CRUCIAL VIEWING
The 20th Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival
Year after year, the Onion City Festival brings tons of the most striking and relevant works of contemporary experimental film, video, and new media to Chicago from artists living all around the globe. This year's line-up, which follows in the footsteps of last Thursday's mind-blowing Opening Night program, is so staggering in its scope and importance that no single paragraph could possibly describe all of its crucial offerings.
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Group Shows 1-6 – Chicago Filmmakers – Showtimes noted below
Group Show 1 (Saturday, 4pm) starts off with a pair of stylistically disparate films by UK filmmaker Rosalind Nashashibi. BACHELOR MACHINES PART 1 (2007, 30 min, 16mm) is a captivating, fragmentary documentary of a ship at sea, while BACHELOR MACHINES PART 2 (2007, 5 min, 16mm x 2) is a mysterious, poetic, menacing double projection—a great film, and easily the highlight of the show. Also on this program: Lithuanian artist Deimantas Narkevicius's REVISITING SOLARIS (2007, 18 mins, video), an adaptation of the last chapter of the famous Lem novel (unfilmed by Tarkovsky), plus work by Michael Wechsler, Riccardo Iacono, and The Speculative Archive.
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In Group Show 2 (Saturday, 7pm), dedicated to local artist Zack Stiglicz (1952-2007), we find his excellent GOD THE PUGILIST (1996, 10 min, 16mm); master animator Lewis Klahr's first foray into digital video, ANTIGENIC DRIFT (2007, 17 min, video); and Luke Sieczek's PHANTOM (2007, 6 min, video), which captures and distills some of the eerie yearning of Jacques Tourneur's CAT PEOPLE. Also in this program: work by Daïchi Saïto, Vincent Grenier, Dietmar Brehm, Jake Barningham, and Paul Abbott.
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The heart of Group Show 3 (Saturday, 9pm) is in the landscape. Ben Rivers brings us a black and white widescreen celebration of work, play, and family in a junky utopia with his masterpiece AH, LIBERTY! (2008, 20 mins, 16mm widescreen). Ostensibly a comment on gaze and self portraiture by two Belgian artists, ANDROA AUTOPORTRAIT (2006, 16 min, video) is really an opportunity to appreciate the physicality of cameraman Androa Kolo and the lushness of the Kinshasa Fine Arts Academy. Also in this program: work by Michael Robinson, Laida Lertxundi, and Corinna Schnitt.
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The longest and best work in Group Show 4 (Sunday, 3:30pm) is Madison Brookshire's OPENING (2007, 25 min, 16mm)—a delicate, heartfelt, and humble observation of the filmmaker's environment. Beginning and ending with intimate interior scenes, the film's graceful eye shows an unhurried day. More perspectives from the respectfully observant eyes of master filmmakers are found in Charlotte Pryce's excellent DISCOVERIES ON THE FOREST FLOOR 1-3 (2007, 4 min, 16mm), which studies plant life, and Robert Todd's RING (2007, 15 min, 16mm), which uses glimpsed imagery of nature and play, superimposition, and rephotography to explore pulsing, waving light. Also on this program: work by Robbie Land, Chi Jang Yin, Peter Bo Rappmund, and Paul Lloyd Sargent.
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A program of work that explores interior spaces and reworks preexisting imagery, Group Show 5 (Sunday, 6pm) features a nice mix of familiar and new names. Robert Todd's SPIRIT HOUSE (2008, 11 min, 16mm) is a film of delicate interiors at dusk. Fred Worden's THE AFTER LIFE (2007, 7 min, video) isn't as good as last year's shatteringly brilliant EVERYDAY BAD DREAMS, but any new work by Worden is of interest. Eriko Sonoda's GARDEN/ING (2007, 6 min, video) shifts and flattens spaces with depth effects and windows. Also in this program: work by Jim Jennings, Deborah Stratman, lia, Adele Friedman, Masha Godovannaya, Peter Miller, and Keith Tassick.
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There is a giant rift in Group Show 6 (Sunday, 8pm), which is probably the best show of the entire festival. There are remarkably subtle, quiet, domestic films like Abraham Ravett's staggering TZIPORAH (2007, 7 min, 16mm), and Nicky Hamlyn's QUARTET (2007, 8 min, 16mm); and then there are three new works each by Michael Robinson and Luther Price, for whom "quiet" would not apply even in silent work. Also in this program: work by uniformly excellent Jennifer Fieber, Karo Goldt, and Jonathan Schwartz. JM
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Ben Russell / Shana Moulton – The Nightingale – Friday, 7pm / 9pm
On Friday night, Onion City takes the party to Noble Square. At 7pm, look for Ethnographic Asides: Films by Ben Russell, a showcase of recent work by one of Chicago's finest current experimental filmmakers. On the slate are three shorts, including the continuation of his mesmerizing BLACK AND WHITE TRYPPS series and a new feature, THE WET SEASON (TJÚBA TÉN), co-directed by Brigid McCaffery. Russell's output is a potent combination of experimental art and ethnographic study, providing both sly humor and rich visual constructions along with subject matter informed by a critical curiosity about the various worlds he inhabits—whether these are the exotic landscapes he visits, or the petri dish of experimental cinema itself (69 min TRT, 16mm). At 9pm, Brooklyn-based video/performance artist Shana Moulton will present CYNTHIA'S MOMENT, a collection of recent pieces from her episodic WHISPERING PINES series. Moulton plays the series' central character, Cynthia, a lonely hypochondriac who attempts to transcend her ailments using the schlocky accoutrements of new age/self-help culture, and sometimes succeeds. Like a Lisa Frank fever dream, Moulton's imaginative use of low-fi production methods, juicy pop-culture tidbits, and vibrant color are good at generating laughter, but her earnest delivery elevates the work above snark to a serious exploration of contemporary consumerism, the "feminist aesthetic," and the dwindling possibility of human liberation (50 min TRT, video). CL
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Sight-Lines – Gallery 400 (400 S Peoria St) – Wednesday, 7pm
Onion City just piles on the cinematic good times with this companion screening of older, out-of-competition work by festival participants. These aren't the established classics of personal filmmaking, but if you love what you see during the festival proper come out and see these "deep cuts." In this program: JERRY TAKES A BACK SEAT, THEN PASSES OUT OF THE PICTURE (1987, 11 min) by the great Ken Jacobs, also featured in the gallery's "Focus Pull" installation show; PISTRINO (2003, 9 min) by Nicky Hamlyn, from Group Show 6; MUKTIKARA (1999, 11 min) by Jeanne Liotta, from the brilliant Opening Night program; a restored classic by animator Larry Jordan (another Opening Night vet), entitled SPECTRE MYSTAGOGIC (1957, 8 min); plus SOFT TICKET (2004, 7 min) and ENGRAM SEPALS (2000, 6 min), by another experimental animation genius: Lewis Klahr, of Group Show 2 and "Focus Pull" fame. (Various formats) JM
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Festival Schedule available at www.chicagofilmmakers.org/onion_fest/onion.html.
Details of Gallery 400's "Focus Pull" exhibition here.
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Noir City, USA (Classic Revivals)
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ROAD HOUSE / KISS OF DEATH – Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
The Siskel’s retrospective of Fox noirs, which has become a de facto tribute to the recently departed Richard Widmark, charges on with his infamous big-screen debut. Widmark stole the show as snickering sadist Tommy Udo in KISS OF DEATH (1947, 98 min, 35mm; Saturday 3pm & Monday, 7:45pm), permanently sealing his typecast fate as a psychopathic loose cannon with a single, indelible image (tossing a wheelchair-bound grandmother down a flight of stairs), and setting the template for decades of the gleeful violence that has become as much a part of Hollywood’s stock-in-trade as suppressed sexuality and happy endings. That one you can Netflix, but the real treat for noirphiles this week are three treasures incomprehensibly unavailable on DVD, especially given the studios’ eagerness to apply the noir mantle to just about anything in black and white and featuring lots of guns. In between his string of decent MALTESE FALCON rip-offs and best-forgotten early CinemaScopers, Jean Negulesco unleashed the overheated backwoods hellraiser ROAD HOUSE (1948, 95 min, 35mm; Friday, 6pm & Saturday, 5pm). Set in a deep country watering hole rowdy enough to put the Double Deuce to shame, proprietors Widmark and Cornell Wilde compete for the affections of the club’s entertainment, Ida Lupino (herself director of a few noirs). The overwhelmingly dark atmosphere is amplified by the remoteness of the setting—removed from the standard urban context, a corridor of trees is revealed to be just as panic-inducing as any dark alleyway: an association capitalized on by horror films from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE to whatever CHAINSAW MASSACRE wannabe is topping the box office this week. That said, ROAD HOUSE is also a lot more fun than your average noir, as Widmark, apparently too green to recognize the perils of typecasting, turns in another volatile performance.
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Joseph H. Lewis's SO DARK THE NIGHT – Doc Films – Wednesday, 8pm
Andre De Toth's SLATTERY’S HURRICANE – Doc Films – Thursday, 8pm
Across town, Doc’s summer calendar starts off with the tantalizing prospect of SO DARK THE NIGHT (1946, 71 min, 16mm), a rare film by Joseph H. Lewis, who three years later created the definitive meditation on America’s overlapping obsessions with sex and violence: the often imitated, never surpassed GUN CRAZY. Widmark turns up again in the Fox’s SLATTERY’S HURRICANE (1949, 87 min, 35mm), mysteriously absent from the Siskel series. Directed by the undervalued Andre de Toth and costarring his then-wife Veronica Lake, Reader critic Fred Camper contends that this film contains “one of he most spectacular camera movements in all cinema.” ROAD HOUSE, SO DARK THE NIGHT, and SLATTERY’S HURRICANE are all unavailable on DVD, so consider yourself booked this week. MK
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More info at www.siskelflimcenter.org and www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Noir addicts are also advised to check out Rudolph Maté's fatalistic D.O.A. at the Bank of America Cinema (see separate listing below).
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BLIND MOUNTAIN (Chinese Contemporary)
Facets Cinémathèque – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
BLIND SHAFT (2003), the first fiction film by former documentarian Li Yang, is one of the best mainland Chinese films of the decade—an intense drama about the nation’s corrupt mining industry with long hand-held takes and an overall verisimilitude worthy of the Dardenne brothers. BLIND MOUNTAIN, Yang’s second feature, is said to advance these stylistic elements while retaining the social awareness that gave such urgency to his debut. A young college graduate is promised a good job in a northern Chinese village when she is really being sold into marriage; the rest of the film depicts her horrific captivity and attempts at escape. The premise sounds almost unbearably depressing (though not implausible—it occurs with upsetting regularity in contemporary China), but Yang is such a compelling storyteller that his work transcends simple reportage. Following recent runs of Jia Zhang-ke’s STILL LIFE and Lou Ye’s SUMMER PALACE, this belated Chicago premiere continues an astonishing year of Chinese imports. (2007, 95 min, 35mm). BS
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More info at www.facets.org.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED
HOUSE OF WAX / KING KONG vs. GODZILLA (Classic Revival)
Portage Theater – Friday, 8pm
Vincent Price: an actor who was always a special effect. When the producers knew they couldn't get a convincing castle or monster, they could at least count on affording Price's rates. Like his successor Christopher Lee, Price was never scary. He was weird, handsome, like a pathetic Mephistopheles with a voice like a feline Orson Welles. Like Stepin Fetchit, he'd stop a scene by opening his mouth. He was memorable; like Beatrice Dalle, Harpo Marx, or Arnold Schwarzenegger; he had a presence that was completely invasive. HOUSE OF WAX (1953, 90 min, 35mm), originally shot for the 3D format, stands with CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER as one of the best Price films extant, because it has imagination as lurid as Price's domination of the screen. Director Andre de Toth is the ringleader of a studio circus, whipping cameramen, decorators, and supporting actors into a display of acrobatics and sword-swallowing. Every sequence is like the cover of a pulp paperback. Filling out the double bill is KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1962, 91 min, 35mm), directed by Tom Montgomery and Ishirô Honda, the great showman of miniature effects and space monsters who treated every plot development the way a vaudevillian would perform a familiar song. IV
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More info at www.portagetheater.org.
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AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (Classic Revival)
Music Box (Matinee Series) – Saturday & Sunday, 11:30am
John Sayles's LIMBO has nothing on this ending: a magnificent seventeen-minute ballet, and then suddenly The End. What will happen between Gene Kelley and Leslie Caron? Perhaps Vincente Minnelli's wisest insight was knowing that we wouldn't really care. Seen today it's the details that grab your attention: It's: the artfully faux-Paris, artificial settings executed with such skill even the bottles behind the bar in a café become a study in early ’50s M,G.M, production design. It's the Gershwin, of course (there are at least eleven of his tunes on the soundtrack). And, more than anything, it’s Oscar Levant, stealing every scene he's in—a particularly memorable dream sequence finds him conducting an orchestra of his own doppelgangers. And who can deny that the real sparks fly between Levant and Kelley, not Kelley and Caron? It's irrelevant whether or not you actually buy Kelley as a painter—the Technicolor is such an eyeful and the score so tuneful that it's enough to sit in a darkened theatre and drink it in. (1951, 113 min, 35mm) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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Edmond O'Brien in D.O.A. (Classic Revival)
Bank of America Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
Cinematographer Rudolphe Maté lensed a number of pictures that need never really fear being forgotten—little items like Dreyer's PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC and VAMPYR may serve to blind the weary browser, but there's also LILLIOM, Fritz Lang's first film in (temporarily French) exile, the eye-popping early Spencer Tracy gimcrack DANTE'S INFERNO, and the seminal/inscrutable GILDA, among many others—but in his second career as a director of comparatively insignificant genre fare, he more than holds his own: He managed to destroy the world with no small panache in the George Pal spectacular WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951), ended his days helming colorful Euro-puddings like THE 300 SPARTANS (1962), and escorted ye olde film noir to the kind of radically obvious apotheosis even old boss Lang never managed. With Edmond O'Brien excelling as ever in the role of a not-quite-sympathetic yet not-quite-unattractive hero, literally destined from reel one to suffer and die on account of his own bourgeois mediocrity, D.O.A. is a pivotal text in the argument that noir was a tendency largely made up of a concentrated and misanthropic fatalism. A stripped-down engine designed to run on little more than the fumes rising from the ancient trope of an inescapable doom, D.O.A. functions as two films at once: a corking little whodunit filled with colorful, shady characters and unlikely motivations; and then a much more alarming number about the futility of knowledge and action in the phenomenal world—a world peopled pretty much exclusively by the walking dead. Since it long ago fell into the public domain, the only decent way to see D.O.A. is projected—the opportunity should not be missed. (1950, 83 min, 16mm) JD
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Venue info at www.cine-file.info/venues/lasalle.html.
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Dario Argento's INFERNO (Cult Revival)
Music Box – Friday & Saturday, Midnight / Wednesday, 2:40pm
Fans of Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA, take note! The second installment in Argento's Le Tre Madri (The Three Witches) trilogy, INFERNO, should be a surreal and disorienting way to spend the witching hour this weekend. It's certainly good timing on the Music Box's part, as the long awaited (and supremely gory) third film of the trilogy, MOTHER OF TEARS, just began a run in New York and LA, and should reach Chicago the first week of July. INFERNO picks up ten years after SUSPIRIA left off, following Rose Eliot, New York poet, as she discovers that her apartment is one of the residences of the Three Witches. She reveals her discovery to her brother in Rome. Murder ensues. The film, when released, failed to live up to the success of its predecessor, but has since been heralded as an underrated horror gem by the likes of author/journalist Kim Newman. Come for the supernatural Giallo terror, stay for the musical score by prog-rocker Keith Emerson. (1980, 107 min) CS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com
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More from the Gene Siskel Film Center
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Visconti: Week 1 (Retrospective) – Showtimes noted below
Even if he claimed to be a lifelong communist, Count Luchino Visconti di Modrone remains cinema's definitive aristocrat. He co-invented neorealism but abandoned it for the filmic equivalent of neoclassicism. His films about the upper class are made under the assumption that manor-house living is the norm; his films about the poor are decorated with a baroque poverty, the attention to detail of someone trying to depict a culture they can't quite understand. Visconti's merits are the same as his flaws and, interestingly enough, the Film Center begins its near-complete retrospective of the director with the two films that illustrate how these very tendencies could bring out the best and worst in him. DEATH IN VENICE (1971, 130 min, 35mm) is closer in thinking to painter Jacques-Louis David than writer Thomas Mann, on whose novella the film is based; the source of its popularity (it remains Visconti's best-known film in America) is also the source of its guilt: the crime of tastefulness. In contrast, ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (1960, 177 min, 35mm) has no tastefulness and is the better—and freer—for it; neither the tastefulness of being short (it's almost three hours long), nor the tastefulness of being melancholic (its "ugly" unsentimentality is more aching than DEATH IN VENICE's longing), nor even the tastefulness to restrain Visconti's decadent fetishization of impoverished toughness. Cine-File contributor Ben Sachs once said that showing people at work was one of the most subversive things a film could do. Visconti's approach to indicating that his characters are poor is to show their threadbare clothes or harsh living conditions. He never understood that the worst thing about being working class isn't having few possessions, but the working itself. Still, what he sets out to do in ROCOO AND HIS BROTHERS is subversive in its odd, aristocratic way: to create a beggar's opera. IV
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Romanian Cinema Rising (Retrospective) – Showtimes noted below
Like the acclaimed 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST, THE PAPER WILL BE BLUE (2006, 95 min, 35mm; Sunday, 5:45pm & Wednesday, 6pm) explores the collapse of Nicolae Ceausescu’s totalitarian rule. But where Corneliu Porumboiu’s comedy was about the legacy of this watershed event, Radu Muntean’s film is set during the explosive evening itself. Muntean uses a national militia troop as his protagonists—torn between the falling national order and the growing masses of protesters set upon invading the capital. Fans of new Romanian cinema should find much to admire in this film, considered by many international critics to be a highlight of the current wave that also includes THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU and 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS. As in these other great works, Muntean uses suspense-film techniques to imagine the force of history as it occurs. Also playing this week is the recent melodrama LOVE SICK (2006, 85 min, 35mm; Friday, 8pm & Monday, 6pm), about the romantic entanglements of young college students. Acclaimed for its talented young cast and understated eroticism, the film stands as an accomplished chamber drama amidst the more allegorical fare emerging from this vibrant national cinema. BS
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More info at www.siskelflimcenter.org.
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Runs at the Music Box
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UP THE YANGTZE – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
This Canadian documentary takes as its subject the same location as Jia Zhang-ke’s recent STILL LIFE: the soon-to-be-destroyed towns along the Yangtze River, which was flooded over in 2005 to make way the world’s largest hydroelectric dam. Director Yung Chang devotes much of her attention the surreal “farewell cruises” that follow the historic river, treating mostly Western tourists to the spectacle of crumbling communities. As with STILL LIFE, the film considers the paradox of economic opportunity amongst devastation—as well as the attitudes it inspires in the generation growing up within it. Wrote Scott Foundas in his Village Voice review, “By journey's end, Yung has found, in the Yangtze, a brilliant natural metaphor for upward mobility in modern China: Whether they hail from the lowlands or the urban centers, everyone here is scrambling to reach higher ground.” (2007, 93 min, 35mm) BS
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SANGRE DE MI SANGRE
– Check Reader Movies for showtimes
SANGRE DE MI SANGRE ("Blood of my Blood") is the Spanish-language debut feature by New York writer-director Christopher Zalla, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Zalla's story focuses on the intertwined lives of Pedro and Juan, two Mexican seventeen-year-olds who travel by trailer truck to Brooklyn, along with a group of other undocumented immigrants. Pedro searches the city for the father that he has never met with the help of street gamine, Magda; Juan usurps Pedro's quest and his identity by taking his belongings and gaining the trust of Pedro's elusive father, Diego. The rival "Pedros" clash in the strange and dark city, longing for a family, an identity, and a life of opportunities (their version of the American Dream). With splendid performances by the actors, natural dialogue between them, and well-crafted photography, SANGRE boldly depicts the semi-invisible lives of one of America's undocumented communities. (2007, 110 min, 35mm) VN
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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THE STRANGERS (Contemporary Horror)
Logan Theater – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Evoking the formal mastery of Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and Tobe Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE without the classism or misogyny of either, Bryan Bertino's debut feature THE STRANGERS is also one of the few authentically scary movies in recent U.S. cinema. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman—who register as human beings and not simply victims—play a thirty-something couple terrorized by the title group over a long, dark night in the woods. Bertino discloses no more background information than necessary, and his film is thankfully devoid of self-referential asides.What he delivers instead is eighty minutes of ingeniously suggestive shocks, framed and edited with a careful, almost classical aesthetic; his use of music—which ranges from Merle Haggard to Joanna Newsom—is effective as well. For only $3 at the Logan (perhaps the city's last true shrine for genre entertainment), this is one of the best deals in town. (2008, 80 min, 35mm) BS
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Venue map and information here.
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MORE SCREENINGS & EVENTS:
Starting this week, the Caro d'Offay Gallery in Wicker Park will host a retrospective of photographs by Fred Camper, Chicago's preeminent experimental film critic. Camper will be present Saturday at 4pm to discuss his varied interests in painting, music, cinema, architecture, science, mathematics, wilderness travel, and bicycling, and how they influence his work.
In case you didn't get enough of experimental animator Larry Jordan's gorgeous, mind-boggling collage films at the Onion City Fest, drop by Facets this Sunday at 12:30pm for a $5 preview screening of their forthcoming DVD compilation, THE LAWRENCE JORDAN ALBUM.
If you missed Jacques Rivette's striking Balzac adaptation THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS last week at the Landmark Century, don't neglect another week of opportunities to bask in the aged director's enduring brilliance. See contributor Jeremy Davies's coverage on last week's LIST.
Also playing at the Landmark Century this week is REFUSENIKS, a comprehensive documentary about the grassroots struggle to free Soviet Jews.
GLASS: A PORTRAIT OF PHILIP IN TWELVE PARTS, a documentary about the life and career of composer Philip Glass, premieres this week at the Film Center. |
