📽️AFRICAN DIASPORA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
FACETS Cinema – See below for showtimes
Sana Na N’Hada’s NOME (Guinea-Bissau)
Saturday, 4:45pm
During the end credits of NOME, a title card explains that in the mid-1970s the newfound government of Guinea-Bissau sent a handful of college students to Cuba to learn filmmaking so that people native to the country could document its development following its independence from Portugal. Sana Na N’hada was one of these students, which makes him one of the leading chroniclers of his nation’s history. Fittingly, NOME covers a critical decade in the history of Guinea-Bissau; the story unfolds against the backdrop of the country’s war of independence and the early days of self-rule. (Some of the documentary footage shot by that group of Cuban-educated students in this period is incorporated into the film.) The story begins in 1969, when a young man leaves his family to join the revolutionary army. Before he joins up, however, NOME provides an absorbing portrait of village life in Guinea in the final days of colonialism as well as a moving character study, charting the relationship between the hero and his pregnant cousin, whom he moves in with to help in her time of need. Their close bond brightens the domestic setting, but the warm feeling doesn’t last, as the early passages give way to the harshness of army life. This harshness, in turn, is replaced in the movie’s third act with a more cynical, world-weary tone, when the film jumps ahead to 1975, not long after Guinea-Bissau is granted independence, and the characters find themselves struggling to adapt to urban life. The hero’s enchantment and disillusionment with his country’s evolution gives NOME its narrative trajectory; moreover, it reflects cultural trends that occur anywhere during times of great transition. Accompanied by pre-recorded remarks by the filmmaker. (2023, 118 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
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Rolf de Heer’s Cinematic Visions: THE TRACKER and THE SURVIVAL OF KINDNESS (Australia)
Sunday, 11am (TRACKER) and 1pm (KINDNESS)
With THE TRACKER (2002, 94 min, Digital Projection), writer-director Rolf de Heer starkly confronts the legacy of racism and violence in Australian history. The film follows an expedition in the South Australian outback in 1922 in which a group of government troopers seek an Aboriginal man accused of murdering a white woman; the dramatic conflict centers on the growing tension between the leader of the group and the title character, another Native Australian employed as a guide. The leader is so defined by his anti-Black bigotry that he’s credited only as The Fanatic, while the other white men in the group are known as The Follower and The Veteran. Driven by The Fanatic’s rage and desire for revenge, the white men commit multiple atrocities against Black people they encounter on their journey, though de Heer refrains from showing any violence directly—rather, he depicts the atrocities in the form of paintings by artist Peter Coad. These images have the effect of pulling viewers out of the drama to consider the violence on broader, historical terms; they’re comparable to the majestic crane shots in ANDREI ROUBLEV that Tarkovsky employed to contemplate massacres in the Medieval world. De Heer also offsets the brutality of the story with the supreme dignity of David Gulpilil’s performance as the title character. The Tracker seems pained by all he witnesses and endures (at one point, he’s even put in chains around his neck), yet he maintains an integrity in his carriage and facial expressions that speaks to the endurance of the Native Australian population. In de Heer’s most recent film, THE SURVIVAL OF KINDNESS (2022, 96 min, Digital Projection), the filmmaker pushes these themes of racism, brutality, and endurance to abstract ends. The characters are not only unnamed here—they’re deprived of a clear historical setting and even language. The film takes place in what is either a post-apocalyptic Australia or an ahistorical dreamscape; practically every interaction is a naked power struggle in which words are irrelevant or else reduced to gibberish. The film begins when a Black woman (credited only as BlackWoman) is put in a cage and left in the middle of the outback. She manages to escape her confinement, only to traverse a forbidding landscape where everyone she encounters is a potential killer. De Heer’s camera is patient and observant; while THE SURVIVAL OF KINDNESS is motored principally by action, the tone is too plaintive for it to be considered an action film. It’s about the timelessness of Black women’s struggles, which de Heer suggests will continue to persist after civilization falls. [Ben Sachs]
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Lillah Hala’s POWER ALLEY (Brazil/France/Uruguay)
Sunday, 5pm
The rebellious nature of Lillah Hala’s POWER ALLEY emerges from the get-go with its cold open: a trio of teenagers cheekily pulling a “heist” at a pharmacy to pilfer hormones and pregnancy tests. It’s a minor moment within the context of the larger narrative that still succeeds in introducing the film’s major pillars: the joy of queer youth, the necessity of accessible healthcare, and the anarchic spirit to do what’s right whenever possible. Hala’s debut feature nimbly shifts between spaces both joyous and clinical, life-affirming and traumatizing, aided by a visual language steeped in realism and abstraction, scenes often cutting to black through frequent, fragmentary editing like a light-switch turning on and off; a cue towards a life in danger of flickering by, with no means of slowing down. Though still a film wholly focused on the power of community support, the journey is led by Sofia (an unwavering force in Ayomi Domenica), the prodigy of the local volleyball team whose recent unwanted pregnancy becomes a lightning rod in their Brazilian community, where the hoops to jump through to receive an abortion make the task nigh impossible. The focus switches between the forces looking to support her road to accessible reproductive health and those standing in her way, the anti-choice voices growing louder and more violent as the narrative progresses. Throughout it all, Sofia finds moments of friendship, sexual euphoria, and passionate joy through her sport, and even in the film’s darkest moments, she still sees things worth fighting for in her quest for bodily autonomy. A potent, if on-the-nose metaphor emerges when Sofia’s father, a beekeeper and honey distributor, narrates his daily routine, including clipping the wings off of drone bees so that they can’t fly away. Lillah Hala, thankfully, crafts a story where no wings need be clipped. Screening as part of the Spotlight on Brazil double feature. (2023, 99 mins, Digital Projection) [Ben Kaye]
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Complete festival schedule and additional info here.
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
William Friedkin's CRUISING (US)
Music Box Theatre – Friday & Saturday, Midnight
This movie that once caused the gay community to protest its making and release is now something of a cult sensation amongst today's generation. At the time, the film was deemed controversial for the way it seemed to correlate homosexual attraction and serial killing and for its mainstream coverage of S&M bars, a rather marginal part of gay life. After AIDS, the movie has found new appreciation in the queer community and beyond. Its new fans are curious about the life it portrayed, its ethos as much as its dress codes, the latter of which has to an extent even been appropriated by today's hipster scene (the bandanna as a signifier of sexual solicitation transformed into a signifier of irony). Al Pacino gives a bizarre performance as a cop who increasingly begins to identify with the gay world he was sent out to cover in light of a series of killings in the community. CRUISING has its faults, in its plotting and other aspects, and many ambiguities, but today those deficiencies are either forgiven in favor of its strengths or are seen as meaningful mysteries to ponder over. Part of its incomplete feel is accounted for by the 40 minutes cut out to appease the MPAA, who then dropped the initial X rating to an R (the missing footage mostly consisting of more scenes at the S&M bars). The print shown should include the infamous disclaimer that was dropped from the DVD release: "This film is not intended as an indictment of the homosexual world. It is set in one small segment of that world, which is not meant to be representative of the whole." With an introduction from archivist Elizabeth Purchell. (1980, 102 min, 35mm) [Kalvin Henley]
Elia Kazan’s WILD RIVER (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
One of Elia Kazan’s most personal films, WILD RIVER finds a masterful balance between ethnographic portraiture and melodrama. Early in his career, Kazan assisted on the labor documentary PEOPLE OF THE CUMBERLAND (1937); over the following years, the director became fascinated by government agencies and how they relate to civilians. Written by Paul Osborn, the script incorporated Kazan’s experience alongside William Bradford Huie’s novel Mud on the Stars and Borden Deal’s Dunbar’s Cove. Like a documentary, the film opens with black-and-white, grainy footage of the suffering caused by the perpetual flooding of the Tennessee River. The newly formed Tennessee Valley Authority begins to construct dams in hopes of providing desperately needed electricity to the surrounding areas. Many locals feel threatened, however, as they are forced to give up their homes, values, and tradition to the project. One eighty-year-old matriarch, Ella Garth (Jo Van Fleet), personifies this sentiment. Tensions rise when she refuses to leave her small island. Outside the political themes of tradition versus progress, public wellbeing versus individual rights, and Black versus white, there is a human drama of love, dignity and tradition; a Hollywood love story between the dashingly handsome Clyde (Montgomery Clift), a government field agent, and the stunning southern belle played by Lee Remick. Clyde is physically vulnerable and has a thoughtfulness in his relationships to women. Whether this comes from the actor’s hidden sexuality or his training at the Strasberg school, he never embodies traditional masculinity. Known for his Anatolian smile and charm, Kazan had a knack for pulling performances out of any actor and injecting realism into any scene. When such a director is paired with such an actor, the results must be studied by students of the form. As suggested in art of this country’s antiquity, American life is full of pain and promise. With a land sprawling and open, prospects become boundless, yet those who inhabit the earth and tend to it have limitations. Entered into the National Film Registry, WILD RIVER presents images of woods, waters, towns, islands and land and their occupants, who survived strife through courage, grace, and humor. Screening as part of the Liz & Monty Matinees series. (1960, 110 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]
Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress’ SEBASTIANE (UK) and Sidney Lumet’s THE HILL (UK)
Leather Archives & Museum – Saturday, 7pm (SEBASTIANE) / Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 3pm and Wednesday, 6pm (THE HILL)
A group of men is sent away; their attitudes toward authority range from slavish obedience to mistrust to outright defiance. The authority in question consists of other men who have arbitrarily been assigned or who have assigned themselves to positions of power and who execute it with prejudice. A major difference between these two films, however, is that in one the men are mostly naked and often cavorting sexually while in the other there’s a conspicuous lack of erotic camaraderie. Regardless, both contain similar character dynamics and confront exile as a means of control, a physical othering that begets a spiritual one and is often due in part to ungovernable aspects of people’s identities. Such is the case of the titular character from Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress’ SEBASTIANE (1976, 85 min, Digital Projection), the former’s first feature film. Sebastian's queerness, even if sublimated, isn’t the cause of his exile, as it technically dominates the film in spite of some casual intolerance; rather it’s his Christianity that attracts the ire of his fellow soldiers (the real Saint Sebastian was killed during the Diocletianic Persecution of Christians; he became an unlikely icon for gay men, partly because of his youthful, chiseled physique and partly for his being a tortured soul). He and the garrison leader enter into a sadomasochistic relationship, the push-and-pull of which composes the film’s scant narrative. Mostly it’s a series of sensual tableaus, the mens’ tanned skin set against sand below and sea afar. It’s a rather dense text, with allusions underpinning the central dynamic; the characters also speak entirely in Latin, which further abstracts the blasphemously rendered lore in this modern reimagining. (Peter Wollen referred to the choice of language as being “high camp,” proclaiming that “dialogue has always seemed an awkward necessity for Jarman.”) It was the first film to do so, which, comparatively, is the least of its subversions. And while it hardly represents the epitome of Jarman’s style, hints of his enduring brilliance account for the film’s best parts. Undeniably it was a watershed moment in British film history, demarcating an exciting new evolution (or, perhaps more fittingly, revolution) of the national cinema. Jarman’s biographer Tony Peake notes that, in the mid-seventies, “British cinema [was] at an all-time low,” and film critic Tony Rayns, an early supporter of Jarman’s, referred to it as something of an antidote, “the most promising sign of new film life in independent narrative cinema in [Britain] in many, many years.” Controversial though it was owing to the explicit sexuality, ultimately, as Peake observes, SEBASTIANE “is less about love and sex than about exile and the exercise of power; what is it to be an outsider?” Not that anyone might think Sidney Lumet’s film THE HILL (1965, 123 min, 35mm) is about love and sex, but it’s certainly about exile, the exploitation of power, and the condition of being an outsider in a hierarchical delimitation. Based on a play of the same name by Ray Rigby and R.S Allen, THE HILL centers on a group of five British army soldiers newly brought to a military prison in the Libyan desert during World War II. Ex-Sergeant Major Roberts (Sean Connery, between Bond films) is the de facto protagonist, having been sent to the prison for assaulting his commanding officer after he gave orders that eventually resulted in the needless slaughter of Roberts’ men. Much of their punishment centers on the titular hill, a formation made of sand and rock in the center of the camp over which the men trudge. It depletes not just their energy, but also their resolve for individuality, which is the goal of Regimental Sergeant Major Wilson (Harry Andrews), who proclaims to turn wayward men into soldiers their country can be proud of. More extreme is Staff Sergeant Williams (Ian Hendry), who delights in breaking the men; providing relief is Staff Sergeant Charlie Harris (Ian Bannen), who becomes a sympathetic ally to the men after one newly imprisoned soldier, a gentler soul whose infraction was going AWOL to get back to his wife, dies from sun poisoning and heat exhaustion. Thus begins the battle between the more righteous soldiers (Roberts is joined in his crusade by Private Jacko King, played extraordinarily by Ossie Davis, a West Indian soldier who’s targeted for his race) and those mired by order and authority. The relatively small main cast and contained setting give this the air of a chamber drama; Oswald Morris’ gritty black-and-white cinematography makes it feel at once sensational and somber, and the sometimes jittery camera work is juxtaposed effectively against the more conventionally shot images, enforcing a pervading sense of continual destabilization. Where Jarman’s film is textually dense, Lumet’s wears its heart on its sleeve, bordering on a didacticism that’s tempered by the strength of the performances and the filmmaker’s diligence in making each aspect meaningful, even if at times too unequivocal. Both films are among the lesser known and lesser seen from their respective auteurs’ oeuvres, and both explore man as martyr, principle becoming the utmost defense against abuse of power. [Kat Sachs]
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s BEIJING WATERMELON (Japan)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
If you’re like me and know Japanese auteur Nobuhiko Ôbayashi solely through his outré, frenetic films like HOUSE (1977) or his final feature LABYRINTH OF CINEMA (2019), you might be surprised by the opening passages of BEIJING WATERMELON, a 1989 feature that was restored in 2021. Based on true events, the film begins by relating how Haruzo Horikoshi, a middle-aged greengrocer in the smallish city of Chiba, Japan, comes to befriend Lee, a college exchange student from Beijing. These scenes promise an update on the sort of “common people dramas” that were so popular in Japan after World War II. Ôbayashi establishes a gentle, ingratiating tone with a leisurely pace and pleasant, down-to-earth performances; the plot is notably free of serious conflict. Yet as BEIJING WATERMELON progresses, it proves to be every bit as eccentric as HOUSE, both narratively and formally, raising questions about the characters or the directorial choices in each new scene. For instance, why does Ôbayashi favor wide shots that make the characters seem like pieces on a chessboard and which make any cuts to close-up seem jarring? Why does he elide so much information about what happens between scenes, so that one is often piecing the story together while it unfolds? On a related note, what compels Horikoshi to perform kindness after kindness on Lee and his friends, to the point where he starts to neglect his wife and children? And why do the exchange students develop such an affinity for this man that they literally begin calling him Dad and treating him like one? The film, it seems, is about a sort of genial mania, comparable to what Steven Soderbergh would later explore in his comedy THE INFORMANT! (2009). (It’s certainly a less solemn take on Chinese-Japanese relations than Zhang Yimou’s RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES [2005].) Throughout BEIJING WATERMELON, Ôbayashi notes when the scenes we’re watching were shot. The device seems like another quirk at first, but it pays off late in the film, when we learn that the scene that was supposed to depict Horikoshi’s reunion with his friends in Beijing was going to be shot there not long after the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of spring 1989. Naturally, the shoot was called off, and this portion of the film, the actors inform us, was shot on a set in Japan. (1989, 136 min, New 2K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
William Greaves’ SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE (US/Experimental)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 9am
The majority of William Greaves’ filmmaking career consists of television documentaries about African-American life, but he made an important contribution to experimental cinema with his 1968 feature SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE. A quasi-documentary meta-movie with an original score by Miles Davis, it alternates between footage of actors performing a drama about marital discord in New York’s Central Park, footage of the crew shooting the drama, and footage of that crew shot by a third party. Greaves plays the director of the film-within-a-film (and to complicate matters further, he’s often seen holding a camera himself); he’s a persistent, often aggravating presence, goading his performers and locking horns with his technical collaborators. For Amy Taubin, writing about SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM for the Criterion Collection in 2006, the film provokes questions about much more than filmmaking, opening up issues of power dynamics and representations of race. “It did not directly engage race or racism,” Taubin concedes, “although the fact that Greaves is both the film’s director-writer-producer and its on-screen protagonist—the focus of almost every scene—guaranteed that the viewer, regardless of race, had to confront whatever racial stereotypes she or he held. Quite simply, in 1968, there were at best a handful of African-American directors working in television and no African-Americans directing feature films. For an African-American director to make a feature film, let alone one as experimental as a film by Warhol or Godard, could not have been imagined if Greaves hadn’t gone out and done it.” The provocative nature of Greaves’ presence ties into larger political issues shaping the zeitgeist in which the film was made. Taubin continues: “Given that in May of 1968 the war was raging in Vietnam, students were occupying university buildings, the French left had almost staged a successful takeover of the government, and a string of assassinations had begun, [the film-within-a-film] would be absurdly reactionary if it were taken at face value. Is the crew’s eventual antagonism, then, part of [Greaves’] master plan to dramatize the other major, though not explicitly stated, theme of the film: power, in particular the power struggle between the leader and the group?” This 35mm revival of SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM feels particularly relevant in our current era, when debates about representation and the significance accorded to directors have become most pronounced in film writing. In this regard, it may be the most contemporary movie playing in town this week. Screening as part of the Rise and Shine series. (1968, 75 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Roy Del Ruth’s BLONDE CRAZY (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 8pm
James Cagney is my favorite actor of all time—stage or any size screen, any gender, any country, any era. I discovered his films on TV when I was a tween, became instantly enamored, and ensured that I would never miss any of his pictures by setting my alarm for the wee hours if “The Late Show” was airing one of them. I still have the 1969 paperback edition of Leonard Maltin’s TV Movies with checkmarks next to all the Cagney films I saw back then. Thus, it came as a surprise to watch BLONDE CRAZY and realize that I had never seen it before. One of five features he made in 1931, including his breakout role as Tom Powers in THE PUBLIC ENEMY, BLONDE CRAZY teamed him with Joan Blondell, his regular costar during the 1930s. The pair came to Hollywood in 1930 when the flop Broadway play they starred in, “Penny Arcade,” was optioned and made into SINNER’S HOLIDAY (1930), their screen debuts and the first of seven films they made together. BLONDE CRAZY is classic Cagney and Blondell. Cagney plays Bert Harris, an ambitious bellhop with larceny in his heart and a yen for Ann Roberts (Blondell), the chambermaid whose job he secures at the expense of his coworker’s girlfriend. He enlists her in a scheme to fleece a rich adulterer, something she agrees to do only because she is drawn to him. They move from their small Midwest city to Chicago, where Bert ends up on the wrong end of a scam. Chasing the team who took all their dough, Ann and Bert end up in New York City, where they pursue different dreams, only to end up (as expected) together. The chemistry between Cagney and Blondell sparkles, and the exceedingly clever script by THE PUBLIC ENEMY’s writers, Kubec Glasmon and John Bright, gives them both a chance to uncork their signature wisecracks. When the pair starts their partnership, Bert turns Ann’s qualms aside with “The age of chivalry is past; this is the age of chiselry. … Honest men are scarcer than feathers on a frog.” Put off by Bert’s crude passes, Ann says, “I could go for you. Sometimes I think I even want to. You’re nice. You're not a collar ad, but, you’re not bad-looking either. But just when I get set to fall, you spoil everything.” With these two quotes, the keys to Cagney’s appeal are revealed—naughty, nice, easy on the eyes, worldly wise. In addition, director Roy Del Ruth makes the most of Cagney’s physicality, giving him opportunities to show off both his dancing and boxing chops. Cagney and Blondell are well supported by Louis Calhern and Noel Francis as confidence artists out to fleece Bert. A great recreation of a stock brokers office and its hand-operated stock board is fascinating, and a final overhead tracking shot of ceilingless prison cells, complete with prisoners, lend interest to a tonally interesting crime film. Screening as part of the Public Enemy: Cagney on Film series. (1931, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Lynne Ramsay's MORVERN CALLAR (UK/Canada)
Highs & Lows at the Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, double feature starts at 7pm
Played magnificently by Samantha Morton, the title character of Lynne Ramsay’s second feature is an existential protagonist in the tradition of Albert Camus’ Meursault. She has no morality and no ambitions; she is capable of both friendship and betrayal, entering into both without apparent motivation. Ramsay doesn’t attempt to probe the character’s inner life; rather she delivers a rich sensory experience that channels the excitement of Morvern’s moment-to-moment existence. The film is marked by mobile camerawork and vivid sound design (Ramsay’s use of music is especially strong), which draw viewers into the character’s perspective but without generating any psychological insight. This immersive style adds to the general sense of unpredictability—not only are you unsure of what Morvern will do next, you can’t see far enough beyond to immediate experience to guess. The film begins when the anti-heroine finds her husband’s corpse after he’s committed suicide. Rather than inform the police, Morvern hides the body, tells her friends that her husband disappeared, then takes his recently completed novel and attempts to sell it to publishers as her own work. While all this is happening, she continues going to her job as a supermarket clerk during the day and partying hard at night; Ramsay finds mystery and wonder in both activities, presenting them as part of a continuous sensory flow. Nothing jars that flow, not even when the setting switches from urban Scotland to rural Spain, which is where Morvern and friend go on vacation with the money Morvern’s taken from her dead husband’s bank account. There are echoes of Antonioni’s THE PASSENGER in how Ramsay presents travel—the attractive imagery carries an undercurrent of disappointment, suggesting that no matter how far you go, you never get away from yourself. (2002, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Screening after Tamra Davis’ 2002 film CROSSROADS (94 min, DCP Digital). Programmed by Oscarbate and sponsored by Hopewell Brewing.
Kelly O’Sullivan & Alex Thompson’s GHOSTLIGHT (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
There are days where Chicago’s storefront theater scene can feel like the city’s best-kept secret; abandoned rooms and buildings scattered across the city that have been converted into shelters for imagination and earnest emotional excavation, created by people sharing stories with live audiences for little-to-no money, simply for the pleasure of nourishing that deep, artistic part of the human spirit. It’s corny and scrappy and painful and oftentimes exploitative, and in its best moments, it’s a place where—​despite it all—​art for art’s sake comes alive in a most hopeful and earnest fashion. It’s somewhat surprising that such a potent artistic subculture has rarely been seen as an environ for cinematic exploration, but Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s GHOSTLIGHT succeeds in mining this world for all it’s worth, tying this all to a story of familial grief and cathartic retribution that, of course, can only be unearthed through the power of theater. In this case, a hastily tossed-together production of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet does the trick, with construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) inexplicably joining the cast after wandering away from his worksite. Sullivan’s script slowly teases out the true narrative meat plaguing Dan’s life, a tragedy of human proportions that finds eerie parallels to the tragic Shakespearean love story Dan and his theatrical cohort (led by a harsh-yet-tender Dolly de Leon) have found themselves exhuming in a dingy storefront in the Chicago suburbs. The layers of authenticity are further deepened by the fact that Kupferer’s real-life family inhabit those same roles on screen here; Tara Mallen (a Chicago theater all-star in her own right) plays Dan’s beleaguered wife, and their daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer delivers an adolescent tornado of a performance as their rebellious teen offspring. Their shared onscreen family trauma (unfurled late in the film at a deposition hearing in a stunning piece of performance from Kupferer) is always boiling under the surface of their lives, with Dan and his daughter eventually finding a home for these repressed feelings to thrive within the Bard’s text. O’Sullivan and Thompson deliver the final blow with one fleeting image near the end of the film, hiding in the shadows, bringing Dan closer to a breaking point of meaning and understanding than he’s ever felt before. As messy and as slapdash as storefront theater often is, truth and vulnerability always find a way to shine through. O’Sullivan and Thompson in attendance for post-screening Q&As following the Friday, 6:45pm and Saturday, 7pm screenings. (2024, 110 min, DCP) [Ben Kaye]
Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s BANEL & ADAMA (Senegal/France/Mali)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
“Banel e Adama. Banel e Adama. Banel e Adama.” The couple’s names fill the notebook of 19-year-old Banel like an incantation, an attempt to will her relationship with Adama into impossible permanence. Living in a small village in Senegal, the two have just been married following the death of Adama’s father and brother, the latter of whom was Banel’s previous husband. Talk of destiny abounds. Were Banel and Adama meant to be together? They certainly think so: blissfully in love, they plan to leave their homes and families to live together in an abode outside the village, with Adama shirking his prescribed hereditary role as the new village chief. Banel, too, sees a way out of her own societal constrictions as a woman forced to bear a male heir. While they map out their shared future, a deadly drought befalls their village. Is this plague punishment for their recalcitrance, as the village elders believe, or a needed upheaval of an oppressive social order? BANEL & ADAMA stands firmly on the side of its rebellious titular characters—played beautifully and without sentimentality by Khady Mane and Mamadou Diallo—even as their headstrong ways court danger. In earthy images that poetically return to mythical motifs of water, sun, sand, trees, and animals, Sy conjures a world beyond societal dictates, where the distant call of freedom makes even the most perilous storm worth weathering. (2023, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Jenny Mackenzie’s THE RIGHT TO READ (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 3:30pm (Free Admission)
One area that is highly prone to fads is education. When I was in grade school, it was the new math. For the past few decades, it has been units of teaching for reading, a system pedaled by for-profit publishers that teaches children to guess at words by looking at pictures that provide obvious hints. When children are asked to read the sentence that appears below the picture without the visual aid, they invariably fail. Like anything one needs to master, reading takes systematic and constant exposure to and practice in the fundamentals. The dismal reading scores of children of color in many parts of the United States are especially concerning. This situation is a civil rights issue, according to Oakland NAACP activist Kareem Weaver, and one that he is working to redress one school district at a time. READING IS A RIGHT chronicles Weaver’s efforts alongside the story of two Black families who are trying to help their children succeed in reading and life, and one teacher who dumps the units of teaching model used in her district to develop her own methods based on research. The documentary, produced by actor LeVar Burton, who acted as host and executive producer of the Peabody Award-winning “Reading Rainbow,” is eye-opening and vital viewing for anyone who loves a school-age child. Importantly, the documentary asserts that university education departments need to reconsider how they are training future K–12 teachers. (2023, 71 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL (Ukraine/Documentary)
Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago (2249 W. Superior St.) – Saturday, 2pm
What will be most rage-inducing about Ukrainian video journalist Mstyslav Chernov’s firsthand account of the siege of Mariupol at the start of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine is undoubtedly the graphic depictions of violence perpetrated against the port city’s helpless civilians. Footage of a pregnant woman being carried away from a bombed-out maternity hospital while she grips her lower midsection, in a daze of what appears to be pain and incredulity—we find out later that her pelvis had been completely crushed—will stay with me forever (we also find out later that she and the baby died, a nurse telling Chernov that her injuries were “incompatible with life”), as will the reactions of parents realizing that their children are dead. What may be most shocking, though, isn’t the violence itself; rather it’s the fact that, as the documentary touches upon at several intervals, many believed it to be manufactured. The implication is “fake news,” the two words an oft-mocked, counterfactual dictum that has become as opprobrious as, say, Sieg hiel. Hail victory, the latter means; it’s not too far off to bridge a connection with fake news, a recrimination that always puts its recipient at fault of manipulation and deceit. Thus the utterer is always the victor, never wrong even in the face of fact. It’s not a new concept (at least not anymore), but paired so closely with video documentation of atrocities it assumes that new meaning, becoming a salute to facism and its ability to turn reality into fiction. For example, “The [aforementioned maternity] hospital was turned into a film set with extras and actors,” proclaims a newscaster in a clip included in a montage of fake-news allegations from Russian journalists and military personnel, this person in particular calling one of Chernov’s AP colleagues, Evgeniy Maloletka, a “well-known Ukrainian propagandist.” (Chernov and Maloletka, implied to be the only international journalists who stayed in Mariupol after the siege, and two of their colleagues from the Associated Press would eventually be awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for their efforts.) Only segments of Chernov and the team’s footage was transmitted during the siege due to lack of reliable internet connection, but it’s now been more thoroughly assembled into this feature-length documentary; some of the interstitials that show how these images were used in world news are a tad self-admiring, but that’s the least of anything irksome going on here. One hopes to say that because all this footage exists it will be believed, but alas, that is not the case. What purpose, then, does this film serve, if the sheer credibility of its images are questioned by the people who theoretically should be most impacted by it, those seeming to need irrefutable proof that such events are occurring? The documentary doesn’t attempt to answer these questions, nor should it. Cinema transforms, but it’s long been the documentary’s ambition to assert, to act as a witness and record the truth for posterity; what does it mean, then, when people accuse journalists and filmmakers of using cinematic effect to documentary aim? One might be asking themselves these questions, but it’s just as likely that viewers will be so enraged by what they see, these 20 days of the terror being faced by civilians in Ukraine, that such Hegelianist ponderings become secondary to the immediacy of the images. The film seems to suggest that this may ultimately be more effective in the short term—some doctors in the film, for example, are nearly begging Chernov and his team to make these atrocities known, to make the world see—but the disquieting proposition put forth by the film’s assembly (it was edited by Frontline PBS staffer Michelle Mizner), combining the firsthand account with the fake-news speculation, suggests a larger, more ideological war that’s still on the horizon. (2023, 94 min, Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]
Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Wednesday, 7pm
Spike Lee's long and prolific career has been maddeningly uneven but he is also, in the words of his idol Billy Wilder, a "good, lively filmmaker." Lee's best and liveliest film is probably his third feature, 1989's DO THE RIGHT THING, which shows racial tensions coming to a boil on the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Lee himself stars as Mookie, a black deliveryman working for a white-owned pizzeria in a predominantly black community. A series of minor conflicts between members of the large ensemble cast (including Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito, and John Turturro) escalates into a full-blown race riot in the film's incendiary and unforgettable climax. While the movie is extremely political, it is also, fortunately, no didactic civics lesson: Lee is able to inspire debate about hot-button issues without pushing an agenda or providing any easy answers. This admirable complexity is perhaps best exemplified by two seemingly incompatible closing-credits quotes--by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X—about the ineffectiveness and occasional necessity of violence, respectively. It is also much to Lee's credit that, as provocative and disturbing as the film at times may be, it is also full of great humor and warmth, qualities perfectly brought out by the ebullient cast and the exuberant color cinematography of Ernest Dickerson. (1989, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
Steven Spielberg's JAWS (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 5pm
If PSYCHO forever changed bathroom behavior, then JAWS no doubt gave us pause before diving head first into the ocean; but like the best horror movies, the film's staying power comes not from its superficial subject matter, in this case a mammoth, man-eating shark and the ominous abyss of the deep blue sea, but from the polysemic potential and wealth of latent meanings that these enduring symbols possess. JAWS marks a watershed moment in cinema culture for a variety of reasons, not excluding the way it singlehandedly altered the Hollywood business model by becoming the then highest grossing film of all time. A byproduct of such attention has been the sustained output of scholarly criticism over the years. At the time of its release, JAWS was interpreted as a thinly veiled metaphor for the Watergate scandal (an event that was slightly more conspicuous in the book), but since then a variety of readings have emerged, including socioeconomic and feminist analyses; however, Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson may provide the most intriguing interpretation by connecting the shark to the tradition of scapegoating. Like Moby Dick or Hitchcock's titular birds, the shark functions as a sacrificial animal onto which we project our own social or historical anxieties (e.g., bioterrorism, AIDS, Mitt Romney). It allows us to rationalize evil and then fool ourselves into thinking we've vanquished it. But by turning man-made problems into natural ones we forget that human nature itself is corrupt, exemplified here by Mayor Vaughn who places the entire population of Amity Island in peril by denying the existence of the shark. Jameson's reading is in keeping with the way in which Spielberg rarely displays the shark itself (the result of constant mechanical malfunctions); as opposed to terrifying close-ups, we get point of view shots that create an abstract feeling of fear, thus evoking an applicable horror film trope: the idea is much more frightening than the image. JAWS is a timeless cautionary tale because it appeals to the deep-rooted fears of any generation. And because sharks are scary. (1975, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Harrison Sherrod]
🎞️ ALSO SCREENING
âš« Alamo Drafthouse
Don Hertzfeldt’s 2024 short film ME (22 min, DCP Digital) plays before screenings of his 2012 film IT’S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY (62 min, DCP Digital). See Venue website for showtimes. More info here.
âš« Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with 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.
âš« Chicago Filmmakers
Chicago Filmmakers is hosting a special preview of John Oricchio and Ricky Byrdsong Jr.’s BYRDSONG on Saturday, 3pm, at YWCA Evanston/North Shore (1215 Church St.).
Counter Weights, programmed by Zack Parrinella and Anna Kipervaser and co-presented with Nightingale Projects, screens Thursday at 7pm. Featuring films by Parrinella, Kipervaser, Andrew Kim, Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, Daniel Robert Kelly, Erin Espelie, Kalpana Subramanian, Sylvain Chaussee and Zack Parrinella. More info here. More info here.
âš« Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.
âš« Cinema/Chicago
Lisa Mulcahy’s 2023 Irish film LIES WE TELL (90 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.) as part of the organization’s free summer screening series. Free admission, though rush only at this time. More info here.
âš« Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Jason Coffman presents Tony Randel’s 1992 horror film AMITYVILLE: IT’S ABOUT TIME (95 min, Digital Projection) Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission. More info here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
Pablo Berger’s 2023 film ROBOT DREAMS (102 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
The 2024 National Theatre Live production of Tim Price’s Nye (170 min, DCP Digital), directed by Rufus Norris and starring Michael Sheen, screens Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Goethe-Institut Chicago (150 Michigan Ave., #420)
Frank Beyer’s 1966 film TRACES OF STONE (134 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday, 6pm, as part of the 70 Years of German Films series. Free admission. Advanced registration is required; bring a photo ID for check-in. More info here.
âš« Hyde Park Art Center
Rachel Gadson’s documentary DEAR BLACK ARTIST screens Thursday, 6pm, in conjunction with the center’s exhibition, The United Colors of Robert Earl Paige. Followed by a post-screening discussion with featured artists Shani Crowe and Shyvette Williams moderated by Gadson. More info here.
âš« Light Matter: Chicago Program
A traveling program of the Light Matter experimental film festival screens Sunday, 7:30pm, at Elastic Arts (3429 W. Diversey Ave. #208). More info here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
Music Box Garden Movies continue. See Venue website for films and showtimes.
Chris Nash’s 2024 horror film IN A VIOLENT NATURE (94 min, DCP Digital) and Pamela Adlon’s 2024 comedy BABES (109 min, DCP Digital) continue screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
As part of the Yorgonna Love It - A Yorgos Lanthimos Series, Lanthimos’ 2011 film ALPS (93 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 4:30pm and Saturday at 2pm; THE FAVOURITE (2018, 119 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 7pm, Monday at 4:15pm and Wednesday at 9:30pm; THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017, 121 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday and Tuesday at 4:15pm and Sunday at 4:45pm; THE LOBSTER (2017, 119 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 6:45pm, Monday at 9:30pm and Thursday at 4pm; and POOR THINGS (2023, 141 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 1:45pm and Wednesday at 4pm.
Elizabeth Purchell’s 2019 film ASK ANY BUDDY (78 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday and Saturday at 9:30pm. Purchell in person to introduce.
The Life Within the Lens: Juneteenth Edition shorts program screens Sunday at 7pm. Filmmakers in person for post-screening Q&A.
The Front Row presents Wallace Potts’ 1970 film LE BEAU MEC (71 min, DCP Digital) on Sunday at 9:30pm.
MOTOBLOT presents Franc Roddam’s 1979 film QUADROPHENIA (117 min, DCP Digital) on Monday, 7pm, in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of MODS vs ROCKERS Chicago.
Rated Q and Ramona Slick present Mike Nichols’ 1996 film THE BIRDCAGE (117 min, DCP Digital) on Friday at 9:45pm. There will be preshow drinks and a DJ in Music Box Lounge at 9pm and then a drag show performance in the Main Theater at 9:45pm, followed by the film screening. More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« 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
âš« VDB TV
Saif Alsaegh: Bittersweet Landscape, a program of three short films by Alsaegh, screens for free on VDB TV. More info here.
CINE-LIST: June 14 - June 20, 2024
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Ray Ebarb, Marilyn Ferdinand, Kalvin Henley, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Harrison Sherrod, Michael Glover Smith