CRUCIAL VIEWING

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's A CITY OF SADNESS (Taiwanese Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Monday, 7pm
Who's got time to talk about Hou Hsiao-Hsien's long takes when there's so much to be said about the feelings in his movies? A CITY OF SADNESS is the beautiful, massive expression Visconti, Kurosawa, Pontecorvo, Bertolucci, and Zhang spent their careers trying for but never achieved. Hou is less artful than any of them, and therefore more likely to produce art: here he is doing something like what Sergio Leone created when he turned the American Century into an opium dream in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, or what Orson Welles invoked when he called for a hallucinatory cinema. An experience, like remembering someone else's memories—immediate, fleeting, but also inescapable. A history rendered entirely in interludes; moving in a slow straight line, it bests Dos Passos' and Döblin's busy tangles. Yes, Hou shot this elusive film in a town abandoned in the 1940s and cast Tony Leung, who didn't speak a word of Taiwanese or Mandarin, as a deaf man, but the authenticity of his direction is moot when compared to the way emotions seem to emanate from the images, wriggling their way inside of you—little invisible tendrils sprouting from faces or objects on the screen. (1989, 157 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

Jodie Mack: LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE (Experimental Animation/ Animated Documentary)
Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center - Thursday, 6pm
Jodie Mack's work consistently finds that elusive mix of joy and criticality often woefully absent in experimental work. Drawing on the traditions of abstract animation, avant-garde notions of materiality, and her own expansive creativity, Mack creates colorful, musical pieces with wide appeal. Often incorporating performance and audience interaction, Mack's screenings feel more like parties. This event in particular should be especially fun as Mack is a returning SAIC hero premiering her most ambitious work, DUSTY STACKS OF MOM: THE POSTER PROJECT, a featurette-length animated documentary about her mother's failing poster business. Mack reworked the lyrics from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to narrate the action and invited different musicians to reinterpret the backing tracks. DUSTY STACKS calls into play the line between abstract art and popular iconography, rock opera tropes, and the changing nature of object-based markets. DUSTY STACKS is an inventive and engaging take on a personal story with timely cultural resonance. Amidst the rollicking fun of the music, witty puns, and skillful abstract segments, Mack is posing sharp questions about the value of art and commerce. And because she is so good at engaging us with her infectious energy we will probably have some hearty thoughts in response.  Also showing will be four brand new shorts. Jodie Mack in person. (2013, approx. 80 min total, Multiple Formats) CL
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More info at blogs.saic.edu/cate/fall-2013-season>.

Harold P. Warren's MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE (American/Cult Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Friday and Saturday, Midnight
The sadness that washed over me the first time, many years ago, that I ever saw an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 remains a bitter ache that, like a cut inside your mouth, seems to reopen and refresh itself every time you notice it. Lovely, idiosyncratic, intensely felt, and deeply strange films were unearthed on that show, movies that in their inimitable misunderstandings of classic Hollywood idioms and troubled relationships with narrative were like mysterious blind alleys branching off the tedious main thoroughfares of cinema. Delirious, visionary, and transformative, movies like BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, THE INDUSTRUCTIBLE MAN, THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN, and NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST, movies that I treasure, movies that are among the greatest of their times, were made into mere setups for cruel mockery on the part of comedians whose interest in cinema was apparently limited to finding hilariously wanting anything that didn't look like the anonymous productions of well-paid professionals. In January, 1993, Mystery Science Theater 3000 aired one of its most notorious episodes when the cast set up to piss all over a largely-forgotten horror film from 1966, made by a cast and crew who were almost all complete amateurs and produced by an insurance salesman merely so as to win a bet. It was MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE, directed, produced, written by, and starring Harold P. Warren. Much has been written on MANOS, nearly all of it supporting the proposition that it is not merely bad but amazingly bad, a film admirable and remarkable precisely because it is a contender for the worst film ever made. It is not the worst film ever made. In fact, it is extraordinary, a mesmerizing and precious piece of film history. The bare plot line is easily summarized, though to do so, as with all great cinema, is to miss everything of note in the film. A married couple and their young daughter lose their way and end up at a decrepit old house manned by a disturbed cripple named Torgo. The house is the home of the Master, a priest of some sort, endowed by the god Manos with undisclosed powers that may include mental domination. The Master rules over a cult of scantily-clad and in-fighting women, his brides, and contends with Torgo for sexual access to them. The family finds themselves turned into unwilling battlegrounds for this contest between Torgo and the Master. What matters, though, is not the silly erotic mysticism of the story but the movie's rhythms, its style, its camerawork, which in their outsider brutishness combine to form nothing less than a window into an alternative conception of cinema itself. Where many movies strive for a rough continuity between our experience of the world and the constructed phenomenology of the art world, MANOS jettisons any coherence of character or theme, all but the slightest glimmer of narrative structure, and the rudimentary foundations of cinematic convention. One's experience of time and space, critical philosophy recognizes, is not found within that which we perceive but in fact structures the very act of perception. Ingrained within the very fabric of reason, the intuitions of space and time allow for, shape, and control the kinds of sensations we're capable of having. To watch MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE is to encounter a direct assault upon those representations. It's a project doomed to fail, a doom echoed by the overarching doom that the ever-approaching, never appearing god Manos himself represents in the film.  But it's a film that in its failure is nothing less than astonishing. Note: The version of MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE being shown has been lovingly restored by Benjamin Solovey from the original 16mm workprint. It has never looked better, even at the 1966 premiere. If you are only familiar with the film from the washed-out, cropped version circulating in the public domain, you are in for a revelation. (1966, 69 min, DCP Digital Projection) KB
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.

Aleksandr Sokurov's RUSSIAN ARK (Russian Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check Venue website for showtimes
Aleksandr Sokurov's magnum opus—an unbroken hour-and-a-half Steadicam shot that weaves through the rooms of St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, adopting the perspective of a time traveler (Sokurov, uncredited) who has become lost in Russian history. Part essay film, part historical pageant, the film alternates past glories with periods of hardship—a cyclical sense of culture that's central to Russian nationalism, and Sokurov's work. A radical piece of conservative art. (2002, 96 min, DCP Digital Projection) IV
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

ALSO RECOMMENDED

Olivier Assayas' LES DESTINEÉS SENTIMENTALES (French Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 7pm
Olivier Assayas' three-hour period drama is the most unfairly neglected of his features. Spanning the first four decades of the 20th century, the film follows a Protestant factory owner (Charles Berling) through two marriages (first to Isabelle Huppert, then to Emmanuelle Beart) and changing fortunes; fluid camerawork and attentive editing draw out the characters' repressed emotions and anxieties. Though often characterized as a stylistic departure for Assayas, the movie shares his other films' fixation on awkward social gatherings (an early ball scene, shot almost entirely handheld, is as fidgety as anything in IRMA VEP) and commerce. (2000, 180 min, 35mm)  IV
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

Roman Polanski's ROSEMARY'S BABY (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
Growing up I only knew Patsy Kelly from two movies, the first being, obviously, THE NORTH AVENUE IRREGULARS, where she offers a sublime performance as the powder-faced Irish churchlady Mrs. Rafferty. The second was ROSEMARY'S BABY. I first saw it on TV, chopped up with commercials, but even so it scared the bejesus out of me. And, if only briefly, it made me scared of Patsy Kelly. Something I hated Polanski for, at least at first. If pure evil can manifest itself in the form of a doughy doofus like Laura-Louise, where does that leave us? Later of course I realized how brilliant it was to cast her in the part (over at the Criterion blog, Michael Koresky offers a wonderful appreciation). She's one of the movie's secret ingredients, alongside Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Ralph Bellamy, Elisha Cook, Jr., and all the other crinkly old timers playing Satanists. What seems like a casting stunt at first is actually part of an adept strategy of misdirection; more than perhaps any other horror movie of its time, aside from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, Polanski was able to convincingly demonstrate that the banality of the everyday can act as the perfect cloak for the sinister and demonic. (1968, 136 min, DCP Digital Projection; New Restoration) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.

Todd Haynes's VELVET GOLDMINE (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 10:30pm
The past decade has not been kind to Todd Haynes. His last three major projects represent a steady, precipitous decline for a director whose work once was one of the most excitingly iconoclastic and theoretically informed in the country. The stillborn Sirk mimicry of FAR FROM HEAVEN, the empty, desperate casting games of I'M NOT THERE, the glacial tedium of MILDRED PIERCE, his HBO miniseries...his retreat into the safe and plasticine is a disappointment, but mustn't be allowed to diminish the fecund achievement of that first decade, years in which he brought forth his suppressed Karen Carpenter biopic, a haunting meditation on the works of Jean Genet, and [SAFE], an infectious and quietly harrowing film of uncompromising brilliance. VELVET GOLDMINE is a transitional work, sandwiched between the intensity and coldness of his earlier works and the complacency of the later: a truly decadent work in all the best senses of the word. Loosely based on the lives of David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop, and gleefully stealing the structure of CITIZEN KANE, Haynes's film attempts nothing less than a reinvention of the musical as a micro-historical fantasia. Christian Bale's reminiscing journalist investigates the career, stardom, and afterlife of Brian Slade, compellingly played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. A loose Bowie-stand-in, Slade is disturbingly charismatic, indiscriminately carnal, and brilliant. He crosses paths with, mentors, and then brutally battles Curt Wild, played by Ewan McGregor. An uncontrollable maniac, furious and self-destructive, Wild unleashes within Slade an explosion of sexual and sonic experimentation that brings about glam rock. Haynes rips the frame to shreds, burns the celluloid, cross-casts new covers of minor 1970s hits, and turns the memoiristic call-and-response of the Welles film into a postmodern refusal of master narratives. History, Stephen Dedalus famously muttered, was a nightmare from which he was trying to awake. VELVET GOLDMINE presents history as a nightmare from which no one awakens, a pulsating, thumping fever-dream of debauchery and incomprehensibility, one that never grows clear, only more distant, and from which emerge not wakeful eyes in the daylight but the monstrous, Reaganite undead. (1988, 124 min, 35mm)KB
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

Lewis Milestone's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Tuesday, 7pm
Thanks to the coming of sound in 1928, director Lewis Milestone's determination to test the limits of this new technology, and the still-fresh memories of World War I, when soldiers get shot in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, they don't grimace and fall over quietly. They scream horribly, tear at their faces, and cry for their mothers, and their friends have to watch because there's nothing they can do. Milestone's adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel emphasizes the twin themes of suffering and helplessness through all the tools in sound cinema's ever-increasing toolbox while enlisting the elegiac formal perfection of the late silents, creating a film of lyrical beauty and punishing realism that Hollywood failed to equal in a war film until well after World War II. Admittedly, it strays a tad too often into talky antiwar naivety, but the cumulative effect of watching these schoolboys turn into soldiers turn into meat for the war machine, set to the incessant thunder of artillery, is still devastating. (1930, 140 min, 35mm) MWP
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

Takeshi Kitano's SONATINE (Japanese Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Saturday, 5pm and Tuesday, 6pm
Takeshi Kitano's yakuza flick sucks the cool out of the gangster genre, but retains the doom and violence. In a typically superb low-key performance, Kitano stars as a Tokyo underboss who gets sent to Okinawa to settle a turf dispute; following an ambush, he takes his men to a nearby island to hide out—which is where they end up spending the remaining two-thirds of the movie. With no present or future, the yakuza wander empty beaches, playing games and goofing off while they await the inevitable. Kitano's style—which makes extensive use of off-screen action and sound—gives off a vibe that's one part sincere melancholy, one part absurdist nihilism. (1994, 94 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's LA VÉRITÉ (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Sunday, 4:45 pm and Wednesday, 6pm
Henri-Georges Clouzot's last film before the personal and aesthetic crisis of L'ENFER is also his finest non-documentary feature, fully and freely realized through the style the director had been developing since the 1930s and would try to ditch soon afterward. Brigitte Bardot—dressed in tight sweaters and those awful '50s that make breasts look like knees—stars as a naïve bohemian who falls for a pretentious conductor (Sami Frey). Clouzot's underrated sense of editing, with its strong but subtle rhythms, is put to great use in the conducting scenes, which recall the director's collaborations with Herbert von Karajan; these sequences, in which the world seems to take on a hierarchy and furious order through music, make Bardot's attraction to Frey more palpable than any of his haughty banter. (1960, 127 min, Archival 35mm Print) IV
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

Robert Mulligan's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Friday, Noon
Despite the novel's critical and commercial success, the film adaptation of Harper Lee's Pulitzer-Prize winning story was initially considered something of a Hollywood nonentity. "The other studios didn't want it because what's it about?," Mulligan recounted. "It's about a middle-aged lawyer with two kids. There's no romance, no violence, except off-screen. There's no action. What is there? Where's the story?" Shot in black and white, MOCKINGBIRD's racial tension is set against an ironically 'colorless' backdrop that gives sharp contrast to the characters' social divide. A guilelessly straightforward title sequence and a score that brings to mind youthful musical experimentation add further innocence to the film's mature overtones. Lee intervened to have Gregory Peck cast as Atticus Finch, a deep-voiced Southern lawyer of high morale who moonlights as World's Best Dad, and two kids with no professional acting experience (Mary Badham and Phillip Alford) were cast as Scout and Jem, the novel's young protagonists. Robert Duvall also made his film debut as Boo Radley, the man whose presence sparks the imaginations of the precocious children. With deceptively simple styling and a faithful screenplay by noted playwright Horton Foote, Mulligan succeeded in tastefully representing the inherent simplicity of Lee's acclaimed novel. (1962, 130 min, 35mm) KS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.

Jason Osder's LET THE FIRE BURN (New Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check Venue website for showtimes
Few non-Philadelphians have more than a casual understanding of the May 1985 MOVE bombing, in which then-mayor Wilson Goode ordered explosives delivered by helicopter to the roof of the house of a small group of controversial religious radicals in a middle-class African-American neighborhood; this ultimately lead to a larger conflagration which immolated multiple city blocks. This impressive documentary, composed entirely of period film and video footage from the 1970s through the mid-1980s (including a fascinating commissioned hearing subsequent to the catastrophe with a level of public, civic introspection inconceivable in Chicago), eschews talking heads for the mediated verité of home movies and live TV. The facts are mind-blowing enough for those unfamiliar, but the jumble of images is dense enough to support more in-depth considerations on the limits of cultural radicalism in the urban environment. While animal-liberation, anti-capitalist, pro-naturalism, anti-materialism, and even anti-technology positions continue here-and-there in cities today, what this film makes clear is that if your community constructs a stable belief system from these sentiments (as opposed to a linguistic rhetoric which you wear like a Halloween costume when writing English papers), the state will wage war on you and it will not stop until you and your family have been murdered and your home and the homes of your neighbors are burned to the ground. (2013, 93 min, DCP Digital Projection) MC
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

Richard Linklater's BEFORE MIDNIGHT (New American)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Saturday, 7 and 9:15pm; Sunday, 3:15pm
Told in a few, spare movements, BEFORE MIDNIGHT reacquaints the audience with Celine and Jesse—whom have been together for some years now—rather than each other, as in the chance or bittersweet meetings of the previous films. Gone is the giddy romance and impressing-by-way-of-theorizing of their youthful first encounter. Instead, almost twenty years and one movie later, Celine and Jesse are now in their 40s and have grown into themselves, their lives, and their choices. On extended holiday in Greece with their children, Celine and Jesse's conversations feel so natural, so mired in the details of their life, that the exuberance of ideas about love and the fullness of life are far more weighted here. Though together as a result of their genuine loving bond, BEFORE MIDNIGHT openly and boldly questions why they remain connected. A lengthy scene during dinner with friends young and old allows for an egalitarian discussion of just this idea, expressing in a different way what Linklater's films are: interim reports on the shifting definition of love as we age. The scene also sets up one of the most remarkable quarrels on film, elegantly shot and staged. The abundance of interpersonal connection is followed by a gradual understanding of the inherent separateness of their lives, yet they maintain an ongoing union out of something much more than convenience or habit. Is this love? It's close enough. (2013, 109 min, 35mm) BW
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

 

MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS

Chicago Filmmakers presents Marianna Milhorat: Notions of Space on Saturday at 7:30pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.) and on Wednesday at 6:30pm at Columbia College's Ferguson Theater (600 S. Michigan Ave.). Local filmmaker Milhorat will screen a selection of her beautiful and haunting experimental works, along with several films that have inspired her.

FVNMA Media Archeologies Institute at SAIC (112 S. Michigan Ave. Rm. 1307) presents Lori Emerson: The Media Archaeology Lab as Thinkertoy on Tuesday at 1pm. Emerson is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Free admission.

Defibrillator (1136 N. Milwaukee Ave.), in conjunction with Columbia College A+D Gallery, present Imperfect Symmetry: A Compendium Performance Evening, which will feature a live audio-video performance by the duo Lucky Dragons, along with performance works by Younger and Michael & Alan Fleming. It's on Friday at 8pm. www.dfbrl8r.org/event/imperfect-symmetry

Eye & Ear Clinic (SAIC, 112 S. Michigan Ave., Rm. 1307) presents film, video, and new media artist Robert Campbell, who will be screening and discussing excerpts of his work, on Monday at 4:30pm. Free admission.

Chicago Film Archives at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents The Real Cowboys of the Prairie on Tuesday at 8pm. The screening includes RODEO CLOWN: THE DARING BREED (1975, 24 min, produced by Charparral Productions and Adams & Adams Productions), Collin Low's CORRAL (1954, 12 min), and Nancy Kelly's COWGIRLS: PORTRAITS OF AMERICAN RANCH WOMEN (1985, 29 min). All 16mm. Free admission.

On Tuesday at 6pm, the Museum of Contemporary Art presents Alexis Gideon's FLOATING OCEANS, the latest installment of the artist's ongoing performative multimedia opera series. Opening is a live performance of Chicago writer and illustrator Ezra Claytan Daniels's immersive science fiction graphic novel Upgrade Soul.

 The Chicago Cultural Center presents Jake Myers and Lara Unnerstall's Celestial Bodies Episodes 1-6 on Thursday at 5pm. Free admission. www.facebook.com/events/1225999874206387

The 7th Annual B Movie Celebration takes place Friday-Sunday at Hollywood Blvd Cinemas (1001 W. 75th St., Woodridge, IL), with three days of feature and short film screenings. Actor Robert Englund, director Jim Wynorski, director Fred Olen Ray, and other guests in person. www.BMovieCelebration.com

The Chinese-American Museum of Chicago (238 W. 23rd St.) screens Kenda Gee and Tom Radford's 2011 documentary LOST YEARS (90 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Saturday at 2pm. Free admission, but RSVP suggested due to limited seating: (312) 949-1000 or office@ccamuseum.org

The Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.) at the University of Chicago screens Pamela Sherrod Anderson's 2011 documentary CURATORS OF DIXON SCHOOL (80 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Sunday at 3pm. The screening will be followed by panel discussion featuring Anderson, Joan Crisler (former Dixon School Principal, Diasporal Rhythms member), Ra Joy (Executive Director, Illinois Arts Alliance), Dayo Laoye (Commissioned Artist); moderated by Emily Hooper Lansana (Associate Director of Community Arts Engagement, Logan Center/Arts Incubator). Free admission.

The Black Cinema House (6901 S. Dorchester Ave.) presents the program Remembering Maarten Van Severen on Sunday at 4pm. Screening are the documentaries MAARTEN VAN SEVEREN. WERKEN - WORK (2004, 32 min, Terenja Van Dijk) and THE .03 CHAIR (2010, 25 min, Pain Perdu Productions). Free admission, but due to limited seating, reservations are recommended. Visit the BCH website to RSVP. www.blackcinemahouse.org/

The Northwest Chicago Film Society (at the Patio Theater) presents a double feature screening on Wednesday beginning at 7:30pm. First up is John Gilling's 1956 film THE GAMMA PEOPLE (79 min, 35mm), followed by Bert I. Gordon's 1957 Chicago-set BEGINNING OF THE END (76 min, 35mm).

The Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) screens Victor Janson and Eugen Illes' 1918 silent German film THE YELLOW TICKET (50 min, DCP Digital Projection) on Saturday at 8pm. The film features an original score composed and performed live by klezmer fiddler Alicia Svigals, along with pianist Marilyn Lerner. The screening takes place at the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.) Free admission.

The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens Robert Siodmak's 1946 film THE KILLERS (103 min, 35mm) on Wednesday at 1 and 7:30pm. Free admission. www.northbrook.info/events/film

Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: D.W. Griffith's 1916 masterpiece INTOLERANCE (167 min, DCP Digital Projection; new digital restoration) is on Saturday at 3:15pm (final showing); Marcel Carné's 1938 film PORT OF SHADOWS (91 min, DCP Digital Projection; New Restoration) is on Friday at 6pm and Sunday at 3pm; Michael Reeves' 1968 film WITCHFINDER GENERAL (86 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 6:30pm and Wednesday at 8:30pm; and Rob Zombie's 2012 film THE LORDS OF SALEM (101 min, DCP Digital Projection) is on Saturday and Thursday at 8:15pm.

Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Darren Aronofsky's 2000 film REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (102 min, 35mm) is on Friday at 7, 9, and 11pm and Sunday at 1pm; Charlie Ahearn's 2013 documentary JAMEL SHABAZZ: STREET PHOTOGRAPHER (Unconfirmed Running Time, DVD) is on Sunday at 7pm; and John Cassavetes' 1971 film MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ (114 min, 35mm) is on Wednesday at 7 and 9:30pm.

Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Randy Moore's 2013 film ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW (90 min, DCP Digital Projection) opens, with Moore in person at the Friday and Saturday 7:15pm screenings; Robin Hardy's 1973 cult film THE WICKER MAN (100 min director's cut, DCP Digital Projection) opens; Jim Sharman's 1975 film THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight and Thursday at 10pm; and Byron Haskin's 1953 film THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (85 min, New 35mm Print) is on Sunday at 1pm, preceded by U of C professor Neil Verma playing and discussing excerpts of Orson Welles' infamous radio broadcast.

Block Cinema (Northwestern University) screens Joris Ivens' 1967 collaborative documentary/essay film FAR FROM VIETNAM (115 min, DCP Digital Projection; New Restoration) on Friday at 7pm; and Jill Nicholls' 2013 BBC documentary VIVIAN MAIER (70 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format; Free admission) on Saturday at 2pm, with an introduction by Northwestern faculty member and Maier scholar Pamela Bannos.

Facets Cinémathèque presents the Chicago International Children's Film Festival this week (additional screenings at other venues; check website for complete schedule); and the Facets Fright School series concludes with James Whale's 1931 film FRANKENSTEIN (70 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format), presented with a live score by Dysfunctio Cerebri, is on Friday at Midnight (introduced by Bruce Neal) and M. dot Strange's 2007 film WE ARE STRANGE (88 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Saturday at Midnight (introduced by Joseph R. Lewis).

Landmark's Century Centre Cinema screens John Carpenter's 1978 film HALLOWEEN (91 min, Digital Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Wednesday at 9pm.

The Logan Theatre screens John Carpenter's 1978 film HALLOWEEN (91 min) and Michael Dougherty's 2007 film TRICK 'R TREAT (82 min) Friday-Monday (check venue website for showtimes); HALLOWEEN also screens on Thursday at 10:31pm; and Mary Lambert's 1989 film PET SEMATARY (103 min) is on Tuesday and Wednesday at 10:30pm. All Digital Projection - Unconfirmed Format.

Also at the Patio Theater this week: Fady Haddad's short film DIA DE LOS MUERTOS screens on Saturday at 7pm, accompanied by a selection of addition shorts and music videos; and Richard Schenkman's 2013 independent horror film MISCHIEF NIGHT (87 min, Unconfirmed Format) screens on Thursday at 7:30pm.

The Alliance Française (54 W. Chicago Ave.) screens Michel Brault's 1974 documentary film LES ORDRES (109 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) screens on Wednesday at 6:30pm, with an introduction by journalist Kevin Tibbles.

The Italian Cultural Institute (500 N. Michigan Ave.) screens Matteo Rovere's 2008 film GAMES GIRLS PLAY (94 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Tuesday at 6pm.

The Whistler presents the Odd Obsession Foreign Film Series on Saturday at 7pm. Screening is Chih-Hung Kuei's 1983 Hong Kong film BOXER'S OMEN (99 min, DVD Projection). Followed by music from Impala Sound Champion DJs at 9pm.

The Logan Square International Film Series at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents a double feature of Shinya Tsukamoto's 1991 film HIRUKO (89 min, DVD Projection) and Tetsuro Takeuchi's 1999 film WILD ZERO (98 min, DVD Projection) on Wednesday at 7pm (HIRUKO) and approx. 8:30pm (WILD ZERO). Free admission. www.facebook.com/squarelogan

ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS

UPDATES/CLOSURES