CRUCIAL VIEWING

Needle Through Thumb (Experimental)
Museum of Contemporary Art - Tuesday, 6pm
Continuing the theme of the MCA's October 4th First Friday event centered around local magicians, Tuesday's screening, curated by local filmmaker and programmer Alexander Stewart, examines the influence of Georges Méliès' parlor tricks on experimental cinema. Optical illusions and subversions of expectations conspire in these selected works, resulting in a resolutely fun program. Mark Toscano's RATING DOGS ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10 (2011) is one of the most ebullient films made in recent memory. What begins as a seemingly simple conceit, that of superimposing a numerical rating onto images of Los Angeles dogs, slowly reveals itself to be a game played against the viewing audience and their expectations of what constitutes dog adorableness. Gary Beydler's stunning ability to transform still frames into motion pictures—the essence of cinema itself—is applied to self-portraiture in GLASS FACE (1975), examining facial plasticity through animation. While GLASS FACE creates movement from still imagery, NECROLOGY (Standish Lawder, 1970) slows activity to a near-crawl as it captures a seemingly endless stream of people on an escalator. In OH DEM WATERMELONS (1965), Robert Nelson extends a racist signifier to surreal lengths, from the dissection of a watermelon's viscera to its passionate lovemaking (all buoyed by Steve Reich's deconstruction of a Stephen Foster "coon" song!). Leighton Pierce's GLASS (1998) examines the optical effects of water and glass through a carefully staged execution of domestic manipulation. Also screening is the minute pun of John Smith's GARGANTUAN (1992), the existential drama of standardized testing in Owen Land's NEW IMPROVED INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY (1976), and pair of Chicago works: Tom Palazzolo's treatment of out-of-control patriotism in LOVE IT / LEAVE IT (1973), and REFLEXFILM/FAMILYFILM (1978), Dana Hodgdon's home movie riff on the experimental film cannon. (1965-2011, 84 min, 16mm) DM
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More information at www.mcachicago.org.

David Lynch's HOTEL ROOM (American Revival) 
Gene Siskel Film Center - Wednesday, 8:15pm
Over black & white images of a somber hallway intercut with industrial footage of men working in a factory, David Lynch's flat, nasal voiceover introduces us to the world of HOTEL ROOM: "For a millennium the space for the hotel room existed, undefined. Mankind captured it and gave it shape and passed through. And sometimes when passing through, they found themselves brushing up against the secret names of truth." Barry Gifford spent part of his childhood growing up in hotels, and in fact was born in the Seneca Hotel on Chestnut Street in Chicago. He was undoubtedly the right author to help explore this simple yet ingenious premise. Produced for HBO in the heady days following TWIN PEAKS' success, the short-lived series revolved around the fictitious Railroad Hotel in New York City.  (The Siskel will be screening only the two Lynch/Gifford episodes; a third episode was written by Jay McInerney and directed by James Signorelli). Each episode takes place in Room 603 but in a different time period. Set in 1969, "Tricks" follows what happens when two men share both an enigmatic history and a pot-smoking call girl. It features superb performances by Freddie Jones, Glenne Headly, and especially Harry Dean Stanton, who delivers a mesmerizing soliloquy about a stint as a Chinese food delivery boy. Anticipating their future collaboration LOST HIGHWAY, Lynch and Gifford use noirish dialogue to sharpen a dream-like excursion into a realm of shifting identities. It's also really funny. "Blackout," which takes place in 1936, is essentially a two-hander between disturbed child-wife Alicia Witt and Crispin Glover, who has never been gentler. As the couple confronts a painful remembrance during a thunderstorm, Lynch and cinematographer Peter Deming use the lonely beam of their flashlight to dramatize their isolation. Both episodes are beautifully wrought miniatures, structurally reminiscent of the Golden Age of live television in the 1950's but thematically one of a kind. Surely Rod Serling would have approved. Following the screening, Elysabeth Alfano of The Dinner Party at City Winery will lead an audience discussion with Gifford, who will then sign copies of "The Roy Stories," "Landscape With Traveler," and "Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels." (1993, 78 min total, Unconfirmed Formats) RC 
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 More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

Orson Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL (American Revival)
Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) - Wednesday, 1 and 7:30pm
The film opens with a close-up of a time bomb. A doomed couple crosses the border from Mexico to California with ticking death in the trunk of their convertible. Another doomed couple moves with them, on foot. In a moment, all the world will explode. But this isn't a film about explosions and death. It's a film about violence, about the horrifying disconnect between words and deeds, about betrayal and lies. As the racist bully of a policeman, Hank Quinlan, Orson Welles exudes grotesquery, sweating bullets of injustice and bigotry with every wheezing step. He blunders through the film, a monstrous presence prepared to do anything to enact his vision of law and order, willing to frame a man for murder just because he doesn't like his attitude. All is transient, in flux, not merely taking place on the border but being about borderlines themselves. Where do we draw that line between interrogation and torture, between investigation and harassment, between evidence and supposition, between the friend and the foe? TOUCH OF EVIL is a film of cold fury, one that gives us a vision of existence as a permanent state of emergency, in which all that was previously thought solid has not just melted but burst into flames. The film begins with a bomb in a bravura long-take that falsely shows the world as whole, coherent, legible, only to destroy that world, to show it as always having been destroyed just moments before. But it ends with a sequence of crushing beauty: Quinlan, pursued through a wasteland of Mexican architectural filth by the mock-heroic Vargas (Charlton Heston), finally learns that in this space of nihilism, where things themselves can lie (a stick of dynamite, a photograph, a corpse) his own words are the only things he cannot escape. Objects are mere opportunities for deceit here, and space just a field of power, mastered by evil and oppressive, corrosive, of the genuine. Only words, perversely, can be trusted, and it's through words, finally, that the monster will be slain, though it's a meaningless victory: the man Quinlan framed has been tortured into confessing anyway. Marlene Dietrich's famous line of elegy, 'What does it matter what you say about people?' is the loveliest and bleakest affirmation of the indefatigability of injustice ever put on celluloid. (1958, 112 min, 35mm) KB
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More info at www.northbrook.info/events/film.

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Docs at the Box
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
The documentary genre is somewhat like a Venn diagram: one circle is good filmmaking, the other is interesting real-life subject matter, and the small intersecting area between those is apropos to the seeming shortage of great documentaries that successfully merge the two. When the focus is on a subject, it is not unusual for artistic nuance to fall by the wayside of compelling fact-based drama, and when the focus of a documentary lies in its aesthetic refinement, its candid distinction can become lost amongst the licensing. But when the two come together, it's something so anomalous and oftentimes masterful that real life suddenly seems more divine and the artful liberties of manipulation serve only to intensify the wonder. It's hard to say if there will be anything of this sort at the Music Box Theatre's Docs at the Box series, opening tonight and running through next Thursday. The subject matter is certainly interesting, with most of the documentaries being about famous people and their beguiling idiosyncrasies. PLIMPTON! STARRING GEORGE PLIMPTON AS HIMSELF (Tom Bean and Luke Poling, 2012) is about none other than the man who's lived more lives than a shelter's worth of cats. The notorious writer-editor-actor-sometimes professional athlete, best described as a participatory journalist, is profiled through a series of television and radio interviews, news, TV and film clips, and still photographs that are almost as vibrant as his enduring spirit. SHEPARD AND DARK (Treva Wurmfeld, 2012) profiles the relationship between playwright and actor Sam Shepard and a friend from his Greenwich Village days. Their story is as bizarre as it is steadfast, strengthened by an unrelenting correspondence that is the subject of this documentary. And the ladies aren't left out- ANITA: SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER (Freida Lee Mock, 2013), BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL (Mark Mori, 2013) and THE PUNK SINGER (Sini Anderson, 2013) are about women from three very different professions who each left their respective marks both in their industries and on the world. From harassment on the Hill to the progressive rebellion of the pin-up and punk cultures, Anita Hill, Bettie Page and Kathleen Hanna hold their own in these feature-length films about their noteworthy lives and accomplishments. BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL earns brownie points for being narrated by the subject herself, with extensive interviews recorded prior to her death culled together to merge the subjective and objective. Speaking of which, political intrigue is oftentimes best left to those Netflix documentaries in which any number of people are blamed for 9/11, but it wouldn't be a competent series without at least one thrown into the mix. INFORMANT (Jamie Meltzer, 2012) is about Brandon Darby, the political activist noted for his heroics in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina who was then later revealed to be an FBI informant. The only film with access to Darby since his infamous confession in 2008, it's sure to be a source of real-life civic melodrama. While a title such as OUR NIXON (Penny Lane, 2013) might suggest the aforementioned intrigue popular in online streaming, it's actually a refreshing look at the life of Richard Nixon through the home movies made by three of his top aides. Assembled from more than 500 reels of Super 8 footage, the film shows us one of the most infamous presidents through the metaphorical eye of those who knew him best. Speaking of infamy, TRIALS OF MUHAMMAD ALI (Bill Siegel, 2013), the long-awaited new documentary from Kartemquin Films, will focus instead on a tumultuous time in the famed boxer's life during which he converted to Islam and refused to serve in the Vietnam War, rather than his illustrious sporting career or the more sordid aspects of his troubled personal life. The screening is a Chicago sneak preview and will include the filmmakers in person. Without having seen any of the films, it's difficult to determine which part of the diagram any of these will fall into. And while most documentary film festivals and series can boast the inclusion of films either artful or interesting, it suffices to say that this week's lineup may feature a few films that will merge all that is real and illusory within the context of non-fiction cinema. The series will also include SMASH & GRAB: THE STORY OF THE PINK PANTHERS (Havana Marking, 2013), MY FATHER AND THE MAN IN BLACK (Jonathan Holiff, 2013), EVOCATEUR: THE MORTON DOWNEY, JR. MOVIE (2012), and FREE THE MIND (Phie Ambo, 2012). KK
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.

David Lynch's ERASERHEAD (American Revival) 
Music Box Theatre - Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am; Saturday, Midnight
"It's my Philadelphia Story. It just doesn't have Jimmy Stewart in it." In Lynch's debut feature, a man and a woman conceive a monstrous child somewhere in between suburban alienation and industrial rot, a mostly conventional situation with the most grotesque punchline. Watching ERASERHEAD now feels like wandering through a nightmare more than ever, due in part to its central conceit and the expected barrage of disturbing events and images that it entails—distended faces, animal carcasses, etc.—but even the film's few familiar features add to this dreamlike quality. For example, most of ERASERHEAD takes place in an apartment building whose lobby is recognizable as the Other Place from TWIN PEAKS, and its checkerboard floors trigger a series of half-conscious connections, the common dream trope of a location playing the role of another location. But for every fact we know about the film's production, we're equally uncertain about what it is we're actually looking at, including the creature-child itself, whose uncertain origins have inspired theories that claim it as everything from a cow fetus to an elaborate puppet. Then, amidst this uncertainty, the film's most destabilizing quality emerges: its sweetness. As the father, Jack Nance has a constant wide-eyed, beleaguered stare that is almost as infantile as the creature-child that he tends to, ambivalently at first and then urgently as soon as he sees it in distress. It's effectively moving for the same reason that it's effectively dreamlike, with conscious logic and psychological realism applied to unreal conditions. But because Lynch's mind doesn't seem to format in the conditional or hypothetical, this aspect of unreality is always underlined as literal, so that the scenario of a largely silent father figure demonstrating real concern over his freak spawn is never played as what would happen but what is happening, shifting the focus onto affect and away from conditions. The silhouette of Nance's head has become a visual shorthand for the film, and is also emblematic in many ways of this oddly bound logic; it's shape is both inexplicable and inevitable, and the only place is could possibly make sense is on the floor of a pencil factory, which is exactly where it ends up. (1977, 89 min, New 35mm Print) AO
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.

Todd Haynes' POISON (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 9pm
Todd Haynes' first feature remains a high point of his career, a startling pastiche of film styles that waves its themes before the audience like a moving target. One section, a B-movie homage about a disfigured scientist and the woman who comes to accept him, suggests an allegory for the AIDS generation; the melodramatic prison romance, inspired by the writings of Jean Genet (and looking a bit like R.W. Fassbinder's Genet adaptation QUERELLE), hints at an epic poem about queer culture in general. The third strand, however, is something else entirely: a domestic drama presented in the style of a Dateline human-interest piece (and broken by occasional experimental flourishes) about a seven-year-old boy who's shot and killed his father. This section—deadpan, elusive, and gradually terrifying—is what ensures the movie's lasting impact. Designed like a puzzle with no solution, it throws everything we see into doubt, casts its horror on the entire film (which Haynes subtitled, provocatively, "three tales of transgression and punishment"). Haynes interweaves the three stories for poetic rather than thematic effect, imbuing the somewhat clinical compositions (the greatest weakness of all his film) with a rich, associative imagination. The director's Bowie-like ability to mimic various genres rarely seemed more purposeful than it does here: at its most direct, POISON evokes like few other films what it's like to never feel at home in one's own skin. (1991, 85 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

Jean-Pierre Melville's UN FLIC (French Revival) 
Gene Siskel Film Center - Friday, 6pm and Sunday, 5pm
Jean-Pierre Melville's last film (released posthumously in the US in 1979) is a blue affair from top to bottom. Shot in a sickly cobalt, UN FLIC is largely affectless and methodical but no less captivating as it pairs cop (Alain Delon) and robber (Richard Crenna) as two sides of the same coin. Both are supposed friends, and both play the long game—albeit with different target: one intricately plans and executes well-timed bank heists and smuggling operations, the other is equally as calculating and patient in pursuit. Both men are infatuated with Cathy (Catherine Deneuve), adding something tangible to their otherwise inexpressive—and passively homosexual relationship. Melville is masterly in creating a mysterious and unseemly atmosphere out of seemingly very little. The extended opening heist sequence is intentionally mechanical, but it is also held together by an inherent urgency and tension. Mostly, though, Melville imparts the feeling of down-and-out apathy of going through the motions, overriding the generic film noir conventions. All the waiting and planning, false leads, sterile locales, etc., coupled with Melville's interest in showing us such things, suggests that criminal and detective might simply be filling their roles for the sake of the film and by extension the audience. Is Melville? (1972, 98 min, 35mm) BW
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

Friday, 7, 9:30, and Midnight; Sunday, 1pm
David Fincher's SE7EN (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Friday, 7, 9:30, and Midnight; Sunday, 1pm
SE7EN has all the typical strengths and weaknesses of a great artist's early work. In it we see all the hallmarks of Fincher's mature style already expressed to a masterful degree: the intense scrutiny of the cruelty and eroticism of male power dynamics, the aching pessimism underlying heterosexual romance, and the abstraction of the human being to mere physicality. This is a crushingly well-composed movie, one that moves to a brutal rhythm, that creaks and groans and drips and cries out without mercy. The obvious theme, notoriously, is sin: a serial killer murders a person every day over the course of the film's week-long narrative, each death staged as an illustration of one of the deadly sins. But that is to read the film as mere illustration of the well-crafted but cliché-addled script by Andrew Kevin Walker. The real concern here is not one of theology but, as is so often the case for Fincher, of ethics. In this case, the question is the largest of Fincher's career to date: is cinema evil? Which is another way of asking, is there a line film cannot cross, or is it, by its very existence, unforgivable? This isn't a new question, though it is one that lacks a satisfying answer. One of my favorite early opponents of cinema, the art and food critic Elizabeth Robins Pennell, believed that cinema was a kind of special perniciousness that threatened to destroy civilization through its thought-numbing evil. "The movies," she wrote, "are worse than a sedative—they are dope, pure dope, the most deadly ever invented," adding that film was an "unpardonable sin" that destroyed the morals of its viewers by "the stifling of all tendency to thought." Pennell, writing in 1921, was part of a large-scale ideology of panic over the movies. Only six years earlier, Joseph McKenna had pronounced a withering unanimous Supreme Court opinion that noted that motion pictures are "capable of evil, having power for it, the greater because of their attractiveness and manner of exhibition." Movies, in other words, were under suspicion: so magnetic and captivating were they, so addictive and worthlessly pleasurable, that they constituted a danger, real and immediate, for the morals of America. Cinema was after our very souls. SE7EN's antagonist sees the world as having already lost that moral war, as having already surrendered its soul. He moves in a world that has been neutralized of meaning, and so he tries, through his horrifying crimes, to restart our outrage, our righteousness, our lives, so that the devilish spectacle of modern media can be destroyed.  SE7EN's form, like its villain, sees evil in every shadow, creeping all around its characters, but recognizes that the mesmeric force of its imagery has its own moral value. We cannot look away from the grotesqueries that the killer's staged for us, his real audience, and in that weakness we damn ourselves, but SE7EN, for all its darkness, presents a vision of absolute moral clarity: there's nothing that can't be shown, but there are some things that even when shown can't be seen. (1995, 127 min, 35mm) KB
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

Sofia Coppola's THE BLING RING (New American)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Saturday, 7 and 9pm; Sunday, 3:45pm
Paris Hilton's real house is prominently featured in Sofia Coppola's THE BLING RING, with no question as to whose it could be. The decor is distinctly personal, her face appearing on everything from the pictures on the wall to the pillows on her bed. It's hard to tell whether or not Hilton is in on the joke—she agreed to let her house be used and even appears in a cameo—but it's no secret that the whole film is a somewhat mocking representation of a vainglorious celebrity culture so rampant as to inspire theft in an already privileged group of teenagers. If Hilton isn't in on it, then the late Harris Savides must have been. The renowned cinematographer shows a world so beautiful as to seem unreal, even fake, producing the cinematic equivalent of luxury brand magazine ads and some of the classier network reality shows. (That's not to criticize Savides' work, but to recognize his impressive ability to duplicate and even expand upon a familiar aesthetic.) Both Hilton's involvement and Savides' portrayal represent the complexity of a film that appears as vapid as the lifestyle it's infiltrating, with only the subtlest of indicators suggesting any depth beyond its glossy surface. The lack of any outward ugliness in relation to the film's debauched premise is a nuance that has caused many a critic and moviegoer to wonder if the film isn't more endorsement than depiction. That's not to say people believe Coppola is endorsing her character's actions, but the film's portrayal of tantalizingly beautiful stuff lends itself to an uncomfortable understanding from the audience as to why someone might want to steal it. Ironically, the thieves in question were not admiring from afar but instead lurking in the fringes of entitlement—the film is based on true events during which a group of affluent LA teenagers (later dubbed 'the Bling Ring') robbed the houses of several celebrities whom they proclaimed to admire. Coppola makes no attempt to mask the glamour or denounce an appreciation for beautiful things, instead forcing viewers to reconcile that acknowledgement with their disdain at the criminal actions rooted in society's envy of the rich and famous. Hers is an uncomfortable truth, one in which very little effort is made to add depth where it does not belong; the stuff is beautiful and the people are shallow, but there is no need for them to be anything more than that. As the teenage robbers admire Hilton's vast collection of clothes, shoes and accessories, one can not help but to wonder if them admiring the beautiful things is the same as us admiring Savides' beautiful images. Any semblance of depth exists not within the narrative, but in what it reflects back upon and says about the viewer. (2013, 90 min, 35mm or DCP Digital Projection - Unconfirmed) KK
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

William Friedkin's THE FRENCH CONNECTION (American Revival)
Patio Theater - Sunday, 5 and 7:30pm
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
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More info at www.patiotheater.net.

MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS

As part of the Museum of Contemporary Art's First Friday event today, Christy LeMaster has curated a program of shorts to accompany the event's theme of magic. Screening continuously (on 16mm) throughout the evening are DIXIE CUP MAGICIAN OUTTAKES (1950's, 7 min), Segundo de Chomón's 1907 trick film THE RED SPECTRE by (10 min), Robert Nelson's 1963 film PLASTIC HAIRCUT by Robert Nelson (15 min), and Peter Miller and Alexander Stewart's 2011 film VERY SIMILAR TO By (3 min).

Eye & Ear Clinic (SAIC, 112 S. Michigan Ave., Room 1307) presents filmmaker Bill Brown in person with his short experimental documentary/essay films MEMORIAL LAND and CONFEDERATION PART on Wednesday at 4:30pm. Free admission. Brown will also be presenting these films on Friday at the Nightingale (see next week's list for a review).

Afterglowings presents Bedsheet Cinema on Wednesday at 8pm in the backyard at 3149 W Lyndale. Screening from DVD Projection are experimental films by John Smith (OM and GARGANTUAN), Ron Rice (CHUMLUM), and Peter Rose (THE MAN WHO COULD NOT SEE FAR ENOUGH). Approx. 65 min total.

Conversations at the Edge presents a program by media artist Kurt Hentschläger, in person, on Thursday at 6pm at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

The Northwest Chicago Film Society (at the Patio Theater) screens Philip Kaufman and Benjamin Manaster's 1964 Chicago-made film GOLDSTEIN (84 min, Newly Restored 35mm Archival Print) on Friday at 7:30pm; and Dave Fleischer's 1941 animated feature MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN (78 min, 35mm) on Wednesday at 7:30pm.

The Chicago International Film Festival opens on Thursday with a screening of James Gray's new film THE IMMIGRANT (2013, 120 min, Unconfirmed Format). Check the festival website, www.chicagofilmfestival.com, for more information.

Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.) screens Mark Kitchell's 2012 environmental documentary A FIERCE GREEN FIRE (101 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Saturday at 7:30pm at its own veneu and again on Wednesday at 6:30pm at Columbia College's Ferguson Theater (600 S. Michigan Ave.).

Due to a last-minute time crunch, we are unable to unable to provide more complete information on the following screenings. Our apologies. Please visit the various venues' website for more details.

Gene Siskel Film Center
INTOLERANCE
OUR CHILDREN
HANNAH ARENDT
THE HUNT
ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW
A HIJACKING
A PIG ACROSS PARIS
Various Formats

Doc Films (University of Chicago)
MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY
A TIME TO LIVE, A TIME TO DIE
THUNDERBOLT
FACES
COLD WATER
All 35mm

Music Box Theatre
YOU WILL BE MY SON
Found Footage Festival: Best of the Midwest
BAD MILO
All Unconfirmed Format

Facets Cinémathèque
SYMPHONY OF THE SOIL
DUMPLINGS
SUICIDE CLUB
All Unconfirmed Format

Landmark's Century Centre Cinema
GRAVITY
MUSCLE SHOALS
Both Digital Projection

Logan Theatre
CANDYMAN
POLTERGEIST
THE MONSTER SQUAD
All Digital Projection

The Patio Theater
THE UNTOUCHABLES (Digital Projection)

Logan Square International Film Series
FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET + THE CHURCH
DVD Projection

Chicago Public Library
TONY AND JANINA'S AMERICAN WEDDING
SALT
Both Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format

Italian Cultural Institute
THE SPEED OF LIGHT (DVD Projection)

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.

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.