:: FRIDAY, MARCH 8 - THURSDAY, MARCH 14 ::

📽️ Crucial Viewing

Video Data Bank Presents: Roundabout #2 (US/Japan/Experimental)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

For the second iteration of Roundabout, for which Video Data Bank invites its national and international counterparts to join a conversational curation, Image Forum Japan, a school and cinematheque that promotes and preserves experimental films in the East Asian region (also the host of the long-running experimental film festival, Image Forum Festival, renowned for its multi-city footprint and welcoming its 38th iteration this year), respond to select works from VDB’s collection with works from its own archive. The program unfolds in rounds of calls and responses. Cecelia Condit’s seminal piece BENEATH THE SKIN (1981, 12 min) sets a bleak and absurd tone. Intense and thrilling are weak words to describe the spine-chilling violence that has been committed against women. Voicing-over interlaced images that daringly approach death and decay is Condit telling her experience of being in proximity to a murderer. Her almost neurotic voice, jumpy at first and culminating in frenetic, almost ear-piercing chanting, is at the verge of presenting herself as an unreliable narrator. In MY PRINCE (2005, 15 min), director Oguchi Yoko composes a work of masochistic introspection through diaristic segments of claustrophobic scenes, eerie repetitions and adventurous encounters as a response to the arrest of sex criminal Kobayashi Yasunori in Japan in the same year. Joon Soo Ha’s short video JUST (2002, 6 min) serves as a visual metaphor for the Telephone Game. A snippet of an American flag blowing in the wind goes into iterative degeneration; both sound and images fall into gradual deterioration. It throws out a thorny question: What level of truth do moving images retain, and to what extent are they just illusion? This idea of setting up frames of references and shifting perspectives is reflected in Filipa César’s documentation of a neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) seminar in Berlin in RAPPORT (2007, 17 min). Voice from the guide who led group meditation is laid over tracking shots that survey the participants’ presence in the room or close-ups of their body parts: hands holding coffee cups, feet on the ground. NLP’s idea that “mind, body, and language create an individual’s perception of the world” and can be changed (or manipulated) is visually embodied through César’s quizzical composition, editing and the revealing conversations between the participants. Hirabayashi Isamu’s enigmatic short TEXTISM (2003, 11 min) is indelible thanks to its power to hypnotize the omen of death and despair with deadpan humor. The title suggests that the work is more about meta-stories—stories about storytelling—than what early computer-generated voices that you will hear have to say in three unsettling—albeit poetic—stories. ULTRAMINT (1980, 10 min) by Hirose Tadashi concludes the program by bouncing to the other end of the spectrum. This 16mm film is devoid of textual language; when visual and sonic languages take hold, they trigger visceral sensations. Enjoy this audiovisual massage that may or may not be relaxing. Digital projection for all works except for ULTRAMINT, which will be presented in 16mm. [Nicky Ni]

Paul Thomas Anderson's PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 8pm

Praising a big film is easy. It's enveloping, cushioning in its self-importance. Praising a small film, a movie that doesn't necessarily want to be praised, means taking a plunge. For example: PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE is Paul Thomas Anderson's greatest work. This little 95-minute movie, made between two projects intended to be "epic" (MAGNOLIA and THERE WILL BE BLOOD) comes across as more epic than either—a struggle that's almost comically ordinary instead of one maximized for "meaning." It's also his most beautiful musical without being a musical; it could be a ballet, a little operetta, or a children's symphony. Plunger salesman Adam Sandler, wandering through a world of Andreas Gursky colors in a blue suit, alternately pursues and is pursued by Emily Watson, a friend of his overbearing sister. It's a romance that's not so much about finding love as being able to outrun the world for long enough to let that love become something. Preceded by a panel discussion with Film Center Director of Programming Rebecca Fons and Marti Lyons, artistic director of Remy Bumppo and and director of Love Song by John Kolvenbach, opening March 21 at Theater Wit. (2002, 95 min, 35mm) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

George McCowan’s FROGS (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Three years before Steven Spielberg's cash cow of a killer shark burst onto the scene, another American epic about vicious animals attacking hubristic Americans on the Fourth of July improbably made its way into theaters across the nation. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who prefers the amphibian antics of George McCowan’s eco-horror film FROGS over the popcorn theatrics of JAWS (1975), but there are still thrills to be had with this relic of 1970s horror filmmaking. McCowan’s particular brand of "Man Vs. Nature" storytelling finds itself off the coast of Florida, the swamp air practically emanating from every frame, with greenery devouring the atmosphere where the wealthy, aging Jason Crockett (Ray MIlland) has built a destination mansion smack dab in the middle of natural swamp territory, poisoning and polluting his cold-blooded neighbors to the point where revenge is all but expected. A youthful Sam Elliott arrives as a nature photographer, the only voice of reason speaking on behalf of Mother Nature amidst a cast of vapid socialites who find themselves picked off one by one by the viscous fauna. Despite what one might glean from what is a particularly frank title, the frogs themselves aren’t the actual forefront of vicious murder throughout this holiday celebration. They act more as guardians of the land, resting on the sidelines, akin to being the mafiosi of the swampland, having the lizards and snakes do their horrid business for them. But these green folks are never far from sight, hopping across the frame in close-up photography that gloriously captures every scale and patch of slime imaginable. Even if they rarely lay a webbed foot upon a soon-to-be-dispatched soul, their presence is ever felt within the sound design, barely a scene existing without a chorus of ribbits coloring the background. Les Baxter’s score, especially, exists as a cacophony of instrumentation, almost like the band is croaking across the soundscape of the motion picture, ensuring that every note of this film leaves us hopping mad. Screening as part of Shawn Michelle Smith and Oliver Sann’s Cli-Fi lecture series. (1972, 91 mins, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]

The Chicago European Union Film Festival: Spotlight on Belgium

Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes

Paloma Sermon-Daï’s IT’S RAINING IN THE HOUSE (Belgium)
Friday, 6pm
On paper there’s no denying the similarities between Paloma Sermon-Daï’s narrative feature debut IT’S RAINING IN THE HOUSE and any number of films by the Dardenne brothers, who like Sermon-Daï are from Belgium and have made the country’s working class—specifically in the Wallonia region where all three filmmakers are from—the subject of their cinematic explorations. More personally, though, she's also said in interviews that she grew up similar to the young, disadvantaged protagonists of her film, adding another layer to the social realist elements that elicit such comparisons. A la a different kind of filmic realism, that of neorealism, nonprofessional actors and Sermon-Daï’s step-niece and her step-brother, Purdey and Makenzy Lombet, play brother and sister in the movie (also named Purdey and Makenzy, ages 17 and 15, respectively), and this real-life connection is discernible in their onscreen dynamic. The story centers on the pair as they contend with being abandoned by their addict mother, which it’s implied they deal with on a recurrent basis. It’s the summer, and not only is school over, but Makenzy finds out he’s been kicked out of it altogether, suggesting that aforementioned factors outside his control may be holding him back. While Purdey spends time with her affluent boyfriend and gets a temporary work contract at a nearby resort, Makenzy hangs out with a friend who deals with a similarly chaotic home life and steals bikes to make money. The differentiator in this particular instance of their mothers’ negligence is that Purdey becomes resolved to take care of them both herself after she turns 18. It’s obvious that social and economic disparity is a key part of the film; plot points such as the dynamic between Purdey and her well-off boyfriend (who tells her to turn on the air conditioning, a convenience with which she's clearly unfamiliar, when she goes to open a window) and Makenzy’s later harassment of a young, affluent tourist clearly represent this, but Sermon-Daï executes such gestures subtly, and with such sincerity, that it never feels crushingly didactic. Broad issues of economic inequity are abridged to complement a character study of these two people; social realism here feels less like an intended artistic strategy than a byproduct of their lived experiences. And even as their situation is realistic in the sense that it reflects some of the harsher sides of life, the way it looks certainly doesn't. Perhaps the biggest distinguisher from any socially realistic influence, be it of the Dardennes or otherwise, is the rich cinematography that ultimately distinguishes the film from others of its persuasion made by filmmakers also following in the footsteps of a clear influential precedence. (Sermon-Daï has also noted Hirokazu Kore-eda's 2003 film NOBODY KNOWS and the work of Bruno Dumont as an influence.) Simply put she shows rather than tells, using the image to convey what words may be sufficient to communicate but do so less impactfully. Sermon-Daï, who has a cinematography background herself, and the film's cinematographer Frédéric Noirhomme choose to intensify a certain aesthetic lushness—warm, natural lighting; richly illuminated darkness; the sheen of summer’s warmth glistening on skin—to counter how one might expect a film about realistic struggles to look. Yet this doesn’t undermine the severity of the characters’ problems; rather it uses an element of non-reality, the careful design of not just what a film is expressing but how it's being expressed through the image, to amplify the social issues that likewise underscore the facade of seemingly harmonious day-to-day life.  (2023, 82 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Claude Schmitz’s THE OTHER LAURENS (Belgium/France)
Friday, 8pm
The title character of this offbeat murder mystery is the twin brother of a recently deceased investor and bon vivant. He’s also a private detective, which is why his teenage niece (the dead man’s daughter) calls on him after many years of estrangement to look into the suspicious details surrounding her father’s death. Befitting this premise, THE OTHER LAURENS builds on various doublings and oppositions: the hero often compares his schlubby lifestyle in Belgium to the more ostentatious one his brother led in France, and this provokes a broader consideration about living morally versus amorally as the other Laurens learns about his brother’s shady business dealings. While the film ends up in relatively conventional potboiler territory, it spends its first two acts mainly contemplating odd characters and even odder circumstances. It’s the sort of cockeyed drama that thrived in American movies in the 1990s and all but disappeared from our national cinema soon after; the unpredictable plotting and quirky characterizations specifically recall Phillip Haas’ underrated 1993 adaptation of Paul Auster’s novel The Music of Chance—and come to think of it, the “music of chance” is the quality that THE OTHER LAURENS seems most interested in delivering. There are multiple details that seem to exist for the sake of throwing the viewer off its thematic trail, so to speak, such as the monologue the dead man’s brother-in-law gives about his experience in the US Marines. Moments like these speak to the sheer variety of human lives and inspire a kind of low-key wonder. (2023, 119 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Please note that the screening of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s 1999 masterpiece ROSETTA on Saturday at 3:30pm is sold out. View the festival’s complete schedule here.

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Noora Niasari’s SHAYDA (Australia)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

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]

Denis Villeneuve's DUNE: PART TWO (US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Denis Villeneuve’s colossal 190-million-dollar cosmic magnum opus, DUNE: PART TWO, has been released in 70mm. With returning collaborators, he continues to demonstrate skills accumulated over his career thus far. Originally set for release in October 2023, the studio stalled the opening of the film until November due to the 2023 Hollywood labor strikes, then pushing further to March 1, 2024. Following the success of OPPENHEIMER's touring prints in 70mm, DUNE followed a similar marketing campaign. At first, I felt skeptical viewing the movie in this format. I assumed it was a marketing ploy, following the heels of OPPENHEIMER and an excuse to sell a higher priced ticket for a film shot digitally. After walking out of the theater as the credits rolled, I realized I was wrong. 70mm always beautifully compliments the light exposed on the subjects in the frame. The celluloid experience adds a dreamlike element to a film full of visions, nightmares, monsters, and magic. Cinematographer Greig Fraser proves his powers behind the lens and proves comfortable with the ballet between film scans and digital exposures. His work is elevated through the work of editor Joe Walker, a former musical artist who has cut for heavy hitters like Steve McQueen and Michael Mann. A frequent collaborator of Villeneuve from SICARIO on, Walker finds a smooth rhythm, making a lengthy runtime fly by. Hans Zimmer’s captivating score, pulling sounds across time and cultures has become an aural signature for this director. The creative team assembles stunning intergalactic set pieces and fills each frame with vibrant color and light to ground the viewer in each world. It is rare to have an A-list cast work so well together. Everyone gives a strong performance in this space opera. Each recognizable face in DUNE: PART TWO supplements the story like a true ensemble. As counterparts, Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya continue to prove their status, hypnotizing the theater with their charming pathos. Entering in a nightmare-like sequence, Austin Butler disappears into his role as the psychotic Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. Javier Bardem’s charisma as Stilgar adds life to each scene, with the audience anticipating his every moment of screentime. The first film of this series, DUNE (2021) remains faithful to Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, a promise to Herbert fundamentalists that they’re in good hands for the rest of Paul Atriedes’ story. As David Cronenberg has stated, "You must be unfaithful to be faithful to the source material." For this second film, Villeneuve’s script strays, showing epic battles only discussed passively by Herbert’s words. While some may take issue with these modifications to the story, I agree with Cronenberg’s assertion. For any literary work switching to screen, changes must be made to adjust to the medium of communication: the written word is a different experience than the image. Audiences should praise the director’s achievement of translating page to screen. Although this sequel does not have the slow world building of its predecessor, it has its own gravitational pull, drawing the viewer in with its immense scale, stomach dropping in all aspects. Regardless of the box office numbers, it’s important to remember the voice behind the camera, providing justice to a literary phenomenon and maintaining their own unique style of cinematic storyteller. Although the film doesn’t follow Herbert’s text religiously, anyone can experience the overwhelming potential of science fiction storytelling. (2024, 166 min, 70mm) [Ray Ebarb]

Daniel Weintraub’s DEEP LISTENING: THE STORY OF PAULINE OLIVEIROS (US/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 12pm

I wasn’t familiar with Pauline Oliveros before watching this documentary, but, after being impressed by her talent and pioneering status in the world of experimental and electronic music, I was even more so taken by the motivating factor behind her enthusiasm for the craft. “I've never tried to build a career,” she says in the film. “I've only tried to build a community.” That comes through in Daniel Weintraub’s DEEP LISTENING, which features many of said community members, who provide details of Oliveros’ life (Weintraub worked with Oliveros, who died in 2016, on this for three years, accounting for her participation in the film prior to her passing; Weintraub details in his director’s statement that “Pauline and [he] shared the feeling that her story was made for [him] to tell”) and illuminate the value of her work and contributions to the medium. Linda Montano (a one-time lover), Laurie Anderson, and Thurston Moore appear, as do many more paragons of the avant-garde, experimental, and electronic music worlds (Terry Riley, Anna Halprin, and Morton Subotnik, et cetera) whom she worked with, influenced or both. Born in Houston, Texas, Oliveros made her mark after moving to the West Coast, later becoming a founding member of the influential San Francisco Tape Music Center; I’ll confess to understanding little of the details behind how she did what she was doing, but all that and the why behind it are fascinating nevertheless. Much of what Oliveros and her cohorts did had few precedents, resulting in singular works that shock and awe even now. The concept of deep listening itself comes from Oliveros having made a recording 14 feet underground in a yawning cistern; the name of it is a pun, but what began as a kind of a joke later morphed into a core program of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation (now called the Center for Deep Listening). Deep Listening is described on the center’s website as exploring “the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious nature of listening. The practice includes bodywork, sonic meditations, and interactive performance, as well as listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, one’s own thoughts, imagination, and dreams.” (The Film Center presentation will be followed by a Deep Listening exercise led by artist, educator, and writer Veronica Anne Salinas, so this enticingly ambiguous description may better come to life via experience.) Weintraub’s documentary touches briefly on Oliveiros’ personal life, like the fact that she was a lesbian and spent almost a third of her life with author, playwright, poet, and improvising word/sound artist IONE (Carol Lewis), who appears in the film as well. Appropriately the film focuses less on her queerness—an important thing, but one that should not eclipse her myriad accomplishments—and more on her genius; the film’s description calls Oliveros “the only female amongst notable post-war American composers),” a critical distinction but again not one belabored in the film. This is a valuable overview that gets to the heart of her brilliance, and I’m sure admirers of her will enjoy any elaboration heretofore unknown to them. Co-presented by the Experimental Sound Studio. Science on Screen® is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with major support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Each event includes a presentation and dialogue with experts in the field of science and technology. (2023, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Raven Jackson’s ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT (US)

FACETS Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes

Mack (Charleen McClure) sits on the porch of her rural Mississippi house with her niece, Lily (Robin Crudrup), watching rain pour down. Lily is afraid of it, thinking it might hurt if it fell on her. Mack tells her that it doesn’t and then lets her in on a secret. “It doesn’t end or begin. It just changes form. All these drops might be a river someday. Might be snow. Might be you.” Transformation is the undercurrent of first-time feature film director/screenwriter Raven Jackson’s visual poem, ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT. Jackson takes us through the stages of Mack’s life, from childhood through adulthood to old age, in nonlinear fashion, subtly outlining a story of love and loss. But this film is best understood as focusing on the ties that bind, not only between family members, but also to the land and the lore that harkens back to Africa. The images of ALL DIRT ROADS, as beautifully realized by cinematographer Jomo Fray, miss nothing in the verdant landscape. A worm escaping from the earth during a downpour gets as much attention as a long-held shot of trees and the river that runs through them. Most haunting and beautiful are the human faces Jackson and Fray examine, particularly at a church service where the Black congregants stare unabashedly into the camera. One face, that of Sheila Atim as Mack’s mother, is so startlingly magnetic that one longs to see it again and again. The film also privileges the tactile, from the opening shot of Mack running her finger across the scales of a fish she caught and, in kindness, releases to a scene late in the film of an elderly Mack (Zainab Jah) running her hands through the mud of a riverbed. ALL DIRT ROADS can be considered slow cinema, but more in an attempt to communicate deep feeling rather than to silence our busy minds. Indeed, one three-minute scene of Mack reuniting with and hugging her one-time lover, Wood (Reginald Helms Jr.), communicates such intimacy that one might be tempted to turn away discreetly. Screening as part of the If We Picked the Oscars series. (2023, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Sally Potter's ORLANDO (UK)

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

Sally Potter's ORLANDO is not so much an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel as it is an interpretation respective to the nuances of its medium. "It would have been a disservice to Woolf to remain slavish to the letter of the book," Potter wrote. "For just as she was always a writer who engaged with writing and the form of the novel, similarly the film needed to engage with the energy of cinema." And it does, with such stamina that at times it's rather slow and boring, just as life is often slow and boring. Roger Ebert so eloquently wrote in his review of the film that "it is not about a story or a plot, but about a vision of human existence. What does it mean to be born as a woman, or a man? To be born at one time instead of another?" Potter doesn't attempt to answer these questions but instead relishes in their very existence. In addition to such existential ruminations, themes of gender, art, and conformity are also confronted just as in the book. Titled Orlando: A Biography, Woolf's novel was meant to be something of a spoof inspired by her lovers' turbulent family history. (The lover in question was fellow writer Vita Sackville-West.) Both the book and the film are about a young Elizabethan nobleman who mysteriously turns into a woman. In the book it's never explained, but in the film, eternal youth is granted to the teenaged Orlando by Elizabeth I, who's played to ironic perfection by gay icon Quentin Crisp. It's fitting, then, for this and other obvious reasons, that Tilda Swinton was first able to explore her own conspicuous androgyny in the title role. For those all too familiar with her now archetypal aesthetic, ORLANDO will breathe new life into one's appreciation of her as both an actress and an icon. Potter's talents are no less extraordinary; a penchant for transformation is evident in most of her films, though it's realized more explicitly in this one. Director Jane Campion best spoke to its metamorphic capabilities: "When my son died, on the third day, I was devastated, I didn't know what to do with myself. I went to see ORLANDO. It was so beautiful. This earth can be transformed. There are moments of extreme wonder...and that's all worth living for." (1993, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Terry Gilliam's TIME BANDITS (UK)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 11:15am

If Andrei Tarkovsky crafted profound lyric poems about dreams and the time-space continuum, then Terry Gilliam might be his lowbrow, comic book counterpart. Indeed, anachronistic whimsy abounds in TIME BANDITS, the first feature in Terry Gilliam's "Trilogy of Imagination." The film centers on Kevin, a precocious young history buff who discovers that his bedroom closet is a time portal to the past. After inadvertently joining forces with a team of treasure hunting dwarves, he travels to various centuries, encountering Napoleon, Robin Hood, Agamemnon, and others. Each dwarf has been said to represent a member of the Monty Python troupe (Gilliam himself is embodied by Vermin, the plucky leader of the group). The word "logic" is not part of Gilliam's vocabulary, and the sooner one can jettison the need for any hint of historical accuracy or narrative coherence, the sooner one will be susceptible to the film's charm. Though it has the trappings of a children's movie, TIME BANDITS features some delightfully disturbing images, namely undead minotaurs who emit fireballs from their empty eye sockets. In fact, under its fanciful surface, this is essentially a story about a boy who's so ignored by his parents that he welcomes what befalls them. Gilliam attempts to inject the film with some social commentary by offering a perfunctory critique of techno-modernity and consumer culture, but luckily this gets lost amidst all the wackiness. As with any Gilliam film, TIME BANDITS boasts plenty of psychedelic eye candy and visual wizardry, including spatial distortion, inverted images, and M.C. Escher-esque set design. (1981, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Harrison Sherrod]

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ABOUT DRY GRASSES (Turkey)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2:30pm

As Dave Kehr wrote of Douglas Sirk’s THE TARNISHED ANGELS (1957), this should be seen on a big screen or not at all. Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the fewer-than -ever working filmmakers who designs movies principally for theaters: for one thing, his imagery cries out for the largest exhibition possible; also, his rich, Dostoevskian characterizations (co-created with his wife and cowriter, Ebru Ceylan) were meant to be bigger than life. Epic in more ways than one, ABOUT DRY GRASSES marks the third Ceylan feature in a row to run over three hours, and like its two predecessors WINTER SLEEP (2014) and THE WILD PEAR TREE (2018), it happens to center on a self-regarding loser. Though frequently shameful in their actions, the protagonists of all three features come to embody a sort-of anti-everyman, displaying foibles we might see (if not experience ourselves) the world over. At the same time, could this concept of failure-as-everyman, and vice-versa, have anything to do with the fact that the government of Turkey, the setting of all of Ceylan’s features, has grown increasingly authoritarian over the past two decades? The filmmaker himself tends to shrug off political readings of his work, and I’m hardly an expert in Turkish politics, but it remains a path worth exploring. One of the most frightening moments in ABOUT DRY GRASSES occurs when a middle school classroom is subjected to a surprise police inspection, and in another scene a principal character alludes to her experiences as a political activist. The key word here is alludes—any connections between the film and our fast-paced information age society remain hazy at best. That’s partly the result of the film being set in an isolated mountain village where the forbidding landscapes serve as constant reminders of the denizens’ vast remoteness from the rest of human society. Indeed, the film’s everyman/failure is practically defined by his desire to be somewhere else; he spends the movie hoping he’ll be transferred to Istanbul because he's taught intermediate grades in the middle of nowhere for over four years. Apart from leaving, he seems to have no other ambitions—that is, until he gets set up on a blind date with a quick-witted high school English teacher who surprises him by actually appealing to him. His repeated bungling of their relationship recalls classic Hong Sang-soo, and in fact, there’s a scene relatively early in the film where Ceylan pays tribute to the great South Korean director with a long-take medium shot where two men and a woman drink tea together and a subtle game of one-upmanship unfolds between the two men. Late in ABOUT DRY GRASSES, Ceylan makes a bold narrative turn that’s all the more jarring for never being discussed after it unfolds, a strategy that recalls the mind-blowing twist in Cristi Puiu’s recent MALMKROG (2020). The film defamiliarizes these references by casting them on such a grand scale, yet another reason why this current run is a must-see. (2023, 198 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Wim Wenders' PERFECT DAYS (Japan/Germany)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

There is peace to be found in routine. That’s what Hirayama—and perhaps director Wim Wenders—would have you believe. Exquisitely brought to life by Koji Yakusho, Hirayama, an employee of the "Tokyo Toilet," guides us day by day through Wenders’ latest fiction endeavor, a leisurely diary of a film. The world of PERFECT DAYS follows its own internalized rhythms, lulling the audience into a network of patterns in navigating Hirayama’s days, perfect or otherwise, that unwind before us. The sun will always rise in a purple-orange sky, a can of coffee will always pop out of the vending machine, the plants will always get their morning mists of water, the leaves will always be brushed to the side, the public toilets spread throughout Tokyo will always receive Hirayama’s careful and rigorous cleaning, and the day will always end with dreams. Hirayama’s dreams—at least as Wenders shares them with us—are always in black-and-white, layered fragments of the day, coated in leaves and shadows, an abstracted reset of the film’s internal clock. Days blend into each other in a way that feels intricate yet inevitable, with the most glaring piece of conflict arising more than halfway through the runtime, Hirayama’s niece having run away from a life of affluence and loneliness. She prefers her uncle's life, which she sees as simple and noble. But unbeknown to most around him, Hirayama’s life is an iceberg, the solid routine of the day hiding depths of passion and loneliness underneath. There is constant reflection on his past, especially upon the mass of cassette tapes he has collected over the years and refuses to part with, there is the yearning towards the future with his voracious consumption of literature. But where does that leave the Hirayama of the present? In one moment of conversation (one of the few times Hirayama feigns to utter dialogue in the entire film), he offers up that "the world is made up of many worlds. Some are connected, some are not." In a moment of potent vulnerability near the film’s end, Yakusho offers up a rare moment of the bottom of the iceberg peeking out, the tough exterior of Hirayama breaking apart ever so briefly, as the sun rises on yet another day. Just like every other day, and still brand new. (2023, 123 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

2024 Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts

Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema and Music Box Theatre – See Venue websites for showtimes

In this year’s theatrical package of Academy Award-nominated shorts, it’s perhaps disappointing (or unsurprising, depending on your vantage point) that the most exciting film in the bunch is the one helmed by an already established director. That would be Wes Anderson’s stunning cinematic adaptation of Roald Dahl’s THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR (37 min), a triumph of visual splendor, pathos, and boundary-pushing experimentation. Anderson retells the cheeky tale of a selfish gambling addict who attains transcendental powers that allow him to cheat at poker before steering his life towards altruism and charity, bringing it all to life through his now-signature style of theatrically realized artifice and storybook-like production design and presentation. Dahl’s text is read almost entirely verbatim to the camera, as if the actors (a star-studded bunch including Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Richard Ayoade, and Sir Ben Kingsley) were in the room with us, telling us this story first-hand. It’s perhaps the most presentational work in Anderson’s filmography, but no less emotionally rich, plumbing the depths of the lives of men striving to achieve greatness, yet wondering what their true legacies will be once they’re gone. Consider Anderson’s short (no doubt more wondrous on the big screen than trapped within the confines of Netflix) a forty-ish-minute confection waiting for you at the end of this carousel of miniature movies, most of them more concerned with thematic messaging than with creating fully realized cinematic realms. There are works on either side of the emotional spectrum exploring grief; with THE AFTER (18 min), a father (David Oyelowo) grapples with how to keep living in the aftermath of losing his wife and daughter in a vicious act of violence. For those seeking a film carrying similar themes but perhaps with a bit more levity, KNIGHT OF FORTUNE (25 min) is a welcome jolt of dark comedy, finding a man mourning the death of his wife somehow entangled with a fellow widower traveling the labyrinth of a local morgue. There are also films centering political urgency like RED, WHITE AND BLUE (23 min), where a mother (Brittany Snow) travels with her young daughter across state lines to an abortion center, the horrors of contemporary American life roaring to the forefront in a work that often sacrifices character and atmosphere for more didactic goals. The struggles of youth spring to life in INVINCIBLE (30 min), one of the more artful shorts on display, inspired by a true story of a young boy’s too-short life within the walls of a juvenile detention center, yearning to be heard in a world of adults refusing to listen. Director Vincent René-Lortie’s poetic imagery (an early match cut involving a character diving into water practically made my jaw drop) leaves a charming and memorable impression in a short practically begging to be expanded to feature length; it's one of the only shorts on display that trusts the audience to wrestle with artful visual language. In the realm of short-form filmmaking, these five films prove—in one way or another—that less is certainly more. [Ben Kaye]

2024 Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts

Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema and Music Box Theatre – See Venue websites for showtimes

More than the other shorts categories, the Academy-Award nominated animated shorts are often where you find the greatest variety of storytelling, in content and especially in form. Make no mistake; each work in this quintet of nominees is each its own singular world, waiting to be explored intensely and allowing their visual vocabularies to explore themes vast and unknowable, intimate and familiar. Yet the unintended connective tissue between films is always intriguing to seek out. War is certainly on the mind of a lot of artists, no more evident than in Dave Mullins’ WAR IS OVER! INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF JOHN AND YOKO (11 min), taking the Lennon/Ono song and crafting a narrative around two enemy combatants in the throes of war who are unknowingly playing chess against each other with the aid of a carrier pigeon. The short is perhaps the most “traditionally” animated of the bunch—in contemporary terms, at least—with CGI realism shaping the aesthetic, albeit with slight squiggle lines around characters to connote the illusion of pencil lines, all the better to convey its simple but meaningful “War is Bad” message. A more impressionistic response to the atrocities of war comes in LETTER TO A PIG (17 min), Tal Kantor’s exploration of grief, revenge, and memory told through the eyes of a Holocaust survivor sharing the story of how a pig saved him from being captured by Nazis. Kantor’s short exists in ink strokes, with characters' faces and arms extending from negative space, their empathy towards others the only thing to aid them in extending further and further as they begin to question how their concept of revenge might strip them of their own humanity. A young girl questions the systems around her in OUR UNIFORM (7 min), which brilliantly crafts a conceit around the characters and narrative taking place on and around various items of clothing. The topography of shirts and dresses and hijabs provides the architecture of scenes, the shape of characters and motion, the emotional barriers for a young girl who wants nothing more than the freedom to express herself and her personality in the ways she sees fit. The intimate PACHYDERME (11 min), another slice-of-life story of a young girl, finds the protagonist staying with her grandparents and learning to face her fears during her visit, from the utterly mundane (noises that go bump in the night) to the deathly existential (the loss of a loved one). It’s a slight short, filled with lush storybook-esque two-dimensional images that take on an uncanny nature  when set in motion, but it finds beauty in small, still moments. For a more humorous and lush take on the inevitability of death, look no further than the incisive NINETY-FIVE SENSE (13 min) a wonderfully adventurous short directed by Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (2004) fame. Here, an elderly man (voiced by Tim Blake Nelson) on death row examines each of his five senses, and how they guided the choices he made through life. Each sense is animated by a different team, providing singular textures for each segment; sight morphs from shape to shape, drooping down absorbing new environments. Hearing feels like a newspaper comic come to life, flat colorful shapes enveloping the frame as the camera zooms further inwards, examining how his senses let him down at a crossroad in life where he needed them the most. Of the five Oscar-nominated entries on display, it’s perhaps the one that finds the best marriage between story and expression, displaying what it is about the animated arts that can be so breathtaking when stretching a story past the confines of reality. Also included in this presentation are two short films that were “highly recommended” from the Oscars shortlist: WILD SUMMONS (14 min), which examines the life of salmon through a humanizing twist, and the short but charming I’M HIP (4 min), directed and animated by veteran Disney animation director John Musker. It’s a perfect cap to this eclectic collection of animated films, filling the screen with noise and color and vibrancy, a testament to the power of what animation can do with such limited time. [Ben Kaye]

Hayao Miyazaki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON (Japan/Animation)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 8:15pm

The anticipation of seeing a new film directed by Hayao Miyazaki is two-fold: there is a set expectation of whimsy, magic, and complex thematic exploration inherent in his work, but this is tied to the mystery of not knowing how specifically these traits will play themselves out. So it is with his (seemingly) final film, THE BOY AND THE HERON, a film rooted in familiar themes that Miyazaki has been dwelling on for decades of artistry. As with many of his works, Miyazaki provides another story of a youthful protagonist; here, the teenage Mahito—buried within heavy emotional armor to navigate the grief of losing his mother in a hospital fire the year before—finds himself navigating an unknown mystical world that sits somewhere between the afterlife and his own subconscious, after he's lured there by a deliriously antagonistic gray heron. The fantastical elements of Miyazaki immediately float to the surface, from new imaginative creatures like the Warawara—adorable floating balls that ascend to the heavens to be born as humans—to the bizarre amass of pelicans and parakeets that threaten to swallow up any frame they inhabit. Mahito‘s quest to find closure for his mother’s death results in a journey, ever joyous and sumptuous to watch, that ponders the nature of a world built upon loss, destruction, and chaos. Without spoiling too much, the film leaves us on something of an abrupt note, left to ponder the work of an undisputed master of cinema who was unafraid to bare his mortality before us, letting us sit in the knowledge that to live with the chaos of grief is still a beautiful life in and of itself; to know that there is no escaping pain, and there is something beautiful to carry on towards. Maybe a book your mother left behind for you, maybe a new, unknown journey waiting on the other side of a doorway. (2023, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alliance Française de Chicago (810 N. Dearborn St.)
Ayana O’Shun’s 2022 documentary film THE MYTH OF THE BLACK WOMAN (94 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, followed by a post-screening panel discussion. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation 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 March 15. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
An in-person open screening takes place on Saturday at 7pm. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
FACETS Anime Club presents a members-only double feature of two cyberpunk, demon-filled OVAs from the late 1980s, Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s GOKU MIDNIGHT EYE (1989) and Ichirô Itano’s BATTLE ROYAL HIGH SCHOOL (1987), on Thursday at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Anthony Chen’s 2024 film DRIFT (93 min, DCP Digital) screens this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

A Film Center Volunteer Interest Meeting takes place Wednesday at 7pm. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Media Burn Archive
As part of a Drag History Movie Night, Media Burn Archive and the Leather Archives & Museum present a screening of two short documentaries about drag performers—Pat Lehman’s recently re-discovered and preserved 1977 film FIRST IMPRESSIONS (25 min, Digital Projection) and James Hosking’s 2014 film BEAUTIFUL BY NIGHT (29 min, Digital Projection)—on Thursday, 7pm, at the Leather Archives & Museum (6418 N. Greenview Ave,). Free admission. Find more info and RSVP here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
The short film program “Life Within the Lens” screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Melanin, Roots and Culture series. More info here.

⚫ South Side Home Movie Project 
Assistant Director of the South Side Home Movie Project Saroop Singh is participating in the BMRC Community Symposium, where BMRC members and affiliates will discuss their latest work in documenting Black experiences in Chicago, on Wednesday from 11:30am to 2pm at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library (1100 E 57th St) in room JRL 122. More info here.

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

🎞️ ONLINE SCREENINGS/EVENTS

⚫ VDB TV
Beyond the Dust: Colonial Legacy in the Desert, programmed by Martí Madaula Esquirol, 2023 - 2024 Graduate Curatorial Fellow at the Video Data Bank, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA candidate in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation, screens for free on VDB TV. Includes short works by More info here.

CINE-LIST: March 8 - March 14, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS //  Ray Ebarb, Marilyn Ferdinand, Ben Kaye, Nicky Ni, Harrison Sherrod, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky