CRUCIAL VIEWING
Half Suffocated (Experimental)
Chicago Filmmakers at Gallery 400 (400 S. Peoria St., UIC) - Wednesday, 7pm (Free Admission)
The four shorts in the Half Suffocated program revolve around shared themes of interruption, shock, and repurposed motion. The first film, Martin Arnold's amazing ALONE. LIFE WASTES ANDY HARDY (1998, 15 min, 16mm) is an unqualified masterpiece, an astonishing exploration of invisible moments in the films Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland made for MGM. At once the most moving and most elaborate of Arnold's works, the film reveals subtle undercurrents of despair and longing that pervade apparently neutral character interactions. Here, a blink is an admission of guilt, the flexing of a muscle is an urgent threat, and an exhalation of breath is the expression of overwhelming sexual desire. Re-editing frame-by-frame the slick productions of industrial Hollywood style, Arnold reconstructs the briefest of clips into intricate systems of visceral roughness, revealing himself to be one of the great found-footage filmmakers working today. In a startling and great juxtaposition, Marjorie Keller's DAUGHTERS OF CHAOS (1980, 20 min, DVD Projection) comes next, a densely edited excavation of the visual symbolism of feminine adolescence in the persons of two pubescent girls on a boat, delightedly examining old photographs of their families. In place of the content of the snapshots, Keller delivers a rapid-fire series of associational montages: a woman in a red bathing suit, a different, naked woman entering a pond, a horse. The girls joke and rib one another, amicably exploring a world of nascent adulthood they clearly find both alluringly mysterious and deeply disgusting. The central guiding structure here is the curious move from play-acting to sexual coupling represented by a marriage ceremony that is intercut throughout the piece. Filmed through windows and through water, a joyless wedding takes place in nondescript church, the principals in the ritual barely visible, the platitudes of the minister booming stupidly through the soundtrack, both challenging and confirming the girls' nervous fantasies of grown-up carnal tedium. It's as radical and as cutting an attack on romantic conventions as Arnold's film, and as essential. The second pair of shorts takes critique in a different, much more physical, direction. Malcolm Le Grice's CASTLE 1 (1966, 20 min, 16mm and incandescent light bulb) is almost certainly the most annoying film playing in Chicago this week, and might also be the funniest. Using footage scavenged from trash bins outside of film labs, Le Grice fashions a deliberately overwhelming set of rhythmical counterpoints, the connections between image and soundtrack permanently surprising, almost plastic, never predictable. The movie's alternative title, THE LIGHT BULB FILM, reveals Le Grice's master stroke, which is to hang an incandescent bulb from the ceiling of the theater directly in front of the screen, a sight that mimics and mocks a similar shot within the film, returned to again and again, of a hanging light bulb. Both the filmed bulb and the real one are repeatedly flashed on and off throughout the length of CASTLE 1, thus turning the exhibition space itself every few moments into a pseudo-cinematic extension of Le Grice's anti-illusionistic project. This brute-force dismantling of cinema's alleged powers of realism is heavy-handed, but over time becomes increasingly hilarious and wonderful, a celebration of falseness and artifice. Building on this is the final short, Kera Mackenzie and Andrew Mausert-Mooney's IN A PERFECT FEVER (2014, Video Projection), a work-in-progress that uses extra-filmic light sources in a conspiratorial strategy with the audience. Mackenzie, who has a degree in art therapy, and Mausert-Mooney describe the video as taking inspiration from contemporary experimental psychological studies "that find increased stress levels and shorter life spans" among those who deeply feel for other people. (1966-2014, approx. 60+ min total, Multiple Formats) KB
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More info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
Billy Wilder's AVANTI! (American/Italian Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 5:30pm and Tuesday, 6pm
Earlier this week, intrepid internet journalists discovered that all of the regular folks featured in the GOP's latest re-branding campaign, "Republicans Are People, Too" are, in fact, models unwittingly lifted from common stock photos. The RNC might do better to screen AVANTI!, a humanizing portrait of a tight-ass Baltimore businessman played by Jack Lemmon. Instinctively vulgar and judgmental, automatically prepared to denounce his late father's selfishly unconventional private life, Lemmon's Wendell Armbruster, Jr., is a thoroughly unsympathetic character brought to the screen with bravery and subtlety. Even if he learns a few lessons by the end of AVANTI!, he cannot help but remain fundamentally himself. This performance builds on the terminally resentful, casually misanthropic archetype developed by Lemmon and Wilder in THE FORTUNE COOKIE. Yet whereas Lemmon's presence in that film simply reinforces the ugly glibness of the proceedings, the cold heart at the center of AVANTI! is continually brushing up against other moods, other styles. Tonally, AVANTI! is all over the place--a mix of low comedy, lush scenery, political satire, mystical fairy tale, and ceremonial pageant. It's a not a perfect film: Lemmon's foil, working class Briton Juliet Mills, is saddled with some heavy misogynistic baggage (the trim Mills is repeatedly and confusingly called a "fat ass," as if the sexist cant of the script must supersede the casting and survive the final cut at all costs) and standard-issue rom-com contrivance occasionally substitutes for genuine character development. Yet AVANTI! stands as a unique and essential experience--the atmosphere remains tightly controlled even as the plot rambles and the comedy achieves a remarkable level of organic social observation. (In the last act, we even get a bumbling Henry Kissinger stand-in, hilariously embodying the excesses of American entitlement.) In its time, AVANTI! was rejected by critics and audiences alike; as an autumnal film that gently mocks the impossible imperative of middle-aged hipness, it now looks like a companion to Don Siegel's THE SHOOTIST and George Cukor's TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, not to mention Wilder's own THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. (Perhaps the cycle never ended: modern viewers may find a touch of the Grand Budapest Hotel in AVANTI!'s Grand Hotel Excelsior.) AVANTI! may be too messy and coarse to be declared Wilder's masterpiece--and yet the fluidity of the set pieces and the emotional depth of the situations suggest nothing less. Jonathan Rosenbaum lectures after the Tuesday screening (1972, 144 min, 35mm) KAW
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Andrew Lampert: Tables Turned (New Experimental/Performance)
Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center - Thursday, 6pm
"Celluloid is not cinema, not even close" writes Andrew Lampert in a 2010 exchange with NYC film programmer Ed Halter. Lampert is an artist, programmer himself, and film archivist and his works for cinema are appropriately conceptually robust; what may come as a surprise is that they are also extremely funny. By deconstructing cinema's most essential elements, Lampert prizes the medium of film and the shared experience of cinema. He often incorporates the whole of the film theater's black box to get his idea across. The projector and the projectionist are occasionally present in the audience and several pieces rely on game play and humor to remind the audience that they are after all not in this large dark room alone. His CATE show will include a site-specific performance created for the Siskel's space, and his 2013 short EL ADIOS LARGOS, which is a witty "reconstruction" of Robert Altman's "lost" film THE LONG GOODBYE. The conceptual conceit involves the creation of a back-story in which Lampert realized that a film he purchased through the mail is the "lost" Altman film, and he sets about to restore it with a group of archivist friends. Limited by the condition of the print (what he bought was actually a black and white 16mm cropped copy of Altman's 35mm color print) the "restoration" is expertly done even if the outcome is not what one would expect. Lampert in person. (2013-14, approx 70 min total, Multiple Formats) CL
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More info at www.blogs.saic.edu/cate/fall-2014-season.
Tay Garnett's HER MAN (American Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) - Friday, 7pm
The films of Tay Garnett are too genial and modest to arouse any real controversy, but that hasn't stopped some wags from trying. Perpetually on the verge of 'rediscovery,' Garnett's films attracted bemused partisans and baffled detractors even when they were new. Maurice Bardèche and Robert Brasillach singled out Garnett's ONE WAY PASSAGE as an exemplary American talkie in their 1935 survey Histoire du cinéma, even after allowing that it "introduced no novelties in the use of sound and ... disturbingly resembled some of the best films at the end of the silent era." When Iris Barry prepared an English translation of Bardèche and Brasillach's book in 1938, she repudiated the original text and speculated that the Frenchmen simply possessed insufficient knowledge of English to recognize the vapidity of Hollywood films. "Certainly," Barry assured her readers, "it is very difficult to understand the authors' enthusiasm for a film like ONE WAY PASSAGE on any other grounds." Garnett's loudest admirers remain French, but that opinion is not unanimous. In 1983, Jean-Pierre Coursodon described Garnett as "another of those 'neglected' directors of Hollywood's Golden Age whose work, when subjected to mass rescreening, turns out to have deserved only slightly more attention than it actually received in the past"--a probable dig at Henri Langlois' Garnett boosterism. (Block Cinema is reviving HER MAN, Garnett's pre-Code rendition of the Frankie and Johnnie story, this weekend as a tribute to Langlois, who programmed it in a 1967 festival of neglected American films.) Admittedly, getting a handle on Garnett is difficult, even for sympathetic viewers. His most famous picture, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, is uncharacteristic and overrated: slathered in the white light of M-G-M melodrama, this POSTMAN comes across squarely decorous when it aspires to lusty convulsions. Then again, the pokey pace of Garnett's gangster drama BAD COMPANY ("which it was," the director adds dismissively in his memoir) lulls us into a state of mild reproval--until the shockingly sadistic final reel, which plays all the more effective for its slack build-up. Like many practically-minded filmmakers, Garnett favored isolated effects over consistent atmosphere. He apparently recognized the dialogue-heavy drag of HER MAN and elected to spice up the proceedings with elaborate tracking shots. The gambit worked: one impressive sequence from HER MAN is excerpted in A PERSONAL JOURNEY WITH MARTIN SCORSESE THROUGH AMERICAN MOVIES to disprove the received wisdom that a stationary camera was the only stylistic option in the early talkie era. There have been precious few chances to examine HER MEN in its entirety, but anyone who's seen the clips won't want to miss this. The Garnett question will not be settled by a single screening, but we venture cheerfully into the maelstrom. (1930, 85 min, 35mm) KAW
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Josef von Sternberg's SHANGHAI EXPRESS (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
"It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily," so says glamorous, gravely-voiced Marlene Dietrich, but the truth behind the camera is that it took only one man, fellow German ex-pat Josef von Sternberg, to make Dietrich the most enigmatic of Hollywood icons. Sternberg's SHANGHAI EXPRESS was the commercial height of their seven collaborations, where exotic adventure and popular thrills exist in equilibrium with the director's sometimes smothering artistic vision. The film follows the eponymous locomotive on an ill-fated journey from Peking to Shanghai; which begins with a worldly array of passengers all buzzing about the appearance of the notorious Shanghai Lily, then gets held up by a band of rebels for a lengthy episode that exists mainly to provide the film with some sort of conflict, only to end in an extended denouement that affirms Sternberg was far more interested in erecting a monument to his muse than in telling a simple adventure story. And this, ultimately, is what it makes the film--and this could be said of their entire partnership--so damn fascinating. Dressed in decadence, awash in chiaroscuro, Dietrich is unforgettable, and while much is made of her image itself, there's more to it than an early auteur's obsessive gaze. Dietrich's presence is palpable, which goes hand-in-hand with the abundant confidence required to pull off Sternberg's increasingly larger than life heroines, and as it turns out here, she can deliver one-liners with the best of them. Together, they made SHANGHAI EXPRESS one of the great popular successes of their respective careers, which allowed their partnership to push forward in even more outlandish directions. (1932, 80 min, 35mm) TJ
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Nagisa Oshima's DIARY OF A SHINJUKU THIEF (Japanese Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 3:30pm and Monday, 8pm
DIARY OF A SHINJUKU THIEF is the third film Nagisa Oshima released in 1968, following DEATH BY HANGING and THREE RESURRECTED DRUNKARDS. Together, these films constitute the most Brechtian work of Oshima's career, utilizing visual tableaux and a frequent addresses to the audience that consistently frame the subject matter in a political context. Where the other films approached capital punishment and Korean involvement in the Vietnam War, DIARY OF A SHINJUKU THIEF is about the radical youth culture itself, filmed in one of its most active zones. (At this point, Shinjuku was something like the Greenwich Village of Tokyo.) A characteristic love story between delinquents, this mutates into a stylistic free-for-all, complete with pageant-like depictions of current events, very much in keeping with the times. (1968, 94 min, New 35mm Print) BS
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Nagisa Oshima's IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (Japanese Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Friday, 6pm and Saturday, 5:30pm
Oshima's most infamous film is revelatory, difficult, and brilliant. On its surface it is a graphic tale of sexual obsession. And certainly Oshima has much to show us about sex and obsession. However, like Alan Clarke's stunning ELEPHANT, through the repetition of shocking, jarring sequences IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES becomes an indescribable manipulation of time. No film plays as brutally with dramatic (filmic--if I didn't hate that word) distance and intimacy. This isn't a playful strip tease or an exercise in Marquis de Sade deviance. Oshima stops time or at the very least jolts us out of our vulgar understanding of time and being, allowing us to recognize and reconsider ourselves in the light of a profoundly destructive and immeasurable love. (1972, 95 min, 35mm) WS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Akira Kurosawa's STRAY DOG (Japanese Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 7 and 9:30pm
Like David Lean in England (and at almost the exact same time), Akira Kurosawa didn't graduate from popular cinema so much as expand it to epic proportions. For cinephiles ranging from Pauline Kael to George Lucas, their careers represent the validation of filmmaking itself--a transformation of pop culture into myth. For others, Kurosawa's ever-ballooning grandeur simply yields a cinema of contradictions, where constant appeals to awe nullify the modest pleasures of storytelling that made his early work so satisfying. Coming just before RASHOMON, his breakthrough into more serious filmmaking, STRAY DOG finds Kurosawa at the peak of his craft before reaching for even greater thematic heights. The movie is a gripping, often intense detective story built around a rich depiction of post-war Tokyo. Toshiro Mifune stars as the young detective Murakami, whose search for his stolen gun takes him into the city's developing underworld. It's a film memorable for its cramped alleyways, sweltering police stations, and darkened clubs: With each location so essential to the story's momentum, all take on a strong identity, making the city something of a character itself. But there are some pressing themes beneath the style, rather than slathered on top of it. Writing on the film's violence in his Criterion Collection essay, Chris Fujiwara notes: "In STRAY DOG, action solves no wider problems--only the immediate ones of recovering the gun and catching the criminal--and yields no release. It's tangential to the larger sphere of society, as Kurosawa stresses in the climactic sequence by shifting our attention from the cop and the culprit to a young woman practicing piano nearby; and even within its own sphere (of narrative cause and effect), it is unsatisfying and inconclusive." (1949, 122 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (British Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 9:15pm
At once the origin story of a pop icon, a McLuhan-esque critique of mass media, a postmodern western, and a commentary on the space age, Nicolas Roeg's elusive, kaleidoscopic THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH firmly defies classification. David Bowie plays Thomas Jerome Newton (in his first film role), an extraterrestrial who has traveled to Earth in search of water for his drought-stricken planet. Candy Clark and Rip Torn turn in equally offbeat performances as Newton's lover and scientific consultant, respectively. The plot, which involves Newton becoming a technology tycoon and celebrity enigma, is disjointed and incoherent. The sooner one can refrain from attempting to impose a conventional narrative structure onto the film, the easier it becomes to appreciate it as a freeform, hallucinatory head trip. Stylistically, the film is as capricious and unpredictable as Bowie's off-screen shape-shifting persona. Roeg hurls every trick in his cinematic arsenal at the screen, from point of view shots to trippy flashbacks. Time is warped to the point that days, months, and even years vanish between scenes, and just when things begin to feel stagnant, the viewer is bombarded with a neon lit alien sex scene right out of a Jodorowsky graphic novel. A film that could have only been made by a foreigner, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH is a twisted fun house mirror image of post-60s America in which even the most far out of outsiders embraces the ways of the establishment: capitalism, religion, and the imbibing of copious amounts of gin. (1976, 138 min, 35mm) HS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Leslie Buchbinder's HAIRY WHO & THE CHICAGO IMAGISTS (New Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
For the longest time there was a dearth of scholarly coverage of the Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists. Prominent figures like Ed Paschke and Karl Wirsum were periodically spotlighted as solo artists, but it was difficult to contextualize their work within a larger historical narrative. What was the relationship between the Hairy Who and other cliques in the Chicago art scene like the Monster Roster and Nonplussed Some, not to mention the Pop artists based in NYC? This is the subject of Leslie Buchbinder's new documentary, HAIRY WHO & THE CHICAGO IMAGISTS, which functions as a brilliant treasure trove of interviews and archival photographs, aided by animations by cartoonist Lilli Carré. The Imagists drew inspiration from comic books, tattoo flash, and the iconography of local spectacles such as Maxwell St. market. However, unlike their East Coast, postmodern counterparts, the Imagists had a sincere love of mass culture. In this sense, they leapfrogged much of the debate that has preoccupied the contemporary art discourse over the past several decades, presaging what some critics refer to today as "metamodern." The influence of the Imagists can be seen in the work of Gary Panter, Mike Kelley, and John Kricfalusi. Moreover, in an extended interview with the director (which can be read on the Cine-File blog), she expands on the intimate link between Imagists and the cinema--just another footnote in what amounts to the most comprehensive chronicle of Chicago's most vibrant, iconoclastic, and carnivalesque chapter in art history. Check the Siskel website for details on in-person appearances. (2014, 109 min, DCP Digital) HS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Chicago International Film Festival opens on Thursday with Liv Ullmann's 2014 film MISS JULIE at the Harris Theater. The festival continues through October 23 at the AMC River East 21.
The CineKink film festival takes place at the Leather Archives and Museum (6418 N. Greenview) on Saturday and Sunday. More info at http://cinekink.com.
The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents A Geography of Addresses: Films by Josh Weissbach on Tuesday at 7pm. The Connecticut based experimental filmmaker will be in person to screen a selection of his works. Screening are 106 RIVER ROAD (2011), STORM CROSSINGS: SHIFTING GEOMETRIES (2012), 2843 COLBORNE ST. (2012), INVERTED EXTERIORS (2013), MODEL FIFTY-ONE FIFTY-SIX (2014), THEORIA (2014), 200 N.W. 5TH STREET (2014), and FOOTBALL FILMS PRESENTS (2014, Digital Projection). (Approx. 60 min total, 16mm except where noted).
Thalia Hall (1807 S. Allport St.) welcomes Isabella Rossellini on Friday at 9pm, who will present her Green Porno series of short films.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago screens Todd Haynes' 1998 film VELVET GOLDMINE (124 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Sunday at 1pm, followed at 3:15m by an on-stage conversation between Haynes and costume designer Sandy Powell, moderated by SAIC professor Bruce Jenkins.
The Portage Theater hosts a screening of William Castle's 1959 film HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (75 min, 16mm) on Tuesday, with Victoria Price, daughter of the film's star Vincent Price, in person. Ms. Price will greet guests from 6:30-7:15pm, the film is scheduled for 7:15pm, Ms. Price will give a multimedia presentation on her father at 8:35pm, and will continue to greet guests afterword, for autographs, photos, and signing of her book on her father. Free admission.
Gallery 400 (400 S. Peoria St., UIC) screens Jesus Treviño's 1972 documentary YO SOY CHICANO (59 min, Unconfirmed Format) and Sylvia Morales' 1972 documentary CHICANA (23 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Monday at 6pm. Free admission.
Black Cinema House (7200 S. Kimbark Ave.) screens Michael Schultz's 1976 film CAR WASH (97 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Sunday at 4pm. Introduced by Romi Crawford, Associate Professor in Visual and Critical Studies and Liberal Arts at SAIC. Free admission, but limited seating; RSVP at www.blackcinemahouse.org.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Tom Dolby and Tom Williams' 2014 film LAST WEEKEND (94 min, DCP Digital) plays for a week, with co-director Dolby in person at the Saturday screening; Roman Polanski's 2013 film VENUS IN FUR (96 min, DCP Digital) screens daily (except for Tuesday); and Wim Wenders' 1977 film THE AMERICAN FRIEND (126 min, Imported Archival 35mm Print) is on Sunday at 3pm and Wednesday at 6pm.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Rob Reiner's 1987 film THE PRINCESS BRIDE (98 min, 35mm) is on Friday at 7, 9:15, and 11:15pm and Sunday at 1pm; Nicholas Stoller's 2014 film NEIGHBORS (97 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 6:30, 8:30, and 10:30pm and on Sunday at 3:15pm; Edgar G. Ulmer and Jacob Ben-Ami's 1937 Yiddish film GREEN FIELDS (106 min, 35mm) is on Sunday at 7pm; Volker Schlöndorff's 1979 film THE TIN DRUM (162 min Director's Cut, DCP Digital) is on Monday at 7pm; François Ozon's 2002 film 8 WOMEN (111 min, 35mm) is on Tuesday at 7pm; and Errol Morris' 2013 documentary THE UNKNOWN KNOWN (105 min, DCP Digital; Free admission) is on Thursday at 7pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Rory Kennedy's 2014 documentary LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM (98 min) opens, with director Kennedy in person at the 7:10pm screening on Friday; John Ridley's 2013 film JIMI: ALL IS BY MY SIDE (118 min), Terry Gilliam's 2013 film THE ZERO THEOREM (107 min), and One9's 2014 documentary NAS: TIME IS ILLMATIC (74 min) all continue on varying days and times (check the Music Box website for specifics); Hamish Hamilton's 2013 documentary DAVID BOWIE IS (Unconfirmed Running Time) returns for four screenings on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday; Ryan McGarry's 2013 documentary CODE BLACK (78 min) continues for two shows only on Saturday and Sunday at 1:20pm; Jayson Thiessen and Ishi Rudell's 2014 animated film MY LITTLE PONY EQUESTRIA GIRLS - RAINBOW ROCKS (75 min) is on Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am; and John Carpenter's 1978 film HALLOWEEN (91 min) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight. All Unconfirmed Formats.
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week: Mike Attie and Meghan O'Hara's 2014 documentary IN COUNTRY (80 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) is on Thursday at 7pm, with co-director Attie in person. Free admission.
Facets Cinémathèque plays Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren's 2014 documentary THE DOG (100 min, Unconfirmed Format) for a week's run.
Retrospective titles at the Logan Theatre this week: Tobe Hooper's 1982 film POLTERGEIST (114 min) is on Friday, Saturday, and Monday at 10:30pm; Roman Polanski's 1968 film ROSEMARY'S BABY (136 min) is on Friday, Saturday, and Monday at 11pm; Fred Dekker's 1987 film THE MONSTER SQUAD (82 min) is on Saturday and Sunday at Noon; Wes Craven's 1996 film SCREAM (111 min) is on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 10:30pm; and Brian De Palma's 1976 film CARRIE (98 min) is on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 11pm. All Digital Projection - Unconfirmed Format.
The Logan Square International Film Series at Comfort Station in Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.), in collaboration with Daily Grindhouse present George Blair's 1956 film THE HYPNOTIC EYE (79 min, DVD Projection) on Wednesday at 7:30pm. Free admission.
At Chicago Public Library locations this week: Gustavo Loza's 2004 film AL OTRO LADO (TO THE OTHER SIDE) (90 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) screens at the Woodson Regional Branch (9525 S. Halsted St.) on Saturday at 2pm. Free admission.
Also at the Portage Theater this week: Martin Shore's 2014 documentary TAKE ME TO THE RIVER (95 min, Unconfirmed Format) screens on Friday at 8pm.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
I Am Logan Square (2644 ½ N. Milwaukee Ave.) opens a show of horror movie posters from the collection of the Logan Theater on Friday (reception from 6-9pm). The show runs through November 14.
Washington Park Arts Incubator (301 E. Garfield) continues the exhibition How To Make A Hood through October 10. Included is "The Hood We Live In," a sculpted 3 channel video installation by Amir George. More info at www.htmah.com.
SAIC's Sullivan Galleries (33 S. State St., 7th Floor) continues the show Surface Tension through October 4. Included is Kevin B. Lee's 3-D version of his video TRANSFORMERS: THE PREMAKE.
UPDATES/CLOSURES
The Northbrook Public Library film series is on hiatus during renovations at the library. Expected completion is Spring 2015.
The Portage Theatre has resumed occasional screenings (from Blu-Ray/DVD only we believe).
As of July 2014 the Patio Theater is up for sale.
The Northwest Chicago Film Society is again on hiatus for their weekly series, with the closing of the Patio Theater. They plan to do occasional screenings as opportunities arise.
