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:: Friday, MAY 6 - Thursday, MAY 12 ::

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 LADYBUGany 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.).

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CINE-LIST: May 6 - May 12, 2011

MANAGING EDITOR / Patrick Friel

CONTRIBUTORS / Michael Castelle, Rob Christopher, Jason Halprin, Doug McLaren, Anne Orchier, Ben Sachs, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Brian Welesko, Darnell Witt

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