CRUCIAL VIEWING

ANIMATION AND THE CINEMA (Academic Conference)
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – Friday & Saturday
The fourth Graduate Cinema Conference at University of Chicago takes on the subject of animation, with an intent to provide "a counter-history of cinema that is not based in photographic indexicality... [and to shed] light on animation’s ability to order the world depicted in film in a different way—one which both references the real world and yet surpasses it, presenting a world that we recognize as simultaneously other and the same." In addition to a various panels and a keynote address by University of Toronto professor Nic Sammond entitled “The Thing Is, or, Animation, Alterity, and Indifference” (Saturday, 5:30pm), the conference will also include two screenings: Friday's "Pre-Show for the Optical Unconscious" will be introduced by Sammond and features SWING YOU SINNERS (Max Fleischer, 1930), STREET OF CROCODILES (Quay Brothers, 1986), and FAUST (Jan Svankmajer, 1994), plus additional classic animation shorts; Saturday's selection features THE ORNAMENT OF A LOVING HEART (Lotte Reiniger, 1919); MODELING (Max Fleischer, 1923); KOKO-NUTS (Dave Fleischer, 1925); RHYTHMUS 21 (Hans Richter, 1921); SYMPHONIE DIAGONALE (Viking Eggeling, 1924), 1968); 7362 (Pat O’Neill, 1989); Heavy-Light (Adam Beckett, 1973); and additional short films from the Film Studies Center's collection.
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LTTR: The Dead, the Absent, and Fictitious (Experimental)
Conversations at the Edge / Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm
LTTR is a feminist genderqueer art collective whose varied output manages to be radically inclusive without sacrificing the sharply critical point of view explored in its annual art journal, live performances, and video screenings. Members of the group will be on hand to present and discuss the following works: MARBLE MOUTH AU REVOIR (Curtis Carman, 2006); TO PEE IN PUBLIC PLACES (Itziar Okariz, 2001-6); SOCIAL MOVEMENT (Emily Roysdon, 2005); ME (Chris Spinelli, 2005-6); LEZ SIDE STORY (Hedia Maron and Faye Driscoll, 2006); SPEKTRO DEL TEMPO (Ilona Berger, 2005); LOVE/TORTURE (Ulrike Mueller, 1995); fat/soft/normal/skinny (Dafne Boggeri, 2005); and others. (75 min, various formats). Fred Camper's Reader writeup here. Official website: www.lttr.org. Screening details at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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INTO GREAT SILENCE (New Foreign)
Music Box – Screening Daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
In case you missed the Chicago premiere at the Film Center's EU Fest, the Music Box is bringing Philip Gröning's critically lauded INTO GREAT SILENCE back to Chicago for a week-long run. It takes as its subject Carthusian monks living in the French Alps, but it isn't focused on their history, background, or why its individuals chose to join the order, which was founded in 1084. Instead, it captures and contemplates the rhythm of their lives. Gröning had to wait 16 years for permission to film inside the monastery, and even after he was granted access, he had to be very discreet and avoid interrupting the monks' ascetic lifestyles. Aided by cameraman Anthony Dod Mantle (JULIEN DONKEY BOY, DOGVILLE), the movie softly and beautifully creates a portrait of the monks' ethereal states of existence. (2006, 165 min). More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL
Screening roughly 100 films in 10 days, this year's festival is an embarrasement of riches that covers the entire world and dozens of subjects. This week's Chicago Reader offers a comprehensive guide to the expansive festival, featuring a selection of capsules for most of this week's films, including thorough considerations of the Frederick Wiseman offerings discussed below. Click here to view the Reader guide. Click here to access the festival's official website.
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FREDERICK WISEMAN RETROSPECTIVE
According to Errol Morris, the world never looks as terrifying or as perplexing as it does in a Frederick Wiseman movie--an observation whose resonance might stem from the fact that Wiseman constructs his films from simply recorded, unstaged events. At first glance his style and focus on institutions instead of characters suggests reportage, but the films’ accumulation of detail reveal a world of poetic complexity, unrecognized hypocrisy, and institutionalized cruelty. Wiseman's first and best-known work, TITICUT FOLLIES (1967), unflinchingly depicts the often brutal treatment of disabled patients in a Massachusetts state hospital; the film was banned for violating the patients' privacy, although the director has suggested the state government was more concerned with its reputation. BASIC TRAINING (1971) highlights the loss of individuality at the hands of a system that demands unquestioning obedience and total conformity; Stanley Kubrick allegedly requested a copy before filming FULL METAL JACKET. Starting with the operatic WELFARE (1975)--later adapted into a real opera--Wiseman’s films have tended to run three hours or more, thereby creating a unique documentary form: a kind of seething, radical meditation. This mini-retrospective highlights some the director’s optimistic work as well: HIGH SCHOOL II (1994), about an alternative public school in New York; BALLET (1995), about the creative process of the American Ballet Theater; and the unexpectedly life-affirming DOMESTIC VIOLENCE (2001), about a battered women’s shelter in Tampa, Florida. None of Frederick Wiseman’s 35 features have been officially released on video or DVD, so this chance to see the work of one of the greatest documentary filmmakers is a truly remarkable event.
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Full schedule and details at www.chicagodocfestival.org.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED

THE TELEPHONE BOOK (Cult Revival)
Eye & Ear Clinic - Friday, 5:05pm
Like an obscene mixture of Terry Southern and Mad magazine, Nelson Lyon's only film, 1971's THE TELEPHONE BOOK, is an opulent, sleazy farce, spinning the tongue-in-cheek tone from the sexploitation films of the period out into a glorious mess--the story of the "world's greatest obscene phone caller" becoming more like the world's longest grade-school dirty joke. Shot in black-and-white with animated sequences in color, this X-rated movie is famously rare and has developed a cult following. The film is being presented by authors Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, whose survey of the films that played in New York's famous grindhouse cinemas, Sleazoid Express, is one of the definitve works on American exploitation film. They will also be appearing at the Music Box for the midnight screenings of PETS, discussed below. Eye & Ear Clinic is located at SAIC, 112 S. Michigan Ave, room 1307 (13th floor).
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MEDIA.OBSCURA :: THAUMATROPES (Experimental / Performance)
Busker Chicago - Friday, 8pm
Busker presents the premiere event in a series featuring Chicago artists and curated by Nicholas O'Brien, which aims to "create a duologue between NewMedia/Time.art/Web.art/Live AV/video installation and their critical implications (or cultural influences)... The infrastructure of Media arts and technology has obviously evolved since the days of the Camera Obscura, however O'Brien suggests that the fundamental processes involved in [New]Media making are actually not as disparate as suggested by the idea of 'progress.'" Tonight's program, THAUMATROPES, is organized around the theme of a popular 19th century amusement: "The Thaumatrope was a toy that played with persistence of vision by having a card spin on a piece of string when pulled. In this vein, BUSKER will host a night where the string and the card have been substituted for other Media, but where artists Mike Miles, jon.satrom, Swift (aka Alex Inglizian and Alex Faulk), and Noise Crush (aka Lisa Slodki) ++ The Fortieth Day (aka Isidro Reyes, and Mark Solotrof) might be able to rekindle the optical illusions the thuamatrope gave us." More info at www.buskerchicago.com.
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ELECTRIC DRAGON 80,000 V (Cult / Special Event)
Sonotheque - Saturday, 7:30pm
Like falling inside a video game, this breakneck whatsit has something to do with a showdown between “reptile investigator”/guitar hero Dragon Eye Morrison (Tadanobu Asano, lately of Kitano, Hou, Ratanaruang, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa) and a half-man, half-mannequin named Thunderbolt Buddah. The illogic gets parsed out through a savvy mix of Eisensteinian editing, slam-bang sound design and head-nodding rawk. A forebear to the TETSUO school of sensory overload, director Sogo Ishii’s relentless film-school aesthetic is mercifully infused with an infectiously reckless, tongue-in-cheek verve. Highly entertaining nonsense, if highly exhausting for its 55 minute length. More Info.
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CHICAGO FILMMAKERS OPEN SCREENING (Local / Special Event)
Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 8pm
A time-honored exercise in cinematic democracy, Chicago Filmmakers' famous Open Screening accepts a wide variety of formats (BetaSP, Mini-DV, DVD, VHS, and 16mm) and subjects (anything non-pornographic). All you have to do is bring your movie and be civil towards others' work. Chicago Filmmakers asks that films be under 15 minutes, but they're willing to accomodate any length. Full program details will be available at www.chicagofilmmakers.org by this weekend.
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Mervin Leroy's 5 STAR FINAL (Classic Revival)
LaSalle Bank Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
Mervyn Le Roy is one of those directors that reveals the limitations of the auteur theory. As with Michael Curtiz, Le Roy’s name appears on a wide range of Hollywood studio pictures, from LITTLE CAESAR (1931) and GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 to THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), which, although they remain popular today, don’t reveal a consistent vision. In 5 STAR FINAL, look instead for the professionalism and precision of a director learning how to orchestrate the studio machine. His material here: an ethical drama set in the world of newspaper journalism starring Edward G. Robinson and Boris Karloff. With these ingredients in mind the film either hits the mark, or goes impossibly, but entertainingly, wrong. (1939, 89 min). Venue Information.
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PETS (Cult Revival)
Music Box – Friday & Saturday, midnight
One of the definitive works of the "California sleaze" genre, PETS is a sun-drenched S&M slave fantasy, with girls-next-door whipping wealthy old men while wearing tight sweaters and mini-skirts and enviable lechers keeping blondes as playthings. It's the kind of smut that derives its power from the perceived innocence of its characters: girls who "fall" into romances, men rendered senseless (or even abusive) by the prospect of sex. The stagy beach house settings make even murder seem like a slight vice. The film is presented by as part of a series by Michelle Clifford and Bill Landis, editors of Sleazoid Express. (dir. Raphael Nussbaum, 1974, 103 min). More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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SORRY, WRONG NUMBER (Classic Revival)
Music Box – Saturday & Sunday, 11:30am
Invented at roughly the same time as film, it should come as no surprise that for over a century telephones have provided the axis of suspense for many taut thrillers, from D.W. Griffith's LONELY VILLA in 1909 to Joel Schumacher's PHONEBOOTH in 2002. Separating people in space, but not in time, phones demand that people helplessly listen while evil deeds are underway. Aural connection first leads to physical paralysis, but gives way to new, more creative forms of action. Anatole Litvak's SORRY, WRONG NUMBER, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster and based on a popular radio play, is just such a film; Stanwyck plays a wealthy, bedridden hypochondriac who overhears a television conversation about a murder being plotted. (1948, 89 min, 35mm). More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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DAUGHTER OF KELTOUM (New Foreign)
Facets Cinematheque – Saturday & Sunday, 3pm
Facets continues its presentation of the African Traveling Film Festival with DAUGHTER OF KELTOUM. "A young woman, Rallia, raised in Switzerland, travels to an isolated and barren Berber settlement located in the rocky Atlas Mountains of Algeria. Rallia's journey is one of multi-tiered discovery in terms of her relationship to her extended family, traditional Berber culture, and her desperate need to locate her biological mother. Through her eyes, the viewer is immersed in a world virtually untouched by contemporary society, one that still clings to tribal mores and strict religious codes of conduct. Mehdi Charef skillfully captures the windswept vistas of a faraway mountain range with wide camera angles that frame the harsh environs and the desperate daily search for water, the responsibility of the resilient women of the Berber tribe." Text from the Facets website. (2001, 106 mins, 35mm). More info at www.facets.org.
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FRESH MODE: Exploring the Four Pillars of Hip Hop (Documentary)
Chicago Cultural Center – Friday, Saturday, Sunday
The ubiquitous presence of mainstream rap has obscured hip-hop's origin as well as its continuing presence at less visible levels of urban American culture. This four-part series of independent documentaries will cover the "four pillars" of hip-hop: deejays, emcees, b-boys, and graffiti artists. Friday brings FREESTYLE: THE ART OF RHYME (2000, 72 min; screening Friday, 7pm) an experiment in "improvisational cinema" inspired by the hip-hop mixtape format and featuring some well-known MCs; Saturday's screening of THE FRESHEST KIDS: A HISTORY OF THE B-BOY (2002, 91 min; screening Saturday, 7pm) provides exactly that, as it traces the development of breakdancing from the South Bronx into the mainstream media and then across the globe; finally, Sunday wraps up the series with ROCK FRESH (2004, 81 min; screening, Sunday 1pm), a portrait of graffiti artists that examines interplay between commercial imperitives and artistic honesty. The movies will be screening in the Cassidy Theatre at the Cultural Center, 78 E Washington, downtown [map].
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Spike Lee's SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT (Revival w/ Lecture)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday & Tuesday, 6pm
The Film Center's African American Auteurs lecture/screening series, now entering its final phase with a focus on the films of Spike Lee, provides ideal circumstances for engaging the director's vital polemics. Lee's first feature, SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT--a bold, vocal sex comedy that earned many times its shoestring budget at the box office--firmly established the director's reputation as a commercially viable, formally inventive, and intensely argumentative filmmaker. Though it lacks the pointed political agenda of his other films in this series, the narrative's radical (if outrageously sexist in the eyes of many feminist critics) treatment of race and gender deserve the rigorous examination and discussion that film scholar Jacqueline Stewart will be leading before and following Tuesday's showing. (1986, 84 min). More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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THIS WEEK AT DOC FILMS (Classic Revivals)
With the exception of Douglas Sirk’s now-canonical WRITTEN ON THE WIND--which, though readily available for home viewing, undoubtedly belongs on the big screen--this week’s DOC line-up specializes in overlooked talent. Beginning Sunday with a program of “Fatty” Arbuckle shorts, the week continues with MR. LUCKY, an obscure Cary Grant comedy directed by the blacklisted H.C. Potter; part one of THE HUMAN CONDITION, Masaki Kobayashi’s (KWAIDAN, SAMURAI REBELLION) nine-hour epic—and one of the most ambitious of all Japanese films—about a pacifist thrown into a series of armed conflicts; and SVENGALI, a short 30s horror film starring the brilliant and doomed John Barrymore. Full schedule and details at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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ASIAN AMERICAN SHOWCASE (Contemporary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
The Asian American Showcase not only exposes Chicago audiences to an increasingly vibrant part of the American independent film scene, but also demonstrates how themes and ideas key to the Asian American experience manifest themselves cinematically across multiple genres; the sense of community the festival seeks to foster is bolstered by the fact that nearly every filmmaker will be present to answer questions. This week's highlights include FINISHING THE GAME, a Bruce Lee mockumentary directed by Justin Lin, an key figure in Asian American indie film; THE OWL AND THE SPARROW, a film shot by an American director guerrilla-style in Vietnam; THE CATS OF MIRIKITANI, a documentary about Jimmy Mirikitani, the New York outsider artist who was raised in Hiroshima and spent his time in an American internment camp; and KORYO SARAM: THE UNRELIABLE PEOPLE, a documentary about Stalin's campaign against Korean immigrants in Russia, paired with AND THEREAFTER II, which relates the experiences of a Korean war bride. This week also brings several free special events hosted by the festival, including an exhibit at the Film Center of "remakes" of classic works of art inspired by the trend towards remakes and sequels in contemporary cinema. More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

STILL SHOWING:

Bong Joon-ho's THE HOST (New Foreign)
Landmark Century Centre – Screening Daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
Fifty-odd years after GODZILLA v.1.0, America’s imperial recklessness has birthed a new Asian cine-monster. THE HOST is a truly unconventional megablockbuster with a surprisingly sharp conscience, pushing the boundaries of CG technology and sci-fi absurdism, and developing insightful political subtext throughout. J. Hoberman: “Bong has no difficulty integrating the horrifying, the stooge-like, and the everyday. (In that, he's even more extreme than our own masters of sociologic shock schlock—George Romero, Larry Cohen, and Joe Dante). Just as grisly bio-horror is tricked out with cheesy effects and inappropriate music, so do spasms of naturalistic grief-coping alternate with pop-eyed slapstick.” This film has broken every box office record in its native South Korea; in our collective dreams, the U.S. top grosser would be half as good. (2007, 119 min).
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ALSO PLAYING

*Recommended by the Chicago Reader

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Contributors this week: Erika Balsom, Kalvin Henely, Nathan Holmes, Mike King, Ben Sachs, Ignatius Vishnevetsky, Ethan White, Darnell Witt

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