CRUCIAL VIEWING
Stuart Schulberg's NUREMBERG: ITS
LESSON FOR TODAY (Documentary)
Music Box — Check Venue website for showtimes
Commissioned by the U.S. War Office, largely culled from Nazi film archives,
then banned in America until it was forgotten, NUREMBERG: ITS LESSON
FOR TODAY may be the most complex work of U.S. propaganda never seen
here. Like the Nuremberg trials themselves, Stuart Schulberg's 1948
film (meticulously restored) is part prosecution of Nazi war crimes
and part Allied agitprop for U.S.-led justice. Where propaganda often
alters the reality of an objective narrative, the perceived transparency
of the documentary and the courtroom legitimizes the premise of the
tribunal itself. With the evidence on the prosecution's side, the result
is strikingly subtle and effective in eliminating other narratives.
Schulberg builds the case against the Nazi leadership through a diligent
timeline of Nazi expansion. Documented text of Hitler's various statements
of support for Belgium, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, and other nations appear
before each is rebutted by dated footage of Nazi forces crossing in
to each country. Evidence amasses soberly by calm narration, moving
methodically from the decimation and clearing of a Czech town to fetid
ghettos across Europe filled with emaciated bodies. The scenes of the
atrocities are familiar, but they are still arresting. The Nazis' own
films, intimate and disturbingly close, contrast with Schulberg's distant
and anchored camera at the trial. Long shots of the courtroom make the
accused appear weakened and miniscule in the distance, while the prosecutor
is lively and prominent in the middle of the frame. The image is telling
of the new political alignment that emerged, and the return to the rule
of law imposed by the scolding U.S. Shown primarily to a German audience,
NUREMBERG is history from the winner's perspective, but masterful in
its head-fake to stenographer objectivity. (1948, 78 min, 35mm) BW
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Jafar Panahi's CRIMSON GOLD (Iranian
Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Thursday, 7pm
A common feature of the Iranian New Wave—one that unites nearly
every major Iranian filmmaker since the early 1980s—is the employment
of ordinary people in complex dramatic roles. While the practice has
brought a great deal of authenticity to Iranian cinema, it shouldn't
be regarded simply as a continuation of Vittorio De Sica's innovations
in postwar Italian movies. For one thing, the films of Kiarostami, Panahi,
et al., rarely try to compensate for the withholding performance style
of their non-performers, as De Sica did through his expert understanding
of melodrama. In fact, they often embrace the discomfort of their amateurs,
using them to sharpen the films' already palpable depictions of inhibitive
social codes. There are few better examples of the practice than Panahi's
CRIMSON GOLD, which stars a shy, overweight (and, unbeknownst to Panahi
during shooting, epileptic) pizza deliveryman as a shy, overweight pizza
deliveryman. The film begins with his failed attempt to rob a jewelry
store, then goes back in time to find out what drove him to crime. Panahi
never provides a clear answer—though, revealingly, many of the scenes
hinge on the hero's demoralizing encounters with wealthy customers.
(It should be noted that pizza is something of a status symbol in Tehran,
a bit of Western exoticism. In movies ranging from UNDER THE SKIN OF
THE CITY to the more recent DOG SWEAT, it's often significant when characters
eat it.) Panahi's star never provides a clear answer, either: He is
a fascinating, near-changeless presence, practically a deadpan comic
type. ("Buster Keaton as Fatty Arbuckle," as J. Hoberman put it.)
He makes CRIMSON GOLD much more than an exposé of class inequality,
though the film is certainly lacerating in its depiction of that subject.
What he brings may be described as an insolvable human mystery that's
central to all of Panahi's films and which finds its inverse in the
director's glorious depiction of Tehran, always in his eyes a city of
possibility, danger, and overflowing humanity. (2003, 95 min, 35mm)
BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Riffin'
— Films by Andy Roche (New Experimental)
Roots & Culture (1034 N. Milwaukee
Ave.) — Saturday, 7pm
"Riffin'" is an appropriate term
for this program of film and video work by local artist Andy Roche,
certainly for the three longest works showing. Roche touches on religion,
politics, biography, travel, music, storytelling, performance, sex,
avant-garde film tropes, documentary form, and more. The style veers
towards pastiche, but this work isn't the standard cold, over-determined
post-modernism of the 1980s: Rather, it's part of a scrubbier, more
loosely-organized strain that might include Shana Moulton, Kent Lambert,
and Jesse McLean. Roche has said that he's interested more in anecdotes
than narratives and BORN TO LIVE LIFE in particular bears this out.
An experimental-documentary-narrative hybrid (and we're never sure exactly
what part is what) that is ostensibly a portrait film, it jumps from
scene to scene, voice-over to sync sound, old home-movies (we think)
to new footage, dramatic "recreations" to faux-public access-style
interview. Along the way the subjects include Machu Picchu, masturbation,
DIE HARD and ROBOCOP, weight loss, and spirituality. On the surface,
Roche's all-over-the-map approach and grungy, almost anti-aesthetic
look might seem simply unfocused and too rambling. But the effect is
cumulative, building to an ultimately deeper exploration of loneliness,
despair, and life on the fringe. In ANNOUNCING THE MYSTERIES, Roche
films a hippie-like figure in an open wilderness area as he grunts into
a microphone. The image is superimposed, two views of the man one on
the other (doubling his importance), with this familiar experimental
device accentuating the lyricism of the handheld camerawork and the
soft sunlight on the landscape. The intent seems to be an ironic commentary
on the myth of the avant-garde filmmaker as part magus, part man of
nature (i.e.: Stan Brakhage, Bruce Baillie); mythopoeia as egomania.
Also showing are BLACK IRON VATICAN II, two recent music videos, and
four recent collaborations with David Price. Roche in person.
(2005-11, approx. 80 min total, Unknown formats) PF
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More info here.
Marc Singer's DARK DAYS (Contemporary
Documentary Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Thursday, 9pm
An exemplary work among contemporary U.S. nonfiction features (a
genre experiencing its own dark days), Marc Singer's sole feature to
date is as beautiful as it is insightful. The film depicts the homeless
New Yorkers living in secret beneath Penn Station: their community,
an amazing piece of found mise-en-scène, takes on a mythical quality
in the black-and-white 16mm photography. Unlike so many recent documentaries
that use images only to advance predetermined political arguments, Singer
is out to create a distinct atmosphere from his on-the-ground (make
that under-the-ground) observation. Ironically, it is Singer's commitment
to beauty that inspires so much feeling for the film's derelict subjects—more,
certainly, than the succession of talking heads Charles Ferguson (INSIDE
JOB) would have called upon to explain the history of American poverty.
The score by DJ Shadow, which recycles a lot of his best work from UNKLE's
Psyence Fiction album, heightens an already compelling experience.
(2000, 94 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Rolando Klein's CHAC: THE RAIN GOD
(Mexican/Panamanian Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Sunday, 7pm
As practitioners of a leisure activity
and lifestyle so inextricably linked to the consumption of Coffea Arabica,
cinephiles could stand to attend less to the endless re-canonization
of the productions of the colonial empires, and more to oddities of
the international highlands such as 1975's CHAC: THE RAIN GOD, filmed
entirely in the Chiapas mountains of Mexico with a cast of nonprofessional
locals from the town of Tenajapa. The area is a fount of varying histories
and mythologies—ranging from the local clash and integration of ancient
Mayan beliefs with a colonial Catholicism; to the more recent revolutionary
actions of the Zapatista Army; as well as the principal photography
of PREDATOR (1987), a domestic myth in which an unnamed, dreadlocked
xenomorph hunter-gatherer brutally negotiates a conflict between American
commando-politicians and local guerillas. By comparison, CHAC—both
the first and last feature from director Rolando Klein, a UCLA MFA originally
from Chile—is an essentially peaceful folktale, with an initially ambiguous
temporal setting... until a caveside discussion in which one leader
startlingly loads a couple of D batteries into a flashlight. The film's
dialogue is almost entirely in the Tzeltal language (spoken by hundreds
of thousands to this day), but through the occasional elision of subtitles,
Klein conveys the social insularity reflected and engendered by the
wide diversity of Mayan languages in the region. (For example, when
a Diviner speaks in Yucatec Maya to the disinterested rainforest-slacker
representatives of the Lacandón—chilling in hammocks and smoking homemade
cigars—our Tzeltal protagonists wouldn't have understood what they
were saying, either.) But this contradictory attempt to accurately portray
the timeless and contemporary aspects of this particular culture in
a Classical Hollywood style is fascinatingly contradictory. Specifically,
the Tzeltal are notable for a lack of enantiomorphic distinction (i.e.
the conceptualization of a difference between 'left' and 'right'); however,
it is precisely the enantiomorphic distinction that characterizes the
conventions of narrative cinema's spatial continuity (e.g., the 180°
"rule"). Klein's fastidious obeyance of the film school dictums
of the 180° line, shot/reverse-shot, and line-of-sight cutting, then,
are in a paradoxical conflict with the people he intends to honor; ironically,
the symmetrical compositions of Baroque fetishist Eugène Green might
be more appropriate. (1974, 95 min, 35mm) MC
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Bertrand Tavernier's THE PRINCESS
OF MONTPENSIER (New International)
Landmark's Century Centre Cinema — Check Venue website for showtimes
France, 1567: for some filmmakers this would be the perfect setting
for a swashbuckling adventure, a bodice-ripping yarn full of damsels
in distress alternately threatened and rescued by various sword-wielding
he-men, yada yada. Tavernier has done that kind of film to be sure (see
LA FILLE DE D'ARTAGNAN, aka REVENGE OF THE MUSKETEERS), and THE PRINCESS
OF MONTPENSIER does have some exciting swordplay. But he'd rather steep
the viewer in the social and sexual world of 16th-century France, a
complicated world of prearranged marriages, honor, and royal favoritism.
That he does so without turning the whole thing into either a gloopy
soap opera or a monotonous bloodbath is proof of his mastery as a filmmaker.
He doesn't romanticize the period either (there's an unforgettable depiction
of a wedding night that's not for the squeamish). Far from merely leading
lives of pampered leisure, the members of royalty in Tavernier's film
must always be on constant guard against both outside forces and each
other. Even the villains of the piece are more or less just doing what
it takes to survive. Although there isn't much tongue-in-cheek humor,
Tavernier, a renowned gourmet, does indulge himself by displaying several
luscious tableaux of food. He's not concerned with reinventing the wheel
here, just with telling a good juicy story. (2010, 139 min, 35mm) RC
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More info here.
The Basic Materials of Film: Ernie
Gehr (Experimental Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Monday, 7pm
Like any good survey, Doc's current series of American avant-garde
cinema has inevitably devoted an evening to Ernie Gehr's early films.
Nearly every film up to and including his best-known work, 1970's SERENE
VELOCITY (infamously canonized by P. Adams Sitney as the Structuralist
film), will be screened. Ever interested with the mechanics of filmmaking,
in his first two films Gehr uses simple recording techniques to capture
a flickering, vibrant world: with MORNING (1968), a camera obscura records
the dawn, while WAIT (1968) allows the camera's aperture to infuse each
frame with a variance of light. The various speeds a camera can record
at are exploited in TRANSPARENCY (1969), in which speeding cars zip
past the frame as either smeared blurs or solid images. Despite the
near endless critical discussion, SERENE VELOCITY, with its erratic
jump-zooms and metronomic pacing that pummels the viewer with the architecturally-enforced
conformity of higher education, still elicits catatonic enlightenment
upon every viewing. It is indeed a film that rightly deserves to be
shown in every experimental film class, and might well be an excellent
choice for the first day of Intro to Cinema. Also showing are the shortened
versions of FIELD and HISTORY (both 1970). (1968-70, 77 min total, 16mm)
DM
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Mel Stuart's WATTSTAX (Documentary
Revival)
Music Box — Friday and Saturday, Midnight
Nominally an archival documentary of
the Wattstax Music Festival in 1972, the best sequences have nothing
to do with the musicians on stage. Yes, there's Isaac Hayes, bedecked
in a vest of golden chains, singing a languid version of "Theme from
Shaft" to a filled Los Angeles Coliseum. And there's a fire-eyed Rufus
Thomas performing "Do the Funky Chicken" before conducting the crowd
back to their seats. But these performances act as a platform for a
thematic distillation of black identity during the Black Power movement,
seven years after the Watts Riots. Between freewheeling concert footage,
Stuart (FOUR DAYS IN NOVEMBER, WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY),
or more likely his black cameramen, ventured into Watts to interview
its residents about their thoughts on love, the blues, language, style,
and life in the neighborhood after the riots. The interviews feel as
if they hit each touchstone of stereotypical black culture: a man's
afro is preened in a barbershop while another discusses the power of
Christ. One particularly gripping and frantically shot sequence features
churchgoers brought to tears and delirious convulsions by The Emotions'
rendition of "Peace Be Still." At the concert, Stuart's use of the
zoom lens isolates women's curves and intricate Black Power handshakes
from across the Coliseum, as if studying a new breed with a new language.
All this might be unseemly were it not for WATTSTAX's purposed assertion
that "Black is Beautiful." It is a refrain heard in Jesse Jackson's
recitation of "I Am - Somebody" and rounded by Richard Pryor's withering,
humorous critiques of the stereotypes portrayed. (1973, 103 min, 35mm)
BW
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
David Lynch's BLUE VELVET (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday and Tuesday, 6pm
This is where the legend really began. It's curious to think how Lynch's
career would have developed if DUNE (1984) had not been a box office
failure, but cinema history can thank him for not playing it safe with
this rebound project. Though Lynch had already made three features,
VELVET was the first full articulation of his core theme of the evil
that lurks in small towns everywhere. Not the outright surrealist endeavor
that was ERASERHEAD, it is also not the most accessible of narratives.
Dark, violent, sexual, and reeking of 1963 suburbia, the film is at
times a noir mystery and at others a violent thriller. Many of the visual
symbols that would populate TWIN PEAKS are introduced here, such as
red curtains appearing when danger is present in a scene, and Lynch's
continued growth as a complete cinematic artist is evident. Despite
having a cast that didn't feature a legitimate star (Dennis Hopper may
be the exception, but his career was in the dumps when he was cast...as
the third choice), the film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination
for Best Picture, as well as praise from critics throughout the world.
It's also notable that Kyle MacLachlan (essentially playing Dale Cooper)
might never have worked again if not for his excellent performance.
Still dangerous twenty-five years later, the film is as gorgeous as
it is classic. SAIC Professor Jim Trainor lectures at the Tuesday
screening. (1986, 120 min, 35mm) JH
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS (American
Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Wednesday, 7 and 9:15pm
Slavoj ?i?ek wrote, "In order
to unravel Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, one should first imagine the film
without the birds, simply depicting the proverbial middle-class family
in the midst of an Oedipal crisis—the attacks of the birds can only
be accounted for as an outlet of the tension underlying this Oedipal
constellation, i.e., they clearly materialize the destructive outburst
of the maternal superego, one mother's jealousy toward the young woman
who tries to snatch her son from her." That Hitchcock conceived
of (and plotted) THE BIRDS as a comedy shows his gleeful perversity.
It also goes a long way towards explaining the film's enduring fascination.
Most disaster movies simply revolve around the spectacle of things blowing
up; if they make any room at all for humor or interpersonal relationships
it's usually of the throwaway or half-hearted variety. It's just window
dressing for explosions. But in his own crafty way, Hitchcock shows
us that comedy, not tragedy, can be the best way to reveal the layers
of a character while, crucially, misdirecting the audience's attention.
Using a meticulously scored soundtrack of bird effects in lieu of traditional
music cues, paired with George Tomasini's brilliant picture editing,
heightens the feeling of disquiet. It all culminates in the stunning
final shot: the superego has saturated the entire landscape. (1963,
119 min, 35mm) RC
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Terrence Malick's DAYS OF HEAVEN
(American Revival)
Music Box — Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
Who would have predicted that DAYS OF HEAVEN would be the most influential
American film of the past ten years? A number of movies would be almost
impossible without its influence—THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY
THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, THERE WILL BE BLOOD (which tipped its hat by
employing DAYS' ingenious production designer, Jack Fisk), most of the
work of David Gordon Green—that Malick's unprecedented approach has
come to seem almost familiar. But seen in a theater, DAYS OF HEAVEN
is forever new. Malick's poetic sensibility, which combined an absurdist
fascination with the banal with an awestruck view of open landscapes,
renders the past era of pre-Dust Bowl Heartland America a gorgeous,
alien environment. The film is structured around his lyrical observations,
jutting forward in unexpected sequences like a modernist poem. More
than one set piece (including the locust infestation and the bizarre
entry of a flying circus troupe) has become a little classic in itself;
it's easy to forget the primal romantic tragedy, which Ray Pride once
likened to a Biblical fable, that gives the movie its towering structure.
It is this feeling for eternal narratives—rooted, perhaps, in Malick's
study of philosophy—that distinguishes the film from any of its successors,
which could never replicate Malick's spiritual orientation. (1978, 95
min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Frank Perry's MOMMIE DEAREST (American
Revival)
Music Box — Sunday, 1:30pm
DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE, THE SWIMMER, LADYBUG LADYBUG—any
of these three would cement Frank Perry's legacy as a great American
filmmaker. But among the general public the rest of his oeuvre pales
mightily in comparison to MOMMIE DEAREST, his notorious adaptation of
Christina Crawford's memoir. The film's portrait of Joan Crawford, thanks
to a no-holds-barred performance/recreation by Faye Dunaway, decades
of cable TV repeats and hearsay drag queen re-enactment, has cemented
MOMMIE DEAREST's status as a true cult classic. But experiencing it
solely as an over-the-top melodrama sells the movie short. Viewed differently,
it's actually a vivid and disturbing examination of child abuse, the
perils of being a movie star, and of being the child of a star. And
Perry uses the same cool, clean style as in DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE.
His objective camera, usually at some distance from the action, makes
Joan's outbursts of aggression and violence that much more unsettling.
This apparent detachment confounds any easy emotional release on the
part of the audience, most notably during the infamous "wire hanger"
sequence (which, by the way, unfolds without music). So it's no wonder
that the movie has long been experienced as camp; without using humor
as a shield, the events onscreen would be much too disturbing to take
at face value. Here is a film that cries out for a re-evaluation. But
that will have to wait. This Mother's Day screening will be a celebration
of the film as camp, including a Joan Crawford look-alike contest, prize
giveaways and a music video by The Joans, the world's first Joan Crawford
rock-n-roll band. (1981, 129 min, 35mm) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Abbas Kiarostami's CERTIFIED COPY
(New International)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check Venue website for showtimes
CERTIFIED COPY is Abbas Kiarostami's
first narrative feature after nearly a decade of video experiments and
it's also his first feature shot in Europe. These facts alone would
deem the film a major work, but it's a milestone for Kiarostami regardless.
The premise is teasingly simple, in the grand tradition of THE TRAVELLER
and TASTE OF CHERRY: A British art historian (William Shimell) has written
a book on the history of forgery. In it, he posits that it's irrelevant
whether great art is authentic or merely copied because it's the impact
of the work that determines its legacy. After giving a lecture in Tuscany,
he meets a beautiful antiques dealer (Juliette Binoche) who likes the
book but disagrees with its argument. They hit it off anyway and then
decide to spend the afternoon together, visiting historic sites and
bickering about art. This promises, and essentially delivers, a genteel
conversation piece in the Eric Rohmer mold; but in its particulars,
the film is every bit as weird as Kiarostami's prior masterpieces. Much
of the dialogue feels improvised or tossed-off, though the characters
are often filmed in a manner that suggests cosmic significance: They're
isolated in symmetrical, icon-making close-ups; reverently followed
in tracking shots that emphasize the fragility of any moment in the
course of time; and (Kiarostami's calling card) made into specks in
landscape shots that identify them only by the car they're riding in.
At different points of their afternoon, this man and woman behave like
strangers, a long-married couple, and smitten kids on a first date.
Which of these interactions is real? Does it matter? Nearly every scene
of CERTIFIED COPY touches on some profound aspect of human experience—falling
in love, realizing one's place in the universe, et cetera—and in each
of their incarnations, the characters are so fully realized by the leads
that they never seem ciphers for bigger themes. (Binoche won the Best
Actress prize at Cannes for her performance, which contains some of
her most attenuated and unpredictable work; Shimmel, an opera singer
in his major first film role, is a more limited actor by comparison,
but he makes a fine Cary Grant to her Katherine Hepburn.) Their entire
experience, in short, has been recast by their passion for art: Everything
is mysterious and full of promise. Some critics writing about the film
have invoked Henry James in describing this tale about the enticements
of the Continent, but the results have less in common with, say,
The Ambassadors than with James' inexplicable freak-out The Sacred
Fount. Who would have expected this great artist of open spaces
to take after the most psychoanalytical of writers? Only the film's
aftertaste is truly shocking: Kiarostami has arrived at these Jamesian
conclusions through entirely his own means. The film applies to psychology
the same coy, unassuming perspective that Kiarostami directed at landscapes
and faces, respectively, in FIVE (2005) and SHIRIN (2008). Remarkably,
the project remains the same: to regard the subject as if it's never
been contemplated before. That CERTIFIED COPY maintains such a light
surface tone while pursuing such meaningful questions makes most other
recent filmmaking seem trivial or overwrought. (2010, 106 min, 35mm)
BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Yousry Nasrallah's SCHEHERAZADE,
TELL ME A STORY (New Egyptian)
Facets
Cinémathèque — Friday–Tuesday, Check venue website for showtimes
Amidst political unrest and a flagging
economy, the resurgence of the power couple seems either unlikely or
inevitable. In SCHEHERAZADE, these aspirational figures appear as Hebba
and Karim, a talk-show host and newspaper editor living in Cairo. Their
lifestyle is unapologetically glamorous and their marriage seems to
be built on a solid foundation of physical attraction and intelligent
debate, a dynamic that's reminiscent of Hepburn and Tracy's dueling
lawyers in ADAM'S RIB. The main point of tension in this seemingly idyllic
set-up is the fact that their respective professional goals are ultimately
at odds with each other—Hebba's ambitions drive her to stir up controversy
and reveal ugly truths about Egyptian society, while Karim's main goal
is to successfully navigate the complicated hierarchy of his conservative
workplace. In order to salvage their relationship, Hebba agrees to focus
on interviewing local women, who reveal story after story of oppression
and victimization. These dialogues have a strong utopian streak in spite
of their demoralizing content and most of the women relate their suffering
with remarkable openness. As a collection, these interviews work to
diagnose certain societal ills, and then point toward their solution:
television as a liberating social force for women...a proposition that's
as appealing as it is belated and disheartening. (2009, 134 min, Digital
Projection) AO
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More info at www.facets.org.
Zachary Levy's STRONGMAN (New Documentary)
Facets — Wednesday–Sunday, May 15 — Check venue website for showtimes
Though clearly in need of an editor
less emotionally-attached to the project, STRONGMAN manages to elucidate
the interesting themes in Aronofsky's THE WRESTLER—the degradation
of the human body, the transformation of muscle into fat, a champion's
hubris. Stanley "Stanless Steel" Pleskun is a middle-aged
strongman from South Brunswick, New Jersey, eking out a living hauling
scrap metal and putting on shows of strength in parking lots. Apparently
successful in the past, Stanley now covets the success of other strongmen,
papering over his envy with the purist insistence of showing off "real"
strength instead of doing "tricks" to appease an audience.
Currently he only seems to impress his alcoholic brother and his blue-collar
friends, but Stanley is insistent his next break is around the corner,
so he constantly drills his girlfriend Barbara on how to properly introduce
him to a crowd. The documentary sags under its own sad weight in many
places, and as mentioned earlier needs a heavier hand in the editing
room, but things pick up in the third act as Stanley's drinking begins
to mirror his brother's and Barbara begins to lose patience with Stanley's
domineering. An honest existentialist portrait of living in a depressed
(and depressing) community, freshman director Zachary Levy never condescends
to his subjects, which is refreshing, given the myriad opportunities
available to Levy to deflate Stanley's pursuits. Director Levy in
person at the Thursday and Friday (May 12 and 13) 7pm screenings. (2009, 113 min, video) DM
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More info at www.facets.org.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Chicago Film Seminar welcomes
Northwestern University professor Jacqueline Stewart who will
give a lecture titled "Discovering Black Film History: Tracing
the Tyler, Texas Black Film Collection." Michael Martin of the
Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University will respond. This event
is Thursday at 6:30pm at the Film Studies Center at the University of
Chicago (5811 S. Ellis Ave, Cobb Hall Rm. 307). Note: This event
was rescheduled from last Thursday.
This week at Chicago Filmmakers:
Young Mexican filmmaker Nicholas Pereda's award-winning 2010 feature
narrative/documentary SUMMER OF GOLIATH screens on Friday at 8pm. Also showing is his 2009 short INTERVIEW WITH
THE EARTH.
Chicago Filmmakers is also hosting
an Open House on Saturday at 8pm. It's free and you can expect
food, beverages, giveaways, films showing, music, and more.
The Experimental Film Society at SAIC (112 S. Michigan Ave., Rm. 1307) closes their spring season
with Now It's Dark: Experimental Film Society Edition on Saturday
at 7pm. This all 16mm film screening of new SAIC student work includes
Zhuo Yun Chen, Francisco Cordero-Oceguera, Lyra Hill, Shai Ht, Randy
Hunter, Carter Lodwick, Christopher Sonny Martinez, Riley McBride, Miah
Michelson-Jones, Ross Meckfessel, Matt O'Shaughnessey, Zachary Sala,
Bethany Schmitt, Lauren Sparrow, and Jenn Swann.
The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) is packed with new student work the next few
days. On Friday at 7:30pm, Frames + Verities: Non-fiction Works by
SAIC Students, Spring 2011 features work by students of SAIC instructor
and filmmaker Thomas Comerford. Showing are: Elisa Garza, Andy Faulkner
and Chelsey Hoff, Hyunji Kang, Caroline Liebman, Zach Sala, HaJung Shin,
Ziyuan Wang, and Taylor Wood.
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On Sunday at 7pm, PROXIMITY is there
too much features more SAIC work by Runa A, Anthony Bacon, Graeme
Butler, Jenna Caravello, Karen Chavez, Ashley Knotts, Di Liu, Riley
J. McBride, Miah Michelson-Jones, Zachary Sala, and Maxim von Eikh.
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And on Monday at 7pm, Uman Beings:
Experimentations in Film & Video showcases work by UIC visiting
instructor and filmmaker Naomi Uman's students. On the bill are: Sharanda
Underwood, Sarah Stevens, Latham Zearfoss, Evan Behmer, Cara Frazin,
Edward Dignan, Emily Oscarson, Andrew Mausert-Mooney, Anya Solotaire,
Michael Wawzenek, Omar Cardenas, and Rachel Moldauer.
The Museum of Contemporary Art presents an outdoor screening of work by local filmmaker Alexander
Stewart as part of their First Fridays event on, um, Friday. Doors
open at 6pm and the screening will take place in the sculpture garden/terrace
after it gets dark. The approximately 45-minute program of 16mm films
includes ERRATA, ON THE LOGIC OF DUBIOUS HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS 1969-1972,
100 FOOT PULL, 100 FOOT RIDE, and selections from an ongoing collaboration,
CROSS QUARTERS. Additional details on the other First Friday shenanigans
and the (pricey) tickets are here.
Enemy (1550 N. Milwaukee Ave.,
3rd Floor) hosts Strange Electronics 2: Realtime A/V and Hardware
Hacking on Friday at 9pm. The line up is CRACKED RAY TUBE (Kyle
Evans and James Connolly), BATTLESHIP (Zachary Mark and Jeff Milam),
ARCANEBOLT (Mark Beasley, Tamas Kemenzcy, and Alex Inglizian), MONICA
PANZARINO (performing with Becky Grajeda and Emilie Crewe), and VAUDEO
SIGNAL (Ben Baker-Smith and Evan Kühl). And the event is described
as: "A collection of Chicago based new media, sound, and noise artists
exploring realtime audio and video through disciplines of homemade instrument
creation, hardware hacking, and the disruption/corruption of analog
and digital systems."
Local filmmaker Amir George's new short
narrative THE MIND OF DELILAH has a preview screening on Friday
at Multi Kulti (1000 N. Milwaukee Ave.).
Doors open at 7pm and the film will
screen twice at 7:45 then again between 8:45 and 9pm. George and several
cast members in person for Q&A. Guest Host of this event is Nelson
Carvajal (from that other Cine-File: Cinefile.com).
The Northwest Chicago Film Society (at the Portage Theater) screens Alfred E. Green's 1926 silent Colleen
Moore film ELLA CINDERS on Wednesday at 7:30pm. The film will
be introduced by John Falck, the grandson of ELLA CINDERS co-star Lloyd
Hughes, and accompanied on the organ by Jay Warren. Also showing is
the 1944 cartoon LULU IN HOLLYWOOD (and other shorts TBA).
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) screens Basil Dearden's 1957 British film
THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH on Saturday at 2pm.
Werner Herzog's 3D film CAVE OF
FORGOTTEN DREAMS continues at the River East 21 and ShowPlace ICON.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Marcelo Gomes and
Karim Aïnouz's 2009 Brazilian film I
TRAVEL BECAUSE I HAVE TO, I COME BACK BECAUSE I LOVE YOU screens
for a week: the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Undergraduate
and Graduate Film, Video, and Audio Presentations screen on Wednesday
(Program 1), Thursday (Program 2), and Friday, May 13 (Program 3) at
4pm; and the Architecture & Design Film Festival includes
the feature documentaries HOW MUCH DOES YOUR BUILDING WEIGH, MR. FOSTER?,
MILTON GLASER: TO INFORM AND DELIGHT, CONTEMPORARY DAYS: THE DESIGNS
OF LUCIENNE AND ROBIN DAY, SPACE, LAND AND TIME: UNDERGROUND ADVENTURES
WITH ANT FARM, VISUAL ACOUSTICS, CITIZEN ARCHITECT: SAMUEL MOCKBEE AND
THE SPIRIT OF THE RURAL STUDIO, EYE OVER PRAGUE, and ANTWERP CENTRAL
and the shorts programs Oh Canada!, Enduring Icons, Amped & Revamped,
Thinking Big, Tower Power!, and Down Under & Up. Selected films
also screen at theWit (check the Siskel website for details).
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: William
Forest Crouch's 1947 black cast musical REET,
PETITE, AND GONE screens on Tuesday at 7pm.
Also at the Music Box this week: Caroline Bottaro's QUEEN TO PLAY opens; Jim Mickle's
STAKE LAND continues daily at 9pm (and Friday at Midnight); and Darren Lynn Bousman's new horror film MOTHER'S DAY is Saturday at Midnight.
The Chicago Cultural Center hosts the Cinema/Chicago International Summer Screenings series.
This week is Ryûichi Inomata's 2005 Japanese film SHODO GIRLS (from DVD) on Wednesday at 6:30pm. (Repeats May 14)
Also on display at the Chicago Cultural
Center through September 18 is the exhibit
Movie Mojo: Hand-Painted Posters from Ghana.
The Logan Square International Film
Series screens Richard Lowenstein's 1986 film DOGS IN SPACE (from DVD) on Tuesday at 8pm at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N.
Milwaukee Ave.). |