CRUCIAL VIEWING
Thom Andersen's EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, ZOOPRAXOGRAPHER (Experimental / Essay Revival)
---
Shirley Clarke's ROBERT FROST: A LOVER'S QUARREL WITH THE WORLD (Documentary Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Sunday, 5pm and Wednesday, 6pm
When we talk about the canon, we usually think of something that's necessarily monolithic and impersonal. It needn't be so. Canons can also be localized, transparent, eccentric, and sincere. If you came of age, cinematically speaking, in the confines of Hyde Park when the late Miriam Hansen ran the show, you got a very particular interpretation of film history: DRAGNET GIRL was Ozu's most famous film, Paul Fejos' LONESOME and Frank Tashlin's ARTISTS AND MODELS stood as the twin summits of vernacular modernism, and Dziga Vertov's THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA was simply the greatest film ever made. And hardly a quarter went by when LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF director Thom Andersen's EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, ZOOPRAXOGRAPHER wasn't on somebody's syllabus. Bolstered, too, by Jonathan Rosenbaum's endorsement, ZOOPRAXOGRAPHER occupies an axiomatic position--at least within Chicagoland, probably less so elsewhere. Its low-key popularity is understandable and irresistible--it's an instructional piece, a film theory icebreaker, a true crime yarn, and a brilliant structural film. ZOOPRAXOGRAPHER features some 30,000 Muybridge images, many rephotographed on animation stands otherwise commandeered to churn out footage for the PEANUTS TV specials. Among its other virtues, ZOOPRAXOGRAPHER quietly recognizes the cinema's extraordinary utility in studying the dense surfaces of nineteenth-century photographs. (When projected on a sizable screen, the Muybridge landscape photographs compare favorably with the large-scale prints of Carleton Watkins.) Though Muybridge's animal locomotion photographs have become ubiquitous (they're collected in a Dover Thrift Edition, alongside other paperback patrimony), Andersen uses animation, magnification, and even reenactment to find startling new meaning in them. Skipping over the "who invented the cinema?" pissing contest that has distracted too many historians, Andersen instead proposes Muybridge as cinema's great Sunday philosopher. For Muybridge/Andersen, cinema invents itself, inevitably colonizing the indefinite expanse between successive exposures. But back to personal history for a minute: the first time I ever encountered ZOOPRAXOGRAPHER, I was charged with projecting a faded 16mm print with a seemingly limitless number of broken perforations. The last time I saw it, Andersen had removed all prints from circulation and offered only a DVD-R for academic situations. In other words, this is exactly the kind of independent production that UCLA should be commended for rescuing. (1975, 59 min, Newly Restored 35mm Print)
---
Preceded by Shirley Clarke's ROBERT FROST: A LOVER'S QUARREL WITH THE WORLD, which finds the filmmaker training her camera not on junkies and hustlers but upon a poet recognized by schoolchildren everywhere. Early in the film, Frost damns documentary filmmakers who craft "a false picture that presents me as always digging potatoes or saying my own poems." Luckily for Frost, Clarke's interests lie elsewhere. (1963, 51 min, Newly Restored 35mm Print) KAW
---
More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
John Cassavetes' SHADOWS (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 7 and 9pm
Independent filmmaking, warts and all: the first available film by Cassavetes (an earlier version of SHADOWS has only screened once since it was made, and has been withheld from view by Gena Rowlands) contains every error and every virtue of a non-studio creation. It's still an unprecedented experience, filled with a bursting energy that makes every cut, every line of dialogue a world unto itself. The episodic, loosely developed story details three black siblings in jazzy, beat-era Manhattan going through racial and romantic tensions, professional disappointments, and trying to overcome an overall ennui about being set apart from one another in the big city. Benny (Ben Carruthers) might have easily been a Kerouac character ("What the hell's a literary party?" he smirks to his friends in a coffee shop conversation), while Lelia (Lelia Goldoni) plants the seeds for what would evolve as the free-thinking Cassavetes female (which Lynn Carlin would embody so well in his next feature, FACES). Here is the creation of the modern American cinema virtually overnight. (1959, 82 min, 35mm) GK
---
More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Nicholas Ray's JOHNNY GUITAR (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
The western is an odd beast, a genre bound only by location, easily shaped into something as desolate or as crowded, as stark or vivid, as is required. They come more varied than science fiction films, expanding the West into something more complex than outer space, and creating dozens of different landscapes out of the same mold--Anthony Mann's West, John Ford's West, Budd Boetticher's West. Nicholas Ray's West, at least as created in JOHNNY GUITAR, is one of the most bizarrely beautiful. From Peggy Lee's desperate title song and Victor Young's score, hanging over the film like a sympathetic vulture, to the unearthly two-strip Trucolor, which seems to bind the film's characters into their environment as if they're bleeding into one another, it's Ray's most aesthetic film. But it's every bit as personal as IN A LONELY PLACE or WE CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN. Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden don't seem fit for the west, and the same could be said of their gender roles, but it's their complete discomfort that gives the film its tense and uneasy beauty. Ray has a knack for finding poetry where others would surely fumble, and here he's at his most poetic. (1954, 110 min, 35mm) JA
---
More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
James Cruze's THE GREAT GABBO (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Tuesday, 7pm
There's an exquisite strangeness to the early American talkies. More than any other country, America (or, rather, American audiences) fell madly for sound. In nearly every movie of the period, it feels like the studio is a kid who's been given a big paint set for his birthday and wants to try out every color on the first picture. James Cruze's THE GREAT GABBO is a weird labyrinth of heavy framing, paranoid juxtapositions, and unsettling musical numbers. Eric von Stroheim is better-cast here than in any other sound film--including GRAND ILLUSION--because his real strength isn't aristocratic elegance, but pretentious disdain: He spends the entire movie looking like he's offended by the lives of everyone around him. In GABBO, von Stroheim plays a self-important ventriloquist slowly growing crazy; and, in a way, his madness becomes our madness as his subtly lurid story becomes increasingly marginalized by the song-and-dance scenes featuring minor characters. The first image alone--a long wide shot of Stroheim drinking coffee like an aristocrat while sitting in a dingy apartment next to his dummy--is worth the price of admission. (1929, 92 min, 35mm) IV
---
More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Jean-Luc Godard's BAND OF OUTSIDERS (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Friday, 6:15pm and Tuesday, 6pm
Time has been incredibly kind to Jean-Luc Godard's lightweight "crime movie," a notable flop in its time, which has emerged, nearly half-a-century later, as one of the filmmaker's most enduringly (and endearingly) popular films. A seemingly tossed-off distillation of the themes, obsessions, and techniques of JLG's early period, this loose adaptation of a largely-forgotten American pulp novel--Fool's Gold, by Dolores Hitchens--stars Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur as a couple of incompetent dreamer hoods, and Godard's then-wife and muse Anna Karina as a girl they meet in their English class and rope into helping them commit a robbery. Karina gives what is perhaps her definitive performance, combining tragedy, resolve, and girlish charm into a single enigmatic package, and the film's giddy, scuzzy style--packed tight with references, meta-jokes, and directorial flight-of fancy--is downright intoxicating. If you've never seen a Godard film, this might be the place to start. Lecture by Laurence Knapp at the Tuesday show. (1964, 97 min, 35mm) IV
---
More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
William Friedkin's THE FRENCH CONNECTION (American Revival)
Patio Theater - Thursday, 7:30pm (repeats October 6)
Relentless. Gene Hackman's sensational turn as Popeye Doyle only works because of his foils: jaded, unflappable Roy Scheider and bourgeois, urbane Fernando Rey. And New York City, as much a character as any human being on screen. Friedkin thrusts us into the middle of a hellish, grubby, chaotic city, a place where the glass of beer sitting on the bar gets drugs, cigarette butts, and junkie's works dumped into it so Doyle can mix up his patented milkshake. Handheld, documentary-like camerawork, working hand in glove with jagged, quick cutting; the car chase may never be duplicated for sheer adrenaline, but the little offhand details are what make the film a fully formed world. The bicycle in Hackman's apartment, ugly wallpaper in Weinstock's living room, orange drink in the subway, nighttime steam rising from the pavement. Don Ellis' soundtrack is also key to the atmosphere, rife with spooky horns and percussion. The shootout in a dripping, ruined warehouse serves as an abrupt, almost existential ending. It seems to pose the question: "Is that all there is ... to life?" (1971, 104 min, DCP Digital Projection) RC
---
More info at www.patiotheater.net.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Chicago Film Seminar begins its fall season on Thursday at 6:30pm with a talk by University of Chicago professor D.N. Rodowick entitled After the Long Eclipse: Christian Metz and the Invention of Theory. The response is from Northwestern University professor Domietta Torlasco. It's at DePaul's Loop Campus in the Daley Building at 14 E. Jackson Blvd. (at State St.), Room LL 102. Use the entrance at 247 S. State.
Movieside (at the Patio Theater) screens a 35mm Anaglyph-3D print of Jack Arnold's 1954 horror film CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (79 min) on Saturday at 2 and 7pm, with actress Julie Adams in person at both screenings. Doors will open an hour before show time and Ms. Adams will be available for autographs, book signing, and photos. A Q&A will follow each screening, with Adams, historian and author Foster Hirsch, and co-author of Adams' biography Mitchell Danton. More info at http://facebook.com/scifispectacular.
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) presents Erin Cosgrove: What Manner of Person Art Thou? on Thursday at 6pm, with animator Cosgrove in person.
Eye & Ear Clinic (SAIC - Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.) presents Santa Fe based curators Frank Ragano and Mirianah Amster of Parallel Studios for a discussion about media art and its place in contemporary culture, and their work curating, designing, and installing new media work for the currents exhibitions and the Santa Fe International New Media Festival, on Tuesday at 4:30pm. Free admission.
Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.) hosts an Open Screening on Saturday at 7:30pm. Bring something to show (DVD only; maximum 20 min.) or just go to watch. Free admission.
Black Cinema House (6901 S. Dorchester Ave.) screens Sam Wainwright Douglas' 2010 documentary CITIZEN ARCHITECT: SAMUEL MOCKBEE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE RURAL STUDIO (57 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Saturday at 6pm. Followed by post-film discussion with Rural Studio alumnus Daniel Splaingard. Due to limited seating, RSVP to blackcinemahouseRSVP@rebuild-foundation.org to insure a seat.
Andrew Bujalski's COMPUTER CHESS (92 min) opens at the Music Box Theatre this week. Writer-director Andrew Bujalski, actors Gordon Kindlmann and Anne Dodge, and producer Alex Lipschultz in person at the Friday and Saturday 7:15pm screenings for introductions and post-screening Q&A with Newcity film critic Ray Pride.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Alexandre Moors' 2013 film BLUE CAPRICE (93 min) opens; and Edgar Wright's 2010 film SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (112 min) and Joe Swanberg's 2013 film DRINKING BUDDIES (90 min) are the Friday and Saturday Midnight films. All Unconfirmed Format.
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens Vincente Minnelli and Fred Zinnemann's 1945 film THE CLOCK (90 min, 35mm) on Wednesday at 1 and 7:30pm. Free admission. http://www.northbrook.info/events/film
The Whistler (2421 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents the Odd Obsession Foreign Film Series on Saturday at 7pm. Screening is Ngai Choi Lam's 1991 film RIKI-OH: THE STORY OF RICKY (91 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format), followed by the Impala Sound Champion DJs at 9pm.
The Northwest Chicago Film Society (at the Patio Theater) screens Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 filmSABOTAGE (76 min, 35mm) on Wednesday at 7:30pm.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Andrew Dosunmu's 2013 film MOTHER OF GEORGE (106 min, DCP Digital Projection) plays for a week; Belmin Söylemez's 2012 Turkish film PRESENT TENSE (107 min, DCP Digital Projection) screens on Friday at 8:15pm and Saturday at 5pm; Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein's 2012 documentary DECEPTIVE PRACTICE: THE MYSTERIES AND MENTORS OF RICKY JAY (88 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Saturday at 3:15pm and Wednesday at 8:15pm, with producer Alicia Sams in person at the Wednesday screening; David Mamet's 1987 film HOUSE OF GAMES (102 min, 35mm) screens on Saturday at 5pm and Monday at 8pm; Danielle Gardner's 2012 documentary OUT OF THE CLEAR BLUE SKY (107 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Saturday at 7:45pm, with Gardner in person; and Matej Minac's 2011 Czech Republic/Slovak film NICKY'S FAMILY (96 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Sunday at 3pm, Monday at 6pm, and Thursday at 8:15pm.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Terence Davies' 1983 film THE TERENCE DAVIES TRILOGY (101 min, 35mm) is on Monday at 7pm; Olivier Assayas' 2008 film SUMMER HOURS (103 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 7pm; and Todd Solondz's 1995 film WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (88 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 9pm.
Facets Cinémathèque screens Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson's 2013 film I DECLARE WAR (91 min, Unconfirmed Format) for a week run; Kat Coiro's 2012 film AND WHILE WE WERE HERE (83 min, Unconfirmed Format) screens on Saturday and Sunday at 3pm; and Dennis Iliadis' 2013 film PLUS ONE (+1) (95 min, Unconfirmed Format) is on Friday and Saturday at 11pm.
Landmark's Century Centre Cinema opens Nicole Holofcener's 2013 film ENOUGH SAID (93 min, Digital Projection - Unconfirmed Format) and Jacob Kornbluth's 2013 documentary INEQUALITY FOR ALL (89 min, Digital Projection - Unconfirmed Format).
The Logan Theatre screens Tom Shadyac's 1994 film ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE (86 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Friday, Saturday, and Monday at 10:30pm; and Kenny Ortega's 1993 HOCUS POCUS (96 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Thursday at 10:30pm.
The Italian Cultural Institute (500 N. Michigan Ave.) screens Citto Maselli's 2007 film ADDRESS ZERO (80 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Tuesday at 6pm.
This week at Chicago Public Library locations: Stephen T. Maing's 2012 documentary HIGH TECH, LOW LIFE (87 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) is on Saturday at 2pm at the Bezazian Branch
(1226 W. Ainslie St.) and Esau Melendez's 2010 documentary IMMIGRANT NATION!: THE BATTLE FOR THE DREAM (96 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) is also on Saturday at 2pm, at the Toman Branch
(2708 S. Pulaski Rd.), with Melendez in person. Both free admission.
The Chicago History Museum screens Linda Bloodworth-Thomason's 2012 documentary BRIDEGROOM (Unconfirmed Running Time, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Wednesday at 6:30pm. Shane Bitney Crone, the subject and producer of the film, in person. Free admission, but reservations required; visit http://chicagohistory.org to reserve a space. Reception from 5-6pm.
The Logan Square International Film Series at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents a double feature of film THE TUNNEL (unconfirmed details) and Colin Eggleston's 1978 Australian horror film LONG WEEKEND (92 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Wednesday at 7pm. Free admission. www.facebook.com/squarelogan
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
ACRE Projects (1913 W. 17th St.) continues Fumbling Toward Ecstasy through October 7. The show, curated by Kate Bowen, features a video diptych by Georgia Wall, in which "nine people reenact a scene from Yvonne Rainer's 'A Film About A Woman Who' as they watch the action of the film unfold on the screen in front of them." The show also includes work by Elena K. Dahl. Open Sundays and Mondays, 12-4pm.
Roots & Culture (1034 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Of This Place, Or Thereabouts: New Work By Robert Chase Heishman & Megan Schvaneveldt, which features solo and collaborative lo-fi video work by the artists. Runs through October 12.
OTHERKIN (2013, 11 min), a new video work by Chris Naka, continues at Julius Caesar (3311 W. Carroll Ave.) through September 29. Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 1-4pm and by appointment.
Antena (1755 S. Laflin St.) continues the show "How Many Feminists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?" ... ...."That's not funny." through September 28 (hours by appointment only). "'How Many Feminists...' is a collection of comedic work by female video artists and performers who identity themselves as feminists and utilize humor as an important part of their work." With video work by Sarah Kelly, Marisa Williamson, Katya Grokhovsky, Rachelle Beaudoin, Andrea Hidalgo, Roxy Farhat, Em Meine, Cristine Brache, T. Foley, Lex Brown, Lilly McElroy, Molly Shea, Shana Moulton, and Becky Sellinger; and Photographic work by Rosemarie Romero.
UPDATES/CLOSURES
The Portage Theatre remains closed for the foreseeable future.
The Patio Theater has discontinued its regular programming and will instead focus on presenting special events, rental screenings, revival screenings in digital, and The Northwest Chicago Film Society's weekly screenings.
