:: FRIDAY, AUGUST 16 - THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Shinji Sômai’s MOVING (Japan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi (and a good number of Japanese critics) all consider Shinji Sômai the most important Japanese filmmaker of the 1980s and ‘90s, though he still doesn’t have much of a reputation outside his home country two decades after his death. Case in point, almost none of his 13 features are available in the US, which means this short run of MOVING at the Film Center constitutes a major event. MOVING is filmmaking of the highest order: innovative, surprising, beguiling, and, yes, moving. It’s one of those rare movies—like MURIEL (1963), A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1976), POSSESSION (1981), or L’INTRUS (2004)—that seems to be discovering itself, and cinema, as it goes along, devising new approaches to storytelling in response to how its volatile characters engage with the world. The film begins as a naturalistic drama about the impact of a couple’s separation on their preadolescent daughter, a headstrong fifth-grader named Renko. But as Renko, or Ren, grapples with the dissolution of her family (as well as her subsequent problems at school, where her parents’ separation makes her a target for bullying), her behavior becomes increasingly unpredictable and reckless—and so too does the story. Gradually everyone around Ren starts behaving impulsively too, as though her tumultuous inner life were being made manifest in the real world; to shake things up more, Sômai frequently makes shocking advances in time, which raise more questions than they answer about the consequences of the characters’ actions. And just when you think MOVING couldn’t get more ambiguous, it starts to become unclear whether what we’re watching is a dream. Per Kurosawa (who served as assistant director on Sômai’s first two features), Sômai favored narratives that progress from order to chaos, and MOVING certainly fits that description. At the same time, Sômai is always in complete control over his art as a filmmaker, trading in impassive long takes that Kurosawa has likened to those of Theo Angelopoulos and Edward Yang. The formal mastery exists in constant tension with the characters’ out-of-control lives, with each one rendering the other strange. It wouldn’t work at all if the actors weren’t up to snuff, and the cast here is extraordinary; everyone seems like a relatable person when they do things even they can’t explain. Tomoko Tabata, who plays Ren, deserves special mention, exhibiting a complexity and mysteriousness that would be astonishing in a performer of any age. (1993, 125 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Dario Argento’s OPERA (Italy)

Davis Theater – Sunday, 12:30 pm

OPERA feels dreamy; despite there being a serial killer on the loose, the film’s pacing (and its characters) is unhurried by the goings-on. This is also reflected in director Dario Argento’s whirling camera, navigating spaces through floating POV shots. As often found in horror, many of these shots are from the perspective of the killer, but included are those from the ravens that reside in the titular opera house. This further disorients the audience with whirling shots, which culminate in an impressive and unnerving scene in which the ravens violently divebomb a packed opera house. It’s a specialty of Argento’s to render old buildings strange and dangerous, mazelike in their vast array of colorful rooms and shadowed corridors, where it is impossible to get a clear view and yet still impossible to hide; he even seems to comment on his own use of space in the final sequence. A late '80s giallo, OPERA provides a choice demonstration of Argento’s distinct visual landscape. It’s got a familiar premise: after an accident a young understudy, Betty (Cristina Marsillach), is suddenly thrown into the lead role of an avant-garde production of Verdi’s Macbeth. She gets rave reviews from her debut, but members of the opera house are being killed off one by one; Betty herself witnesses these murders, as the hooded killer continually ties her up and forces to watch by taping needles under her eyes—​​an iconic, disturbing image in Argento’s oeuvre. Also worth noting is the wild use of music throughout OPERA. The soundtrack combines classical opera, synth, and '80s metal, sometimes all the same scene. It may seem conflicting, but rather the shifting sound complements the moving camera, keeping a hold of the audience's senses while constantly keeping a sense of dread. Presented by Oscarbate and Severin Films. Screening as part of the Bloody Brunch series. In addition to the movie, there will be breakfast, coffee, and Bloody Mary discounts and deals at the attached Sojourn Restaurant. (1987, 107 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Megan Fariello]

François Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

Although Agnès Varda and Claude Chabrol had released their debut features by the time François Truffaut made THE 400 BLOWS, the film’s premiere at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival (where it won the Best Director prize) is commonly acknowledged as the start of the French New Wave. That’s not to say THE 400 BLOWS is more accomplished than LA POINTE COURTE (1955) or LE BEAU SERGE (1958)—or, for that matter, Godard’s BREATHLESS or Rivette’s PARIS BELONGS TO US (both 1960). It’s that Truffaut struck a chord with popular audiences in a way his contemporaries did not, which makes the release of this particular film such an important moment in cinema history. One of the most beloved movies on the subject of childhood, THE 400 BLOWS is also a stirring illustration of the politique des auteurs, a concept Truffaut helped develop as a critic at Cahiers du cinéma over the previous decade. In brief, the politique argued that the directors worth caring about were those who put a personal imprint on their films, making them artists on the level of painters, novelists, and composers. In THE 400 BLOWS, Truffaut establishes his identity as a personal artist not only through his choice of material (the film is based on his own adolescence), but through the bittersweet tone he develops in telling the story. The overhead shots, handheld camerawork, and ample negative space within the widescreen frame all create the impression that the world is a place to be wandered around in, preferably alone. The film’s childlike romanticism would become Truffaut’s signature, and he would develop (and in some cases critique) it across the rest of his career; in THE 400 BLOWS, it has the effect of endearing viewers beyond measure to Antoine Doinel, the director’s autobiographical stand-in. He’s played memorably by Truffaut’s great discovery Jean-Pierre Léaud, a vulnerable and charismatic actor would become, per Jonathan Rosenbaum, as crucial to the French New Wave as John Wayne was to the western. Through the Nouvelle Vague, Léaud essentially grew up on film—his life became the stuff of cinema, and vice versa. That Truffaut elicited one of the great screen performances from an inexperienced child places him in line with two of his cinematic heroes, Jean Vigo and Roberto Rossellini; that he would invoke these filmmakers at a time when their reputations were still very much in dispute reflects Truffaut’s history as a polemicist and critical Young Turk. THE 400 BLOWS conveys the excitement of theory being made into action, with Truffaut building upon ideas he and his colleagues developed at Cahiers through his vibrant, emotionally resonant filmmaking. (1959, 100 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Truffaut’s last feature, CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS (1983, 110 min, 35mm), screens Monday at 8:15pm; both films are part of the Entrances and Exits series.

Lynne Ramsay’s RATCATCHER (UK/France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Looking back on one’s childhood often feels fragmented, memories connected by gossamer rather than any firm understanding of time as it coheres to form a life. This sensation is evoked in writer-director Lynne Ramsay’s feature debut (making her the second Scottish woman behind Margaret Tait to make a feature film) as it centers on a particular point in her young protagonist's development, coinciding with the 1973 garbagemen’s strike during which Glasgow was beset by trash and under siege by rats. What will undoubtedly become a defining moment in James’ (William Eadie) life occurs toward the beginning of the film; he pushes a neighborhood boy into a local canal and runs away as said boy accidentally drowns. From here an existential curtain is drawn—presaged by the film’s opening, wherein the drowned boy has playfully wrapped his head in a lace curtain—beyond which James watches as life goes on around him with firsthand knowledge of its looming conclusion. His family awaits a new residence from the housing council; the tenements where they currently reside are cramped and dingy, but their large family—mom, dad, and three kids—make do. Theirs might be described as a typical family in this sort of situation, not quite outwardly loving but more or less stable, though James’ father drinks too much. James doesn’t have many friends, per se, but he hangs around with a neighbor boy who’s obsessed with animals and a teenage girl, posited as being “loose” and thus another lost young soul forced to confront adult realities all too soon, with whom he explores a tentative attachment. It’s not necessarily a social realist film; while its central "action," an overstatement, to be sure, is similar to that of a kitchen-sink drama, Ramsey approaches the subject matter with a poetic sensibility, like Ken Loach by way of Terrence Malick (whom she’s cited as a filmmaker she admires), yet specifically with an eye for beauty that can be found amidst misfortune. Ramsay began her career as a photographer, and I’m reminded, albeit very loosely, of Agnes Varda’s first film, LA POINTE COURTE, which the French auteur made after starting out as a photographer as well. Both endeavors evince a purity of seeing, unhampered by what came before or what may have been fashionable at the moment. That’s ironic in the case of RATCATCHER, as it represents what many films after it aspired to be, a quiescent coming-of-age story with an aesthetic that extracts from the prosaic a sense of the poetic. Screening as part of the Chicago International Film Festival Presents: Before They Were Big series. (1999, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

MUBI FEST Chicago

See Venues and showtimes below

Whit Stillman’s THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 11:45am
If ever a filmmaker came by his subject matter honestly, it is Whit Stillman. A bonafide member of the urban haute bourgeoisie (UHBs)—a term he coined in his widely embraced debut film METROPOLITAN (1980)—Stillman has been writing and directing films that cast an affectionate eye toward the much-reviled, coastal elites with whom he rubbed elbows at a series of East Coast prep schools and Harvard. The last of the trilogy of his semiautobiographical films (1994’s BARCELONA was the second), THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO takes place in the heyday of disco in a fictionalized version of New York’s infamous Studio 54 as seen through the experiences of two aspiring book editors, Alice (Chloë Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale). Characteristic of Stillman films, these women play romantic musical chairs with the array of men in their lives—dodgy disco manager Des (Stillman stalwart Chris Eigeman), PR pariah Jimmy (Mackenzie Astin), earnest ADA Josh (Matt Keeslar), and coworker Dan (Matt Ross)—as they try to get their adult lives in gear. The pitfalls facing them—criminal activities in the disco, herpes, fake autobiographical manuscripts, and worst of all, not being sufficiently cool to get into the club—are many, but the always optimistic Charlotte declares that there a lot of choices out there as they watch the writhing throngs of partiers show off to each other on the dance floor. As with all of Stillman’s films, the serious analysis of pop culture—the rap on LADY AND THE TRAMP (1955) is comic gold—and the precisely elevated language his characters speak that is so reminiscent of the writings of his guiding light, Jane Austen, offer both caricature and insight into their worldviews. Charlotte and Alice, former classmates who decide to rent a railroad apartment together even though they’re not sure they like each other, come off as naïve, annoying, and oddly endearing. Charlotte insults Alice multiple times (“Maybe in physical terms I’m a little cuter than you, but you should be much more popular than I am. It would be such a shame if what happened in college should repeat itself.”), but they stick together through thick and thin. Alice isn’t sure if she’s a virgin or not (“If it… squirts outside, without getting in… does that count as losing your virginity?), relying on her crush, Tom (Robert Sean Leonard), to explain what qualifies as sexual intercourse. Des is a slimy guy who dumps women by telling them he has just discovered he is gay, yet he is a loyal friend to Jimmy, who has been barred from the club. Nonetheless, as we see archival highlights of the racist disco demolition that took place at Comiskey Park in 1979 and learn of the plummeting sales of disco records, Josh issues the credo that keeps hope alive: “Disco will never be over. It will always live in our minds and hearts. Something like this, that was this big, and this important, and this great, will never die.… Disco was too great, and too much fun, to be gone forever! It’s got to come back someday.” And then came the ’80s. (1998, 113 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Zia Anger’s MY FIRST FILM (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 5:30pm
Stirring up recent memory of Martine Syms’ THE AFRICAN DESPERATE (2022) and Sebastián Silva’s ROTTING IN THE SUN (2023), Zia Anger’s MY FIRST FILM (2024) would appear to confirm MUBI’s alignment with an emerging microgenre that comprises semi-autobiographical, semi-satirical, internet-age features about the zany and frustrating, stimulant-powered lives of young art world hopefuls. MY FIRST FILM is the perfect third installment to round out this niche with a different groove. It draws on a rich history of confessional cinema and meta-documentary to tell the tale of a young filmmaker, Vita (Odessa Young), reflecting on her chaotic early 20s experience navigating artistic becoming and the gnarliness of interpellated womanhood while facing the physical demands and emotional stakes of directing her first feature film. Precocious and impossible not to like, Vita probes what it means to give birth, looking to her queer upbringing, artistic failures, multiple abortions, and the imperfectly mapped but honest metaphors they engender. Along the way, Young and her co-star Devon Ross deliver phenomenal performances as scattered director and dour muse, eventually blending as an unstoppable duo of the spirit. Propelled along by Perfume Genius’s phantasmagorical score, what begins as a cheeky and relatively straightforward recounting of the story of a fumbling film crew and angsty art school director crescendos quite masterfully through a harrowing, alcohol-induced on-set disaster into a treatise on creative vulnerability, embodied lineages of family and self, and the impetus of joy. Anger sticks the film-in-film landing with MY FIRST FILM’s triumphant complexity in ways reminiscent of Sarah Polley’s deeply caring and hyperpersonal memoir STORIES WE TELL (2012) or Sandi Tan’s innocence-lost revisitation of her own first film in SHIRKERS (2018). Evoking the signature social media interjections of Martine Syms and the selfie-diary tradition of performance artist Molly Soda, albeit in a style wholly her own, Anger manages to weave in a video art sensibility that makes it unsurprising to learn that MY FIRST FILM was originally conceived and executed as a series of live desktop performance pieces before being written and wrapped up as a .mov file. The film is further proof that we are collectively inching closer to saying some variant of “indie sleaze is back” with our chest. This year, I watched Lena Dunham’s unabashedly self-indulgent yet beloved TV show Girls for the very first time, an experience that often felt more like anthropological, archival research than the (fantastic) binge-watch it was. There’s an undeniable power to a milieu of female artists who have taken ownership of the guilty pleasure inherent to the confessional mode. After all, MY FIRST FILM daringly opens with the tagline “This probably shouldn’t be a film.” Much like in Girls, MY FIRST FILM’s feminism somehow gets right in front of your face while simultaneously, inexplicably creeping up behind you and catching you by surprise, as though it were a hug you didn’t know you needed from a new friend who you feel weirdly comfortable oversharing with, and vice versa. Zia Anger keeps you in endless, moving conversation. As the final breaths of the film intimate, “It doesn’t end... And every time you will give birth to yourself. And every time you will find a new version of the truth, again and again and again.” (2024, 100 mins, DCP Digital) [Elise Schierbeek]
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Robert Altman's NASHVILLE (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 8:30pm
It remains debatable as to whether NASHVILLE is Robert Altman’s crowning work (one could make as strong a case for McCABE AND MRS. MILLER, THE LONG GOODBYE, or CALIFORNIA SPLIT), yet in no other film, save for perhaps SHORT CUTS (1993), did the director achieve so many of his ambitions in one go. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about NASHVILLE may be how it threatens to collapse on itself at any moment but somehow doesn’t—Altman’s direction of this two-hour, 40-minute opus is comparable to a captain steering an ocean liner around a range of icebergs without even rattling the passengers. The film famously juggles two dozen principal characters and about half as many different storylines, but no less remarkable is the way Altman succeeds with multiple formal experiments that could have easily come off as gimmicky or distracting. Several of these have to do with sound. Building upon the multi-track audio of CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974), Altman shot much of NASHVILLE with up to 16 separate microphones, seldom letting the actors know who would be recorded directly and mixing the wealth of sonic material in post-production. Roger Ebert once wrote that the beauty of Altman’s films is like basking in the music of a room, and by that token, NASHVILLE is a veritable symphony of jargon, offhand remarks, noise, and actual songs. Most of the songs were written by the actors who sing them, and another one of Altman’s fascinating experiments was to insist that not all of them be good. To reflect the range of quality one finds in Nashville’s music scene, Altman included great songs (like Keith Carradine’s Oscar-winning “I’m Easy” and the classic-style country numbers sung by Ronee Blakeley, arguably the best singer in the cast), hokey songs (like the self-aggrandizing tunes of Henry Gibson’s Haven Hamilton), and even terrible songs (like the ones performed by Gwen Welles’ heartbreakingly naive Sueleen Gay). Similarly, NASHVILLE alternates between a variety of tones, ranging from poignant to sardonic to bitter to menacing. Altman creates the impression that he’s discovering the movie as it goes along, which is fitting, given how it was shot. Screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury created characters and situations for the film, but per Altman’s instruction, wrote very little dialogue; that was left to the actors, whom Altman directed to improvise as much as possible. As Altman put it, “We would stage events and then film the events,” resulting in a fiction film that has the look and feel of a documentary. In one way, NASHVILLE is a documentary about post-’60s political disillusionment in America—one of the movie’s through lines is the campaign of an erstwhile third-party presidential candidate named Hal Philip Walker, who roams the city in a tour bus, blasting calls for political upheaval. The movie ends at a Walker campaign rally that goes catastrophically wrong, then regains ground through the giant sing-along of another Carradine-penned number that would seem to contradict the spirit of liberty that’s run through the epic poem that preceded it. For even a few minutes after the credits end, the song’s haunting refrain repeats: “You may say that I ain’t free, but it don’t worry me.” (1975, 160 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Spike Lee's MO' BETTER BLUES (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 9:15pm
It’s ironic that the Spike Lee films most typically described as minor (CROOKLYN, GIRL 6, SHE HATE ME, RED HOOK SUMMER, etc.) tend to be the most overstuffed, the ones in which Lee tries to pack in too many visual ideas and thematic concerns for one movie. These are the films built on “thin” premises; they “don’t hang together” like conventional narrative movies do. I’d argue that these are some of Lee’s most characteristic works, and that they speak to why he’s such a valuable film artist. Like his colleague Jim Jarmusch, Lee is one of the only genuine poets in contemporary American cinema; his movies represent a sort-of free verse in which the filmmaker draws on his feelings about a range of subjects to create snapshots of the world as it exists at the moment the movie was made. MO’ BETTER BLUES, probably the best of Lee’s “minor” films, finds the director thinking about the cultural legacy of jazz, the economics of being a working artist, sexual politics circa 1990, sports, and his own position as a Black American filmmaker. The way Lee riffs on these subjects—exploring them more directly here, keeping them in the background there—suggests the influence of jazz and an affinity with Jean-Luc Godard, who’s always structured his movies in a similar fashion. Lee creates a conduit for his various concerns in the protagonist of Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington, in the first of his collaborations with Lee), a polyamorous trumpet player who lives in Brooklyn and leads a moderately successful jazz quintet. Bleek considers himself independent as an artist and in his sexual life—nothing can tie him down. Yet one of his lovers, Indigo (Joie Lee), hints at wanting more of a commitment; his manager, Giant (Spike Lee), is a ne’er-do-well friend who sucks at his job; and his saxophone player, Shadow (Wesley Snipes), wants to break away and start his own band, forcing Bleek to take more of a heavy hand as a leader. Lee rotates through the various subplots as he does the themes, connecting them all with brilliant camerawork and colorful visual design that sometimes recalls the paintings of the Harlem Renaissance. This was the fourth of Lee’s six collaborations with cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, and it shows the two at the height of their partnership: Dickerson gets to exploit his love of ‘40s and ‘50s musicals in his swooping movements (there are crane shots in MO’ BETTER BLUES that rival Minnelli’s) and try out new ideas. It’s the first movie where Lee employed his trademark move where the actors appear to be floating, a technique he’s used since to express everything from elation to dread. (1990, 130 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Stephen Nomura Schible’s RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA (Japan/US/Documentary)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 12pm
Ryuichi Sakamoto was a world-class musician, a talented actor, and as this documentary reveals, a poet, philosopher, and political activist all rolled into one. Most cinephiles watching this documentary will probably find a sense of kinship with him, as he watches Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS (1972) and reflects on its naturalistic soundscape. Or as he gives charming anecdotes about his experiences scoring iconic films like MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE (1983) and THE LAST EMPEROR (1987). There is much to dissect in this documentary, which director Stephen Nomura Schible captured over a five-year span and which details Sakamoto’s return following a cancer-related work hiatus. The project at hand is another notable feat: the beautiful score from THE REVENANT (2015). What is most compelling here, though, is Sakamoto’s viewpoint on this world we live in, one riddled with chaos, error, beginning, purity, and infinity. His work was heavily influenced by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and for a long time he could sense the immediate danger present to the environment from humanity's machinations. Are humans a part of nature or not? As we shape nature to our will, our ungodly errors eventually bite back. There is something extremely tragic about the fact that Sakamoto was diagnosed with his own literal biological error. Despite that, he still managed to find his own glimpses of beauty that seem to make everything worth it. The opening scene depicts him playing a tattered piano in Fukushima, which he describes as if he was playing a corpse. Unfortunately, since the film's release Sakamoto sadly has passed away after a different cancer diagnosis. We can be thankful, then, that Schible captured the genius in some of the most special moments in any documentary, and that Sakamoto’s own work may live on to find a notion of infinity themselves. (2021, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
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Bob Fosse's ALL THAT JAZZ (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 4:30pm
The most harrowing movie musical (and the greatest of all the 8 ½ knockoffs), Bob Fosse’s searing auto-critique is almost too excruciating to actually enjoy. Of course, that hasn’t kept the film from being embraced by such luminaries as Kirk Douglas (who presided over the Cannes festival jury that awarded it the Palme d’Or alongside Kurosawa’s KAGEMUSHA), Stanley Kubrick (who called it “the best movie I think I’ve ever seen”), and Kat Sachs (who placed it on her Sight & Sound ballot of the ten greatest movies of all time in 2022), all of whom have recognized its consummate artistry and emotional pull. In a jaw-droppingly committed performance, Roy Scheider stars as Fosse’s autobiographical stand-in, a Broadway choreographer in crisis. Addicted to drugs, juggling multiple romantic relationships, and struggling with creative block and a heart condition, Joe Gideon relies on his art to hold his life together. It’s a miserable life, but what art! The choreography of ALL THAT JAZZ is some of the most electrifying (and erotic) ever put on film, and Fosse’s montage builds brilliantly on its energy. One of the movie’s great formal achievements is how it employs editing to bring viewers into Gideon’s tormented headspace, whether it’s through the quick cuts of the morning routine sequences (famously pilfered by Darren Aronofsky in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) or the way the filmmakers interweave his memories, fantasies, and real life when he’s on his deathbed in the final act. The film was inspired by Fosse’s own near-death experiences—he had had at least one heart attack by the time he made ALL THAT JAZZ and would die of one less than a decade after it was made—and seeing him confront his mortality so nakedly is what gives it its rare power. Even though he didn’t resolve his flaws in real life, Fosse certainly understood them inside and out: his narcissism, his philandering, his aloofness from the people closest to him. ALL THAT JAZZ is unflinching in its personal reckoning, but it’s also one of the most profound movies about the relationship between neurosis and the art-making process. The universal insights prevent the movie from slipping into the realm of mere navel-gazing. (1979, 123 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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MUBI FEST Chicago, a weekend of essential music movies celebrating the transformative power of song and dance in cinema, takes place Saturday and Sunday, with events at the Music Box Theatre, the Gene Siskel Film Center, and the Salt Shed. More info on the lineup, including events not covered above, here. 

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Kathleen Collins' LOSING GROUND (US)

Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) – Sunday, 1pm [Free Admission]

"There's nothing wrong with telling stories." So says one artist when another expresses envy over his ability to work instinctively as opposed to narratively. Director Kathleen Collins' LOSING GROUND is composed of various such oppositions that manifest themselves through Victor (played by GANJA & HESS director Bill Gunn) and his wife, Sara (Seret Scott), a professor of philosophy. He's artistic; she's logical. This is the jumping off point from which other dichotomies—male versus female, creativity versus intellectualism, abstraction versus specificity—are explored. With regards to race, which is a de facto theme owing to its being one of the first fictional features to be directed by a black woman, the film shows rather than tells; many suspect that it was neglected upon its release because it portrays Black characters as well-to-do professionals instead of as victims or thugs. (In response to being asked if minority filmmakers have a duty to address their respective struggles, Collins said, "I think you have an even greater obligation to deal with your own obsessions.") Though LOSING GROUND isn't exactly autobiographical, Collins herself was a professor, and the name of the film comes from one of her own short story collections. Sara's almost obsessive study of aesthetic experience both parallels the aforementioned oppositions and prompts the changes that occur over the course of the narrative. "Essentially it's that change is a rather volatile process in the human psyche," Collins said in an interview with James Briggs Murray for Black Visions. "And, that real change usually requires some release of fantasy energy." This last part refers to the dance-centric film-within-a-film that Sara acts in at the behest of one of her students, which she does in an attempt to achieve the same creative ecstasy as her husband and actress mother. (The meta-film also mirrors the central drama of the narrative.) Overall, the film is an astute meditation on a great many things: the academic experience, the aesthetic experience, the Black experience, and Sara's experience as a woman. Collins was also a person of varied interests; in addition to teaching, writing, and making films, she was also a playwright and an activist. Collins once remarked, "I'm interested in solving certain questions, such as: How do you do an interesting narrative film?" LOSING GROUND is an exceptional solution to that dilemma. There's nothing wrong with telling stories, indeed. Screening as part of the Screening Acts series, a free film series celebrating Black independent cinema. (1982, 86 min, Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]

Sidney Lumet’s BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center –​​ Saturday, 3pm and Wednesday, 6pm

Arriving five decades into Sidney Lumet’s illustrious directorial career, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD—​the last movie Lumet would direct before his passing—​is that rare final film that feels less like a bygone director spiraling towards irrelevance and more like a master of invention still experimenting and seeking out the new in his work. Here, with screenwriter Kelly Masterson, a devious and rotten story of familial crime and intrigue hurls its way into being, when two down-on-their luck brothers concoct a scheme to rob their parents’ jewelry store with disastrous results. It certainly helps that Lumet has cast this film with some of the finest actors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, most notably with the two brothers, Hank and Andy, being brought to life by—respectively—​the meek, nervy fixations of Ethan Hawke and the slimy, boiling pot of faux-confidence and rage that is Philip Seymour Hoffman. Lumet’s film—​a tale of greed and obsession and power butting heads with familial obligation—​unravels nonlinearly, with timelines melting into each other through strobing frames accompanied by discordant sound effects, moments of distress shifting and shuffling through each other. Alongside narrative experimentation, Lumet’s playful energy extends to his visual vocabulary here, employing digital cameras to create a more contemporary aura that gleefully oscillates between blown-out images and stunningly stark compositions. Perhaps it’s spiritually fitting that Lumet, who began his career with a story of noble men seeking justice in 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), closes his filmography with something more sinister and cynical, an everyday fable of bad men doing bad things and getting nothing in return. Screening as part of the Sidney Lumet Centennial series. (2007, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Raoul Walsh’s WHITE HEAT (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 5pm

Both James Cagney and director Raoul Walsh took credit for making Cody Jarrett, the criminal antihero of WHITE HEAT, a mama’s boy as well as a psychopath, and who could blame either of them for wanting it? After Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960), this has got to be the last word on mother love in Hollywood cinema. Jarrett can commit murder without batting an eye, yet he still seeks his mother’s embrace whenever he gets one of his debilitating migraines. In light of his infantile behavior, Jarrett’s violent impulses seem as much the product of his arrested emotional development as his ever-present need for maternal affection. The markedly Freudian nature of WHITE HEAT reflects postwar American culture’s interest in psychoanalysis, which inflected everything from westerns to film noir in the decade after WWII. At the same time, the film was seen on first release as a throwback to gangster pictures of the ‘30s, the genre on which Cagney first built his reputation as a movie star. By the time of WHITE HEAT, the actor hadn’t played a gangster in ten years (the last time had been in THE ROARING TWENTIES, also directed by Walsh) and his feelings toward the genre had soured somewhat. He agreed to make the picture reluctantly, then worked with the screenwriters to flesh out the scenario. His effort paid off—the movie remains one of the most popular of Cagney’s career. Regardless of how much he contributed to the central characterization, Walsh deserves much credit for the film’s shocking brutality. The director specialized in rough-and-tumble characters, but few as downright evil as Cody Jarrett; Walsh’s streamlined approach to storytelling makes the violence hit especially hard. Screening as part of the Public Enemy: Cagney on Film series. (1949, 114 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Edward Yang's YI YI (Taiwan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 3:30pm

Edward Yang’s final film—one of the indisputable masterpieces of the Taiwanese New Wave, if not the culminating achievement of the entire movement—contains one of my favorite moments of any narrative film. It occurs during a business dinner between the film’s hero, middle-aged businessman NJ (Nien-Jen Wu, a key figure of the New Wave who collaborated on numerous screenplays with Hou Hsiao-Hsien), and a Japanese entrepreneur named Mr. Ota (Issei Ogata). Prior to this scene, Yang had presented Mr. Ota as something of a caricature, a nerdy computer whiz with limited social skills. But as the character opens up to NJ about his personal philosophy, something extraordinary happens: Mr. Ota transforms before one’s very eyes into a three-dimensional human being worthy of sympathy and respect. It’s an exemplary use of the long-take—not flashy, but wise, playing on duration to manipulate the audience’s understanding of character and interpersonal relationships. It also represents in microcosm what Yang accomplished with his small, but extraordinary body of work, employing a rigorous sense of form to better understand people, the social structures they inhabit, and how they can transcend those structures through a shared sense of humanity. YI YI is full of humanist epiphanies akin to the one at the business dinner, whether Yang is following NJ, his wife, his teenage daughter, or young son. (Many have commented that this last character, who’s unsubtly named Yang-Yang and interested in taking pictures, serves as an autobiographical stand-in for the director.) The accumulation of these assorted character portraits feels literary, as one comes to understand the family’s problems intimately and on a societal level too—their feelings of loneliness, disappointment, and aspiration speak to universal human experiences as well as the anxieties felt by many urbanites at the end of the 20th century. “At first glance,” wrote Kent Jones for the Criterion Collection in 2011, “YI YI appears to be a serene and becalmed film, in pace and spirit, a movie made by a director who has shed his youthful anger and made peace with the assorted confusions of ‘late capitalist’ Taiwanese life. On close scrutiny, it becomes something else again. Yang has set his city symphonies in a variety of emotional keys—the doleful lament of TAIPEI STORY (1985), the grid-like coolness of THE TERRORIZER (1986), the comic hysteria of A CONFUCIAN CONFUSION (1994), the carefully modulated fury of MAHJONG (1996). In YI YI, he brings all of these moods together, never allowing any one of them to take precedence over another. Which is to say that this is a grand choral work, with a panoptic majesty and an emotional amplitude worthy of George Eliot or late Beethoven, whose ‘Song of Joy’ is quoted with the greatest delicacy in Kaili Peng’s piano score.” (2000, 173 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Yang’s first feature, THAT DAY, ON THE BEACH (1983, 166 min, DCP Digital), screens Sunday at noon; both films are part of the Entrances and Exits series.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s THE HAWKS AND THE SPARROWS (Italy)

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

THE HAWKS AND THE SPARROWS is probably Pier Paolo Pasolini’s most lighthearted movie, but it’s still explicitly political, and it contains plenty of speechifying as well. That’s because Pasolini assumed his role as a public intellectual with the utmost seriousness; even when he was telling jokes, they had to be about Marxism. The film stars comic legend Totò as a wisecracking tramp who leaves his small town on a whim with his grown son (Ninetto Davoli, Pasolini’s frequent muse), and they set off down a long, seemingly endless road. A Godardian title card informs us that their journey will end before it begins; the journey, it turns out, is to solve the problems of the postwar Italian proletariat. As in Godard’s WEEK-END (which came out around the same time), the picaresque story comprises various allegorical episodes, though Pasolini’s thematic focus is on religion as much as politics. In the film’s longest episode, the heroes meet a talking crow, who speaks to them of two of Saint Francis’ followers in the 13th century tasked with converting the hawks and the sparrows to Christianity. (The sequence is an affectionate parody of Roberto Rossellini’s THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS [1950].) Any similarities between this story and the present day, the crow says, are not coincidental—meaning, organizing leftist movements in post-fascist Italy is like trying to explain Christianity to birds. In the end, the tramp and his son eat the crow for dinner. (1966, 89 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

Catherine Breillat's LAST SUMMER (France/Norway)

FACETS Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes

LAST SUMMER is very much a movie of its moment, and not just because it deals in hot-button issues about power dynamics in sexual relationships. The film’s third act (which deviates significantly from that of QUEEN OF HEARTS, the 2019 Danish film it’s based on) relates the heroine’s protracted, knowing deception of the people around her—in other words, her distortion of reality to make it play out in her favor. The character’s self-serving actions are nothing new, yet her methodicalness and thoroughness suggest an exaggerated version of what people do on social media every day, manipulating the facts of their lives in order to create the most attractive versions of themselves. What Catherine Breillat achieves with this section of the film is comparable to what Radu Jude achieves in another great movie of 2023, DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD, with the extraordinary 40-minute shot that shows the real-time manipulation of reality that occurs during the making of a public safety video. In both cases, a major filmmaker is assessing the zeitgeist using the cinematic mode in which they operate best: for Jude, that mode is presentational, Brechtian, and ironically distanced, while for Breillat, it’s inquisitive, wry, and discomfortingly intimate. The French auteur has long shown interest in challenging sexual taboos (indeed, her filmic perspective seems to have grown out of it), and she does it again in LAST SUMMER, a film about what happens when a middle-aged woman enters into a sexual relationship with her 17-year-old stepson. Yet the onscreen sex is relatively brief (especially when compared with some of the director’s other films), as the consequences of the affair take up far more screen time than the affair itself. Breillat uses a similar approach to delineate both the sexual relationship and the heroine’s efforts to cover it up, employing closeups and highly specific sound design to bring viewers into a sense of confidentiality with the characters. Most of the scenes are structured around seduction, persuasion, or argument, which makes the film feel oddly Shakespearean; the classical grounding brings a timeless gravitas to the contemporary concerns. (2023, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Annie Baker's JANET PLANET (US/UK)

FACETS Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes

Annie Baker understands the power of silence, and all it contains. As one of the most prolific and lauded playwrights of the 21st century, her onstage worlds have navigated back alleys, writer’s rooms, and, yes, movie theaters to discover the volume that exists in between the devastating sentences we utter into the universe. In her seamless shift into the world of filmmaking as writer and director of JANET PLANET, Baker brings those silences with her, alongside her accomplished brand of understated maximalism—characters whose outer shell of mundanity plants the seeds for inner truths that yearn to blossom—while taking advantage of the expanse of realism that can be fully accomplished on the big screen. In propelling her artistry forward, Baker looks backward to the early 1990s, when the young Lacy (a one-of-a-kind Zoe Ziegler) spends the late summer months with her mother, the eponymous Janet (Julianne Nicholson, fitting eerily well into the Annie Baker oeuvre) in the rural woods of Massachusetts. Lacy views Janet not just as mother but as lifelong companion, eternal caregiver, all-seeing, all-knowing deity of the universe. "Janet Planet" is the name of Janet’s home acupuncture clinic, but more thematically sums up how Lacy sees her; a world in and of herself, an entire celestial body that all else revolves around. Indeed, the film unravels episodically based around the various friends, lovers, and guides who enter and exit Janet’s life, themselves floating bodies of matter that enter Janet’s orbit but find themselves floating away after such little time. Lacy and Janet have a bounty of meaningful conversations throughout Baker’s extraordinary debut feature, but it’s really in those moments of silence where the inner workings of these two burst off the screen, as the torrid summer days transition into cool autumn nights, and Lacy, without uttering a word, finally realizes that her mother is not a planet, but is something even more mysterious; a person, just like her. (2024, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone's POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING (US)

Davis Theater – Saturday, 7pm

The twenty-first century musician-sanctioned behind-the-scenes documentary is a bizarre and noteworthy genre worth digging into; contemporary artists like Justin Bieber, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish have so tightly and meticulously crafted their careers and brands that, when becoming the subjects—and often, the producers—of introspective non-fiction films about themselves, there is only so much authenticity that can truly be shared for fear of tarnishing that exquisitely constructed brand. Even the moments of vulnerability that do shine through are often moments that are solely aligned with said brand. It’s inauthentic authenticity at its finest. So how else to parody this kind of vapidity in pop music than by creating a musician whose sheer hubris and idiocy become the “brand” in and of itself? Thus, the Lonely Island’s POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING (beautiful title, no notes) shines forth, creating a lead musical character—Andy Samberg’s Connor4Real—who’s every move is chaotic, moronic, self-centered, disastrous, and only a few degrees crazier than the kind of behavior an actual pop musician might display in public. Easily seen as a modern day successor to Rob Reiner’s seminal THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984), Schaffer and Taccone’s mockumentary unfolds through a series of concert footage, behind-the-scenes antics, celebrity-laden interviews (including the likes of Usher, Questlove, Mariah Carey, and Ringo Starr) and social media clips, creating an atmosphere of importance and grandeur for a songwriter with such lyrical bon mots as “Mona Lisa/You’re an overrated piece of shit.” Amidst the buffoonery, the Lonely Island crew are wise enough to thematically center things around a charming tale of friendship gone awry, as Connor4Real’s former musical endeavor—the infectious pop-rap trio “The Style Boyz”—fractures before our very eyes, with true friendship triumphing above fame. As with their infamous SNL Digital Shorts, Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone prove, in feature film form, that their ultimate strengths lie in expertly crafted stupidity. Screening as part of the Tongue-in-Cheek: Satires of Past and Present series. (2016, 86 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Kaye]

David Zucker's THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD! (US)

Davis Theater – Sunday, 7pm

Leslie Nielsen is widely celebrated for his comedic roles, particularly his iconic performance in AIRPLANE!, yet his extensive career prior to 1980 was marked by roles in diverse genres. His earlier work included westerns like The Virginian, the family-oriented The Magical World of Disney, and horror shows including Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Nielsen’s performances were defined by his serious and stoic demeanor, making him a reliable choice for roles such as detectives, affluent villains, and a shirtless executive battling a grizzly bear in THE DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977). Nielsen’s gravitas did not immediately suggest a potential for comedy. His transition to the genre was facilitated by team ZAZ (Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker) after they saw him in disaster films like THE POESIDON ADVENTURE (1972) and CITY ON FIRE (1979). This casting became a recurring motif for ZAZ. Hire a non-comedian to deliver their lines dramatically, no matter the comedic situation. The ZAZ team, known for irreverent humor and clever parodies, first gained attention with their script for KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE (1977). This enabled the team to collaborate on AIRPLANE!, which incorporates elements from AIRPORT, AIRPORT 1975, AIRPORT ‘77, and a dance sequence lifted right out of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. The deadpan delivery of Nielsen’s role as the doctor was a pivotal element of the film’s success, leading ZAZ to include him in subsequent films. The team’s next project was to lampoon police procedural shows. Film studios were skeptical, but ABC offered them six episodes, and the result was Police Squad!, with Leslie Nielson in the starring role as Sergeant Frank Drebin. The show gained a cult following when rebroadcasted. Due to the cult appeal and success of ZAZ’s subsequent projects TOP SECRET! (1984) and RUTHLESS PEOPLE (1986), the team was ready to make THE NAKED GUN: FROM THE FILES OF POLICE SQUAD! The film addressed the absence of a romantic subplot in Police Squad! by introducing Jane Spencer, played by Priscilla Presley, and allowed for the integration of the famous body condom scene and countless double entendres. The film’s main plot involves the validation of a cop’s innocence and thwarting an assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth II. THE NAKED GUN epitomizes ZAZ’s comedic style, characterized by sight gags, slapstick, wordplay, rapid-fire puns, non-sequiturs, and retooled routines made famous by the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges. The film cleverly integrates multiple genres, including film noir, sports films, thrillers, screwball comedy, and disaster films, demonstrating ZAZ’s ability to blend and parody various cinematic forms. The team even wrangled the distinguished John Houseman to teach a student driver how to extend their middle finger, which only elevates the level of the film’s prestige. The success of THE NAKED GUN and its sequels solidified ZAZ’s reputation for parody filmmaking, leading to other notable works such as BASEKETBALL, SCARY MOVIE 3 and 4, and HOT SHOTS. In 2009, Leslie Nielsen himself regarded THE NAKED GUN as a highlight of his career. Screening as part of the Tongue-in-Cheek: Satires of Past and Present series. (1988, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Jay Levy's UHF (US)

Davis Theater – Wednesday, 7pm

One of the few satires to best its target, "Weird Al" Yankovic's first feature unpacks the chic cynicism of NETWORK (itself on loan from A FACE IN THE CROWD) and replaces it with warmhearted democratic bliss. The parody-friendly premise has an unemployed Al inheriting his uncle's decrepit UHF station and refashioning it as a TV funhouse for the most unhinged batch of showboating misfits this side of Harmony Korine’s MISTER LONELY (2007). Like any good-natured freakshow, it's a smash success, and like any underground sensation, its corporate competition (Kevin McCarthy, hero of the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS) hatches a scheme to engulf and destroy it. As with any Yankovic product, not all the jokes work—for every “Conan the Librarian,” there's a Twinkie Wiener Sandwich, though viewers may differ on which of those is the knee-slapper (actually, they both are). Like Michel Gondry's similarly utopian, DIY "take back the media" rallying cry, BE KIND REWIND (2008), UHF critiques not the mindlessness of popular entertainment, but the passivity with which it’s consumed; Yankovic's earnest paean to the now-dying eccentricity of locally produced television should ring especially true for residents of the town that spawned Bozo the Clown, Svengoolie, and Chic-A-Go-Go. Screening as part of the Tongue-in-Cheek: Satires of Past and Present series. (1989, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Mike King]

Uli Edel's BODY OF EVIDENCE (US)

Leather Archives & Museum – Saturday, 7pm

In the recent wave of reclamation of '90s genre films, erotic thrillers have gotten particular attention as some of the more misunderstood films of the lot. It’s clearer now that the films of Adrian Lyne, while always focused on the surface above all else, are fascinating artifacts of an era and its attitude toward sex. This wave has not reclaimed the 1993 Madonna star vehicle BODY OF EVIDENCE just yet, and that may be for good reason; it came on the tail end of the most explicit and exhausting stretch of her career (her erotic coffee table book Sex had come out the year before), when the invocation of sex in her work had shifted from titillating to exhausting. So it’s understandable that people responded so negatively at the time, though some, like Roger Ebert, kept the hate for it alive into the 21st century. With some distance, though, placing the film in the broader corpus of erotic thrillers shows that it was maybe misunderstood as a pure vanity exercise on Madonna’s part. Yes, her soft-focus sex scenes are still the main meat of the film, but it would be wrong to ignore the spoils of talent around her, which elevate a would-be Cinemax throwaway into something resembling interesting drama. Willem Dafoe, a man who could read nutrition facts and still make it compelling, stars as Frank Dulaney, smitten lawyer for Rebecca Carlson (Madonna). Rebecca is set to receive $8 million after her elderly lover dies suddenly, though the DA (Joe Mantegna) is convinced she killed the man intentionally. Evidence is scant, though, and the main point of litigation ultimately becomes whether the kind of sex Rebecca likes to have (various flavors of BDSM) was used to intentionally give him a heart attack. This gives the film its most unique but also most dated material, and the film’s debates about the ethics of kink are far less interesting than its depictions of it. Still, this marks the film as a sort-of post-erotic thriller; after films of the previous five years had made depictions of sex and infidelity passé, someone with an intentionally erotic public life like Madonna was an ideal choice for asking “what’s next?” Frank, predictably, finds this all too alluring and is quickly seduced by Rebecca, leading him down a slippery ethical slope. Like many films in the genre, BODY OF EVIDENCE’s best qualities are only surface-level. But these are some immaculate surfaces, aided in no small part by the gauzy cinematography from Douglas Milsome, a one-time Kubrick acolyte who mostly worked on forgettable actioners after shooting FULL METAL JACKET (1987). This is the kind of script that asks less for humans through which to move the drama, but for bodies upon which to project the sex-logic of its sweaty neo-noir, and Milsome’s clean compositions and saturated lighting frame the proceedings perfectly. Dafoe and Madonna embody their roles like Grecian statues, with bodies perfectly controlled and faces big and interesting enough that they become almost topographical, the carnal maps that drive the film’s otherwise rote plot machinations. The cast is adept at this all the way down, with the supporting cast including Julianne Moore, Anne Archer, and Frank Langella, all reliable choices for bringing depth of character to underwritten pulp (though Moore, it should be noted, regrets doing the film and her nude scene in particular). If nothing else, the film is a sort-of object lesson in elevating trash through a sincere commitment to the material. In an erotic thriller, that’s really all you need. Screening as part of the Fetish Film Forum. (1993, 101 min, Digital Projection) [Maxwell Courtright]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ 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.

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller’s 2004 film HOWARD ZINN: YOU CAN’T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN (78 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the 50 Years of Chicago Filmmakers celebration, with Mueller in attendance. More info here.

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

⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station
W.W. Young’s 1915 silent film ALICE IN WONDERLAND (52 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 8pm, with live musical accompaniment by the Metalliques as part of the Silent Films on the Lawn series. Weather permitting. Free admission. More info here. 

⚫ Davis Theater
Oscarbate presents the next screening of Trust Fall, a brand new “blind” movie screening series, on Friday at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
Pablo Berger’s 2023 animated film ROBOT DREAMS (102 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 3pm and Sunday at 1pm. 

Full Spectrum Features presents CAFE FOCUS in the FACETS Lounge on Sunday at 2pm. Cafe Focus is a monthly coworking pop-up for Chicago filmmakers and film workers of all backgrounds and experience levels. More info here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat’s 2024 documentary SUGARCANE (107 min, DCP Digital) begins and Levan Akin’s 2024 film CROSSING (105 min, DCP Digital) continues screening. See Venue website for showtimes.

Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber’s 2024 hybrid documentary WAR GAME (94 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday at 1pm and 3pm. Both screenings are free to attend.

Docs for Democracy is a two-night (Friday and Saturday) screening series of films about America at a crossroads and includes Deborah Riley Draper and Sabaah Folatan’s 2024 documentary RATIFIED on Friday at 6pm, introduced by Amy Jo Conroy, co-lead of ERA Illinois, and followed by a dialogue with Jay Young, Senior Director of Voting & Democracy at Common Cause, and Emily Best, RATIFIED co-creator, moderated by Jamie Nesbitt Golden from Block Club Chicago; and Jack C. Newell’s 2024 documentary THE CANDIDATE (91 min, DC Digital) on Saturday at 6pm, followed by a dialogue between Newell, subject Qasim Rashid, and producer Lamorne Morri.

The 2024 National Theatre Live production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, called Vanya, directed by Sam Yates and starring Andrew Scott, screens Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Music Box Theatre
***The main theater is currently closed for renovations. All in-theater screenings will take place in theater 2.*** Music Box Garden Movies continue. See Venue website for films and showtimes.

Sean Wang’s 2024 film DIDI (93 min, DCP Digital) continues screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Sideshow Gelato (4819 W. Western Ave.)
SUPER-HORROR-RAMA! presents Alfredo Salazar’s 1993 horror film DIABOLICAL INHERITANCE (78 min, Digital Projection) on Tuesday, 7pm, as part of a weekly horror gathering and screening series, with a social hour starting at 6pm. More info here. 

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

🎞️ ONLINE SCREENINGS/EVENTS

⚫ 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: August 16 - August 22, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Mike King, Elise Schierbeek, Drew Van Weelden