CRUCIAL VIEWING

James Whale's THE GREAT GARRICK (Classic Revival)
LaSalle Bank Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
During his short career, which ran roughly from the advent of "talkies" to America's entry into WWII, British-born Hollywood director James Whale made films that combined a theatrical penchant for mood and atmosphere with an uncommon awareness of the qualities particular to cinema. In some of Whale's greatest and best-known films, such as BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, a hybrid genre becomes the context for insightful explorations of cinema's affect on viewers; period-comedy THE GREAT GARRICK is no exception. The multiple layers of truth at play in Whale's reflexive yet extremely entertaining scenario become poignant analogies for audiences' acceptance of narrative form and cinematic "reality." Brian Aherne stars as the title character, a British actor subjected to an elaborate prank at the hands of vindictive French actors who are, in turn, unaware that he knows he's being had. (1937, 89 min, 16mm). Read David Lugowski's excellent overview of Whale's films at in Senses of Cinema here. Venue Information.
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Charles Burnett's THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH + WHEN IT RAINS (Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm
The Film Center wraps up the Charles Burnett segment of its African American Auteurs series with these exceptionally rare works (both prints have bee provided courtesy of Burnett himself). Jonathan Rosenbaum called WHEN IT RAINS (1995, 13 min, 16mm) one of the 10 greatest films of the 90s, noting in the Chicago Reader that this “jazz parable about locating common roots in contemporary Watts [is] one of those rare movies in which jazz forms directly influence film narrative.” THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH (1999, 108 min, 35mm), a comedy-drama starring Lynn Redgrave and James Earl Jones as aging neighbors whose active fantasy lives complicate their budding romance. A more character-driven effort from Burnett, the film makes clear the plainspoken and artisanal touch to be found in every aspect of his movies—from dialogue and location to pacing and thematic developments. More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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Chantal Akerman's JEANNE DIELMAN... (Underground Revival)
NWesternAve – Wednesday, 7pm
NWA continues its series of commercially unavailable francophone masterworks with a presentation of Chantal Akerman's JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES. Widely considered one of the greatest feminist/avant-garde films of the 1970s as well as Akerman's personal best, this narrative experiment presents three days in the life of the eponymous character, a middle-aged single mother and part-time prostitute. Questioning notions of "women's work," boredom, routine, and duration, the film plays with a spectatorial vacillation between attention and distraction that forces the viewer to notice the ways in which repetition is never a reproduction of the same, but rather a complex fusion of sameness and difference. Jonathan Rosenbaum writes, "By placing so much emphasis on aspects of life and work that other films routinely omit, mystify, or skirt over, Akerman forges a major statement, not only in a feminist context but also in a way that tells us something about the lives we all live." (Belgium, 1976, 201 min, DVD). More info at NWesternAve.com.
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VLADMASTER! (Experimental / Special Event)
Conversations at the Edge / Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm
Portland artist Vladimir elevates the View-Master to high art with her hand-made stereoscopic Vladmasters, repurposing the plastic viewers for extraordinary public performances. Drawing upon Greek legends, entomology, and newspapers, her “films” are 28-frame haikus, photographed from richly detailed dioramas and set to her artfully composed soundtracks-including chimes and dings. Thursday, Vladimir will present a brief survey of her output, including LUCIFUGIA THIGMOTAXIS (2004); THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JEREMIAH BARNES (2004); ACTAEON AT HOME (2005); and FEAR & TREMBLING (2006). View-Masters will be provided. Text by Amy Beste, CATE. (2004-6, 64 min). More information and tons of images at www.vladmaster.com. Screening details at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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SACRIFICE / LEPER / BURIAL: 3 Films by Ellen Bruno (Documentary)
Facets Cinematheque – Screening Daily, check Reader Movies for showtimes
A humanitarian relief worker for more than two decades, Ellen Bruno's documentaries are suffused with a poetic empathy that only highlights the moral outrage her subject matter rightly elicits. "SACRIFICE examines the selling of Burmese girls (some as young as 12) into prostitution in Thailand; LEPER travels to Nepal to meet a society of lepers in a remote village, victims of a disease that has ravaged people's lives since ancient times; SKY BURIAL records a Tibetan monastery ritual in which corpses are consumed by huge vultures, allowing the cycle of life to continue as the spirits of the deceased merge with the sky." The Village Voice writes, "It's the depth of Bruno's commitment--not to abstract principles of liberal idealism, but to flesh-and-blood people--that creates tension within her films." (1998-2005, 85 min, BetaSP). More info at www.facets.org.
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EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL (New Foreign)
Gene Siskel Film Center
Throughout March, the Film Center will be running its 10th Annual European Union Film Festival, featuring 55 new films from 24 countries. This year's lineup includes works by some of the greatest living filmmakers as well as enticing genre cinema from all over the continent. This week's highlights:
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REGULAR LOVERS (France)
Although almost never distributed in America, Philippe Garrel has been an important presence in French filmmaking since the late 60s. In 1968, while Godard and others were making films committed to political change, Garrel produced LE RELEVATEUR: a 70-minute, non-narrative silent film about the futility of action. His latest three hour epic, REGULAR LOVERS (2005, 178 min, 35mm), takes up this concern in its detailing of the aftermath of May '68, standing as a sharply critical response to Bertolucci's THE DREAMERS (both films star Garrel's son, Louis). Through a loose narrative of love, alienation, and disillusionment, it counteracts Bertolucci's romanticizing tendencies with a graceful understatement; the film's beautiful, high contrast black-and-white cinematography absolutely must be seen on the big screen. Read C-F contributor Gabe Klinger's FIPRESCI article here. Screening Saturday, 3pm, and Monday, 6:30pm.
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GHOSTS (Germany)
Co-written by noted documentarian Harun Farocki, this disturbing drama updates a Grimm Brothers tale to address contemporary fears. The plot concerns a teenager drifter and two parents seeking their abducted daughter, but according to German critic Marco Abel, the film's visual language is the highlight. Ranking director Christian Petzold among the most important new German filmmakers, Abel describes his style thusly: “As a result of the very precision of the images, the objects imaged are ultimately removed from “reality”, but it is this very removal that ultimately infuses these images… with a surprising vitality and, indeed, powerful purchase on Germany in the post-wall period.” (2005, 85 min, 35mm). Screening Friday, 6:30pm & Saturday, 6:15pm.
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UNREQUITED LOVE: ON STALKING AND BEING STALKED (UK)
Dennis Lim of the Village Voice raves: “Best of all [the films at the Rotterdam Film Festival], London cine-essayist and psychogeographer Chris Petit’s UNREQUITED LOVE is a Chris Marker-like meditation on the metaphysics of stalking, a ‘love story in long shot’ told largely through CCTV p.o.v.’s and dense with erudite digressions.” The director explains his embrace of multiple film forms in more sociological terms: “I like films that show a process; here, the emotional transfer between stalker and the stalked.” (2006, 77 min, DigiBeta Video). Screening Friday, 6:15pm & Sunday, 5:15pm.
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EXTERMINATING ANGELS (France)
Though the latest from controversial French director Jean-Claude Brisseau supposedly revolves around "transgressive female sexuality"--a topic it engages only in the most superficial terms--it has far more to say about the heterosexual male tendency to observe and exploit under the pretense of art. Brisseau was successfully sued for sexual harassment by women who auditioned for his previous film, SECRET THINGS (2002), and here he brings this experience to the screen: we follow a filmmaker obsessed with uncovering the secret of female pleasure, pursued by horny lady angels with a cruel agenda and emotionally unstable actresses whose secret exhibitionist desires are matched only by their lust for vengeance. Attempting reflexive satire even as it begs to be taken seriously, the film's ultimately impotent Buñuel and Lynch throwbacks don't prevent it from creating a successfully unsettling absurdism all its own. EXTERMINATING ANGELS is highly relevant and undoubtedly provocative, though high-minded European art cinema it is not. (2006, 102 min, 35mm). Screening Saturday, 8pm.
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ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS, the film that swept this year's Goya Awards, shows Spanish filmmaker Isabel Croixet (MY LIFE WITHOUT ME) working with the underrated Sarah Polley, Tim Robbins, and a North Sea oil rig; THE GREAT COMMUNIST BANK ROBBERY is a documentary that imparts the Kiarostami-esque tale of train robbers forced by the Romanian government to re-enact their crime on film.
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Full program details at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED

3RD I: Selections from the Film South Asia Fest. (New Foreign Shorts)
Chicago Filmmakers – Friday, 7pm & Sunday, 7pm
These two programs of new South Asian documentaries selected from the Traveling Film South Asia Festival are the first installment in a series co-presented by the University of Chicago South Asia Language and Area Center, 3rd I South Asian Independent Film Chicago, the Center for Asian Arts and Media at Columbia College, and Chicago Filmmakers . Friday's screening includes CITY OF PHOTOS (2005, 60 min), which explores the unique studio photography of various Indian cities, and TEAM NEPAL (2005, 37 min), which chronicles Nepali youth football team as they travel to India, with University of Chicago professor Karin Zitzewitz on hand to lead a discussion. On Sunday, C.M. Naim, Professor Emeritus of Urdu Language at U of C, will present THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A LADY FROM AVADH: HIMA, a feature-length documentary about Pakistani history after the fall of the Mughal Empire in the 18th century seen through the lens of the aforementioned lady. An additional screening of films from India and South Africa will take place Thursday at Columbia College's Film Row Cinema. Read the Press Release for full details.
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A CHILD'S LOVE STORY (New Foreign)
Facets Cinematheque – Saturday & Sunday, 1pm
Facets kicks off its African Traveling Film Festival with this coming-of-age story set in Dakar. A CHILD'S LOVE STORY follows the shifting relationships among a group of five boys and girls. From different social classes and family backgrounds, they nevertheless attempt to maintain their friendships amidst the vicissitudes experienced by society at large. This tender and engaging portrait of urban pre-adolescents won the UNICEF Award for the Promotion of Children's Rights at the Festival Panafricain du Cinéma de Ouagadougou (FESPACO 2005). Text adapted from FESPACO website. (dir. Ben Diogaye Beye, 2004, 94 min). More info at www.facets.org.
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Frank Capra's THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN (Classic Revival)
Music Box – Saturday & Sunday, 11:30am
Created just before he found his Americana niche, Frank Capra's first masterpiece veered into Josef von Sternberg territory, complete with breathtaking cinematography, somnambulist pacing, and a scantily-clad, stone-faced starlet in opulent captivity (Barbara Stanwyck). The story of a Christian missionary held hostage by a love-struck Chinese general is oddly suited to Capra's peculiar brand of broad-stroke moral confusion. The first film to play Radio City Music Hall, this is Big Screen entertainment: the tension between the crowded visuals and hushed ambiance uses an archaic cinematic language that doesn't translate to video. Recreating warlord-era China with fanciful studio sets, Capra anticipates Powell and Pressburger's BLACK NARCISSUS by creating a cinematic Asia out of Western daydreams. (1933, 88 min, 35mm). More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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CHICAGO'S OWN: Documentaries by Columbia College Students
Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 8pm
Chi Filmmakers will be hosting another diverse selection of documentary work by students in Columbia College's Film & Video program. A post-screening Q&A will be moderated by Columbia professor Jeff Spitz. Full program details will be available at www.chicagofilmmakers.org by this weekend.
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THIS WEEK AT DOC FILMS (Classic Revivals)
Doc kicks off a stellar spring season with a week of bold and rare film revivals. Perhaps the most noteworthy: BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE TODA FAMILY (Sunday, 7pm), an opportunity to discover the sparse “middle period” of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, who only made two films in ten years due to WWII. According to Senses of Cinema, “the film marks an important step in the stylistic development of Ozu's cinema. One can see, for instance, the seeds of his elliptical narrative construction being sown at the beginning, when the death of the patriarch is communicated through the reactions of his friends and family…”. Also: Douglas Sirk's gorgeous and heartbreaking dissection of American superficiality, IMITATION OF LIFE (Wednesday, 7 & 9:30pm); Otto Preminger’s LAURA (Monday, 7pm), a singular film noir that embraces plasticity like few films did before Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (the plot involves several men falling in love with a painting); Thursday’s double bill of Tod Browning’s DRACULA (7pm) and Carol Reed’s THE FALLEN IDOL (9pm) highlights the distinctly non-realistic performance styles of Bela Lugosi and Ralph Richardson, respectively. More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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KALUP LINZY (Experimental / Artist Lecture)
SAIC Auditorium – Wednesday, 6pm
New York-based artist Kalup Linzy will present his recent video work--low-budget camp subversions of daytime soap operas featuring a rotating cast of characters, many of whom are played by Linzy himself. Raunchy and open-ended, yet eloquent and observant, his approach has been compared to the early work of John Waters and Andy Warhol. Midway Contemporary Art's John Rasmussen writes, "Through his insertion of the daily stories of individuals who would never make their way onto mainstream television, he offers a humorous undermining of stereotypes surrounding southern black culture, gender, and sexuality." The SAIC auditorium is located at 280 S. Columbus Dr. Visit Linzy's website here. More info at www.saic.edu/vap.
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FRESH MODE: Exploring the Four Pillars of Hip Hop (Documentary)
Chicago Cultural Center – Thursday, 7pm (continuing next week)
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. Thursday's program focuses on the DJ and features KEEPINTIME: TALKING DRUMS AND WHISPERING VINYL (2000, 13 min), a verbal and musical conversation between legendary studio drummers and the generation who sampled their beats, as well as WAVE TWISTERS, an animated sci-fi/kung-fu epic featuring the famed DJ QBert. The next three installments will follow on consecutive nights. The movies will be screening in the Cassidy Theatre at the Cultural Center, 78 E Washington, downtown [map].
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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, Mike King, Ben Sachs, Ignatius Vishnevetsky, Ethan White, Darnell Witt

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