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The Chicago International Film Festival opens on Thursday and runs through October 21. Check our blog beginning
this week for reviews of select films, posted intermittently during
the run of the fest.
CRUCIAL VIEWING
Multiple SIDosis: The Genius of
Sid Laverents (Amateur Film Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University)
- Friday, 7pm
Introductory Admonition: Go See This
Shit! I would venture that most of you have never heard of Sid Laverents.
I had, but just that he was some amateur filmmaker. He had a reputation,
but amateur films are generally not so interesting, right? Turns out
this reputation was deserved. Laverents, who lived to be 100 (a film
hobbyist parallel to Manoel de Oliviera?), was no ordinary amateur.
He began making films at age 50 (after an earlier career as a one-man
band during the Depression) and his work in this program demonstrates
both the influence of the vaudeville tradition and an ironic, dry, and
frequently self-deprecating sense of humor. He would have been right
at home making short films in the 1930s and 40s alongside Edgar Kennedy,
the Pete Smith Specialties, and Robert Benchley. The earliest film showing,
IT SUDSES AND SUDSES AND SUDSES (1963) could easily have been an Edgar
Kennedy comedy. Laverents' wife (played by his wife) stocks up on his
favorite shaving cream. When he opens the medicine cabinet, the cans
fall into the sink, toilet, bathtub and begin foaming. And foaming.
And foaming. The bathroom is engulfed and Sid has to escape out the
window. It's lowbrow, slapstick fun, but as good as any studio product
two decades before. Laverents' makes himself the butt of the joke and
his feel for comic timing and gags puts this over. In THE ONE MAN BAND
(1964), Laverents hauls out his former rig and plays a selection of
songs (St. Louis Blues leads things off). It's a show-and-tell
film, but Laverents' ability (he plays about a dozen instruments), his
patter, and his seriousness combine to make this charming and infectious
fun. (One wishes Vitaphone had filmed him back in the day.) Laverents'
best-known film is MULTIPLE SIDOSIS (1970), an ingenious film in which
he separates out the various one-man-band instruments and uses in-camera
multiple exposures (more than a dozen!) to create a one-person orchestra.
In insets in the frame, we see multiple images of Laverents playing
a variety of instruments. What is remarkable is that it's sound. He's
accompanying himself a dozen times over. It's a stunning bit of technical
wizardry. I'm not making a case for these films as great art. They're
not. But they are fun. Terrific fun. I can't remember the last time
I had such simple, pure joy watching something. Seriously, go see this
shit! Also showing is STOP CLONING AROUND (1980). The program is co-presented
by Roctober magazine and its editor, Jake Austin, will introduce
the program and screen additional excerpts and complementary historical
shorts. The evening will also include a performance by the one-man band
The Lonesome Organist. (1963-80, approx. 100 min total, Archival 16mm
and 35mm prints) PF
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
Bruce Bickford's World (Experimental
Animation)
Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center - Thursday, 6pm
Bruce Bickford's singular vision exhibits the best of what the art
world calls "outsider art." Driven completely by his articulate
imagination and seemingly made only for himself, his films are singular
creations and spending a block of time with them is like living inside
someone else's visual stream of consciousness. Nothing in either his
line animation or his Claymation work seems attached. Figures transform
into other figures, moving like smoke floating through air. The scale
of objects holds no steady relationship to other objects or their backgrounds
as one thing morphs into an unexpected new thing: televisions turn into
flying saucers, continents turn into faces, milkshakes turn into make-up,
all moving at a mesmerizing pace. One barely has time to recognize one
image before it starts to shift into something else. Bickford's work
also has an epic quality; not only because of the sheer volume of clay
and graphite that must be required to make his intricate scenes, but
also because of his grandiose battle scenes and his interest in universal
themes such as violence (especially gory violence) and sex. This screening
includes the rarely screened PROMETHIUS' GARDEN (1988), the more recent
INVERSION LAYER (1994) and THE COMIC THAT FRENCHES YOUR MIND (2007),
and a collection of fragments and sequences, which will be accompanied
live by Jeff Parker of Tortoise and experimental percussionist Frank
Rosaly. The screening will be introduced and moderated by SAIC animation
professor and artist, Jim Trainor. Bickford in person. (1980-2010,
approx. 90 min total, Various Formats) CL
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More info at www.conversationsattheedge.org.
Raoul Walsh's THE ROARING TWENTIES
(American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 4:45pm and Monday, 6pm
A manic Looney Tune, where soldiers hop into trenches like rabbits and
two men can be knocked out with a single punch, transforms into a post-Expressionist
drama (watch out for the METROPOLIS references!) charting the rise and
fall of Jimmy Cagney, a bootlegger who uses a taxi service as a front.
Raoul Walsh's Tommy Gun opera has the distinction of being funny enough
to qualify as a comedy and epic enough to qualify as a tragedy; conceived
by Warner Bros. as a throwback to their scuzzy pre-Code gangster pictures,
this pastiche (literally: some of B-roll shots are outtakes from the
studio's early '30s movies) functions both as a downer the-world-moves-on
ending to the genre and, aesthetically, a new beginning for both Walsh
and American cinema (Martin Scorsese's filmography, for one, seems unimaginable
without it). Jarring changes in tone, deep-focus shots, sight gags,
rushing dolly-ins: this is primal, potent Walsh. The cast is pretty
gully, too; third-billed Humphrey Bogart's image is so firmly entrenched
in his later cynical good-guy roles that seeing him play an irredeemable
douchebag packs a wallop. (1939, 104 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Bob Rafelson's FIVE EASY PIECES
(American Revival)
Facets Cinémathèque - Check Venue website for showtimes
The films of the so-called American New Wave were united by an effort
to translate European arthouse aesthetics to a U.S. idiom. They fluctuated
wildly in their success, but FIVE EASY PIECES is one of the era's few
enduring masterpieces. Much of its success derives from its central
antihero, Bobby Eroica Dupree, an invention worthy of epic literature
but realized in wholly cinematic terms. Carol Eastman (working under
the pseudonym Adrien Joyce) wrote the character specifically for Jack
Nicholson, an actor whose moodiness and darting intelligence have never
been better deployed. Dupree's alienation is always a wonder to behold,
as the character constantly switches allegiance between his performing-arts
background (which comes through in moments of off-handed arrogance)
and the perceived authenticity of the working class (which he attempts
to emulate by living in a trailer and affecting macho self-confidence).
Everything he does is a failed attempt to divert his angst: Working
on an oil rig, picking up every blue-collar girl that comes his way,
even (in the movie's creepy final shot) trying to rid himself completely
of his identity: Nothing can satisfy this soul determined to live in
exile. Working with the great naturalist cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs,
Rafelson says as much about the film's locations as he does the lead
character, plumbing the zeitgeist in such disparate locations as the
oil rigs of central California and an upper-class manor off the coast
of Washington state. This beautiful but haunted island is the setting
of FIVE EASY PIECES' final act, where Nicholson's prodigal son returns
to visit the dying father he loathes. The place is populated exclusively,
it would seem, by neurotic musical prodigies: It's the closest equivalent
in U.S. movies to the penitential "resorts" that Ingmar Bergman's
late-period characters are always flocking to; and this may be, overall,
the most profound U.S. film to take inspiration from Bergman's cinema.
While taking a page from Bergman's drama of painful self-examination,
FIVE EASY PIECES--collaborative filmmaking at its finest--extends such
scrutiny to an entire generation. Note: Facets will be screening a new
print of the film in celebration of its 40th anniversary. It purportedly
restores all of the film's grainy, sun-bolstered majesty. (1970, 97
min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.facets.org.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Charles Marquis Warren's LITTLE
BIG HORN (American Revival)
Bank of America Cinema - Saturday, 8pm
Probably best known for its inclusion in Manny Farber's famous/notorious/seminal "'Best Films' of 1951" round-up, this cheapie Lippert Western (was
there any other kind?) marked the directorial debut of the vastly-underrated
Charles Marquis Warren, a man of wealthy, cultured origins (F. Scott
Fitzgerald was his godfather) who realized that he simply preferred
to write pulp cowboy and soldier stories. Of course he could never shake
those high-brow East Coast origins, and what should have been just a
quick Custer's Last Stand retelling instead becomes a languid drama
heavy on psychological details; the indoor mise-en-scene is almost Fassbinderian
in its careful framing of actors and use of mirrors, while the outdoor
scenes have a shadowy naturalism. In many ways, this is the first Late
Western (see ULZANA'S RAID below), and its sparing use of action paradoxically
makes it all the more tense. This is artful filmmaking that never resorts
to cheap artiness. (1951, 86 min, 16mm) IV
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More info at www.bankofamericacinema.blogspot.com.
Robert Aldrich's ULZANA'S RAID (American
Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Monday, 7pm
This rarely-screened anti-Western comes from director Robert Aldrich's
(KISS ME DEADLY, THE DIRTY DOZEN) fruitful, if generally brutal late
period. As Doc's programmers point out in their summary, Aldrich was
one of Hollywood's few Classical-Era directors to truly thrive after
the Hays Code was lifted in 1968: What's most resonant in films like
EMPEROR OF THE NORTH (1973)--and, by many accounts, this movie--is not
the introduction of vulgar language or graphic violence into his lean,
old-school style, but how these things seem to crystallize Aldrich's
bleak vision. To cite Sam Adams' glowing reappraisal from 2004: "That
ULZANA'S RAID is set in frontier-era Arizona in no way prevents Robert
Aldrich's Western from being among the finest movies ever made about
Vietnam. As a group of American soldiers track down a rampaging Apache
warrior leading 'a force of indeterminate number,' their moral certainties
slip away, and blood logic replaces the rules of war. In an astonishing
sequence, a wagon containing a fleeing settler couple is set upon by
Apaches. The soldier protecting them runs for safety as the husband
is butchered, then returns, as if to save the woman, only to shoot her
through the head. Fleeing again, he falls from his horse, and rather
than turn his pistol on his attackers, he kills himself. Later, he's
described by seasoned commander Burt Lancaster as 'a good man.' Like
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, ULZANA'S RAID is a movie so thoroughly encapsulating
its own time that it contains its own opposite. Is it a cry of anguish
at the depths to which men will sink to defend so-called civilization,
or an angry protest of the enemy who would force them to respond in
kind? Can it be both?" (1972, 103 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
The Movies of Michael Lopez
(Experimental Video/Animation)
Roots & Culture Gallery (1034 N. Milwaukee Ave.) - Sunday, 8pm
The work of Michael Lopez is comical, bleak, and reveals Lopez as
an artist unafraid to try out a wide breadth of mediums and themes. His
animation work, populated by humanoids reminiscent of characters found
in 70s cartoons, uses scrolls of fabric and paper to continually move
his images forward, creating a nearly hypnotic effect. Lopez's figures
are not quite human; instead, they are often presented in silhouette
or appear faceless. They are trapped in seemingly nihilistic narratives
that appear unable to reach any definable conclusion. But the crafting
of the images is careful, the subtle changes betraying more attention
to composition than the DIY-aesthetics Lopez employs would initially
suggest. His video work is similarly complex. With rambling improvised
dialogue and simple homemade sets, they provide tiny moments of emotional
truth couched in otherwise absurd diatribes and arguments. Some of Lopez's
fabric work will be on display in the gallery during the screening.
(Various Years, approx. 70 min total, Various Formats) CL
Ivan Reitman's GHOSTBUSTERS (American/Cult
Revival)
Doc Films
(University of Chicago) - Saturday, 7 & 9pm and Sunday, 1pm
Rare are the opportunities to watch
an institution deliberately brainwash itself, but that's what'll be
going down Saturday night at Doc films, when a new crop of undergraduates
(who probably aren't aware that Bill Murray used to be a comedian) subject
themselves to the 1984 summer blockbuster GHOSTBUSTERS: a film that
once wittily inscribed a bourgeois, rationalist ideology onto a inestimable
cross-section of Generation X. Amateur occultist Dan Aykroyd's screenplay,
a contemporary updating of the corny Abbott & Costello and Bob Hope
comedy-horror features of his youth, is sustained by an ingeniously
savvy understanding of Reaganomic mythology that makes Frederic Jameson
look like Dave Barry. The titular expelled Columbia University parapsychology
postdocs get in on the ground floor of an emerging urban economy: the
containment of the psychic energy of investment capital, sublimated
into ludic, phantasmic form. Manifesting in historic arenas of the old-money
upper class (Ivy League libraries, Upper West Side apartments, posh turn-of-the-century
hotels), these gilded ghouls rise from the grave to celebrate industrial
deregulation and income-tax cuts (Slimer in particular representing
a ravenous and futile hyperconsumption), but unsurprisingly bring chaos
to the liberal, environmentalist enclave of Manhattan. As the protagonists'
success ushers in an era of celebrity entrepreneurship (see THE SOCIAL
NETWORK, playing elsewhere this week), the infantile collective Ghostbusters
id repeatedly transgresses the demands of a variety of old-fashioned
academic, bureaucratic, or municipal-juridical superegos to now-classic
comic effect. Like the College, GHOSTBUSTERS is suffused with a particular
heteronormative, ascetic intellectual machismo from start to finish.
Feminine promiscuity, for example, is definitively linked here to demonic
possession, and the absurd Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man (unleashed by the
secular unconscious as a direct result of the Ghostbusters' attempt
to physically mediate between an empirical positivism and occult theology)
is defeated only through the violation of a puerile "stream-crossing" taboo, with our heroes simultaneously jizzing nuclear-powered laser
beams into the glammy, gender-ambiguous Gozer's icy ziggurat. A very
serious diversion. (105 min, 35mm) MC
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Kent Mackenzie's
THE EXILES (Classic Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University)
- Thursday, 7pm
A major point of reference in Thom
Andersen's essay film LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF, this independent production
from 1961 provides vivid evidence of California subculture rarely acknowledged
by the movies. Or more appropriately, subcultures--it's about
the lives of Native Americans who left their reservation for Los Angeles
(hence the title) and takes place largely in working-class neighborhoods
that have since been demolished. Director Kent Mackenzie, still in film
school at USC at the time, encouraged his non-professional cast to improvise
so he could most accurately capture their lives. Many critics have compared
his approach to John Cassavetes' contemporaneous work in SHADOWS (1959),
and Roger Ebert, reviewing this new print, went as far as to put the
film on the same level: "[THE EXILES] would have been a key work
of the New American Cinema, the Cassavetes generation, if it had ever
been seen. It played three film festivals, never got picked up for distribution,
has survived only in a low-quality 16mm print. Now the UCLA Film and
Television Archive has restored it, apparently working from the original
materials, and it looks like it was made yesterday." Ebert went
on to laud to film for its bittersweet depiction of alcoholism. (1961,
72 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
Thomas Comerford's THE INDIAN BOUNDARY
LINE (Experimental Doc)
Chicago Filmmakers - Friday, 8pm
Tom Comerford's newest film, both quiet
and compelling, collages together the story of the treaty that established
the boundary between Native-American land and Settler territory in the
locale we now know as Roger's Park. THE INDIAN BOUNDARY LINE is an extension
of the vocabulary Comerford develops in his earlier pinhole pieces.
He builds site-specific histories of local places inviting the viewer
to sit in these locations and re-walk their paths. A regionally-scaled
piece, it provides a space for us to consider the look of the land before
we were born and the decisions, political and personal, that paved the
way for us to live here now. As Chicagoans, we get to recognize some
of these spaces as our own, which make us culpable members of the history
that has slowly stripped away almost every reference to the area's original
inhabitants. Playing on the tensions between the conditions of the two
worlds present and past, comfortable and unconquered, developed and
free, Comerford's movie displays a resonant compassion and a visual
patience that infuses forgotten history with new life. Showing with
his LAND MARKED/MARQUETTE (2005) and his and Bill Brown's collaborative
film CHICAGO-DETROIT SPLIT (2005-06). Comerford in person. (2005-2010,
approx. 76 min total, Various Formats) CL
Casey Affleck's I'M STILL HERE (New
American)
Logan (2646 N. Milwaukee Ave.) -
Check Reader Movies for showtimes
The closest U.S. equivalent to date
of certain provocations by Lars von Trier (EPIDEMIC, THE IDIOTS), in
which recognizable hallmarks of interdicted footage-- haphazard editing,
incriminating and otherwise ugly behavior--are reconstituted in a facsimile
of avant-garde art. As in some of von Trier's films, what at first appears
a simple game of cinema (How much of this is actually staged?) mutates
into a creepier meditation on transgression and its cost: If you don't
find this repulsive, chances are you'll be chewing on it for days. Joaquin
Phoenix, ostensibly playing himself, creates a hypnotically grotesque
creation, a combination of every worst tendency of The Artist personified:
gluttonous, self-important, condescending, convinced his every whim
will yield genius. After announcing his retirement from acting, Phoenix
spends the next year in search of perfect self-expression, first by
recording hip-hop (for which he has no discernible talent) and then
in public acts of self-destructive behavior that function as unwitting
performance art. That entertainment "journalists" would devote
so much attention to Phoenix's stunts is a given: It's no secret that
the "industry" has become an unholy monster, preying on any
non-conformist activity that happens to be enacted by celebrities. Where
I'M STILL HERE gains its heft is in the ostensibly private moments,
when Phoenix binges on drugs, riles up his colleagues and soliloquies
endlessly on himself. Mad flailing in the general direction of enlightenment,
Phoenix's journey inevitably takes on the tenor of movie drama--in no
small part because we're watching movie stars in the hermetic world
of luxury. Like von Trier, Phoenix and co-writer/producer Casey Affleck
became famous actors at an early age, and this may explain their unique
ability to see constructed drama in the messiest situations. (Conversely,
they locate a certain emotional authenticity in highly staged scenarios.)
The strength of their worldview makes I'M STILL HERE a consistent work
of filmmaking despite the extreme variance in image and sound quality
from one scene to the next: This may be the weirdest-looking U.S. feature
since Michael Mann's PUBLIC ENEMIES, which also used video to defamiliarize
famous events, and it may also be one of the toughest to crack. (2010,
108 min, 35mm) BS
Chicago South Asian Film Festival
Columbia College and Chicago Cultural Center - Friday-Sunday
So many movies are produced every year on the subcontinent that
a purely geographic designation makes this film festival sound a little
vague. And Indian movies made for Indian audiences that are big enough
to travel overseas typically radiate such strong corporate, socially
normative vibes that they fit uneasily in the usual foreign film venues.
If you saw a flyer for the North American Film Festival tacked to a
bulletin outside the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New
Delhi, you might feel similarly under-informed. But with sixteen films
scheduled to screen this weekend, this staunchly independent program
has some excellent topical threads and a clear vision of what's worth
supporting. The lives of children, the personal costs of crime, and
the experience of illness all trace thematic through-lines. Most of
the films are from India, with a few more titles from the diaspora,
one from Pakistan and one from Bangladesh. ASHES, a feature-length drama
about a drug dealer and his mentally ill brother, is directed by and
stars Evanston native Ajay Naidu. Nearly half the films are directed
by women, including DO PAISE DI DHOOP, CHAR AANE KI BARISH, which is
the directorial debut of Indian art-house leading lady Deepti Naval,
and RASPBERRY MAGIC by Leena Pendharkar, which screened in Chicago earlier
this year in the Chicago Asian Showcase. Nina Paley's epically bittersweet
Ramayana cartoon SITA SINGS THE BLUES is also screening as part of the
free Saturday program, which is the perfect answer to the dilemma her
movie presents: Because Paley offers her movie for free on the internet,
must one pay the price of admission to see it on a big screen? The unusual
economy of the Festival is worth mentioning here more generally; admission
to the first screening is $100 (it includes dinner and an open bar).
The following day, half the screenings are free. The structure is somehow
reminiscent of the Hunger Awareness Dinner, but who is the poor here,
and who is the very wealthy? JF
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See website for
complete schedule and showtimes: www.csaff.org.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The impressively arrayed GLI.TC/H festival of new media, video, and web-based work began on Wednesday
with a gallery opening and continued Thursday with the Rosa Menkman
show at Conversations at the Edge. But things move into full-gear today
and run through Sunday at various venues with screenings, live performances,
workshops, and more. Visit http://gli.tc/h/ for complete information.
On Saturday, beginning at 11:30am,
the School of the Art Institute's 5th Undergraduate Film/Video Festival takes place at the Gene Siskel Film Center. There are three short programs
of new work, followed by refreshments.
The Transformation Show, curated
by Ben Russell, screens at 7pm on Tuesday at
Gallery 400 (UIC). The program includes the fantastic Adam Beckett's
1973 film EVOLUTION OF THE RED STAR, the 1970 British Structural classic
BERLIN HORSE by Malcolm LeGrice, Larry Gottheim's delicate 1970 landscape
film FOG LINE, as well as GARGANTUAN (John Smith, 1992), THREE TRANSITIONS
(Peter Campus, 1973), FORCED INANIMATE CONNECTION: CLIMAX MODELLING
(Sterling Ruby, 2002), SECONDARY CURRENTS (Peter Rose, 1982), LOSSLESS
#3 (Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin, 2008), and VINELAND (Laura Kraning,
2009).
Sean Baker's new drama PRINCE OF
BROADWAY opens at Piper's Alley for a week run.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Raoul Walsh's 1933 ME AND MY GAL is Saturday and Wednesday; Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker's new documentary
KINGS OF PASTRY plays for a week; Edward Dmytryk's 1947 noir
CROSSFIRE screens Friday and Tuesday (James Naremore lectures at
the Tuesday show); Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath's new documentary about
the Cambodian genocide, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE, has five screenings
during the week; Tahmineh Milani's new feminist Iranian drama, PAYBACK,
plays Saturday and Sunday; and Joe Beshenkovsky's new documentary
LAPORTE, INDIANA is on Thursday.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: on Friday night and Sunday afternoon
it's Christopher Nolan's INCEPTION; Also Friday, at 11:45pm,
is Marino Girolami's 1980 horror film DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D.; Doc kicks off it's huge two-part D.W. Griffith series (part two in the
Winter) on Sunday with a selection of the master's Biograph shorts from 1908-1913; on Tuesday, yet another master, Stan Brakhage, and his
staggeringly great Egyptian Series and Arabics (if there had
been time, these would have been written on and at the top of the Crucial
section. Seriously.); On Wednesday at 7 and 9pm it's Stanley Kubrick's
PATHS OF GLORY; and the Thursday selections are David Lean's 1946
Dickens film GREAT EXPECTATIONS (7pm) and S.F. Brownrigg's 1973
horror film DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT (9:30pm).
At the Music Box this week: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Allen Ginsberg bio-pic
HOWL opens; Gaspar Noé's ENTER THE VOID continues; on Sunday
at 7pm there is a sneak of Sam Taylor-Wood's new bio-pic on John Lennon's
teen years, NOWHERE BOY, followed by a performance by members
of his original band, The Quarrymen. The Saturday and Sunday matinee
is Jacques Tourneur's great 1957 horror film CURSE OF THE DEMON (HOWL also plays in the matinee slot); and the Friday and Saturday midnight
films are ED GEIN, THE MUSICAL and SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD.
Also at Facets Cinémathèque this week: Facets' Night School series becomes Facets' Fright School
in October. Up first is William Castle's 1960 classic 13 GHOSTS on Friday at midnight, introduced by John Aranza, owner of Horrorbles,
the appropriately-themed store located in Berwyn. On Saturday at midnight
is Gilberto Martinez Solares' 1975 Mexican horror film
SATANICO PANDEMONIUM, with a talk by Facets' own Lew Ojeda.
Local animator Lilli Carré's 16mm
animation THE JITTERS screens on Saturdays, through October 30,
between 8-10m as part of the Saturday Cinema series. It's rear-projected
in the second floor window at 1369 W. Chicago Avenue: stand out on the
sidewalk to watch.
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THE ROARING TWENTIES
