📽️ The 29th Annual Black Harvest Film Festival
The 29th Annual Black Harvest Film Festival takes place at the Gene Siskel Film Center through Thursday, November 16, with 20 feature films, 10 shorts programs, and a five-film John Singleton retrospective. Select films and programs are reviewed below. For more information, including all titles, showtimes and ticket prices, check out the festival website here.
Shorts Program: Experiments in Black Experience (Experimental US/Jamaica)
Saturday, 12pm
In QUIET AS IT’S KEPT, director Ja’Tovia M. Gary explores seeing and not seeing as it relates to the Black experience. Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, animates both the images and philosophical ideas Gary explores with Dr. Kokahvah Zauditu-Selassie, who has examined African belief systems mediated through the American Black experience in Morrison’s work. Gary alludes to the drubbing Shirley Temple took in Morrison’s debut novel, and she records the pain of a light-skinned actor who apologizes to actors who are as dark as her mother for usurping their identity and livelihood. A closing modern dance by Bianca Melidor to “Them There Eyes,” a song made famous by Billie Holiday, completes the melancholic meditation. Joseph Douglas Elmhirst’s BURNT MILK takes an ordinary task—a Jamaican nurse living in the UK boiling a can of condensed milk to make a traditional caramelized dessert—and intersperses it with remembrances of her homeland. The black-and-white images of Jamaica were doubtlessly shot on the lush, remote island resort established by the director’s mother and screenwriter of BURNT MILK, Miss Ronnie Elmhirst. Miss Ronnie’s belief that the land is “witchy” with “overwhelmingly good energy” informs the obeah rituals of former African slaves that fill the screen. The images the director makes fit the poetic inner monologue of the nurse voiced by Tamara Lawrance. Also on the bill but unavailable for previewing are Namir Mustafa Fearce’s I’M BUILDING ME A HOME, Lamar Robillard’s GHETTO BIRDS IN US...LET THE SKY TOUCH MY SOUL, Leah Solomon’s JIGNA, and Asari Precious Aibangbee’s OMWAN’EKHUI [person of Dark Skin]. Select filmmakers scheduled to attend. (2021–2023, Total approx. 96 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Caullen Hudson’s NO COP ACADEMY: THE DOCUMENTARY (US/Documentary)
Sunday, 12:45pm
One interviewee in NO COP ACADEMY: THE DOCUMENTARY mentions that Chicago spends $4 million per day on policing. In the several years since the documentary’s subject was making headlines, that number has increased to approximately $5.5 million a day, an astounding number that quantifies a grave problem. The overinvestment in policing to the exclusion of more universally beneficial community services has, in recent years, come under increased scrutiny as police continue to murder citizens, particularly Black and brown ones. In 2017 then Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed a $95 million police and fire training academy to be built in West Garfield Park, a replacement for centers in the West Loop. The movement #NoCopAcademy arose in response, compounded not just by police brutality (Laquan McDonald had been shot and killed by a police officer in an incident that was later covered up by city officials), but by Emanuel’s unprecedented closure of 50 schools in 2013, primarily in Black and Latinx communities, and the closure of half the city’s public mental health clinics two in 2011. Hudson’s documentary details the origin of the movement and the tactics they undertook to protest the resolution, from train takeovers on the CTA to taking up Chance the Rapper on his offer to promote their efforts. The film details the trajectory of the pre-bid and city council meetings leading up to the final vote (not that it’s a spoiler, but, unfortunately, the academy was approved and opened earlier this year) and the group’s actions protesting it, occasionally focusing on specific activists and their experiences within the coalition. The film is both a document of this time (including incidents such as the Black Caucus of Chicago’s City Council ejecting protesters from a fundraising event and Alderperson Carrie Austin referring to her cohort as the city’s real gangsters) and the group’s endless resolve in combating the academy and bringing awareness to this gross, if not exactly illegal, misappropriation of funds. At the first city council vote, only one alderman voted against the proposal on which company to award the bid; by the final vote eight had voted against (one technically abstained but in his absence said he’d have voted nay). That is a huge accomplishment, proving that these efforts work. It’s a much needed reminder of that fact, and that while we may not have won the battle, if things keep up, we could very well win the war. Members of the filmmaking team scheduled to attend. (2023, 69 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Simon Steuri’s HOW I LEARNED TO FLY (US)
Sunday, 7pm and Monday, 8:30pm
The title of this Los Angeles-set drama really does the film a disservice, as it all but promises a sentimental coming-of-age story filled with trite observations. And while HOW I LEARNED TO FLY isn’t without uplifting moments, on the whole it is a sobering and detailed account of what it’s like to live in poverty. The film begins in medias res, with adolescent brothers Daniel and Eli figuring out how to take care of themselves in the absence of their parents. Daniel is a senior in high school and works full time as a dishwasher; he feels sharply protective of Eli, who’s about four years younger and appears to have a moderate autism spectrum disorder. Writer-director Simon Steuri displays empathy as well in how he structures the film: it registers as a big deal when the characters find something for dinner or a new pair of shoes, as it does for many people without money. In fact, the brothers’ immediate needs quickly overshadow the “bigger” questions of what happened to their parents or whether they’ll be coming back, since Steuri effectively dramatizes how poverty determines a person’s priorities. The film is just as considerate of the challenges of living with autism; Eli’s struggles with his speech impediment and aversion to taking showers are granted comparable dramatic weight as the brothers’ financial problems. It’s because Steuri understands his characters so well that the film’s moments of uplift feel earned. One endearing motif of HOW I LEARNED TO FLY is that Daniel and Eli are constantly finding people who want to help them, whether it’s Daniel’s guidance counselor, the fatherly neighbor played by Cedric the Entertainer, or the uncommonly sensitive young woman who works at a laundromat. These characters serve as reminders of the social services that exist to aid people in need and occasionally succeed in their mission. (2023, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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John Singleton's POETIC JUSTICE (US)
Monday, 6pm
In his second feature (following BOYZ N THE HOOD), John Singleton pivoted in tone and style while remaining consistent in the themes that recurred throughout his oeuvre as he explored the toll of violence, trauma, and structural racism in shaping a generation of Black Americans. POETIC JUSTICE attracted audiences with the star power and charisma of Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur as the romantic leads, yet the film was almost universally panned by critics upon release for being "undisciplined" and "disappointing" compared with his highly successful debut. Singleton was only 24 when he made his second film, and his youthful perspective lends itself to a gentle and forgiving portrayal of Justice (Jackson) and Lucky (Shakur), two working-class individuals in South Central Los Angeles struggling to achieve their ideals against harsh surroundings. Justice works as a hairdresser, but her true passion is poetry, which she shares with her friends and coworkers, as well as in voice-over that starkly contrasts with the backdrop of violence that erupts periodically in the film. Justice's poetry shares her interior world as she grieves for her mother, grandmother, and, most recently, her boyfriend. Lucky is a postal worker and single parent who fails to win Justice's number when he flirts with her at her salon and mutters rap lyrics to himself as he drives his truck, although he has no way to envision becoming a true musician. Justice and Lucky meet again when they take a meandering-but-still-work-related road trip up the coast of California with two friends. In a supporting role as Justice's best friend, Regina King displays her usual intensity and believability in even the most mundane character arc. Other cameos include Tone Loc, Q-Tip, and Maya Angelou, who wrote all the poetry in the film and advised Singleton on Justice's character development through her poetry. Over time, opinion of POETIC JUSTICE has softened, as the film has gained popularity for portraying an iconic point in Los Angeles history, early hip-hop culture (the film features a cameo by The Last Poets, who also lend several songs to the fabulous soundtrack), and a tender love story with two incredibly magnetic leads. One of the many facets of the tragedy of Tupac Shakur's murder is the loss of an incredible acting talent: Shakur shows a tender, funny, and vulnerable side of himself through Lucky that only gains poignance after the performer’s death. This film feels more like a meandering and wistful road trip movie than it gets credit for, and it can be easily appreciated as such. Don't go into the film with any expectations except to enjoy these larger-than-life actors, brief moments of connection, and beautiful shots of the California coast, with a healthy dose of offbeat humor (the satirical movie-within-a-movie at the beginning, for example, does not get enough credit for skewering a very popular style of thriller of the era). Be prepared, however, to weather moments of casual brutality alongside these characters you grow to love in the short span of the film, which never lets you forget what catalyzed Justice and Lucky's tragedies in 1990s America, and lament just how little has changed since then. (1993, 109 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]
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John Singleton's BOYZ N THE HOOD (US)
Wednesday, 6:15pm
Orson Welles was just 25 years old when he made CITIZEN KANE, but John Singleton has him beat by two years, having been only 23 when he wrote and directed BOYZ N THE HOOD, a staggering feat that’s intensely personal and distinctly relatable—both not just for him but also many of his viewers, who very rarely, if at all, saw their truth projected 24 times a second on the big screen. Set largely in South Central Los Angeles, the film has two parts: the first, in 1984 (the first iteration of the script was titled “Summer of 84”), depicts the protagonists as young boys, and the second, in 1991, with said boys all grown up and on their respective paths. Cuba Gooding, Jr. stars as the adult Tre Styles, who was sent by his mother (Reva, played by the one-and-only Angela Bassett) to live in South Central with his father, Furious (Laurence Fishburne, dispensing wisdom like Morpheus but ever so sensitively), where he falls in with a group of local pre-teens, among them “good kid” Ricky (played as an adult by Morris Chestnut) and his brother Doughboy (played as an adult by Ice Cube, in a remarkably devastating performance). The film switches to 1991 after a series of scenes in which Tre spends time with his father and Doughboy is arrested for stealing, a dichotomy that permeates the rest of the film, as is evidenced by the 1991 portion opening with Doughboy’s return home from jail for yet another offense. The rest of the film follows the boys—now young men—over an ambiguous period of time leading up to their college acceptance, with Tre and Ricky headed for university (the latter due to his capabilities on the football field) and Doughboy not. As in real life, the events leading up to the tragic ending don’t seem especially significant: Tre hounds his girlfriend, Brandi (Nia Long), for sex, and Ricky, already with a kid of his own and having been scouted by the University of Southern California, attempts to get higher than a 700 on the SAT so that he can play college ball. Things come to a head when Ricky gets into a skirmish with some local gang members, who later seek revenge. Unlike CITIZEN KANE, it’s not a whole lifetime that Singleton depicts, but rather the events that define a lifetime, a phenomenon of perspective that seems to affect people like those in BOYZ N THE HOOD more than it does rich, white men like Charles Foster Kane. Singleton began working on the film while at USC; it's based on his life and those of people he knew. It was also inspired by François Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS—Singleton and Truffaut share surprising similarities in their handling of troubled youth. For his extraordinary effort, Singleton was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, becoming not only the youngest person ever nominated, but also the first African American, almost twenty years before Lee Daniels for PRECIOUS. Singleton passed away in April 2019 at the age of 51—gone before his time, but having left a body of work that will persist even after his death. (1991, 112 min, DCP Digital) [Kathleen Sachs]
📽️ Crucial Viewing
Patricio Guzmán's THE BATTLE OF CHILE (Chile/Documentary)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 2pm
The great Chris Marker once gave a piece of indispensable advice to a young Chilean protege: “You must be ready at the place where the first flame will appear." This was easy advice to follow for Patricio Guzmán, a man who had already been embedded in the embers of revolution for some time when he received the equipment from Marker that would allow him to make his seminal THE BATTLE OF CHILE. The film’s three parts, shot primarily between 1972 and '73, cover socialist president Salvador Allende’s election and eventual death via coup d’etat, leading to 17 years of fascist military rule under Augusto Pinochet. The first two segments happen more or less in real time covering the lead-up to the first (unsuccessful) and second (successful) coups, tracing public sentiment in Santiago as democratic leadership is gradually undone by US-backed fascistic forces. It’s difficult material, featuring the on-camera murder of a journalist by the military as well as the haunting final radio transmissions from Allende before his death by bombing, but Guzmán and his subjects remain resolute through all of it, ever the quick-thinking revolutionaries who have no choice but to push on. This shepherds the film’s shift into a different mode, with part three going back in time and tracing workers groups’ principles and practices under Allende. While the first sections are undeniably urgent primary material, the final section uses this groundwork to launch into more granular material to texture its portrait of a changing nation. Going back to 1972, Guzmán goes into further detail about the Christian Democrat-backed trucker strikes that were meant to collapse the economy, but were stymied when the workers found alternative routes to work; it’s a sort of inversion of typical strike politics, but a reversal that shows the power of mixed methodology in the service of creating worker power. It’s arguably the most technical and intellectual stretch of the film, and it’s here that you can see the roots of the poetic style Guzmán would hone over his future work. On top of the film’s complicated ideas, he becomes more visually creative, adopting longer, freer tracking shots (one of a man running with a rickshaw is a particular highlight) and more of an interest in the geometry of machines. “These are the first symptoms where the state begins to be surpassed by reality,” Guzmán narrates as he describes the gradual occupation of the country’s factories by workers who could have legally expropriated them, but saw the urgency of their work and chose a faster route. This existential question runs throughout the work, where the will of a state and the will of its people are separated. It’s a question provoked by all propaganda, regardless of side, and Guzmán (despite his obvious alignment with the workers) avoids overly prescriptive narration, flatly describing fascist power grabs while letting workers’ own reflections about their place in the whole drive the work. The tragedy in all this is that the left in Chile was very shrewd, anticipating and countering nearly all efforts by fascists to overturn popular mandates. When the Christian Democrats backed a trucker strike to economically ruin the country under Allende, workers combined resources and still found ways to get to their job sites; when a blockade on foreign machine parts was introduced to stymy production at factories, the workers improvised and developed new pieces of machinery themselves. Guzmán champions a Chilean Left that could really do anything; the only thing they couldn’t do was collect enough military support to protect their democracy from the imperial violence of the United States. It’s a theme that pops up in geopolitics too many times to count, but viewers can make obvious connections to mass atrocities still being carried out in this country’s name. The film’s relevance can also be seen in its depictions of the organizing process: this is a Left sometimes at odds with itself, but steadfastly committed to the greater good and willing to adjust and improvise as a result. It’s easy to see how such an experience formed the unique mix of practicality and poeticism that still colors Guzmán’s work, an oeuvre that does its homework but always finds a place for optimism about the human spirit in times of strife. THE BATTLE OF CHILE is a blueprint for us all to do the same. Screening as part of the Open Veins: Postcolonial Cinema of the Luso-Hispanic World series. (1975-’79, 262 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
Alfred Hitchcock's SABOTAGE (UK)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm
Having already established himself as an international cinematic talent, Hitchcock cemented his status as a master of suspense with his early masterpiece SABOTAGE (which was released in the US as THE WOMAN ALONE). With 13 talkies under his belt, Hitch had a clear artistic voice and command of the camera. Throughout the early thirties, Hitchcock’s work bordered the experimental, taking risks that no one else would imagine. Adapted from Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent, the film feels like the first Hitchcockian thriller, an easily identifiable flare. Some argue his sensibilities begin with THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), but the artist would emerge with his distinct voice with SABOTAGE. Ironically, Hitch would look back on the picture with a certain level of disdain. While recognized as an auteur’s vision breaking through, lessons were still to be learned. When asked about it, Hitch explained the film incorrectly resolves suspense. In SABOTAGE the bomb goes off and kills characters the audience has become invested in. In a classic Hitchcock film, all emphasis is put on the building of suspense, to rouse viewers’ emotions. When suspense eventually resolves, it must do so in a way that pleases the viewer. If someone places a time bomb under a table, a bystander must find and defuse it at the last second. Hitch would use this formula throughout his career (he joked that “style is self-plagiarism”). As a modern viewer, I don’t think the bomb’s detonation diminishes the picture, but the director always wanted to lead his audience on a particular path of emotions. A lean thriller, SABOTAGE doesn’t waste time naming a MacGuffin. Hitchcock works with bare bone ideas that would go on to fuel a career and change a genre forever. While reaching the next level as auteur, it’s at a moment in the artist's life where he’s still working out all the imperfections. Screening as part of the Proto-noir: The Roots of the Film Noir Movement. (1936, 76 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]
Frank Capra's THE MIRACLE WOMAN (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 7pm
Frank Capra's THE MIRACLE WOMAN was one of only two films of his from the 1930s to lose money, and though this fact was later attributed to the film's censorship in Britain by their Board of Film Classification, it could also have been due in part to its initial critical reception. Critics at the time praised star Barbara Stanwyck's fiery opening monologue, in which she, as "Sister" Florence Fallon, takes a congregation to task after her priest father dies penniless and having recently been terminated from his position, but the film was largely criticized for opening on such a strong note, thus causing the rest of the film to simmer in comparison. Following Florence's impassioned outburst, the rest of the film details her decision to join forces with a con man and "punish" religious hypocrisy by fleecing those who attend her evangelical road show. She then meets John, a blind man who was previously shown as having decided not to commit suicide after hearing one of Florence's sermons on the radio. They soon fall in love, and Florence seeks to extricate herself from the con. Though the film is never as surprising or exciting as its vehement opening credo, it is exceptionally well written, and at times even genuinely humorous. It's based on the play Bless You Sister by John Meehan and Robert Riskin, which was inspired by evangelical superstar Aimee Semple McPherson, or "Sister Aimee" as she was more popularly known. Adapted to the screen by longtime Capra collaborator Jo Swerling, it's said to largely retain the play's witty dialogue and fast-paced narrative. Capra did compromise, though, by inserting the con man character (Bob Hornsby, played by Sam Hardy) and making Sister Florence appear to have been exploited rather than willfully complicit in the scheme. Perhaps decided upon in part because of objections raised by Harry Cohn, then head of Columbia Pictures, it eventually became Capra's greatest regret about the film that was largely forgotten until 1970, when it played in a retrospective sidebar at the New York Film Festival. According to Dr. James Robertson's book The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action 1913-1972, "some forty years after the event Capra was to admit that he had pulled his punches over the film by shifting the blame for religious confidence tricksterism onto an unscrupulous promoter and away from the disillusioned evangelist." The film's script is nonetheless estimable with its earnest ruminations and smart romantic dialogue, and the performances more than seal the deal. Capra once called Stanwyck a "primitive emotional," a characteristic that's evident in the pulpit and out. David Manners proficiently characterizes John, subtly transforming him from suicidal cynic to romantic jokester against Stanwyck's more outwardly emotive portrayal. Despite Capra's regret over his concession, there's still some moral ambiguity left in both the film and Stanwyck's performance. As he recounted in his autobiography, "[Hornsby] cons Fallon into it. He gets wealthy. She becomes his flamboyant stooge. Did she or did she not believe those 'inspiring' sermons delivered in diaphanous robes, with live lions at her side? I didn't know, Stanwyck didn't know, and neither did the audience." Though Capra is now remembered primarily for films such as MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, which are more conventionally constructed, THE MIRACLE WOMAN is two third-acts sandwiching a second, and altogether a delightful insight into the early careers of Capra and company. Screening as part of the False Preachers series. (1931, 90 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
Kathryn Bigelow's STRANGE DAYS (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 7pm
Utopias don’t age, but distopias don’t age well. The imagined ideal society is always abstract, always planned for perfection, always writ on a blank slate. But our nightmares are built out of the quotidian, made from fears magnified, dangers taken to extremes, the horrors of today turned into the horrors of every day. But if the curve of history teaches anything, it’s that we as a species have a special power to become accustomed to any degradation, and so today’s apocalypses have the unenviable fortune of either tomorrow’s farces, which we read and watch and laugh over at how much worse things actually are than we were warned, or today’s uncanny documentaries, weird reverse time-capsules that accidentally captured the zeitgeist of the future. STRANGE DAYS is both. It is a film that unflinchingly puts American racism and misogyny on display as driving forces of catastrophic exploitation, cruelty, violence, and barbarism, constructing a dense web of a narrative that melds VERTIGO, PEEPING TOM, THE PARALLAX VIEW into an elaborate repudiation of the Rodney King verdict in which two women, a white hooker and a black limousine driver, strike with brutal force at patriarchal bigotry and the police state. It is a dizzying murder mystery in which the killer is irrelevant and the detective is effectively already dead, a love story in which neither partner loves the other, a science-fiction allegory in which the futuristic technology is cinema itself. But in the America of Donald Trump and Richard Spencer, the America of Tamir Rice and Michael Brown, the America of Sandra Bland and Homan Square, the America of hipster Nazis in the New York Times, the romantic idea that a video recording of police officers murdering a black man at a traffic stop could bring such an institution as the LAPD to its knees is either uncomfortably naive or ridiculously idealistic. Bigelow’s film knows all this, of course. Its contradictions were clear in 1995 when it was first released, and Bigelow is a master at playing her films against themselves, at making political art that self-deconstructions in a thousand different ways. If anything, the dark malaise of STRANGE DAYS has only become more urgently needed as time has passed. This movie is the White Gaze stabbing its own eyes out. Screening as part of the In the Club: 90s Electronic Music and Beyond series. (1995, 145 min, 35mm) [Kian Bergstrom]
Kenji Mizoguchi's A STORY FROM CHIKAMATSU (Japan)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm
For many years, the Western title of Mizoguchi's CHIKAMATSU MONOGATARI was THE CRUCIFIED LOVERS, a less obscure and more exploitation-friendly marquee, less a spoiler than a premonition. The decision, some sixty years later, to revert to the more accurate translation of A STORY FROM CHIKAMATSU also restores to Mizoguchi's art a certain sheen of heritage filmmaking that purely formalist interpretations often miss. (Similarly, what we know as THE LIFE OF OHARU translates literally as THE LIFE OF A WOMAN ACCORDING TO SAIKAKU.) Watch the original Japanese teaser trailer for CHIKAMATSU, and you'll see the cast frolicking amidst lion tchotchkes from the Viennale, site of Mizoguchi's three consecutive international triumphs. Clearly, the director is the pride of Daiei, and of the whole Japanese film industry, a filmmaker who brings a 'modern touch' to literary classics and elevates them to the world stage, a key figurehead in the country's post-war revival. In that context, CHIKAMATSU plays as a bewildered excavation of feudal psychology, the dusting-off of a classic that resonates precisely because it's so resolutely grounded in familiar abuses of the office, the home, and the marital bed. It's also, of course, one of Mizoguchi's most beautifully judged films, the claustrophobic confines of the boss's house effortlessly contrasted with the unfettered expanse of the natural world. The distinction is subtle: the interiors are subject to constant reframing, with the camera jerked on its axis to find a better view of a conversation behind a doorway while the camera crane follows the fugitive lovers over the hills. CHIKAMATSU stands besides other Mizoguchi works in its slashing anger towards a society that refuses to let souls rise above their circumstance, but in the end, it becomes that rarest of things: a smiling tragedy. Screening as part of the Amour Fou series. (1954, 102 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Juan José Campanella’s THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES (Argentina)
Instituto Cervantes (31 W. Ohio St.) – Tuesday, 6pm
Passion is the byword of director Juan JosĂ© Campanella’s Oscar-winning feature THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES. Campanella, who cowrote the screenplay with Eduardo Sacheri, the writer of the 2005 novel on which the film is based, brought together a brilliant cast to tell the complicated story of criminal investigator Benjamin EspĂłsito (Ricardo DarĂn), whose probe into the rape and murder of a beautiful young woman (Carla Quevedo) has haunted him for 25 years. Now retired, Benjamin is trying to develop a novel based on the case. He contacts Irene MenĂ©ndez Hastings (Soledad Villamil), who was his boss during the investigation and for whom he has harbored an undying love. Together they revisit the past as Benjamin tries to resolve unsettled business with Irene and with some tragic events arising from the case. Campanella opens the film with a clichĂ© of partings that seems to portend a routine film. He almost immediately undercuts the scene and follows suit throughout the film as plot twists unravel with surprising regularity. Pablo Rago is exceedingly good as the husband of the slain woman who tries to reckon with the true meaning of justice, and Guillermo Francella as Benjamin’s alcoholic colleague provides an unexpectedly vital spine to the story. DarĂn, one of the greatest actors alive today, uses his incredible eyes as our window into the soul of his character, a restless soul trying to right himself in a country descending into fascism. THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES transcends the routine police procedural with its interest in the immutability of human passion. Screening as part of the 40 Years of Democracy series. (2009, 129 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Hayao Miyazaki's KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (Japan/Animation)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Sunday, 11am
In movies about witchcraft, especially those centered on female teenage protagonists, magic is often a metaphor for the emotional vicissitude that is coming of age. The same is true of KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, except that its director, Hayao Miyazaki, extends it to also include the young witch’s pragmatic development. In this world, derived from Eiko Kadono’s eponymous novel, witchcraft is as much an amendable skill as it is an innate gift; Kiki has a knack for flying (using a broomstick, as a witch does), and her mother is shown using her own magic to brew medicine for the locals. Though their skills are otherworldly in nature, it’s required that witches leave home at 13 to find a town that doesn’t have any witch inhabitants and make a living using their powers. With her sassy black cat Jiji in tow, Kiki starts her own delivery service, transporting various items around town with minimal effort but maximum mishaps. As is the norm with Miyazaki, there is no easy fix for Kiki’s problems—magic, unfortunately, can’t replace tenacity or account for a lack of self-esteem. “Magic in the film is a limited power no different from the talents of any average kids,” he wrote in a director's statement for its DVD release. About Kiki’s gender, which is an identifying factor of the film, that it’s concerned so intently with a young girl’s maturation, Miyazaki also said that “[s]he represents every girl who is drawn to the glamour of the big city but finds themselves struggling with their newfound independence.” This reflects the conflict between tradition and modernity that’s common in much of Miyazaki’s work. Also present is a preoccupation with flight that started in his childhood—his father manufactured fighter plane rudders during World War II. Despite said fascination, he does not give Kiki her powers so easily. At one point, she loses them altogether; talented painter and new friend Ursula tells Kiki that the same happens to her, that sometimes she’s completely unable to create. The film’s profound display of maturity and all that precedes its acquisition is standard for Studio Ghibli fare but decidedly less so for childrens' films in general. Its happy ending is predicated on the understanding that to be happy, one must persevere through bad times, sad times, and any doldrums in between. As always, its animation style is wholly ataractic, much like the Romantic and Impressionist painters beyond whose captivating canvases lay a whole complex world, both halcyon and tremulous, as honest as they are illusory in their artistic dissimulation. (The novel on which it’s based is set in northern Europe, and Miyazaki cited a couple of cities in Sweden as influences on the design. Yet another hat tip to the idea that even the most tranquil seas swell from time to time.) It’s the first Ghibli film distributed by Disney, a partnership that’s only recently come to an end with Disney granting home media distribution rights of the studio’s films to GKIDS, who’ve held the theatrical distribution rights since 2011. Miyazaki originally intended to just produce the film but decided to direct after being reluctant to cede his vision for the project. One can only assume that Kiki, in all her dewy wisdom, would do the same as it pertains to her witchy industry. Final note—and a spoiler: Perhaps the most heartbreaking-to-me scene in cinema is when Kiki stops being able to speak with Jiji, who’d previously been able to talk to her as if he was another human. If there’s a more apt metaphor for the transition from adolescence to adulthood, I have yet to hear of it. Still, though the magic of childhood may cease, there’s still some to be found on the other side. (1989, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Justine Triet’s ANATOMY OF A FALL (France)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Like John Cassavetes, Justine Triet makes movies that feel like they’re constantly trying to catch up with their own characters; one consistent pleasure of both of their films is never knowing how the tone will adapt to how the subjects behave. Unlike Cassavetes, who started as an actor, Triet began her career making documentaries, so it’s likely that she allows her characters such liberty because she cut her teeth on observing real people. In her fiction features, the sense of directorial fascination extends beyond what the characters do and into the worlds they inhabit—another surprising quality of Triet’s IN BED WITH VICTORIA (2016) and SIBYL (2019) is how they at first resemble bourgeois lifestyle comedies but end up having a lot to say about law and psychoanalysis, respectively. ANATOMY OF A FALL, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, also has a lot to say about the law, in addition to fiction writing and marriage; befitting a movie about a novelist, it feels novelistic in its breadth and depth. But that doesn’t mean it ever feels less than cinematic—Triet makes as many engagingly eccentric decisions behind the camera as her characters make in front of it. ANATOMY OF A FALL is noteworthy for its deliberately graceless zooms and pans, which suggest the perspective of a curious insect, and its low-angle closeups, which evoke a sense of nervous intimacy before the characters even do anything. Triet also shifts enigmatically between objective and subjective perspectives, creates chilling ellipses through editing, and covers staggering amounts of emotional territory within individual scenes. If she weren’t such an exceptional director of actors, her ambitions as a storyteller might seem show-offy; yet ANATOMY OF A FALL (like Triet’s previous two features) is worthy of Sidney Lumet in how it glues your eyes to the performances. Sandra Hüller deserves all the praise she gets for her lead performance as a successful novelist who stands trial after her husband dies in a suspicious accident, but the whole cast is mesmerizing, down to the bit players. Special mention goes to young Milo Machado Garner, who plays Hüller’s 11-year-old son and exudes an emotional maturity well beyond his years. Yet another surprise of ANATOMY OF A FALL is how much it comes to be about his character in the final act; his story vaguely recalls Ozu’s early masterpiece I WAS BORN, BUT… (1932) in its stinging evocation of the moment when we realize our parents are flawed individuals like everyone else. It speaks to the effectiveness of Triet’s maximalism that even the revelations of secondary characters carry the weight of entire separate films. (2023, 152 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
David Lynch's DUNE (US)
Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 12pm
Having seen David Lynch's adaptation DUNE after watching Denis Villeneuve’s version, I am struck at how similar the two are—and by how easy it is to teeter from making an adaptation work to completely missing the mark. While Villeneuve may have found a way to streamline the original novel’s plot, he didn’t make it any less dense. Lynch’s version never figured out its impermeability; this led to a challenging production and eventual box office failure on release. In revisiting, I’m most surprised to see so many parallels between Lynch’s DUNE and his more recent Twin Peaks: The Return, both in the aesthetic—particularly set design and special effects–and in its puzzling nature. Set in the future, the intricate plot—much of it divulged through voiceover—follows young Paul Atreides (an enthusiastic Kyle MacLachlan in his first film role) as his powerful family relocates to the desert planet Arrakis, which is the only place in the universe where spice, a necessary resource for interplanetary space travel, is found. DUNE is filled with bizarre performances by Lynch regulars and one-offs alike: Patrick Stewart, Brad Dourif, Sting, and Alicia Witt, just to name a handful. The film is also scored by rock band Toto with a theme by Brian Eno. There’s a lot going on, and a lot of that doesn’t work, but it's impressive in its attempt, and often weirdly fascinating. While it’s a perplexing film to grapple with, Lynch's DUNE sits oddly somewhere between two of my favorite kinds of cinema: the ambitious and mainly unsuccessful sci-fi/fantasy films of the 80s on the one hand and Lynch’s most inscrutable work on the other. The former taught me missteps can still contain some stunning visuals; the latter taught me that a seemingly impenetrable film experience can also be a very rewarding one. (1984, 137 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Alliance Française de Chicago (54 W. Chicago Ave.)
The touring edition of the Champs-Élysées Film Festival, with Chicago premieres and award-winning short films presented in a red-carpet event by Justine Lévêque, the creative director of Paris’ only film festival, takes place on Monday at 6:30pm. More info here.
âš« Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Variations: Projector Performances by Madison Brookshire & Tomonari Nishikawa, all on 16mm, takes place Friday, 7pm, with the filmmaker in attendance for a post-screening discussion. Free admission. More info here.
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« Chicago Humanities
Bill Morrison’s 2023 short film INCIDENT (30 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 7pm, at the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.). Followed by a panel discussion with Morrison, journalist and founder of the Invisible Institute Jamie Kalven, University of Chicago Associate Professor Adam Green, and Data Director at the Invisible Institute trina reynolds-tyler. More info here.
âš« Comfort Film (at Comfort Station)
The First Nations Film Festival 2023 presents a short film program on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission. More info here.
âš« Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film BARBIE (114 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 4pm and 7pm, as part of the New Releases & Miscellaneous Screenings series.
Ang Lee’s 1991 film PUSHING HANDS (105 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Films of Ang Lee series.
Andy Milligan’s 1968 film SEEDS (OF SIN) (84 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday, 9:30pm, as part of the Depths of the Grindhouse series. More info on all screenings here.
âš« FACETS Cinema
The 40th Annual Chicago International Children's Film Festival begins on Friday and goes through Sunday, November 19, with screenings at FACETS Cinema the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, AMC NEWCITY 14, the Music Box Theatre, and the Chicago History Museum. More info on all screenings and related events here.
âš« Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago)
Cartographic Cinema: Following a Straight Line, featuring Oleg Tcherny’s 2016 short film LA LINEA GENERALE (16 min, Digital Projection) and Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser’s 2014 film DETROIT TRANSECT - SPINE (42 min, 3D DCP Digital), the central hub of the Detroit Transect suite of 3D films by Downie and Kaiser, screens Thursday, 7pm, with the filmmakers in attendance. More info here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
Daniel Eisenberg’s 2003 film SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT (73 min, Digital Projection) and Kye Stone’s 2020 short film NIGHT PATROL (12 min, Digital Projection) screen Tuesday, 6pm, as part of Eisenberg’s fall SAIC lecture series, the Times, the Chronicle, the Witness, and the Observer: Three Decades Of Film/Video Inquiry. More info here.
âš« Instituto Cervantes of Chicago (31 W. Ohio St.)
Taras Tomenko’s 2021 Ukrainian film TERYKONY (80 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday, 6pm, as part of the Ukrainian films program. More info here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
Alexander Payne’s 2023 film THE HOLDOVERS (133 min, 35mm/DCP [check specific showtime for film format]) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
Wakefield Poole’s 1977 porn film TAKE ONE (98 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 9:30pm. Programmed and Presented by the Front Row and Henry Hanson.
The Chicago Film Society presents John S. Robertson’s 1923 film THE BRIGHT SHAWL (80 min, 35mm) on Monday at 7pm. Introduced by author Rob Kozlowski and with live musical accompaniment by Dave Drazin.
John Waters’ 1988 film HAIRSPRAY (92 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday at 9:45pm. Presented by Rated Q and Ramona Slick, with preshow drinks and a DJ in the Music Box Lounge at 9pm and a dragshow performance in the Main Theater at 9:45pm before the screening. 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 hosts a virtual screening of Bill Morrison’s new short film INCIDENT (2023, 30 min), followed by a Q&A with Morrison and human rights activist Jamie Kalven of the Invisible Institute, as part of the Virtual Talks with Video Activists series. Free registration. 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: November 3 - November 9, 2023
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Maxwell Courtright, Ray Ebarb, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, K.A. Westphal