:: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25 - THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31 ::

📽️ THE 60TH CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The 60th Chicago International Film Festival takes place through Sunday at various venues throughout the city, each indicated with their respective screening below. Select films and programs reviewed; note that the shorts programs will be available to stream virtually. Full schedule and more info here.

Animated Shorts: Major Developments
AMC NEWCITY 14 – Saturday, 2pm

With its inherent malleability and virtually limitless expressive capabilities, animation is a medium ideally suited to depicting our complex inner worlds, the amorphous desires, urges, and fears that brew within our bodies. The program’s most astonishing exemplar of this is Michèle Lemieux’s THE PAINTING (12 min), which brings to life the psychic and somatic torments of Queen Mariana of Austria, a teenage bride who birthed five children by her uncle. Utilizing the relatively rare and hugely time-consuming pinscreen animation technique, the film contrasts the eerie stillness of Mariana’s portrait (based on Diego Velázquez’s painting) with shivery imagery of birds, skeletons, cages, trees, and wombs, light undulating slowly, then rapidly, in a shadow play of a woman’s silent nightmare. A much more lighthearted depiction of the female body is found in Bianca Lambert’s SUPER HIGH: A PERIOD PIECE (9 min), about a woman who gets a little too high after taking medical cannabis to treat her fibroids. The comedic piece ends with a sincere PSA about female reproductive health. Moving from pain to pleasure, Olivia Griselda and Sarah Cheok’s SHE AND HER GOOD VIBRATIONS (11 min) centers on a middle-aged woman who discovers revelatory sexual ecstasy with her new vibrator. The love affair escalates to bawdy heights in a comic animation style awash in purples and pinks and plenty of hilariously explicit imagery. Desire—and revulsion—are made uniquely visible in Loïc Espuche’s YUCK! (13 min) and Zohar Dvir’s BUTTERFLY KISS (11 min), both of which, in totally different ways, use a kissing-related visual conceit to convey how something appealing can also look like a warning sign. The ominous surreality of the latter short is shared by Delia Hess’s charcoal-animated ON HOLD (7 min), which imagines a world deliquescing in the time of a woman’s interminable hold on a hotline call. Nina Gantz’s stop-motion WANDER TO WONDER (14 min) sees the world fall apart from another perspective: that of a cadre of literally miniature actors on a fictional 1980s British children’s television show. When their host suddenly dies, the little fuzzy-suited people wander aimlessly around his decaying studio, at a loss as to what to do with their structureless lives. Catapreta’s languid fable DONA BEATRIZ ÑSÎMBA VITA (20 min) rounds out the program. In delicate blue and burnt sienna lines, it depicts the Congolese Christian prophet Kimpa Vita as a figure capable of endless self-regeneration, multiplying herself as the landscape around her churns and implodes under colonial rule. When everything else is rubble, her body remains. [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Kyle Henry’s TIME PASSAGES (US/Documentary)
Chicago History Museum – Saturday, 2:15pm
Many films came (and are still coming) out from the early days of Covid lockdowns, a time when, amid international turmoil, filmmakers had to navigate drastic changes in how they created and released work. Smaller-scale films boomed out of necessity, and experimental and nonfiction filmmakers became even more reliant on the time-honored traditions of archival filmmaking. For filmmaker Kyle Henry, these aesthetic restrictions drove the structure of his new film TIME PASSAGES, a testament to his mother Elaine. She spent the last years of her life in a nursing home, struggling with dementia and not able to see family in person due to Covid lockdown restrictions. As anyone who has lost a loved one to dementia can tell you, it’s a slow-dawning sort of grief, a loss spread over time that merely hits an apex when the person is actually gone. Because Henry’s relationship with his mother was interrupted twofold, he made TIME PASSAGES as an attempt to recreate the woman in aggregate from older interviews he'd conducted with her, screengrabs of their Facetime conversations from the nursing facility, and other bits both found and invented. The nonlinear timeline of the material puts different parts of her life in stark contrast, showing just how much Elaine lost of herself in her later years. But the material is more celebratory than not; she was a unique woman, outspoken and both a nurturer and breadwinner for Kyle’s family. Even in her later days one can see her warm spirit, with Kyle’s calls (particularly when he sings with her) excavating the real person, much like he’s attempting to do in his archival pulls. One of the film’s stranger gambits involves Henry dressing up as his mom to “interview” her, trying to imagine how she might have responded to the numerous conversations they never got to have before she passed. There’s a palpable grief to these recreations, a pained searching because of just how close these conversations could have been to happening if not for the ravages of time and disease. This is where Henry gets the most direct in confronting documentary ethics, particularly the question of whether this type of portrait is really fair to a person who can’t advocate for themselves anymore. But in a roundabout way, Henry is still the primary subject of the film; these are his stacked griefs, and the film’s aesthetic messiness is not just an essay film byproduct but an intentional reflection of a man trying to organize his own memory. As an ode to the desire to know ourselves by truly knowing those we love, it’s a beautifully sincere film. (2024, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
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Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s ARMAND (Norway/Netherlands/Germany/Sweden)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 4:30pm
AMC NEWCITY 14 (1500 N. Clybourn Ave., c30) – Sunday, 2:30pm
ARMAND is a perfect film for our times. While it has an intimate family drama as its spine, director/screenwriter Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel addresses larger issues surrounding the perception of truth, the spread of rumors, belief systems, and personal and institutional responsibility. That’s a lot to tackle, but Ullman Tøndel packs his scenario tightly and keeps his camera glued to the faces of his ensemble as their emotional journeys gain both complexity and clarity. Renate Reinsve plays Elisabeth, a recently widowed actress raising her six-year-old son Armand in a Norwegian town. Her dead husband’s sister, Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), and brother-in-law Anders (Endre Hellestveit) have been called to the school Armand and their son Jon, also six, attend to discuss the possible physical beating and sexual assault Jon suffered at Armand’s hands. Elisabeth, seen at the beginning of the film speeding through a harrowing drive to the school, seems highly agitated, though she doesn’t know what she has been summoned to discuss. The accusation catches her completely off-guard, and the situation gets worse and worse over the course of the afternoon as the ill-prepared school officials try to minimize the seriousness of the issue. Ullman Tøndel throws doubt on all of the stories the characters tell each other and themselves—showing Anders’ obvious attraction to Elisabeth counterpointed by Sarah’s seeming knowledge of the egotistical tricks an actress like Elisabeth plays to win the attention and sympathy of everyone around her. The director includes some experimental scenes—Elisabeth dancing to jazzy music with the school janitor that the principal (Øystein Røger) seems to watch and having a group of parents gathered to plan an end-of-term celebration comforting and then swarming Elisabeth in a threatening frenzy—that seem symbolic of the way creative people are viewed with suspicion and draw the ire of a normative school community. The film tidies up this intriguing puzzle too quickly and definitively, but its pat conclusion does nothing to negate the brittle, hothouse atmosphere of mistrust Ullman Tøndel and his gifted cast have created. (2024, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa CLOUD (Japan)
AMC NEWCITY 14 (1500 N. Clybourn Ave., c30) – Sunday, 7:45pm
Genre master Kiyoshi Kurosawa (PULSE, CURE) revisits familiar territory with a modern twist in his latest film; CLOUD is an anti-capitalist techno-horror which criticizes the rising gig economy with a combination of dark humor and violence. Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is trying to make some quick money reselling items online at markup. Some success leads him to quit his factory job and he, his girlfriend, Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), and a loyal assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira), relocate to a remote mountain home to continue business. But his new life is being interrupted by strange visitors; many of Yoshii’s items were fakes or faulty, and his buyers are not happy. His handle, "Ratel," is being called out on online message boards as untrustworthy and a ragtag gang of disgruntled customers are rallying to enact vengeance for being duped in person. The seemingly impersonal internet transaction is suddenly taken very personally. It’s a slow build with a few uncanny moments to start, but CLOUD becomes more intriguing as its themes come into focus. It is a film about the gamification of internet-based commerce, and how that plays out in the real world, like the vengeful clients justifying their violent actions. Repeating shots of Yoshii staring blankly at his computer screen as he waits for his posted items to sell are the most unnerving and effective moments; he appears hypnotized, suggesting both the allure and emptiness of his endeavors. While Kurosawa’s cinematography is steely blue and gray reflecting the coldness of the internet, Yoshii’s stare implies the online space is also always being internalized by the user, with real-world consequences. (2024, 123 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Otto Preminger's BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING (UK/US)

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

Otto Preminger was particularly known for addressing—nay, confronting—taboo topics such as drug addiction, homosexuality, rape, and, in BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, as well as a few other of his films, unwed mothers. About BUNNY LAKE, which was a return to the genre that he'd moved away from after making a series of now-classic noirs in the '40s, he said, "[i]f you do not live in our society in a conformist manner, the law doesn't protect you; that is, if you like, the moral of the story... though it is only a small aspect of the film." (This quote speaks to the inherent subversiveness of Preminger's work, that such a big idea is considered only a small aspect. These days such themes are either forgone in lieu of atmosphere or acknowledged to the point of obsequiousness.) BUNNY LAKE is the story of an American mother in London whose young daughter goes missing only days after they cross the pond. It seems to be a pretty straightforward missing person case until a detective, played by Laurence Olivier, begins to wonder if perhaps the child is a figment of the mother's imagination. There's obviously more to the lead-up and deconstruction of this premise, but that's it in a nutshell. The balanced suspense is what holds it together; Preminger's signature mix of controlled distance and frustrating rationality account for a tension that's lacking from most films of this sort nowadays. Based on the eponymous novel by Merriam Modell, Preminger went through several screenwriters over several years before settling on the husband-and-wife duo John and Penelope Mortimer. In addition to Olivier, Carol Lynley and Keir Dullea star as the mother and her brother, respectively. Theater legends Noel Coward, Martita Hunt, and Finlay Currie co-star in disturbing bit parts that provide a farcical contrast to the seriousness of the matter at hand. Its look is striking; the stark black-and-white imagery both mimics Preminger's rationality and mocks its assuredness. According to Chris Fujiwara's book on the director, Preminger advised lab technicians "to make the blacks blacker and the whites whiter," a look that he allegedly favored. He also advised cinematographer Denys Coop to refrain from enhancing Lynley's appearance in any way, wanting to instead focus on her emotions rather than her looks. This emphasizes Lynley's amazing ability to portray her character's seemingly compulsive shift from vulnerable woman-child to ingenious mama bear. Also interesting is Preminger's inclusion of the English rock band The Zombies. The rock tunes elucidate the modernity that Fujiwara says Preminger is confronting while likewise contributing to the surreality of the situation. It's possible that the modern noir has in fact atrophied, but that's even more reason to look to the past. Even twenty years removed from his noir heyday, Preminger proved that the genre's essence is more than mere style. Screening as part of the Women's Paranoia: Cassandras and Conspiracies series. (1965, 107 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Inadelso Cossa’s A MEMORY IN THREE ACTS (Mozambique/Documentary) and THE NIGHTS STILL SMELL OF GUNPOWDER (Mozambique/Documentary)

Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 7pm (MEMORY) and Thursday, 7pm (GUNPOWDER)

With these two films, Inadelso Cossa delivers valuable history lessons about colonial and post-colonial Africa through case studies of his native Mozambique. He also reveals himself to be a gifted and subtle nonfiction filmmaker whose depth of thought can be felt in his choice of titles. THE NIGHTS STILL SMELL OF GUNPOWDER (2024, 93 min, DCP Digital), the name of his second feature, is the more revealing, as it evokes the resonance of history in the present day; however, the title of his first, A MEMORY IN THREE ACTS (2017, 68 min, DCP Digital) speaks to the tension between subjective experience and predetermined form that’s no less significant to Cossa’s work. Both films begin with vintage documentary footage before delving into personal narratives from people who lived through the eras in question. This trajectory suggests that Cossa wants to go beyond official histories of Mozambique in the 20th century to consider how that history was experienced at ground-level; it also feels like he’s establishing a dichotomy between the two. GUNPOWDER addresses the subjective nature of all documentary cinema with cutaways to Cossa and his sound man working on the film’s sonic design and sequences where the onscreen interviewees reenact episodes from several decades earlier under Cossa’s direction. Moments like these draws attention to the process of turning real life into stories (which is basically what all documentaries do), yet they don’t detract from Cossa’s merits as a historian. The short feature MEMORY is most eye-opening, relating what life was like in Mozambique under colonial rule with pointed detail. Through extended-take interviews (shot in medium closeup with little visual information apart from faces), Cossa presents the stories of a few men who were born around 1940 and are old enough to remember having been sold into slavery. Their memories of the everyday injustices of colonialism are sobering, but Cossa alleviates their impact somewhat with stories of the underground liberation movement that took root in Mozambique in the 1950s and ‘60s. GUNPOWDER, on the other hand, is a more despairing experience, as it focuses on the 15-year civil war that began not long after Mozambique was granted independence in 1975. The film centers on Cossa’s efforts, with the assistance of his grandmother and other people in her village, to preserve memories of his grandfather in the form of the movie we’re now watching. Again, the filmmaker explores the tension between personal and national histories to commanding effect. Cossa in person for post-screening conversations after each film. [Ben Sachs]

Bill Duke's THE KILLING FLOOR (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 3:15pm and Monday, 6pm

A rare American labor union drama centered on Black experience, THE KILLING FLOOR is a minor miracle of narrative history, succeeding as drama, as pedagogy, and as a model of independent, inclusive, collaborative, local, unionized filmmaking. Shot in Chicago in 1983 for PBS’s American Playhouse series—an indispensable platform for some of the best independent filmmaking of the era, and a haven for voices and stories far outside the Reagan-era mainstream—THE KILLING FLOOR tells the story of Frank Custer (Damien Leake), a Black sharecropper who travels north to work in a stockyard during World War I. Eager to improve his wages and to reunite his family in the “Promised Land” of Chicago’s flourishing south side, Custer defies the ridicule of fellow Black workers to join a scrappy, mostly-white labor union. When the war ends and white veterans begin returning to the workforce (and to zealously segregated neighborhoods), racial tensions inside the union and out boil over, resulting in the violent 1919 riot that left dozens dead and displaced thousands of mostly Black residents. Producer and co-writer Elsa Rassbach, with a perspicacity uncommon today (let alone in the 1980s), found her way into this frayed historical knot through a footnote in William Tuttle’s book on the riot—a reference to a court record of a labor dispute between Custer and “Heavy” Williams (portrayed in the film by Moses Gunn), a Black stockyard worker whose vocal distrust of white unionists helped the packing company disrupt union organizing across racial lines. Thanks largely to director Bill Duke’s handling, what could have been a binary conflict between Williams’ pessimism and Custer’s idealism becomes remarkably nuanced—after all, Custer has justifiable misgivings of his own, and the film’s central dramatic question is whether his belief in the union can withstand the corrosive racism of its membership. Duke weighs Custer’s ambivalence through performance and point of view, as demonstrated in Frank’s first visit to the Union hall. Taking in the hectic air of jubilation and multilingual speechifying, Leake’s darting eyes register the white faces and powder-keg atmosphere with both wariness and enticement, his voiceover comparing the gathering to a Southern prayer meeting. In this sequence and throughout, THE KILLING FLOOR draws on familiar tropes and narrative conventions, but lends them a charge by introducing an alienated Black gaze to typically white spaces, pointedly validating the cultural knowledge that Black southerners bring as spectators to both the union hall and the historical drama. Celebrated dramatist Leslie Lee’s screenplay further makes virtues of archetypes and blunt expository dialogue; such immediacy is critical to the film’s educational economy, which captures the riot’s myriad underlying causes—the Great Migration, the First World War, the growth of organized labor, the European diasporas, and the centuries of exploitation and disenfranchisement of African Americans—in broad yet affecting strokes. But the film is also rich in detail and atmosphere, a quality starkly revealed in this new digital restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, making its international debut just in time for the 100th anniversary of the 1919 Chicago riots. The renewed digital clarity also exposes some rough edges, of course—that’s to be expected from an ambitious historical drama funded largely by labor unions and populated with volunteer extras (including many from the Harold Washington mayoral campaign). Seen today, that roughness reminds us that THE KILLING FLOOR wasn’t so much a product of its time as a renegade in it—and a treasure in ours. Screening as part of the Workers of the World, Unite! series. (1985, 118 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Michael Metzger]

Nicolas Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW (UK)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 9pm

Nicolas Roeg may have achieved fame as a cinematographer (shooting, among other films, François Truffaut’s FAHRENHEIT 451 and Richard Lester’s PETULIA), but his most important contribution to cinema may be as an editor. Roeg’s fragmented, non-chronological narratives, while clearly influenced by the work of Alain Resnais, achieve a strange allure all their own. Resnais was influenced by the workings of memory and spontaneous thought; Roeg was interested in the plasticity of cinema itself, how the medium could distort reality and create patterns out of experience. DON’T LOOK NOW, one of Roeg’s most successful films, uses fragmentary editing to conjure feelings of disorientation and dread—it merits its reputation as one of the masterpieces of the horror genre. The dread engendered by the film isn’t just supernatural; the film considers a marriage in jeopardy, and watching the film, you’re always afraid that the protagonists’ union will come apart. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie play the couple; they travel from England to Venice after the accidental death of their young daughter, hoping to forget about their recent tragedy. In little time, however, they’re plunged into a supernatural mystery that involves an old psychic and paranormal sightings. Roeg makes brilliant use of Venice’s architecture and design, rendering the city a fantastic, maze-like world. (The eerie, mood-enhancing score is by Pino Donaggio, who would go on to be Brian De Palma’s regular composer.) The leads are superb, playing off each other brilliantly and sexily; the film’s centerpiece is a complexly edited sex scene that aroused no small controversy upon first release. Screening as part of Music Box of Horrors: The Dream Child. (1973, 110 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Robert Bresson's THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (France)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 4pm

One of the only original screenplays written by Robert Bresson (all but two of his films being adapted from other works), THE DEVIL, PROBABLY is described by the director himself as his “most ghastly.” Told through the use of flashback from news reports, the film reconstructs the life of its young, intelligent protagonist Charles (Antoine Monnier), who has committed suicide. Charles serves as an analogy for the disenfranchised youth of France in the late 1960’s that staged protests at universities and factories. Weary of the opulence of everyday life, Charles is left wondering what the point of it all is—even with education, drugs, philosophy, and other things to consider, what is the point of this existence? Many of these musings are pondered aloud to friends or loved ones and one such sequence aboard a bus discussing politics resonates strongly today given the current political landscape in both France and the United States. Bresson's penchant for minimalism pairs perfectly with the existential dread inherent in the film’s plot. Some of the commonplace actives of daily life are shot so matter-of-factly, with little to no camera movement, that it almost feels documentarian in nature. This added facet not only allows the audience to empathize with Charles’s exacerbations but also invites them to ponder their own lives in the grand scheme of things. Rainer Werner Fassbinder says of THE DEVIL, PROBABLY, “The questions Bresson asks will never be unimportant” and now 40 years later, it's plain to see that this film maintains the integrity its auteur set out for so long ago. Screening as part of the Capturing the Real: Four by Robert Bresson series. (1977, 96 min, 35mm) [Kyle Cubr]

Barbara Kopple's HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A. (US/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday and Thursday, 8:30pm

In the wake of the turbulent protests of the late 60s, a smaller, but not unrelated struggle was being waged in rural Harlan County, Kentucky. In her brave, harrowing documentary, Barbara Kopple follows a community of miners as they go on strike after being prohibited from unionizing. The miners and their families are met with hostility from the police and pro-corporation workers referred to as "scabs." Using a direct cinema approach, Kopple details a seemingly never-ending cycle of government corruption and corporate skullduggery. Some of the film's most compelling images show the weary miners as they emerge from underground, their faces caked with soot and ash, reduced to undead automatons. The cruel irony of HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A. is that the miners are struggling for the right to work a job that's extremely hazardous to begin with. With its ramshackle houses devoid of running water and with armed goon squads committing random acts of violence, Harlan County feels more like the lawless badlands of a feudal third world country than any dignified state of the US. The film is accompanied by the haunting folk ballads of Hazel Dickens and Florence Reece, whose song "Which Side Are You On?" has since become a popular protest anthem. In a rare moment of good taste on the part of the Academy, HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A. was awarded an Oscar for Best Documentary. Screening as part of the Workers of the World, Unite! Series. (1976, 103 min, 35mm) [Harrison Sherrod]

Michelle Handelman’s BLOODSISTERS: LEATHER, DYKES, AND SADOMASOCHISM (US/Documentary)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9pm

Michelle Handelman’s BLOODSISTERS: LEATHER, DYKES, AND SADOMASOCHISM is a staggering monument to the San Francisco lesbian BDSM tribe of the '90s, a spirited anthem of queer fluidity and a candid activist tape. Equal parts concerned with community ethics, political praxis, and the sexual sublime, the documentary largely undertakes a project of demystification. At a time when sadomasochism was acutely marginalized within feminist, LGBT, and civil rights discourses, the “queers of the queers” became a sacrificial lamb in the bid for progressive state reform, necessitating an in-group “social system and learning system,” as one interviewee elaborates in the film. Educators, leatherdykes, and activists flesh out this landscape along the horizons of BDSM vernaculars, decorum, safety skills, and political advocacy. Despite these codified techniques for surviving and thriving, the film’s participants emphasize the community’s open circuit and fluidities: freeform approaches to power play, desires to be of service that cut both ways across domination and subordination, and the ways in which community enthusiasm for leather and enthusiasm for violence need not be a perfectly overlapping Venn diagram. The film’s dialogues are intercut with a trove of archival play scenes that hold tension across slow-motion clamps, whips, and cinchings, documentation of public teach-ins, protest demonstrations, leather competitions, and the staged ecstasies of private rooms. Testimonies veer into reveries, the camera is dommed in first-person, and Coil’s “Windowpane” ushers in a climactic montage of chains become tender. Life and death blur, and characters break. The film is a seminal and defining text that manages to carefully acknowledge the mercurial status of sexuality before language and consent before the law. Limits, extremes, and devastation sit comfortably alongside healing, commitment, trust, and futurity. In a particularly moving interview, trans writer Patrick Califia (known as Pat Califia at the time of the film) expresses a serene appreciation for the possibility of social change evidenced by younger generations who had shockingly only ever experienced an SM sexuality, having come of age under the protection of a new era of social bonds and visibility. BLOODSISTERS is a message in a bottle sealed in blood and ceremoniously entrusted to the tides of intergenerational genderfuckery. Screening as part of the Subversive Histories: A Snapshot of Queer Cinema series. (1995, 69 min, Digital Projection) [Elise Schierbeek]

No Master Territories: Feminist Short Films with Curator Erika Balsom

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Wednesday, 7pm [Free Admission]

In 2022 to 2023, Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg curated an exhibition in Berlin and Warsaw titled “No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image.” With films and video works by dozens of filmmakers and artist collectives, the two provided an expansive look at intersectional feminist works made between the 1970s and 1990s. The Block Cinema’s screening brings three films that provide a snapshot of the entire exhibition. Gunvor Nelson & Dorothy Wiley’s SCHMEERGUNTZ (1965, 15 min, 16mm) is a dizzying montage of archival footage and animated sequences. We see a woman applying mascara and eyeliner, clips from a beauty pageant, medical illustrations, cute babies, and then a whole lot of “grotesqueries”: pregnant bellies, vomit, shit inside toilets, shit inside diapers. The effect is startling. Nelson and Wiley initially lull us into a view of women as mediated by advertising—dolled-up and happy—with footage set to pop music. But then all the prettiness gets ruptured and the editing revs up. Before long, you’re worried about the shocking images that’ll appear onscreen. That I felt grossed out by seeing the contents of a sink served as a profound comment on what society desires from women both publicly and privately. Nelson and Wiley repeatedly make this burden clear: you’re expected to be both beautiful and nonthreatening to the status quo, all while carrying out a countless number of tasks—cooking and cleaning, homemaking and childrearing. I was reminded of the women filmmakers in the lineage of Viennese Actionism who, despite the shock of what is onscreen (the self-mutilation in Valie Export’s REMOTE… REMOTE…, the pissing in Friedl vom Gröller’s IM WIENER PRATER), comment on something far more profound and personal than mere shock and awe. Sara Gómez’s MI APORTE (1972, 33 min, Digital Projection) is a striking look into Afro-Cuban women who discuss their roles and rights in the middle of a revolutionary time. It begins with an interview of factory workers but quickly switches gears, as if commenting on the ineffective nature of such documentary filmmaking. We then see four women discussing around a table, the camera following each person as they share thoughts about wanting to participate in society as workers—or wanting to work creatively—despite societal expectations to fulfill household duties. “The existing situation is being confronted and there aren’t any solutions… yet,” says one woman before a title card ends the film. But this isn’t the actual end, as we then see a venue filled with more than a dozen women discussing the same footage. Gómez allows them to speak at length without interruption. There is a prevailing sentiment: if men are to participate in the Revolution, then they are to understand the inequalities that still exist between them and women and act accordingly. The women disagree with each other and build upon another’s thoughts but are always respectful; to see this exchange in real time reveals how such congregations—thoughtful, representative of multiple viewpoints, and solution-focused—are essential for enacting change. Grupo Chaski’s MISS UNIVERSE IN PERU (1982, 45 min, Digital Projection) is the only film in the program in color, and is all the better for it. Shot during the 1982 Miss Universe pageant held in Peru, we see images of the event on a television screen—scanlines prominent—juxtaposed with a shot of a Peruvian woman staring at the camera. It’s an ominous, bitter image, heightened by the pitch-black backdrop. These contrasts continue: a camera captures vibrant billboards for major corporations before panning to children in a less glamorous locale. That the sound of a whistle punctuates this difference feels a little on the nose, but as the film progresses, it is the absurdity of these coexisting realities that shakes you. Numerous interviews shed light on how local Peruvian women feel. “We don’t think women should be the object of commercialization,” says one. Later, we see the pageant contestants frolic around and hold up a message that reads “The Inca Gods welcome you to Peru.” The deliberate cruelties on display—acts that the Miss Universe organization say are actually empowering to women—are a reminder that feminism and political action cannot exist without consideration for intersectionality. Balsom in person for a post-screening discussion. [Joshua Minsoo Kim]

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Paul Vecchiali’s THE STRANGLER (France)

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

David Hudson has my number. He begins his 2023 piece on French filmmaker Paul Vecchiali, who passed away in January of that year, and his film THE STRANGLER for The Daily on Criterion by noting that “Vecchiali’s beguiling 1970 oddity… is so steeped in cinephilia that it seems to compel reviewers to cite the references it’s brought to mind.” Indeed, my first thought when viewing this singular anti-giallo was that it’s akin to a filmic lovechild of Jacques Demy and Dario Agento, popular comparisons among other critics as well, along with specific films such as Michael Powell’s PEEPING TOM, Claude Chabrol’s THE CHAMPAGNE MURDERS, and Jean-Pierre Melville’s LE SAMOURAÏ. It does have a direct relationship to Demy in that its titular character, Émile, is played by Jacques Perrin, who starred in THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT; here he’s a chipper young sociopath targeting lonely women whom he can strangle them with a white knit scarf, presumably liberating them from the melancholy of singlehood. His foray into murder is explained only by a cryptic opening sequence in which Émile, as a child, is shown accompanying a strange man who commits the very same murder that Émile will go on to replicate as an adult. Inspector Simon Dangret (Julien Guiomar) appeals to him on national television, hiding his identity as a cop in an attempt to draw him out as a potential confidant, while Anna (Eva Simonet, Perrin’s real-life sister), a beautiful young university student, approaches Dangret to offer herself up as bait. Émile’s killings are near-dreamlike affairs, with the women seeming almost to welcome the reprieve from their lonesomeness. Are these murders or mercy killings?, one might wonder. Perhaps best known for producing Chantal Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES, Vecchiali was also an auxiliary member of the French New Wave, having written for Cahiers du Cinéma in the mid-’60s. He later founded the production company Diagonale, whose films have in common “an acute sense of class relations, a taste for heartrending lyricism inherited from Pagnol and Grémillon, an affection for actors as eccentric as they are brilliant… a confidence in the endless unfolding of dialogue, a love of popular chansons of the 1930s, a loathing for the routine screenplay, and an infinite trust in mise-en-scène, which ‘does everything’,” per filmmaker Axelle Ropert’s piece on Vecchiali for Screen Slate. This latter quality is evident in THE STRANGLER, as damn near every composition tells a story unto itself. Vecchiali’s film often defies narrative logic, such as when Dangret is talking to a fellow detective and the scene cuts back and forth to and from the first and a second location, the same conversation ostensibly taking place. What purpose does this serve? Does it matter? In the logic of this uncommon film, no. Nor do the more peculiar parts of its plot, like the burglar who follows the strangler to rob his victims after he’s killed them and who later becomes the strangler’s final foe, or the slight twist concerning Anna at the very end of the film. Perhaps another comparative figure might be Michael Mann, whose film HEAT has a random subplot about one of its characters also being a serial killer with seemingly little to no connection to what the film seems to be about overall. But as with Mann’s films, it stops being “why?” and instead becomes “why not?” This skillful aimlessness in THE STRANGLER ultimately reflects the trajectory of its characters, making the most sense where it doesn’t. Screening as part of the Paul Vecchiali and Diagonale series. (1970, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Sally Potter's ORLANDO (UK)

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

Sally Potter's ORLANDO is not so much an adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel as it is an interpretation respective to the nuances of its medium. "It would have been a disservice to Woolf to remain slavish to the letter of the book," Potter wrote. "For just as she was always a writer who engaged with writing and the form of the novel, similarly the film needed to engage with the energy of cinema." And it does, with such finesse that at times it's rather slow and mundane, just as life is often slow and mundane. Roger Ebert so eloquently wrote in his review of the film that "it is not about a story or a plot, but about a vision of human existence. What does it mean to be born as a woman, or a man? To be born at one time instead of another?" Potter doesn't attempt to answer these questions but instead relishes in their very existence. In addition to such existential ruminations, themes of gender, art, and conformity are also confronted, just as in the book. Titled Orlando: A Biography, Woolf's novel was meant to be something of a spoof inspired by her lovers' turbulent family history. (The lover in question was fellow writer Vita Sackville-West.) Both are about a young Elizabethan nobleman who mysteriously turns into a woman. In the book it's never explained, but in the film, eternal youth is granted to the teenaged Orlando by Elizabeth I, who's played to perfection by gay icon Quentin Crisp. It's fitting, then, for this and other obvious reasons, that Tilda Swinton was first able to explore her own conspicuous androgyny in the title role. For those all too familiar with her now archetypal aesthetic, ORLANDO will breathe new life into one's appreciation of her as both an actress and an icon. Potter's talents are no less extraordinary; a penchant for transformation is evident in most of her films, though it's realized more explicitly in this one. Director Jane Campion best spoke to its metamorphic capabilities: "When my son died, on the third day, I was devastated, I didn't know what to do with myself. I went to see ORLANDO. It was so beautiful. This earth can be transformed. There are moments of extreme wonder...and that's all worth living for." Screening as part of the Subversive Histories: A Snapshot of Queer Cinema series. (1993, 93 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Tobe Hooper’s THE MANGLER (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm

While Tobe Hooper’s THE MANGLER, based on a Stephen King short story, has got a bonkers premise to be sure, it’s not void of deeper meaning, and it's also just a lot of fun. Hooper regular Robert Englund plays the cartoonishly evil Mr. Gartley, owner of Gartley’s Blue Ribbon Laundry. After a series of accidents involving women workers being violently maimed and even killed by a certain ancient and giant laundry press machine, the Mangler, local police officer and widower John Hunton (Ted Levine) investigates. His demonologist brother-in-law, Mark (Daniel Matmor), is immediately sure the machine is possessed, but John needs some convincing. Along with the help of Sherry (Vanessa Pike), Gartley’s niece, the two must find a way to exorcise the insatiable demon within the Mangler. Hooper presents a setting both bizarre, particularly Gartley and his laundry, and melancholy, with deep greens and blues. This is especially reflective of the emotional men at the center of the film, John and Mark; it’s a melodramatic take that Hooper also used in his 1990 film SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION. That sincere melodrama here is connected to the thematic heart of THE MANGLER. It’s a film that’s not just a critique of capitalism, but a gendered one. Women’s domestic work, though completely necessary, is so often harmfully devalued. Perhaps that’s also why the film was initially so harshly received; a horror film set in a laundry featuring a haunted laundry press might seem ridiculous, but the injustice and violence at its core isn’t all that far from the historical reality of labor conditions. Hooper manages to weave in and out of the outlandish and real in surprisingly dexterous and expressive ways. Screening as part of Terror Tuesdays, programmed by John Dickson from the Oscbarbate Film Collective. (1995, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Mickey Keating’s INVADER (US)

FACETS Cinema – Thursday, 9pm

Joe Swanberg wields a sledgehammer like a conductor of cacophony to smash his way through drywall and countertops. He busts a door down, he throws chairs across the room, and he stares in delight at the chaos around him. INVADER begins with a foreboding intertitle that says: “According to the FBI, a break-in occurs every 30 seconds in the United States.” We gather Swanberg is the invader in question. He revels in the destruction without any discernible reason and as quickly as one house falls to ruin, he leaves out the back door to lay waste to the next. Writer-director Mikey Keating decided exposition regarding Swanberg’s character would only bloat the lean 70-minute runtime. This minimalist approach works to sow the seeds of dread throughout the rest of the film. At a deserted Metra stop in a Chicago suburb, Ana (Vero Maynez) is getting kicked off the train. She is offered the full Chicago experience as the train is four hours late due to downtown traffic. Ana attempts to contact her cousin, Camila (Ruby Vallejo), who she is supposed to stay with, but Camila never answers. A taxi arrives, but the creepy cabbie inside asking her if she is all alone gives her second thoughts about taking a ride. Ana has the hypervigilance that is required when it is four in the morning and you are, indeed, all alone. After being chased by the driver who either wanted to cause harm or was upset about the loss of a fare, Ana decides to walk the five miles to her cousin’s house. Keating’s walk montage includes Ana walking past buildings in various stages of decay along with shots of American flags waving in the wind. When she finally arrives at her cousin’s house, no one answers the door. Ana even checks for her cousin at the market where she works. There she meets an employee, Carlo (Colin Huerta), who works with her cousin. He decides to help. Carlo calls the police and reports a disturbance at Camila’s home as a ploy for a wellness check. After Ana and Carlo see Swanberg come out of the house and talk to the police, Keating pushes the film into another gear. Between the kinetic movement of Mac Fisken’s handheld cinematography and Valerie Krulfeifer’s rapid-pace editing, Keating’s film sprints to the finish line. The camera acts as both a fly-on-the wall watching the proceedings and as an active participant in the horror. A point-of-view shot will pivot around a corner allowing the audience to see what the characters can’t. It is in these moments that the film becomes our own experience. We are trying to find the right moment to pass an open hallway so we don’t get caught. Other times, the camera will follow too closely to a character and obstruct our view. This constant shift in viewpoint causes disorientation which helps to add to the film’s relentless tension. The wordless Swanberg gives a disturbing performance with a lasting impact and nods to PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991) and HALLOWEEN (1978). He is animalistic in his unstoppable instinct to invade, destroy, and repeat. With its minimalist narrative and aggressive filming techniques, INVADER is successful in reducing horror to its purest form. Screening preceded by FACETS Film Trivia at 7pm and then live music by Hunting Scene. Followed by a post-screening Q&A with film talent. (2024, 70 min, DCP Digital Projection) [Shaun Huhn]

Ti West’s THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (US)

Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 7pm

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL has one of the most striking opening credit sequences. Set in winter, as our protagonist Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) strolls to campus with her Walkman, director Ti West throws in occasional freeze frames, halting the movement; both the freeze frames and the lingering camera begin to build a sense of dread in an ordinary scene. Samantha, a college student who just rented her first apartment and is looking to make some extra money, answers a mysterious job board ad for a babysitter. Her friend Megan (a delightful Greta Gerwig) gives her a ride to a house out in the country but is wary of the situation. While the job is not exactly what she expected, for a big paycheck, Samantha is willing to stay, on her own, at the house. Although the opening text discussing the '80s Satanic panic immediately suggests something sinister afoot, West takes his time. THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is the slowest of burns, but successful, its focus on nostalgic hairstyles, music, and tech a skillful distraction that makes the last terrifying fifteen minutes all the more potent; shot on 16mm, it’s self-aware in its homage to '70s and '80s horror (the film features genre greats like Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov, and Dee Wallace) without losing any sincerity or focus on the story at hand—it’s a juxtaposition to his latest MAXXXINE, which often gets lost in its visual references and homages. West’s approach here gives THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL a loose and easy feel, with bits of key information dropped casually and the creeping pace giving way to more and more tension. The middle section, where Samantha putters around, casually watches television, and dances to her Walkman, are truly brilliant both in the lurking camerawork extending that tension and distraction, as well as Donahue’s compelling performance; Samantha is consistently at least a little concerned about her situation, but not nearly concerned enough until it’s far too late. Screening as part of the Music Box of Horrors: The Dream Child series. (2009, 95 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (West Germany)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am

NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE is Werner Herzog's homage to F.W. Murnau's glooming, swirling, haunting masterpiece—the 1922 original, NOSFERATU, A SYMPHONY OF HORRORS. As moody as its predecessor, this NOSFERATU dwells in the caverns and misty crossings of Herzog's Caspar David Friedrich-esque film landscapes. The centerpiece is Klaus Kinski's performance as Count Dracula—a limping, aching vampire who has lured an ambitious gentleman to his castle. Though radically differing from the original, NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE does represent an interesting moment in the history of German cinema. Herzog, perhaps more than his contemporaries, is credited with bridging the gap of the so-called "lost years" of German cinema—those between Expressionism and the Neue Deutsche Film. Despite this film and his admiration of Murnau, Herzog has distanced himself from his esteemed predecessor in German film: "SUNRISE is a great movie... but there's really no connection." Agreed. Screening as part of the Music Box of Horrors: The Dream Child series. (1979, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Liam Neff]

Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s UNION (US/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

I have seen more than my share of labor union documentaries, both domestic and international. Towering over them all in my mind is the Oscar-winning HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A. (1976), the ambitious, four-year chronicle of the coalminers’ strike against a mine owned by Duke Power Company in Harlan County, KY, during which director Barbara Kopple captured one of the company’s gun thugs pointing a pistol directly at her. Entering into this inspiring, violent, sometimes exhausting corner of cinema is Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s UNION, which follows fired Amazon worker Chris Smalls and the tight-knit cadre of dedicated workers and labor organizers in the independent Amazon Labor Union (ALU) as they work to organize the more than 8,000 employees at Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, JFK8. Union films follow a certain formula—worker beefs, union organizing ups and downs, certification vote, and next steps—spiced with internecine conflict and company pushback. Despite the expected structure (and well-publicized outcome), Maing and Story get us deeply invested in the process and people whose lives have become intertwined with their cause. We don’t get much in the way of the private lives of Smalls or any of these comrades, though we learn he spent three years living in his car and that one of the organizers, Natalie, is homeless despite being employed at Amazon. Madeline, an organizer from Florida, becomes an integral part of the team as a “salt,” a person hired by the company who works for unionization from the inside. Another outside recruit calls everyone “comrade” and questions Smalls’ accelerated tactics by citing the coming winter weather as a reason for delay. I could only guffaw as I recalled the Willmar 8, immortalized in Lee Grant’s brilliant documentary THE WILLMAR 8 (1981), who picketed their Minnesota bank through two dangerously frigid winters to protest gender discrimination. Thankfully, ALU members didn’t have to put their lives on the line as so many others have, but their struggle was not only equally important to the quality of life for Amazon workers, but they also helped revive the labor movement so necessary to help curb the unbridled greed and power of the multibillionaires like Jeff Bezos who have destabilized the lives of millions of frontline workers. Screening as part of the Workers of the World, Unite! Series. (2024, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Paul Schrader's HARDCORE (US)

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

Paul Schrader’s sophomore film as director, following his debut BLUE COLLAR, sets the tone for the director’s own personal output of films to follow. Made only two years after Schrader’s screenwriting credit for TAXI DRIVER, HARDCORE follows Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott), a devoutly Calvinist father in search of his missing daughter, who happens to have found her way into the underground world of porn. Jake hires a private detective (Peter Boyle) to track his down his daughter, and finds himself completely un-ready for what information the detective might turn up. Much like the plot of TAXI DRIVER, Scott takes it upon himself to venture into this seedy world and reclaim his daughter on his own, to “save her” from a reality he feels she can’t understand or endure. His search takes him to Los Angeles, where Jake finds himself at odds with a changing world, far from his Grand Rapids hometown where the more communal, small-town ways of life still reside; the journey he takes to find his daughter becomes more of a black-comedic nightmare than anything, as Jake prowls the corridors of neon-lit porn stores and brothels, pointing towards the removed sexual-atmospheres of his surprise hit AMERICAN GIGOLO and the deeply-underrated LIGHT SLEEPER. The film was made at the end of the so-called New Hollywood-generation, with Schrader being late to the directing chair; it bears many of the bitter, raw attitudes that awaited a film-world about to be consumed by the likes of STAR WARS (which receives an ominous and hilarious jab at a strip club, an in-joke of the likes we’ll probably never be able to see again). Humor looms large in a film that, on the surface, appears bleak and unforgiving. HARDCORE retains a very curious position that tries to align with and pity Jake, but also can’t help giggle at his discomfort, as in the scene where he nervously paces around a sex shop, looking at dildos while Neil Young’s “Helpless” plays on the store’s hi-fi; or where, in an attempt to locate one of his daughter’s male “co-stars,” he holds a casting call in his hotel room, confronting a group of young men so eager to be a part of something, they casually revert to exposing themselves in an effort to be wanted. It's despite these satirical barbs that the film rests itself upon a bed of real, naked emotion, as in the scene where Jake is shown the porno his daughter has been found performing in. Scott’s father figure breaks painfully and earnestly, in a stellar series of cuts and camera positions, reinforcing the power of film to show us the disquieting howls of an unforgiving world, through the complicated mechanics of artifice. This is a film about discomfort and loneliness (something that would become trademark for Schrader) in which its characters just simply want to belong, to be a part of something, anything, resembling any notion of a comforting reality; what HARDCORE comes to depict, ultimately, is a reality where moral conviction itself is not enough to change a world at odds with certain notions of decency, it is instead a world where all one can do is stop the projector and look away. Screening as part of the Columbia Pictures in the 1970s series. (1979, 109 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]

Bas Devos’ HERE (Belgium)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 9:30pm and Sunday, 6pm

A lithe and hushed film, HERE is refreshing to watch and bittersweet to think about. Plot generally takes a back seat to mood, though that isn’t to say the film is plotless—in fact, it’s quite sophisticated in how it interweaves two distinct narrative threads. In the first, a construction worker from Romania visits various friends and family members around Brussels as he prepares to make a visit home between assignments; in the second, a Chinese botanist, also living in Brussels, navigates her daily life as she studies mosses, teaches college classes, and hangs out at her aunt and uncle’s restaurant. The principal characters don’t cross paths until halfway into HERE, and their one meaningful interaction doesn’t occur until 20 minutes before it ends. You may leave the film wondering (as the characters might) what could have been if they had met each other sooner, what they could have done with more time together. You may also start thinking about the transient nature of contemporary life or the international makeup of European cities today. Writer-director Bas Devos doesn’t force these concerns; he’s more interested in observing how they play out in individual moments and shape the atmosphere of Brussels. That atmosphere is rendered vividly, thanks to an immersive sound design and 16mm images with a pronounced sense of height and depth. In its patience and tactility, HERE is often redolent of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s work (the fact that one of the main characters is a botanist specifically evokes MEMORIA [2021]), though Devos’ concerns are more social than spiritual. He also advances a strong romantic sensibility in addition to beatific quietude. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2023, 84 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Colin Higgins' 9 TO 5 (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6:15pm and Wednesday, 8:15pm

Despite the fact that the feminist office satire 9 TO 5 is almost turning 40, this film feels depressingly current in its assertion that women deserve an equitable, harassment-free workplace in America. The story follows three women in an office who, through a series of mix-ups and shenanigans, including one hysterically funny scene in a hospital, kidnap their horrible male boss, holding him prisoner in his home for several weeks. While he is under house arrest, they enact a series of changes that make the workplace both more equitable and productive (flexible schedules, free daycare, etc.), attracting praise from the head of the company. Jane Fonda commissioned writer Patricia Reznick to write the screenplay for 9 TO 5 through Fonda's production company, IPC Films, which she founded to produce socially conscious and impactful films. After producing and starring in THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979), a successful drama about a cover-up at a nuclear power plant, Fonda switched gears with 9 TO 5, addressing feminist concerns following the women's liberation movement and heading into the stifling Reagan era, but doing so with a broad, silly satire to make the feminism a little more palatable to the masses. Screenwriter Reznick had originally drafted a much darker comedy, according to a 2015 interview in Rolling Stone, inspired by Charlie Chaplin's black comedy MONSIEUR VERDOUX, but Fonda and other producers worried the material was too dark to succeed at the box office. Colin Higgins, a gay filmmaker who wrote HAROLD AND MAUDE and produced the popular comedy FOUL PLAY (1976), was brought in to rewrite the script and direct. Though Reznick, who wrote the treatment for Altman's 3 WOMEN (1977) and wrote the screenplay for A WEDDING (1979)—one of my favorite Altman films—was heartbroken that the screenplay was re-written, much of her original intent, including having the film star Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton in her screen debut, remained intact. The result of the rewrite and Higgins' love of the broad slapstick of Warner Brothers cartoons is the version of 9 TO 5 that became one of the highest grossing and enduring comedy films of all time. Lily Tomlin as office manager Violet Newstead smirks and rolls her eyes through endlessly frustrating office experiences, hindered by chauvinistic and incompetent men at every turn, bringing her wry timing and loose, cartoonish physicality to bear in each scene. Jane Fonda plays a trembling, hesitant woman going through a divorce and entering the workforce for the first time, recalling the persona of some of her flightier pre-feminist comedic roles in BAREFOOT IN THE PARK (1967) and BARBARELLA (1968), but updating that persona with modern-day feminist empowerment. Dolly Parton plays Doralee Rhodes, the sunny and cheerful secretary to the horrible male boss who is shunned by all the female staff as they assume she is sleeping with him, though she staunchly avoids his sexual harassment with as much southern kindness and euphemism as she can muster. Both the plot and characters of 9 TO 5 are absurd and cartoonish, and recall the silly exploits and machinations of classic screwball comedies, though the boss, Franklin Hart (played by Dabney Coleman), engenders much less sympathy than a surly Spencer Tracy or sneaky sideways-glancing Cary Grant. Coleman plays a deliciously repulsive villain whose structural faults are sadly still present today, if more subtly practiced. Parton charmed viewers both with the title track "9 to 5" over the opening credits and with her delightful persona and winking-yet-wholesome comedic style. Screening as part of the Workers of the World, Unite! Series. (1980, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]

Bernard Rose’s CANDYMAN (US)

FACETS Cinema – Wednesday, 7pm

While Chicagoans are quick to recall the location shooting of CANDYMAN in the Near North Side's Cabrini-Green public housing community, few seem to remember just how highbrow this low-budget Clive Barker adaptation really was: the main characters are UIC folklore/anthropology Ph.D. students studying (via ethnographic interviews) the urban legends on which the film's plot is itself based, and the soundtrack is an elegant, metronomic fugue for electric organ, strings, and chorus by Manhattan minimal don Philip Glass. The story, conflating the by-then nearly universal Anglo-American folktales of "Bloody Mary" and "The Hook" (regarding menstruation and castration, respectively) with some vague Shakespearean allusions, a touch of hypnotism, and a lot of bees, centers on the real-world locus of imagined terror for a generation of city residents and journalists: the intersection of Division and Larabee. In a twist which seems rather insightful even for the early 90s, the post-colonialist "Indian burial ground" cliché is displaced onto the contemporary process of gentrification then occurring in Old Town: Virginia Madsen's character's high-rise condo is itself revealed to be part of a redeveloped former housing project. The resulting film oscillates widely and sometimes uncomfortably between clever meta-horror and quotidian actual-horror, but remains an underrated snapshot of the city's pre-"Plan For Transformation" unconscious, in the shadows of the towers which (as of May 2011) no longer exist. (1992, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Castelle]

Hong Sang-soo's IN OUR DAY (South Korea)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm and Sunday, 4pm

As daunting as it may seem to break into the filmography of the prolific Hong Sang-soo (as of this writing, he has directed over thirty feature films, with at least one new film released annually since the mid-2000s), there is an intentionally casual nature to his filmmaking that makes any journey with him feel breezy and worthwhile. Take his latest experiment in lackadaisical cinema, IN OUR DAY, a tale of parallel artists each faced with a visitor at their doorstep ready to interrogate them about their respective artistic processes. Outside of these chance encounters, there’s seemingly little that unites the to-be-admired actor Sangwon (Kim Min-hee) and the wizened poet Uiju (Gi Ju-bong), though pockets of connective tissue slowly emerge as the film goes on. These conversations—Sangwon with a visiting cousin looking for acting advice, Uiju with an aspiring actor looking for inspiration—are primarily filmed in long single takes that eventually make these ensuing scenes feel more like theater than cinema, the stillness of the image and the bodies onscreen forcing you to wrestle with Hong’s winding conversations about seeking honesty in less-than-ideal work environments or finding love in a world where that isn’t guaranteed. There are few “events” here (a cat goes missing at one point, a promise to remain sober gets destroyed within the running time), but Hong’s focus is less on the larger moments that demolish us than the smaller interactions that chip away at us and reveal what truly lies beneath. Hong’s films are certainly an acquired taste, but as Uiju responds to his visitor’s question about the futility of writing poetry in a less-poetic world, as long as at least one person is watching them, then they’re more than necessary. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2023, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Jack Arnold's CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Saturday, 1pm

In Jack Arnold’s 3D monster feature CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, a group of plucky scientists journeys deep into an Amazonian cul-de-sac in search of a fossil, definitive proof of an aquatic hominoid from the Devonian Period. (Why a hominoid would be from the Devonian of all times is a mystery too deep to plumb.) They find instead that the species they seek is still alive, and it lives in lovesick solitude in a cave at the base of a serene lagoon. Narratively, CREATURE is a great plodding beast, lurching from one plot point to the next with all the dexterity of a half-man/half-fish out of water. But once in the lagoon, the film becomes a feast for the eyes, a series of languorous plays of depth, movement, and cross-species eroticism that is genuinely scary, and deeply disturbing. The film's 3D effects on land are often limited to cheap, but effective, shock effects—the creature approaching the lenses, his claw raking our eyeballs, and so on—but the uncannily unrealistic effects of 3D cinema become the very subject matter as the monster propels himself easily, strangely, through a primeval seascape. As the scientists close in on the Gill-Man, threatening to capture it, or kill it, the film literalizes its theme of humanity versus nature, making the advancement of learning a process that can only succeed at the expense of the world it studies. The wild, in the person of the creature, its libidinous needs created by the presence of a woman amongst the scientists, must either capture and rape her or be destroyed in the attempt. In CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, the only response possible to the evil we bring on nature is to finish the job of destroying it before it takes revenge upon us. (1954, 79 min, 3D DCP Digital) [Kian Bergstrom]

Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s RUMOURS (Canada/Germany)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

RUMOURS, the latest nocturnal emission from Guy Maddin, is a daring and altogether shocking aesthetic deviation for the Canadian auteur who, for the better part of three decades, has staked his name on an outré brand of silent film panache and has remained one of cinema's most immediately recognizable stylists. With his newest, an apocalyptic political satire co-directed by brothers Evan and Galen Johnson, he has dispensed with the vast majority of his usual tricks, swapping out the dynamic shadow play of German Expressionism and the blistering rhythms of the Soviet montage for a filmic approach that is decidedly more contemporary and festival friendly. If that sounds like a slight against the film, I assure you it is not; this is a venomous exercise in détournement that leverages its heightened visual fidelity, star-studded cast and sweeping orchestral score as ironic signifiers of the status quo in a scathing satire of feckless liberalism. The film turns its gaze towards a fictionalized staging of the annual G7 summit, examining seven world leaders representing powerful Western democracies as they clumsily attempt to draft a provisional statement in response to a major global crisis—one that is never actually explained throughout the film’s runtime. There’s a real prom night feel to the proceedings as the heads of state decamp to a sunny gazebo on the outskirts of a German chalet, where they flirt like schoolchildren and spend more time drinking Bordeaux than generating salient ideas for their statement. The film begins in earnest when night falls as cell phones lose signal, butlers and chauffeurs vanish into thin air, and the hapless politicos are ultimately forced to embark on a grim journey through the woods in hopes of finding rescue, beset along the way by a cavalcade of grotesqueries: a giant brain (a "game-changer" according to Alicia Vikander in a scene-stealing turn as a deranged EU emissary) and a horde of masturbating bog zombies (routinely decried as protestors and terrorists) chief among them. In spite of the film’s visual concessions, fans of Maddin’s extensive body of work will find plenty to love in the film’s slow and shambolic march towards Armageddon, one which achieves a sustained pitch of droll absurdism and psychosexual perversion that should be unmistakable to acolytes of the director. The film is doggedly committed to broad, slapstick caricatures of the politicians and hellbent on sidestepping topicality via increasingly surrealist flourishes, but its abiding ideology is crystal clear. Firstly, the politician can only cower in terror when removed from social context and forced to grapple with their position in the hierarchies of the natural world. Secondly, global agents of neoliberalism will see the end of the world itself approaching in the rearview and continue driving as though nothing is happening. They will conduct geopolitical business as usual, wax poetic about the hallowed legacy of Western democracy, and glibly gesture towards corrective action through statements that, as the film’s ending seems to argue, might as well be written by ChatGPT. (2024, 104 min, DCP Digital) [David Whitehouse]

Henry Selick's CORALINE (US/Animation)

Alamo Drafthouse – Sunday, 12:30pm and Tuesday, 6pm

Over the last decade, the family-friendly film has been irrevocably sanitized—especially animated films intended for young audiences. No longer is the focus solely put on creating engaging plots and characters that resonates with both children and adults; rather the new normal has been to prioritize popular franchises with capitalistic success as well as big-name voice actors to bolster market appeal. But there was a time where family-friendly movies could take risks in storytelling and style, break conventions, and still be commercially successful—and Henry Selick’s CORALINE is a prime example. After moving into a dreary new town, the film’s brash and spitfire titular character (voiced by Dakota Fanning) discovers a parallel world that seems like a dream come true—one that’s exciting, full of color, and starkly contrasts her everyday life. But when Coraline’s friends and family sew buttons onto their eyes and are a bit too sickly sweet for comfort, she has to face the fact that not everything is what it seems. Animation studio Laika’s whimsical stop-motion work is a standout and helped cement what would later be considered a studio standard of excellence. But what’s most remarkable about CORALINE is that it takes its young-intended audience seriously. Selick is not afraid to frighten; nor is he shy to delve into complicated topics like toxic familial relationships and how one's perception of the world drastically shifts in their adolescence. (2009, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Cody Corrall]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ 2018 film LAKE MICHIGAN MONSTER (78 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info here.

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Rea Tajiri’s 2022 documentary WISDOM GONE WILD (84 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 7pm. Tajiri will appear for a post-screening conversation with Kyle Henry, Associate Professor of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University. 

Fables of Dematerialization: Erika Balsom on oceanic cinema takes place Thursday, 5pm, with Balsom in person and followed by a discussion with Corey Byrnes, Associate Professor of Chinese Culture and co-founder/co-director of the Shifting Shorelines working group of the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern, and Michael Metzger, Curator of Cinema and Media Arts at the Block Museum. Free admission to both. More info on all screenings here.

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

⚫ Consignment Lounge (520 W. Diversey Ave.)
Tommy Lee Wallace’s 1982 film HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (96 min, Digital Projection) and Michael Dougherty’s 2007 film TRICK ‘R TREAT (100 min, Digital Projection) screen Monday at 7 and 9pm. Co-programmed by Cine-File contributor Meg Fariello. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films at the University of Chicago
Wallace Worsley’s 1923 silent film THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (113 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 7pm, at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel (​​5850 S. Woodlawn Ave.), with live accompaniment by Jay Warren. Free for UCID and Doc quarter pass holders.

Nathaniel Dorsky’s TRISTE (19 min, 16mm), VARIATIONS (24 min, 16mm), ALAYA (28 min, 16mm) and LOVE’S REFRAIN (22 min, 16mm) screen Sunday starting at 8pm as part of the Devotional Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler series.

Delphine Seyrig and Carole Roussopoulos’ 1976 film S.C.U.M. MANIFESTO 1967 (26 min, DCP Digital), Roussopoulos’ 1971 film Y’A QU’À PAS BAISER (17 min, DCP Digital) and Catherine Lahourcade and Anne-Marie Faure’s 1974 film MUSIDORA: FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DES FILMS DE FEMMES (26 min, Digital Projection) screen Tuesday, 7pm, with an introduction by London-based scholar and curator, Erika Balsom.

Amat Escalante’s 2016 film LA REGIÓN SALVAJE (98 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Mexican Romance: Through the Heart of the Nation series.

Sam Raimi’s 1987 film EVIL DEAD II (84 min, 35mm) screens Thursday, 10:30pm, for Halloween. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ FACETS Cinema
Griffin Dunne’s 1998 film PRACTICAL MAGIC (104 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday at 6:30pm. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Nesa Azimi’s 2024 documentary DRIVER (90 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 8:15pm and Sunday at 5:30pm. There will be post-screening dialogues after both screenings. After the Friday screening, Azimi and former truck driver, labor organizer and author Anne Balay will participate in a discussion moderated by Deborah Rudolph; after the Sunday screening, Azimi, Balay, truck driver Michelle Kitchin, retired steelworker and labor organizer Isabell Sundin and executive director of Chicago Jobs with Justice Jill Manique will participate in a discussion moderated by Ines Sommer.

As part of the Workers of the World, Unite! Series, Martin Ritt’s 1979 film NORMA RAE (114 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 5:45pm and Wednesday at 8:30pm; Michael Moore’s 1989 documentary ROGER & ME (91 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 3:15pm and Thursday at 6:15pm; and Sam Wood’s 1941 film THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES (92 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 6pm and Monday at 6:15pm.

Lucian Pintilie’s 1968 film RECONSTRUCTION (100 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of the Propaganda and Counterculture Lecture Series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.)
Atiq Rahimi’s 2004 film EARTH AND ASHES (102 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 7pm, followed by a post-screening conversation with visiting scholar Fazel Ahad Ahadi. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Media Burn Archive
Thea Flaum’s 1988 documentary RUTH PAGE: ONCE UPON A DANCER (60 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 2pm, at the Ruth Page Center (1016 N. Dearborn St.). Flaum is a charter member of Media Burn’s board. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Sean Baker’s 2024 film ANORA (139 min, 35mm and DCP Digital [check showtime for format]). See Venue website for showtimes.

As part of the Music Box of Horrors: The Dream Child month-long series, David 'The Rock' Nelson’s CONRAD BROOKS VS. WEREWOLF (43 min, DCP Digital Projection), co-presented by Saturn's Core & Strange Tapes, screens Friday at 9:30pm and 11:30pm; the world theatrical premiere of George Demick’s 1998 film ASYLUM OF TERROR (75 min, DCP Digital) , co-presented by VHShitfest, takes place Monday at 9:30pm; Sandor Stern’s 1989 film AMITYVILLE HORROR: THE EVIL ESCAPES (95 min, DCP Digital), co-presented with WBEZ Chicago and Spookified, screens Tuesday at 9:45pm; and Mark Oates and Tom Rubnitz’s PSYKHO III: THE MUSICAL (60 min, DCP Digital), co-presented by VBD, screens Wednesday at 7pm, followed by a post-screening Q&A with curator Emily Eddy, George William Price, and Video Data Bank Executive Director Tom Colley. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Sideshow Gelato (4819 N. Western Ave.)
SUPER-HORROR-RAMA! presents Irvin Willat’s 1919 film THE GRIM GAME (71 min, Digital Projection), starring Harry Houdini, on Thursday at 8:30pm, preceded by a live escape show at 7pm. More info here.

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

CINE-LIST: October 25 - October 31, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom,, Michael Castelle, Cody Corrall, Maxwell Courtright, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Joshua Minsoo Kim, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Michael Metzger, Liam Neff, Elise Schierbeek, Harrison Sherrod, David Whitehouse