewer, but be warned this is not a film for those with a weak constitution. Much of the action centers on the sisterhood of Justine and Alexia. Their dynamic plays out as rebellious thanks to their implied strict upbringing, and the two share increasingly shocking moments as the film progresses. Ducournau draws influence from older body-focused horror films such as EYES WITHOUT A FACE as well as more modern stylized features including the works of Nicolas Winding Refn and Jeremy Saulnier. The driving, Europop score adds a frantic layer that attempts to simultaneously sharpen the horror and dull the viewer’s empathy. Haunting and unforgettable, RAW provokes strong reactions, mental, and for some, physical. Like a pack of lions on the prowl, it strikes at the most vulnerable of our senses. Screening as part of the Cherchez la Femme series, with a complimentary glass of Bourgogne Louis Jadot. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Nick Davis, Associate Professor of English and Gender Studies at Northwestern University. (2016, 99 min, Digital Projection) [Kyle Cubr]
Tod Browning's DRACULA (US)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 2:15pm
In DRACULA, Tod Browning, the greatest horror director of the silent period, famously inaugurated Universal's long cycle of scary movies. Browning's Dracula, played with astounding charisma by BĂ©la Lugosi, is a handsome, collected, and hyper-civilized monster whose lust for blood and power plays out not in fangs, hairy palms, and vivid, animalistic transformations (as in Bram Stoker's novel) but in the pregnant look, the deliberate pause, and the contorted, barely controlled fury threatening to boil over in every gesture. Lugosi's performance as the titular count was a radical departure from the rat-like portrait drawn in the novel, but has become the gold standard in stately and erotic menace, haunting the nightmares of the susceptible for three-quarters of a century now. The product of a deep collaboration with Karl Freund, perhaps the greatest cinematographer ever to live, DRACULA is a beautiful and disturbing film, one of the great financial successes in Universal's history, and a high-point in any consideration of the genre. The film's oneiric pacing and logic defy summary: nothing makes any sense at all, and yet feels so utterly and terrifyingly inevitable. For years, critics were fond of dismissing DRACULA as a shallow and sloppy exercise that contrasted poorly to James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN, arriving later the same year. But in the roughness of DRACULA's style, its stagy performances, its incoherent plotline, its strange, stuttery dramaturgy, they missed the ways all of these ostensive faults only enhanced the film's true power. Dracula is a demonic, supernatural force of evil that, repeatedly, is equated in power and malice, to cinema itself. His hypnotic gaze penetrates into our eyes as much as into those of the innocent flower-vendor he murders upon his arrival in England, and that gaze is symbolically and visually linked to that of his exact opposite, the mysterious foreigner Van Helsing, whose glasses have the unearthly power to reflect the lights of artifice itself. Screening on a double bill with Lambert Hillyer's 1936 sequel DRACULA'S DAUGHTER. (1931, 75 min, DCP Digital) [Kian Bergstrom]
Frank Oz’s LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (US)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 11:30am and Sunday, 1:15pm
Originating from a 1960 film directed by Roger Corman, Frank Oz's LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is in turn based on Howard Ashman’s off-Broadway musical. It’s one of the rare films based on a stage show that holds on to its theatrical roots while successfully engaging with the cinematic format; Oz keeps the settings simple but uses striking camera angles and edits to make it distinctly filmic. Set in New York in the early 60s, the film is narrated by a doo-wop girl group acting as a Greek chorus. From moment one, the music is incredibly catchy and lyrically sharp; LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS maintains a gentleness without diminishing the underlying dark humor. The story follows timid flower shop employee Seymour (Rick Moranis), who’s desperately in love with his co-worker Audrey (Ellen Greene, reprising her role from the original stage show). Seymour’s fortunes change when he acquires an unusual plant with a taste for human blood—and Audrey’s abusive dentist boyfriend (Steve Martin) makes for a choice first victim. Despite the stellar main cast and delightful cameos (including Christopher Guest, John Candy, and a memorable Bill Murray as the sadistic dentist's masochistic patient), Greene shines brighter than anyone. Her performance of “Somewhere That’s Green” is equal parts devastating and hilarious; the song epitomizes the film's send-up of '80s obsession with mid-century American culture without minimizing the heartbreaking stories and sincere desires of its main characters. Ashman—who also wrote the script—would go on to pen some of the most iconic Disney songs along with composer Alan Menken; THE LITTLE MERMAID’s “Part of Your World,” is a clear descendant of “Somewhere That’s Green.” (1986, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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]
Guillermo Del Toro's CRIMSON PEAK (US/Mexico)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Sunday, 10am
Guillermo del Toro's CRIMSON PEAK was released in theaters just before Halloween and on DVD just before Valentine's Day. The day of horror and the day of love—all things considered, very appropriate for del Toro's Gothic romance. Or is it Gothic horror? Perhaps a date between those holidays would have been better, as the film similarly toes the line between the two subgenres of Gothic fiction. (Jessica Kiang astutely pointed out in a piece for the Playlist that the distinction "ultimately means less than you might think: it's more a difference of degree than of actual type.") It was a hot-as-hell topic, however, in the weeks leading up to the film's release, as del Toro gave interview after interview asserting that it is indeed a Gothic romance in spite of its marketing, which many critics felt was misleading. Or was it? Set in the late nineteenth century, the film is about the virginal daughter of a wealthy American businessman who marries a dashing English baronet and goes to live with him and his sister in their decaying mansion. She's an aspiring writer and he's a failed inventor, while the sister is something of a career lunatic. The plot itself surrenders to atmosphere; there isn't a single set, costume, or special effect that doesn't move the story along better than any line of dialogue. The trailers—and, to a lesser extent, the posters—certainly highlight the artistry of the film's production design. In fact, the official trailer on Legendary's YouTube channel begins with almost 30 seconds of shots of the macabre mansion. In most every other trailer, Mia Wasikowska can be heard breathlessly exclaiming in a voiceover that "ghosts are real." The romantic bits weren't minimized, either; a rather provocative waltz is featured in several versions of the trailer, and I think one or two even hint at the steamy sex scene. Gothic architecture plays a central role in Gothic texts (both romance and horror), as do supernatural elements like ghosts and spirits, and while the trailer doesn't give away the twist in regards to the bizarre love triangle, it definitely hints at the sexy stuff. So was CRIMSON PEAK misleadingly marketed as a horror film—Gothic or not—or simply misunderstood as a work of Gothic romance, which contains many of the same elements of its scary counterpart? Perhaps both, but neither is a reason not to see it. And even though many critics and filmgoers alike claim it isn't that scary, this critic begs to differ. Certainly nothing terrifies me more than watching two people engaged in a protracted knife fight... in the snow... while wearing white! (2015, 119 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING
âš« Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, called we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station and will run day and night through mid-March next year. More info here.
âš« Comfort Film Halloween at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Keil Orion Troisi’s 1997/2022 film CICADA! I WAS A TEENAGE HORROR MOVIE (63 min, Digital Projection) and Bruce Neubauer’s 1999 film M10.28 (55 min, Digital Projection) screen Wednesday at 8pm. Programmed by Jason Coffman. Free admission. More info here.
âš« Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
James Mangold’s 2023 film INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (154 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 2pm, as part of the New Releases & Miscellaneous Screenings series.
Mervyn LeRoy’s 1932 film I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (92 min, 35mm) screens Monday, 7pm, as part of the Proto-noir: The Roots of the Film Noir Movement series.
Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan’s 1972 documentary MARJOE (88 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 7pm, as part of the False Preachers series.
Dave Steck’s upcoming documentary CATALYST (42 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 4pm, followed by a post-screening Q&A with Steck, co-producer and featured subject Duro Wicks, and Sara Chapman from Media Burn Archive.
Ang Lee’s 1997 film THE ICE STORM (112 min, 35mm) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Films of Ang Lee series.
Gaspar Noé’s 2022 film IRRÉVERSIBLE (97 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.
âš« FACETS Cinema
Jon Moritsugu’s 1989 film MY DEGENERATION (61 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday at 7pm and 10pm. Both screenings will be preceded by a special video introduction from the filmmaker and Moritsugu’s 1998 45-second short CRACK. There’s also a live set by musician Pillbug Junction at 8:30pm; ticket holders for the 7pm screening are encouraged to stay later and for the 10pm screening to come early to hear the music. Curated by Henry Hanson and co-presented by Full Spectrum Features.
The 2023 Chicago Horror Film Festival takes place Saturday from 11am to midnight and Sunday from 11am to 11pm. Takes place across three screens and includes 150 indie horror films and a costume contest with prizes.
Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou’s 2023 horror film TALK TO ME (95 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday at 7pm.
Tetsuro Takeuchi’s 1999 Japanese cult horror comedy WILD ZERO (98 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday at 9pm. Preceded by a recorded introduction by film critic Harmony Colangelo and a screening of Kansas Bowling’s 2018 music video for Collapsing Scenery’s The Resort Beyond the Last Resort.
Also preceded at 7pm by FACETS Film Trivia, hosted by critic, programmer and Cine-File contributor Raphael Jose Martinez. More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
Jerry Franck’s 2023 documentary BOTTLE CONDITIONED (82 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday at 8pm. More info here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
Susanna Fogel’s 2023 film CAT PERSON (120 min, DCP Digital) begins and Maeve O’Boyle’s JOAN BAEZ: I AM A NOISE (113 min, DCP Digital) continues this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
The Music Box of Horrors marathon takes place Saturday starting at noon through Sunday at noon, approximately. This year’s event is entirely sold out, so we did not list it above. To all who are going: godspeed!
Also screening as part of the Bride of Music Box of Horrors month-long series are Adam Wingard’s 2011 film YOU’RE NEXT (95 min, 35mm) on Friday, 10pm, with writer Simon Barrett and co-star Joe Swanberg in attendance for a post-film Q&A; Roy Ward Baker’s 1970 film THE VAMPIRES LOVERS (91 min, 35m) on Sunday at 9pm; and a double feature of Luis Llosa’s 1997 film ANACONDA (90 min, 35mm) and Fabrizio De Angelis’ 1989 film KILLER CROCODILES (90 min, 35mm) on Wednesday at 7:30pm, presented by Severin Films. More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« Northwestern University
Not a screening but a job opportunity! Northwestern University’s Department of Radio/Television/Film seeks an outstanding Professor of Media Production specializing in narrative fiction for cinema and television, to teach narrative techniques and aesthetics to undergraduate students and graduate students in their MFA in Documentary Media program. This is an open-rank, tenure-eligible position, hiring at any appropriate rank, up to Full Professor. The school seeks a filmmaker with an established or emerging national and international reputation, who has an impact on the field with an innovative body of work directing and/or producing theatrical features and/or scripted episodic television. Additional significant experience in writing, editing, cinematography, or other cinematic crafts a plus. Application deadline is November 17. Apply here.
âš« 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.
âš« Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Find information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.
🎞️ ONLINE SCREENINGS/EVENTS
âš« Media Burn Archive
On Thursday at 6pm, Media Burn Archive is hosting a virtual screening/discussion with early video pioneer Nick DeMartino, moderated by film scholar/filmmaker Carmine Grimaldi, as part of the ongoing Virtual Talks with Video Activists series. More info here.
âš« VDB TV
Mark Oates and Tom Rubnitz’s 1985 video PSYKHO III THE MUSICAL (23 min) screens for free on VDB TV. More info here.
CINE-LIST: October 20 - October 26, 2023
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Kyle Cubr, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Josephine Ferorelli, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Nicky Ni, Harrison Sherrod, Drew Van Weelden