:: FRIDAY, MAY 3 - THURSDAY, MAY 9 ::

💎 DOC10 Film Festival

See Venues and showtimes below

Brendan Bellomo & Slava Leontyev’s PORCELAIN WAR (Ukraine/US/Australia/Documentary)
Davis Theater – Saturday, 12pm
Slava and Anya are married artists in eastern Ukraine who make intricately designed porcelain figurines. Their division of labor in making the little sculptures reflects the healthy, supportive nature of their partnership, which began when the two were children: he constructs the figurines, and she paints the designs. Their artistic process is so essential to their lives together that they’ve continued making figurines throughout the Russian military invasion of their country, which they also help to fight against. PORCELAIN WAR is a tribute to the citizen-soldiers of Ukraine, who come from all sorts of backgrounds and are united in their patriotism. One of the more eye-opening moments of the film comes when it introduces the people whom Slava and Anya are fighting alongside, relating what everyone’s profession was before the invasion. No one seems to have had any military experience, which makes their bravery in combating the invasion all the more admirable. The film also shows how the war is being fought; there’s even a short introduction to how the citizen-soldiers use drones. But what shines through is the central portrait of the married artists and their efforts to maintain some sense of normalcy amidst calamitous times. Some of the scenes that show them making their figurines are even soothing, showing how art can be a salve during difficult times and why the defense of Slava and Anya’s lives in particular is crucial to the fate of Ukraine on the whole. Screening with Sofiia Melnyk’s short film MARIUPOL: A HUNDRED NIGHTS. Followed by a virtual Q&A with Bellomo, Leontyev, and Melnyk. (2024, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Lea Glob’s APOLONIA APOLONIA (Denmark/Poland/Documentary)
Davis Theater – Saturday, 2:30pm
This doesn’t feel biographical, per se, even though Danish director Lea Glob made it about another person; rather it feels akin to a diary, with Glub documenting her subject as the artist might document herself, treating each day, month, year equal to the next, sans the sort of milestone-specific hierarchy that typically provides the structure for more conventional documentaries about a single subject. Glob refers to Apolonia Sokol, the lodestar at the center of this extempore portrait of an artist as a young woman, as a motif, the only one who has “caught her eye” as a filmmaker. Required in school to make a cinematic portrait of a person, Glub chose Apolonia, a French artist of Danish and Polish descent who was raised (literally, as in she lived there) in an experimental theater her parents founded; it’s the very idyll of bohemia, where art prospers over commerce and community fills the void eroded by the alienation of our capitalist society. Apolonia studies painting at the École des Beaux-Arts; her work is good, reflecting a singular viewpoint of the world around her. In her practice as in her life, people are at its center. One of those who figures prominently in the latter is Oksana Shachko, a Ukrainian political refugee who cofounded a radical feminist activist group in her home country. She plays a significant part in the film, but Glob’s documentary doesn’t follow just one single thread of Apolonia’s life. While her art is a throughline, the structure of the film is like that of life itself in that it shifts perspectives, locations, and all else that’s routinely subject to change over time. The parts about Apolonia’s artistic practice are interesting, as they chart the ebb and flow of an undeniably successful career (her talent is indisputable but still susceptible to criticism). It would be reductive to say that the film is about failure, rejection, or perseverance, but there’s nevertheless inspiration to be found in Apolonia’s trajectory. At some points Glob’s own life becomes part of the mix, such as her experience of almost dying when giving birth to her first child, one that parallels Apolonia’s childhood struggle with cancer. The film works best when it’s expressing a certain rawness (I could take or leave the motif involving scale models of important locations in Apolonia’s life, such as the theater building and a hospital room, etc.); it’s the nitty gritty details of Apolonia’s entrancingly gritty life that account for the beauty. (2023, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s UNION (US/Documentary)
Davis Theater – Saturday, 5:15pm
I have seen more than my share of labor union documentaries, both domestic and international. Towering over them all in my mind is the Oscar-winning HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A. (1976), the ambitious, four-year chronicle of the coalminers’ strike against a mine owned by Duke Power Company in Harlan County, Ky., during which director Barbara Kopple captured one of the company’s gun thugs pointing a pistol directly at her. Entering into this inspiring, violent, sometimes exhausting corner of cinema is Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s UNION, which follows fired Amazon worker Chris Smalls and the tight-knit cadre of dedicated workers and labor organizers in the independent Amazon Labor Union (ALU) as they work to organize the more than 8,000 employees at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, JFK8. Union films follow a certain formula—worker beefs, union organizing ups and downs, certification vote, and next steps—spiced with internecine conflict and company pushback. Despite the expected structure (and well-publicized outcome), Maing and Story get us deeply invested in the process and people whose lives have become intertwined with their cause. We don’t get much in the way of the private lives of Smalls or any of these comrades, though we learn he spent three years living in his car and that one of the organizers, Natalie, is homeless despite being employed at Amazon. Madeline, an organizer from Florida, becomes an integral part of the team as a “salt,” a person hired by the company who works for unionization from the inside. Another outside recruit calls everyone “comrade” and questions Smalls’ accelerated tactics by citing the coming winter weather as a reason for delay. I could only guffaw as I recalled the Willmar 8, immortalized in Lee Grant’s brilliant documentary THE WILLMAR 8 (1981), who picketed their Minnesota bank through two dangerously frigid winters to protest gender discrimination. Thankfully, ALU members didn’t have to put their lives on the line as so many others have, but their struggle was not only equally important to the quality of life for Amazon workers, but they also helped revive the labor movement so necessary to help curb the unbridled greed and power of the multibillionaires like Jeff Bezos who have destabilized the lives of millions of frontline workers. Followed by a post-screening Q&A with Maing. (2024, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Lana Wilson’s LOOK INTO MY EYES (US/Documentary)
Davis Theater – Saturday, 8:15pm
Lana Wilson’s latest documentary feature, a patient work of simmering voyeurism following the world of New York’s psychics and mediums, is less concerned with the act of channeling the dead and more with our desire for comfort in a lonely world. For many of the clients who walk through these psychics' doors, whether they believe in clairvoyance or not is often beside the point; the reassurance of a loved one’s blessing, or the knowledge that a dead pet is at peace, or a premonition of good things to come is enough to provide something meaningful and lasting, truthful or otherwise. Wilson’s camera provides surprising intimacy to these moments of pseudo-spiritual connection, providing us with a front-row seat to these readings that often come off less as spiritual mysticism and more like carefully-crafted solo theater. There’s little editorializing here; it’s right around the fourth time one of Wilson’s clairvoyant subjects offhandedly remarks they once studied theater in college, or are an aspiring screenwriter, or that they’re still hoping to break into the world of professional acting, that something snaps into place. This calling to become a conduit for the other side sits in a space of performance for many of these practitioners, though their acquiescence to the theatricality of their medium work is not mutually exclusive with whether they actually believe in their abilities. What becomes painfully clear is that each medium has their own story of loss, heartbreak, distress, and anguish pinning them down, and perhaps providing closure for others through clairvoyance is a way of filling that emptiness. Wilson’s success is in refusing to provide an easy answer of whether she herself believes in the powers of these psychics, that tension of refusing us closure revealing itself to be a core tenet of the human experience. She provides us with something they never will; a beautiful, unanswerable unknown.  Followed by a post-screening Q&A with Wilson. (2024, 105 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
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Johan Grimonprez’s SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT (Belgium/France/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2:15pm
SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT offers an essential history lesson, as it breaks down the various multinational factors—particularly the direct involvement of the CIA—responsible for the overthrow of democratically elected Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1960; and befitting a movie with “soundtrack” in the title, the music is killer as well. That’s because SOUNDTRACK also covers one of the most robust periods in jazz history, touching on the bebop and free jazz movements through such figures as Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Charles Mingus. These artists, along with Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong, were also unwitting actors in the Cold War, it turns out. Drawing on impeccably documented research, SOUNDTRACK explains how their music was used to sell American culture to people around the world (particularly behind the Iron Curtain) and how “goodwill concerts” in African nations were often fronts for espionage activity organized by the CIA. Writer-director Johan Grimonprez cuts between footage of various jazz giants and vintage documentary material of the United Nations, the Congo, and other crucial sites in the short history of the Pan-African movement; in doing so, he conveys how far-reaching the Cold War was while creating an engaging sense of counterpoint between political and artistic histories. The musicians profiled here represented the vanguard of Black creative expression, while some of the other subjects (Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X) represented the vanguard of Black political thought; they’re united by the fact that the CIA undermined them all. Grimonprez effectively conveys the excitement around both jazz and revolutionary political movements in the late 1950s, which inspired people to believe in alternatives to white supremacy in both culture and third world politics. Ultimately, the film is about how different the world seemed when these alternatives were being seriously considered and the dominance of Western corporate interests over global affairs wasn’t so depressingly certain.  Followed by a post-screening Zoom Q&A with Grimonprez. (2024, 150 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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More info on the fest, including the full schedule, here.

📽️ Crucial Viewing

James Benning’s AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST AND FOUND) (US/Experimental)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 8pm

A disturbing portrait of psychosis and American mass culture, comparable to Don DeLillo’s novel Libra in the way it gets under your skin. AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST AND FOUND) is an hour-long fugue in which the soundtrack, images, and onscreen text relate different things and whose interrelatedness is never made entirely clear. The imagery mostly consists of baseball cards and other memorabilia related to Hank Aaron, the pioneering Black athlete who at one time held the record for the most home runs hit by any major leaguer; the soundtrack is a mix of sound bites and popular songs from the years Aaron played in the major leagues (1954-1976); and scrolling across the bottom of the screen like ticker tape are excerpts from The Assassin’s Diary by Arthur Bremer, the man who shot George Wallace in 1972. Benning presents each of these elements the way he normally presents landscapes: in a constant, repetitive manner that allows each one to become the focus of meditation. Taken together, the sources of information can be overwhelming, not so much because it’s hard to take it all in but because the overlay of facts and personal testimonies hints at so many possible interpretations. What do the people on the soundtrack (among them Martin Luther King, Patricia Hearst, and Richard Nixon) have to do with Hank Aaron? And what does Aaron have to do with Bremer? Each viewer will have their own answers to these questions, which speaks to the elasticity of these celebrities and political actors in the popular imagination. Also screening is one of Benning’s rare forays into fiction filmmaking, O PANAMA (1985, 27 min, 16mm), starring Willem Dafoe. Screening as part of the series, An Artist of Intimate Intent: James Benning. (1984, 53 min, 16mm) [Ben Sachs]

Luchino Visconti's ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (Italy)

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

Even if he claimed to be a lifelong Communist, Count Luchino Visconti di Modrone remains cinema's definitive aristocrat. He co-invented neo-realism but abandoned it for the filmic equivalent of neoclassicism. His films about the poor are decorated with a baroque poverty (see: LE NOTTI BIANCHI): the attention to detail of someone trying to depict a culture they can't quite understand. Visconti's merits are the same as his flaws; these very tendencies could bring out the best and worst (DEATH IN VENICE) in him. What tended to do him in was tastefulness, and thankfully ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS is tasteless and the better—and freer—for it; it has neither the tastefulness of being short (it's almost three hours long), nor the tastefulness of being melancholic (its "ugly" unsentimentality is more aching than DEATH IN VENICE's longing), nor even the tastefulness to restrain Visconti's decadent fetishization of impoverished toughness. Cine-File contributor Ben Sachs once said that showing people at work was one of the most subversive things a film could do. Visconti's approach to indicating that his characters are poor is to show their threadbare clothes and harsh living conditions; he never understood that the worst thing about being working class isn't having few possessions, but the working itself. Still, what he sets out to do in ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS is subversive in its odd, aristocratic way: to create a beggar's opera. Screening as part of the Programmer’s Picks series. (1960, 177 min, 35mm) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Joanna Arnow’s THE FEELING THAT THE TIME FOR DOING SOMETHING HAS PASSED (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

In my estimation, writer-director Joanna Arnow is a contender for being a modern equivalent to Buster Keaton. Her face is made for cinema, a landscape unto itself even as it’s distinguished by a lack of discernible emotion. Her body, including said visage, is the source of the wry humor that makes her work as discomfiting as it is endearing. Her characters, modeled after and played by Arnow herself—in work she's directing, her vision, like Buster’s, best when solely her own—are painfully average and yet bewilderingly unique, both representative of modern society yet still at odds with it. The comparison struck me so much that watching her second feature, THE FEELING THAT THE TIME FOR DOING SOMETHING HAS PASSED, led me to wonder if the Keaton archetype would have been as sexually submissive as Arnow's character, Ann, is in the film. Ann’s a thirty-something Brooklynite who works a meaningless office job (media e-learning specialist?) and pursues sub-dom relationships with men who subjugate her with varying levels of intensity. The film is divided into chapters, each one named after the man or men currently dominating her. The first and perhaps most significant is Allen (Scott Cohen, recognizable as Max from the fucking Gilmore Girls, which adds something to the film that I can’t quite articulate), an older man to whom we’re introduced as Ann, fully nude, dry humps his clothed body, telling him in her monotone delivery that his lack of concern for her pleasure turns her on. It’s a scenario ripe for comic exploration and in theory a provocative statement on power dynamics in society, sex and relationships, specifically from a woman’s point of view. But neither Arnow nor Ann is letting herself be degraded even as she intentionally degrades herself; Ann’s submissiveness is just a natural part of who she is, like having gone to Wesleyan, liking cheesy showtunes, being an employee, a daughter, a sister, and simply a person. All this comes through in vignettes that could be self-contained but nevertheless come together nicely to establish character development. (A Letterboxd review of the film exclaims that it’s “kind of like a collection of Garfield comic strips where Garfield is in a series of submissive relationships,” and, you know, that’s not too far off. I might again compare Arnow to Keaton in this latitudinous mode of compartmentalization that establishes a cohesive character via a vignette-like approach, Keaton’s having been established first through a collection of shorts.) In terms of Ann’s fetish for humiliation—one suitor goes so far as to provide a “fuck pig” costume, which is the most clothes that Ann wears throughout all her encounters—when put into the context of daily life it becomes clearer as a type of self-awareness, an understanding that, more often than not, simply to be alive is to be embarrassed. Filmmaking-wise, as Richard Brody points out in his review of it for the New Yorker, the “distinctive aesthetic involves a finely calibrated relationship of body and image, and it is achieved by two kinds of distance: the physical distance of the camera from the actors and a canny use of lenses’ focal lengths to evoke the spaces the characters inhabit. The movie has relatively few closeups.” To echo Keaton, “Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.” And as in Keaton’s films this acceptance of self and the world begets at least the prospect of fulfillment, even if the credits sequence here teases an emblematic return to form. (2023, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Lee Chang-dong: Redemption and Revelations

Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes

Lee Chang-dong’s PEPPERMINT CANDY (South Korea)
Friday, 8:30pm
Not only is PEPPERMINT CANDY a searing character study; it’s also a useful introduction to South Korean history in the last two decades of the 20th century. Moreover, each aspect of the film reinforces the other, resulting in something of an Erich Fromm-like social-psychological assessment of the national character. Young-ho, played by Sol Kyung-gu in a relentlessly intense performance, represents all the worst qualities of the modern South Korean psyche. Shortly into his military service in 1980—the year that South Korea’s military staged a coup d’état and declared martial law—Young-ho accidentally kills a college student as a result of wanting to look tough with a rifle. When he transitions out of the military to the police force during the height of the military dictatorship later in the decade, he begins to torture the suspects he picks up, seeming to take pleasure from inflicting pain. During South Asia’s economic boom in the early 1990s, he becomes a businessman and abandons all morals in his pursuit of money; and when he loses his job at the end of the decade, he declares himself worthless and makes a pathetic spectacle of himself at a high school reunion before committing suicide by jumping in front of a train. One of the brilliant devices of Lee Chang-dong’s screenplay is to tell this story backward, beginning with Young-ho’s suicide, then presenting episodes that go further and further back in time, as if digging for clues to his self-destruction. Young-ho almost never emerges as likable in this journey: besides being a sadist, he’s also a reckless narcissist who cheats on his wife and hurts the only woman he ever loves. (His eternal feminine is played by the great actress Moon So-ri, seen here in her screen debut; her second film would be Lee’s even better OASIS [2002].) The visual style is unforgiving. Lee’s favorite approach to a scene is to film the whole thing from one position (pointed down from a slightly elevated position, if possible) so that everyone seems trapped in the shot. This analytical aesthetic, replete with depictions of cruelty, might bring to mind Michael Haneke’s films, but Lee is ultimately a humanist. He wants to assess South Korea’s psychological problems not to wallow in them, but in the hopes of solving them. PEPPERMINT CANDY ends, notably, with Young-ho as a naive idealist who wants nothing more than to take photographs and be nice to people. (1999, 130 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Lee Chang-dong's SECRET SUNSHINE (South Korea)
Saturday, 4pm
SECRET SUNSHINE begins with a shot of the sky and ends with a shot of the ground, and could therefore be described as a nearly 2 1/2-hour downward pan: from milieu to character, from ambitions to realities, from action to aftermath, and from a higher calling to its failure to its fitful application. This drawn-out movement isn't readily obvious, and a first impression of the film tends to be dominated by its unpredictability: where the story is going (and, considering Lee Chang-dong's elliptical matter-of-factness, how quickly it'll get there), and, by the second hour, what Jeon Do-yeon's character will do at any given moment. That the movie manages to be simultaneously sprawling (in terms of plot and characterization) and compact (in terms of pacing and setting) owes a lot to the strength of Lee's style, which seems off-the-cuff at first, but slowly reveals its rigor; it's a carefully-designed middle-ground that allows SECRET SUNSHINE to pass through numerous genre shifts (drama, comedy, thriller, tragedy) without ever seeming to over-extend itself. (2007, 142 min, DCP Digital) [Ignatiy Vishenvetsky]
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Lee Chang-dong's POETRY (South Korea)
Sunday, 4pm
The evolution of Lee Chang-dong from storyteller to soothsayer has been one of the glories of contemporary movies. A former novelist (and high school teacher before that), Lee began his filmmaking career in the energetic, confrontational manner that's marked so much recent Korean cinema. His first films as director, GREEN FISH and PEPPERMINT CANDY, are cannily placed needles in the national nerve; but his third, OASIS, is a revelation, one of the watershed moments in South Korean cinema. A romance between disabled characters that's neither sentimental or schematic or flippantly unkind, it demonstrated how a curiosity about challenging social taboos (a near-constant in the Korean New Wave) could blossom into a study of humanity, period. It is one of the finest films ever made about the opposing forces of love and civic propriety. After a stint as South Korea's Minister of Culture, Lee made SECRET SUNSHINE, a film about the inevitabilities of suffering and spiritual awakening that already seemed timeless shortly after its release. And then, POETRY. The main character, Mija (played by '60s Korean icon Yoon Jeong-hee, who came out of retirement for the role), is an elderly woman deprived, by circumstance, of companionship and anxious to rediscover life by learning to write poems. Like much of Lee's work, this sounds potentially maudlin, though the realization of the material is anything but. As in the case of Jeon Do-yeon's character in SECRET SUNSHINE, Lee reveals different facets of Mija's personality through impulsive, often furtive action without ever betraying an audience's initial impression of her. Combined with the narrative unpredictability that has defined the director's best work, the result is a multi-faceted film that is inseparable—formally as well as structurally—from its central character. (2010, 139 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
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Lee Chang-dong's BURNING (South Korea)
Monday, 6:30pm
“It’s a metaphor.” Spoken by the inexplicably wealthy, smugly superior Ben (Steven Yeun) after he equates cooking at home to making offerings to the Gods, this line, like so much of the teasingly elusive BURNING, hints that we’re in delicately self-reflexive territory in Lee Chang-dong’s latest. It’s one of a tantalizing series of moments, mostly generated by Yeun’s perpetually smirking and vaguely otherworldly character, that draws us ever deeper into the film’s porous reality, where our unreliable narrator Jongsu’s (Yoo Ah-in) confounded perspective makes us question the veracity of what we’re seeing. The mysteries start accruing early, when Jongsu, a barely employed, young aspiring writer, happens upon Haemi (Jeon Jong-seo), a girl from his childhood neighborhood whom he can’t remember. Haemi is off to Africa, and she’ll need Jongsu to feed her cat while she’s away, but like the phantom tangerine she pantomimes over dinner, there is no trace of the cat. For a while, anyway, Haemi seems to offer the romantic companionship Jongsu has been missing, but when she returns from Africa with Ben in tow, the rich, possibly sinister interloper unleashes in Jongsu a cascade of latent anxieties, desires, and resentments that are as socioeconomically based as they are libidinal. In the thorny, unmistakably homoerotic relationship between the sullen working-class Jongsu and the suave new-moneyed Ben, Lee articulates a dynamic underpinned equally by class antagonism and envy, by a disdain for a callous power elite as well as by the aspirations of a young generation, evident especially in eastern Asian countries such as South Korea, to assimilate the goals of global capitalism. Like Haemi, who oscillates (perhaps uneasily) between economically desperate millennial and male sexual fantasy projection, Ben is a slippery subject, a recognizable brand of entitled affluent hotshot who nevertheless appears like a kind of taunting phantasm. It is a mark of Steven Yeun’s sneaky performative prowess that he can make Ben feel like both a plausibly malicious person and a free-floating metaphor for modernity and toxic masculinity, every ingratiating grin and forced yawn an invitation to confront the banally seductive face of evil. BURNING refers, most denotatively, to Ben’s avowed habit of burning down abandoned greenhouses, but what it really describes is the psychological unease that smolders in places both rural and urban, sparked by the conditions of a society pervaded by inequality and disaffection. We can’t be sure if everything Jongsu thinks happens literally does. Then again: it’s a metaphor. (2018, 148 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Also playing are Lee’s first feature GREEN FISH (1997, 111 min, DCP Digital) on Friday at 6pm and his third feature OASIS (2002, 133 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 1pm. More info here.

Chicago Critics Film Festival

Music Box Theatre –​ See below for showtimes

Gillian Armstrong’s LITTLE WOMEN (US)
Sunday, 11:30am
Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic coming of age novel Little Women is the epitome of coziness on screen, cycling through the seasons though holding the most space for winter. The cyclical nature of the film is also emphasized by its memorable score from composer Thomas Newman; its robust use of horns serves to maintain the balance between epic and domestic. The characters, too, are divided by their desires to adventure out into the wide world and stay close to home; as our protagonist Jo March (a dazzling Winona Ryder) eventually finds, the everyday human stories that surround us are worth examining and celebrating. LITTLE WOMEN follows the Marches, a Massachusetts family fallen on hard times during the American Civil War, led by the steadfast Marmee (Susan Sarandon). The story focuses on second eldest daughter, Jo, a writer, and her three sisters: practical Meg (Trini Alvarado), homebody Beth (Claire Danes), and artist Amy (Kirsten Dunst and Samantha Mathis), as they navigate both the crises of their historical era and the ordinary struggles of growing up and establishing one’s own identity. LITTLE WOMEN is broken into vignettes, featuring the individual struggles and triumphs of each of the sisters, including finding love (Christian Bale plays neighbor Laurie, who complicates their close-knit relationships) and devastating loss. These stories and developments all tie in with the LITTLE WOMEN’s visual emphasis on the changing seasons, both in the natural environment and the living, breathing nature of the March’s untidy but warm home. The film’s profound sense of coziness is grounded not only in the emotionality of the characters and story, but in the beautiful and delicate visualization of how these aspects are reflected and refracted in the everyday spaces of home and family. (1994, 119 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
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Martin Scorsese’s BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (US)
Tuesday, 7pm
Unfairly criticized on first release, and given even more unfortunate marketing, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD has been long considered a minor work in Scorsese’s career—which is incredibly frustrating, as it is very much the filmmaker’s final love letter to the New York he knew and loved. Though released in 1999, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is very pointedly set in the early ‘90s, curiously making it a period piece set only a few years earlier. In this pre-Giuliani, pre-Disneyfied NYC, we follow Frank Pierce (Nic Cage), a paramedic based in Hell’s Kitchen, as he goes about his 3rd shift life, attempting to save lives in the chaos of nighttime Manhattan. Haunted by visions of a girl he couldn't save, Frank falls deeper into a self-destructive depression. He hasn’t been able to save anyone’s life in a while and wishes he could just leave the job that is killing him physically, mentally, and spiritually—but his mix of cowardice and occupational awe won’t let him. He is another one of Scorsese’s Lonely Men. Quite possibly his greatest one. With Scorsese teaming up with writer Paul Schrader for a fourth time, they take us back to the last gasps of the nocturnal NYC of their Travis Bickle. But here we have a 57-year-old Scorsese and 53-year-old Schrader looking to clean up and save the city not with a frustration steeped in anger and vengeance but in salvation and grace. It’s glaringly obvious that spirituality and religion have always deeply colored both Scorsese and Schrader's works. Scorsese made SILENCE (2016) about Catholic missionaries; Schrader made HARDCORE (1979), his neo-noir Dante’s Inferno about the spiritual descent of a Calvinist into the depraved hell of the world of pornography. They both made THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988) together. Still, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD may be the most Christian of all their works. Or at least the most spiritually pure. While Scorsese laments the death of his NYC, he and Schrader set Frank in it to show that when the city was still dangerous and a beast unto itself, that there were always people who wanted nothing but to save it. That perhaps the city did need saving, and that good people were trying to do that without feeling the need to change it. That the city’s salvation was in grace and understanding, not in destructive, forced transformation. Frank may be haunted by the ghost of the woman he couldn’t save, but it's clear that Scorsese is equally haunted by the NYC he lost. As in so many of his films, the New York he personally knew, the city itself is played as a character, but only here is it a ghost. As equally myopic in his mission as Travis Bickle, Frank Pierce drives endlessly through the night; but instead of the Old Testament God of wrath and vengeance, he is the New Testament, humanly flawed God of compassion. Instead of wishing punishment on transgressors, he wants peace for the afflicted. Frank is almost a kind of ersatz Charon or psychopomp, navigating the dead to the afterlife for all eternity, unable to help those beyond his grasp. The drama of BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is in Frank’s feelings of punishment, that he is being tested in a near Jobian way for caring too much about the innocent—for everyone is innocent in the eyes of the paramedic. This is a Christian film outside the shadow of Scorsese’s crucifix or Schrader’s cross. BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is an exploration into the actual teachings of Christ without resorting to literalism or deism (though naming Patricia Arquette’s character “Mary” is a bit on the nose). Recommended by Brian De Palma after their working together on SNAKE EYES (1998), Nicolas Cage gives here what is arguably his greatest performance. His dynamic range and anti-Method style of acting have never been better suited for a role. Being surrounded by a versatile group of actors like Arquette, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore, John Goodman, and a scene-stealingly brilliant Marc Anthony seems to have helped Cage slightly restrain his otherwise unrestrainable style. After all, the only actor capable of out Nic Cage-ing Nic Cage is Tom Sizemore—which he does magnificently here despite playing one of the most morally reprehensible characters in Scorsese’s rogues' gallery. BRINGING OUT THE DEAD is the apotheosis of Scorsese’s and Schrader’s Lonely Men and their explorations of morality and faith in an uncaring world. While both filmmakers would continue to approach these topics throughout their careers, they have never been better synthesized and fleshed out than they did here. The film was a box office bomb on release, but the past 25 years have given new life to this ghost of Scorsese’s past, and in a just world another 25 will see this considered his masterpiece. (1999, 121 min, 35mm) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
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Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross’ GASOLINE RAINBOW (US)
Wednesday, 4:30pm
In an ever-expanding filmography blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, the Ross Brothers are fleshing out their own cinematic language in real time, focusing on emotional truth within constructed circumstances. Their subjects here are a quintet of high schoolers taking a road trip from their nowheresville town of Wiley, Oregon, to the coast, a nomadic quest to break free of the confines of their listless lives in pursuit of "one last great adventure." The improvisational nature of the dialogue means scenes are always natural, consistently human, and intermittently poetic, but the Ross Brothers’ visual inventiveness keeps things alive even when the scenes otherwise hit a lull. The early portions of the film, in which desert skies of orange and pink and purple cast a roof above the hopeful yearnings of these endlessly likable teens, are a magnificent encapsulation of the wandering youthful spirits on this journey. A character muses later on that the biggest difference between grown-ups and children is that "grown-ups aren’t supervised." Here, then, is a feature-length adventure of kids with no adult supervision in sight, growing up before our eyes, bright-eyed and awkward and stumbling towards an ocean full of possibility before them. The only question they’re left with is how to get back home. (2023, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
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India Donaldson’s GOOD ONE (US)
Wednesday, 7pm
It would be incredibly easy, and painfully reductive, to label India Donaldson’s debut feature GOOD ONE as a movie where "nothing happens." In the traditional sense, one could concede that, sure, not a lot "happens"; a father and daughter—accompanied by the father’s oldest friend—go on a hiking trip, have awkward conversations, gaze at nature, and then complete said hiking trip. No grand revelations are unveiled, no lengthy monologues are delivered, and the surface-level stakes remain at a particularly modest level. But visually, emotionally, and atmospherically, worlds are uncovered and scavenged throughout, as relationships between this central trio are tested in tiny but momentous ways. As our center, Sam (Lily Collias) is an ecstatically confident teenager, but moments of disbelief poke through her self-assured visage, finding herself shaken by the frequent childishness of her middle-age companions. Her father, Chris (James Le Gros), and his friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy), bicker and banter like siblings—or perhaps more appropriately, an old married couple—as they each contend with shattered hopes, loves lost, and futures that remain painfully unclear. It’s a film of glances between father and daughter, deep sighs between friends, dumb jokes and painfully creepy asides, of humans simply living within the bounty of nature. GOOD ONE thrives in its pastoral environment (aided by Celia Hollander’s earworm of a score), the rocks and trees painting the frame, the rivers flooding our eardrums with calm, instilling a whole world into the lives of these wandering lost souls. In one of the final moments, Chris presents a rock to Sam, slamming it on the dashboard. A gift, a peace offering, a token of his appreciation; whatever this may be, in this moment, everything happens. Donaldson in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. (2024, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
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More info on the fest, including the full schedule, here.

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

3 Films by William John Willke (US/Experimental)

Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30 pm

These three short films by William John Willke share themes and images, presenting what feels like a living, breathing representation of theorizing everyday life. Originally aired on PBS in the early '90s, these black and white shorts are rhythmical both in their poetic voiceovers and evocatively stark visuals. GENERAL METHODS OF BALANCE examines, through mid-century interiors and empty cityscapes, how art holds time in unique ways, questioning how that can reshape routine monotony. It also introduces the recurring visual of a dead body, wrapped in a sheet, and the use of recorded voiceover; notably the women speaking are steady and confidently puzzling through their everyday life, while the men’s voices are more shaky and less self-assured. THE SLEEPING GROUND includes a haunting score and focuses more so on objects as connected to ritual and rebirth, including the burying of the dead. Here, too, Willke reflects on life as a museum, with common objects and bodies acting as memorials to time. Finally, TROTLINE, the longest of the three films, feels like the culmination of these themes, as the camera concentrates on fragmented bodies and fragmented spaces. While dead bodies are also featured here, there is also the image of a couple sleeping, reflecting the simultaneously melancholy and beautiful images that Willke repeatedly captures. Willke in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. (1992-1994, 24 min, Digital Projection) [Megan Fariello]

Claire Denis' TROUBLE EVERY DAY (France)

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

TROUBLE EVERY DAY was Claire Denis’ most contentious film before BASTARDS; not surprisingly it was her goriest film to date, trading in dark, eroticized violence that can be a deal-breaker for many viewers. Vincent Gallo stars as an American doctor who travels to Paris with his innocent young wife. He says they’re on a honeymoon, but really he wants to research the rare condition with which he’s afflicted—it makes him want to drink human blood. Gallo encounters a doctor (Denis regular Alex Descas) whose wife (Beatrice Dalle) is afflicted with the same condition; Denis goes on to parallel Gallo’s story with Dalle’s, showing how terrible things might get for the American doctor. The violence is shockingly graphic, yet the narrative is characteristically vague. Is TROUBLE EVERY DAY an AIDS allegory? A Cronenbergian fable about how little we understand our own bodies? Or just a reflection of whatever nightmares Denis was having at the time? As usual for the director, Denis makes you feel vivid sensations before you understand what the film means. The associative editing, the moody cityscapes, and the evocative Tindersticks score combine to create a memorable sensory assault. Screening as part of the Americans in Paris: After the Dance series. (2001, 101 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Ryan Martin Brown's FREE TIME (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 7pm

Valiantly taking the baton from the likes of Robert Altman, Elaine May, Albert Brooks, Noah Baumbach, and Andrew Bujalski, Ryan Martin Brown has crafted a delightful, lo-fi, casual-but-committed work of indie comedy filmmaking, tackling big themes in small rooms, and low stakes with high-wire characters. Brown’s noxious protagonist Drew (Colin Burgess, in a comic performance equally endearing and frustrating) finds himself a bit out of step with the world; he’s just quit his crummy data analyst job but has no sense of direction beyond the general youthful malaise that comes with, understandably, despising corporate America. He has friends, or rather, people who are willing to meet up with him to grab a quick smoothie, but he barely knows how to engage in any kind of meaningful human conversation. In a society systematically structured around your job being your life, Drew seems all-at-once determined to break this rule, yet he's disturbingly inept at trying to grasp at what else is out there for him. Perhaps the most tragic realization comes deep into the film; the one non-corporatized tenet of Drew’s life‚ his own artistic pursuits as a keyboard player in a burgeoning Brooklyn band—is, frankly, mediocre at best, especially as he fails to adapt to the lead singer’s new direction for the band (Drew’s disturbed reaction to his Brooklyn indie band pivoting to country music is one of many endearingly witty tangents in a film full of meandering minds in the youth of the 2020s). Even the one "win" Drew finds along the way—a mid-film makeout session after a serendipitous meet-cute—is squandered by his incessant desire to push his music on anyone and everyone around him, yet another rejection of the here and now to aspire to a grindset mindset. Drew is full of ambition with nowhere to throw it, all talk and no action, fully personified in all his awkward glory. With such a slice-of-life premise threatening to run in circles for it’s already-brief, less-than-ninety-minute runtime, Brown effortlessly shifts things into a gear of semi-absurdity, taking Drew’s solo quest for anti-capitalist rebellion and letting that virus spread amongst a similar class of fed-up young men who’ve similarly had it with the system. It’s a welcome piece of elevated comedy in what’s otherwise still a promising piece of bleak-yet-bright comic antics, Drew’s journey receiving an ending that anyone experiencing the dread of fighting against late-stage capitalism might suspect is coming. For those who think the old adage “there are no atheists in a fox hole” doesn’t apply to them, may I suggest “there are no anti-capitalists in a cafe where you can’t afford an almond croissant”? (2023, 78 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Alejandro Jodorowsky's SANTA SANGRE (Mexico)

Alamo Drafthouse – Saturday, 11:30am and Monday, 10:15pm

You wouldn't know it from the circus freaks, the religious cults, and the malicious (not to mention limbless) mothers, but SANTA SANGRE is Alejandro Jodorowsky all grown up. Separated from his early staples of hallucinatory cinema, EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, by 16 odd years and a highly mythologized failed first crack at Frank Herbert's Dune, the film finds Jodorowsky with an unexpected amount of narrative confidence, and surrealist sensibilities half as wild, yet twice as perceptive as all his concoctions to date. He spins the story of Fenix, troubled son of the circus, both in flashback and flash-forward, and the first half even tugs a few heartstrings with its tale of love, loss, and complete mental breakdown in the world of ethereal trapeze artists and adulterous knife-throwers. The murderous second half shakes things up, and Fenix's story takes a most unorthodox Oedipal twist that could wake Freud from cold, dead slumber. It's here we recapture some of the Jodorowsky visual flair we once knew, but more importantly, as the film veers firmly into the horror genre, he gets to flex his muscles as a surrealist pioneer. Sure, it's nowhere Lucio Fulci hadn't dabbled before, but Jodorowsky's return proves a surprisingly wise and unsurprisingly creepy effort, not quite the sensory experience that his earlier works remain, but every bit as much a great film. Screening as part of the Americans in Paris: After the Dance series. (1989, 123 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]

Pedro Almodóvar’s BAD EDUCATION (Spain)

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

Anyone familiar with Pedro Almodóvar will expect an insane plot, dramatic music, a good dose of camp, refreshing queer perspectives, and actresses with incredible range and charisma. In an unusual turn, BAD EDUCATION focuses almost entirely on men, and more importantly, boys, in a tale much closer to Almodóvar’s childhood and more terrifying in its indictment. Whereas his well-known films such as ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER and WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN focused on women in crisis and the strange, powerful bonds they form, as well as the surprising strength of their characters in thankless, domestic situations, BAD EDUCATION is surprisingly absent of women, save in the form of Gael García Bernal’s transgender alter-ego (whom he portrays with admirable intensity). Instead of manipulating tropes of classic Hollywood melodrama, BAD EDUCATION weaves an intriguing and difficult-to-discern web of mystery, childhood sexual trauma, and the perilous and powerful bond between two little boys, who may or may not be meeting again decades later to unravel the emotional entanglement that has haunted them their whole lives. Outlining the plot of this movie ahead of time—or even fully understanding the plot of this movie when the credits roll—bears almost no impact on the chilling, visceral, sinking feeling that will haunt you as you leave the theater. Encore screening as part of the Programmer’s Picks series. (2004, 106 min, 35mm) [Alex Ensign]

Olivier Assayas' PERSONAL SHOPPER (France)

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

PERSONAL SHOPPER continues to explore themes that run throughout Olivier Assayas' oeuvre, especially CLEAN (2004) and CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (2014). Much like CLEAN, which starred Maggie Cheung, the film centers on an isolated, inward-facing character recovering from trauma in the city of Paris. Much like CLOUDS, the film stars Kristen Stewart, who plays a personal assistant (specifically in this case, a personal shopper) to a glamorous actress entrenched in the world of celebrity and fashion. Unlike CLOUDS, however, PERSONAL SHOPPER delves into the world of the assistant, and the single-name celebrity, Kyra (Nora von Waldstätten), is seen rarely. Kristen Stewart commands almost every second of screen time, much like Maggie Cheung does in CLEAN. Drawing comparisons among these three films is helpful in finding more depth and meaning in PERSONAL SHOPPER, which suffers in some ways from a meandering, underdeveloped screenplay that elicits accidental laughs and does too much juggling of tone to strike a resounding emotional chord. Assayas called the movie a "collage," but unfortunately the collage is uneven in execution, despite an incredibly impressive performance from Stewart. Apart from the unevenness of the screenplay, the movie has many interesting aspects, and one of the most inspired is allowing Kristen Stewart to do things without being highly sexualized and without speaking. She emotes in a subterraneously explosive manner, indicating the enormous tension within her character without overtly emoting. It's surprisingly captivating. PERSONAL SHOPPER vacillates between several genres, from dark comedy to coming-of-age to psychological thriller, and lastly to horror. The reason the film vacillates so much is due in part to the actual plot: Maureen (Stewart) is a personal shopper by day, and a medium on nights and weekends, mourning her dead twin brother who said he would send her a sign from beyond. She is in Paris for an indefinite amount of time, putting off her own life, and existing as something of a ghost herself, just waiting. Because the movie accepts the existence of ghosts as a given, it turns into a psychological thriller (revolving around an exchange of text messages with an unknown number who may or may not be Maureen's brother...it gets old, fast, watching text messages pop up on a screen), and then a spooky horror (by far the weakest element of the movie), while exploring elements of Maureen's character in quieter, sadder, less suspenseful scenes, hinting at depths the movie never quite reaches. Critics have disagreed widely in their reviews of the film, and it is easy to see why, but it is still highly recommended to see the film for yourself and wonder what this could have been with a stronger screenplay, given how fascinating it is to watch already. Encore screening as part of the Americans in Paris: After the Dance series. (2016, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]

Vera Drew’s THE PEOPLE’S JOKER (US)

Music Box Theatre –​ See Venue website for showtimes

Though initially catapulted into infamy for its legally-dubious use of characters from the Batman franchise, THE PEOPLE’S JOKER is far more than the faux-controversy surrounding its cheeky superhero antics. Director/writer/star Vera Drew’s multimedia collage of comic tomfoolery is as much a playful piece of comic-book lampooning as it is a deeply introspective origin story for Drew’s own coming-out as a trans woman, transplanting her life story onto the neon buildings and villainous cohorts of Gotham City. Drew’s fair-use feature is punk in every sense of the word; the melding of live-action actors, wonky CG imagery, stop-motion animation, and 2D cartoons makes for a tapestry of intertwining artistry. The casting of notorious alt-comic performers, from Maria Bamford’s freakish Lorne Michaels to Tim Heidecker’s Alex Jones-esque Perry White to David Liebe Hart’s transcendently tapped-in performance as the comic guru Ra’s Al Ghul, gives further shape and texture to the general reclamation, distortion, and anarchic reverence for the corporate properties on display. Drew’s own coming-out journey is delivered with humor and truth in equal measures. Her humor is oftentimes ribald and nonsensical, yet it never distracts from the earnestness at the root of her story, resulting in sequences that veer from delirious to artful in a matter of moments. It’s a tale that undeniably belongs to Drew but now, with the wide release of this film, can be shared with the world. Warner Bros. may own their specific clown prince of crime, but Vera Drew’s Joker the Harlequin is a character that now belongs to us all; a villain who’s lived long enough to see herself become our hero. (2022, 95 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Bedsheet Cinema (1737 N. Sawyer Ave.)
Victor Erice’s 1973 film THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (95 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday at 8pm. More info here.

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Ines Sommer’s 2023 documentary THE HILLS (43 min, Digital Projection), along with short Chicago steel industry films, screens Friday, 7pm, followed by a conversation with Sommer (Associate Professor of Instruction in Northwestern’s Radio/TV/Film Department and Director of the Pritzker Pucker Studio Lab), Mark Bouman (Senior Environmental Social Scientist, Field Museum), and Block Museum Associate Film Programmer, Malia Haines-Stewart.

Dancing Flowers and Sprouting Seeds: Films of Botanical Motion, featuring  a selection of short digital and 16mm films by John Ott, Wilhelm Pfeffer, Percy Smith, Rose Lowder, John Smith and Ian Bourn, Julie Murray, Charlotte Pryce, and Jodie Mack, screens Thursday, 7pm, with an introduction by Colin Williamson (Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon), addressing histories of time-lapse photography in early cinema and popular science films. 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, 2026. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Palestine Film Fest
Nick Rosen and Zachary Barr’s 2023 documentary short RESISTANCE CLIMBING (37 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday, 8:30pm, at the DePaul University quad (2325 N. Seminary Ave.) in Lincoln Park. More info here.

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

⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
A shorts program as part of the Spring 2024 Edition of the First Nations Film and Video Festival screens Monday at 7pm. More info here. 

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Gregory Nava’s 1997 film SELENA (127 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 7pm, and Saturday, 4pm, as part of the Board Picks series.

Zaynê Akyol’s 2022 documentary ROJEK (128 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 7pm, as part of the New Releases (+ More) series.

George Clooney’s 2023 film THE BOYS IN THE BOAT (124 min, DCP Digital) screen Sunday, 1pm, also as part of the New Releases (+ More) series.

Franco Rosso’s 1980 film BABYLON (95 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday, 4pm, as part of the Black Britain series.

Cauleen Smith’s 1999 film DRYLONGSO (81 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday, 7pm, as part of the Apparitions: An Assemblage of Black Independent Films series.

Yael Melamede’s 2023 documentary SPEAKING FREELY (83 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 8pm.  After the screening, Abrams will join a panel discussion on challenges to the First Amendment created by rapidly changing technological developments.Abrams will be joined by Melamede and Nick Feamster, UChicago professor and founder and director of the Internet Equity Initiative, and moderated by UChicago First Amendment Savant Geof Stone.

Kinuyo Tanaka’s 1961 film GIRLS OF THE NIGHT (93 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday at 7pm as part of the Kinuyo Tanaka, Actress and Auteur series.

Bruce Conner’s 1962 short film COSMIC RAY (4 min, 16mm) and Ralph Bakshi’s 1972 animated film FRITZ THE CAT (78 min, 16mm) screen Thursday, 9:30pm, as part of the Inside Outsider Cinema series. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
The Chicago Horror Film Festival’s Halfway to Halloween event takes place through Sunday.

The Anime Club takes place Thursday; films TBA, members will receive a link to RSVP via email once announced. More info here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) 
The Speculative Archive: Deanna Bowen and Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich takes place Friday, 7pm, in the Logan Center Screening Room with Hunt-Ehrlich and Bowen in person for a post-screening conversation with Christopher Harris and Allyson Nadia Field.

Playing with Animals: CMS Graduate Student Conference takes place Friday, 7pm, in Cobb Hall 307.

Program 1 of Film Talks: A Touring Program of Experimental Cinema, featuring a selection of short digital and 16mm films by Neil Henderson, Bea Haut, Jenny Baines, Karel Doing, Francisca Duran, Ute Aurand, Nick Collins, Helga Fanderl, Nicky Hamlyn, and Andrew Vallance, screens Thursday at 7pm in the Logan Center Screening Room. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
The Chicago Palestinian Film Festival officially concludes with Sarah Ema Friedland and Rami Youniss’ 2023 documentary LYD (78 min, DCP Digital), preceded by Nick Rosen and Zachary Barr’s 2023 documentary short RESISTANCE CLIMBING (37 min, Digital Projection), on Saturday at 7pm, though the screening is sold out, as are the encore screenings of the award-winning short films program on Tuesday at 6pm and Farah Nabulsi’s 2023 film THE TEACHER (118 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday at 6pm. 

Marten Persiel’s 2021 film EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE (93 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of Shawn Michelle Smith and Oliver Sann’s Cli-Fi lecture series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
The 4K restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 film LE SAMOURAI (105 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes. More info on all screenings 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
Filmmaker-choreographer Sarah Friedland's feature-length trilogy Movement Exercises, presented in conjunction with Friedland's participation in the Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) Project Space Residency, screens for free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: May 3 - May 9, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Tristan Johnson, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Raphael Jose Martinez, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky