CRUCIAL VIEWING
Chris Marker's SANS SOLEIL (French Documentary/Essay Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Friday and Tuesday, 6pm
Chris Marker's expert-level art documentary SANS SOLEIL--one hundred minutes of transnational street footage intermingled with the secondhand musings of an anonymous writer's melodic and soporific voice--can't really be "seen" in any comprehensive sense: this is cinema as waking dream, and maintaining focus on any one of its uncountable subjects is like trying to read an epistolary novel while being held under hypnosis. Instead, like the unconscious Japanese commuter-train riders who remind our narrator of "a past or future war," the viewer finds themselves fixed in an oneiric trance by undulating handheld photography and softly murmured meditations of the perfect filmic anthropologist-tourist, magically shuttling between Tokyo, San Francisco, and the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa. In these three arbitrary locations, we are presented with a humanity trapped in a global simultaneity--one of ceremony, technology, melancholy, and revolution--perpetually annihilated and resurrected by the recording and reviewing of the material image. Released in 1983 but "dated" only by the spectacular use of an analog video synthesizer presumably lost to a history whose existence we can no longer accept, SANS SOLEIL will always be the film of the future. SAIC Professor Dan Eisenberg lectures at the Tuesday screening. (1983, 100 min, 35mm) MC
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival
Opening Night Program + Shorts Program One
Gene Siskel Film Center - Wednesday, 7:45pm + Columbia College - Thursday, 7:30pm
The 26th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, presented by Chicago Filmmakers, opens on Wednesday and runs through Saturday, January 31. The Opening Night Program includes nine short films from a variety of experimental and avant-garde filmmakers, several of which either pay tribute to or blatantly appropriate (in a good way, of course) the work of more conventional auteurs. Gregg Biermann's ITERATIONS (2014, 5 min) meets the criteria for several definitions of the eponymous word as it uses footage from Alfred Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW; it's both "a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result" and, as a work born of computer technology, "the repetition of a sequence of computer instructions a specified number of times or until a condition is met." Jean-Paul Kelly's THE INNOCENTS (2014, 13 min) combines bits and pieces of Truman Capote's interview responses from the Maysles Brothers' documentary WITH LOVE FROM TRUMAN with seemingly random photographs and imagery inspired by early avant-garde animation. This continues Kelly's ongoing examination of nonfiction material. On the contrary, Eytan Ipeker's TRIBUTE TO BUSBY (2014, 6 min) is pretty straightforward in how it pays homage to the choreographer turned director. Berkeley's choreography (and the way it was filmed) is often described as kaleidoscopic, which Ipeker conveys in a literal sense through his psychedelic imagery. In Joshua Gen Solondz's IT'S NOT A PRISON IF YOU NEVER TRY THE DOOR (2013, 8 min), scenes from a Godzilla movie are digitally "destroyed," mimicking in practice what's happening in the film. Other titles in this program include Janie Geiser's THE HUMMINGBIRD WARS (2014, 11 min), Mónica Savirón's BROKEN TONGUE (2013, 3 min), Fern Silva's WAYWARD FRONDS (2014, 13 min), Robert Todd's AFAR (2014, 13 min), and Phil Solomon's PSALM IV: "VALLEY OF THE SHADOW" (2013, 8 min), all of which are accomplished in their own right. (2013-14, 80 min total, Digital and DCP Digital Projection)
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Shorts Program One takes place on Thursday at 7:30pm in the Ferguson Theater at Columbia College (600 S. Michigan Ave.). It includes Clint Enns' A KNIGHT'S WALK (AND OTHER SPECULATIVE EVENTS) (2014, 12 min), Giuseppe Boccassini's LEZUO (2013, 17 min), MM Serra and Josh Lewis' ENDURING ORNAMENT (2015, 14 min), Vika Kirchenbauer and Martin Sulzer's KINGDOM COME: RITUALS (2014, 7 min), John Powers' THE SOMBER VAULT (2014, 6 min), Stephanie Wuertz and Sasha Janerus' CALGON (2014, 15 min), Tomonari Nishikawa's SOUND OF A MILLION INSECTS, LIGHT OF A THOUSAND STARS (2014, 2 min), and Dana Berman Duff's CATALOGUE (2014, 7 min) (2013-15, 80 min total, Digital Projection). KS
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Onion City continues January 30 and 31; see next week's list.
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Note: Onion City is programmed by Cine-File editor Patrick Friel
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More info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
Luis Buñuel's UN CHIEN ANDALOU / Jean Vigo's ZERO FOR CONDUCT / Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's AN EATER (Experimental Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Sunday, 7pm
Amos Vogel, the original avant-garde programmer, once stated, "The three most subversive aesthetic tendencies of our century--surrealism, expressionism, and dada--are anchored in the reality of a civilization in decline...(Surrealism's aim was) to destroy all censors and to liberate man's libidinal, anarchist, and 'marvelous' impulses from all restraint." This subversive/destructive/liberating spirit is present in each of the films in this impressive sampler platter of seminal avant-garde shorts in Doc Films' ongoing Vogel tribute: Luis Buñuel's directorial debut, UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929), is the most famous Surrealist movie ever--and for good reason. Based on a script co-written with Salvador Dali, it opens with the still-shocking image of a man slicing a woman's eyeball with a straight razor in close-up (a shot that is graphically matched to a cutaway image of a cloud drifting in front of the moon) before abruptly jumping ahead to "Eight Years Later" and focusing on a new set of characters in a series of scenes that are equally bizarre. Since Buñuel plays the man with the razor, the function of the prologue is to announce that the movie will be an all-out assault on the viewer's sight, our most important sense in experiencing the film. Buñuel and Dali's rule when writing the screenplay was that UN CHIEN ANDALOU should be nonsensical to the point of not being interpretable; legions of critics and historians have ignored their intention ever since. ZERO FOR CONDUCT (1933), Jean Vigo's penultimate movie, is an unforgettable tribute to the anarchic spirit of youth, documenting the rebellion of four pre-adolescent boarding school students and based on the director's own childhood memories. Vigo was way ahead of his time in blending experimental filmmaking techniques with narrative storytelling (check out the poetic use of slow motion during the pillow fight scene) and the end result is beautiful, strange, beguiling and unmissable. It was also a major reference point in Lindsay Anderson's IF... Rounding out the program is AN EATER (1963), a Buñuellian satire of bourgeois dining customs made by the Japanese director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi (best known today for 1977's HAUSU) in collaboration with the painter Kazutomo Fujino. (1929-63, 88 min total, 35mm (Zero)/16mm (Chien/Eater)) MGS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
J.B.L. Noel's THE EPIC OF EVEREST (Silent British Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) - Friday. 7pm
"Since the beginning of the world men have battled with Nature for the mastery of their physical surroundings. Such is their birthright, and such is their destiny." So reads a quintessentially British--and vaguely imperialist--opening title card in this mesmerizing silent documentary from explorer/filmmaker Captain J.B.L. Noel. Newly restored and re-released by the good folks at the British Film Institute, THE EPIC OF EVEREST is the official record of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine's ill-fated 1924 attempt to scale the world's highest mountain. The movie's focus, refreshingly, is not on the personalities of the men involved but on the arduous task of mountain-climbing itself; most of its power stems from shots of wee man, often not more than a black speck on the horizon, crawling all over the overwhelmingly indifferent, ice-capped peaks of Mount Everest. Some of Noel's astonishing montage sequences feature shots where the most dramatic thing happening is the way drifting clouds cast shadows over mountaintops, images that resemble moving paintings in their abstract beauty. The best such scene is arguably the last, after the two men spearheading the trek have perished; the final images of Everest, tinted blood-red, conjure up the futility of their mission with an almost unbearable poignance. (1924, 87 min, DCP Digital) MGS
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT (American/British Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Friday and Saturday, Midnight
Seen in any version (there are at least seven), BLADE RUNNER is a monstrous mess--a mélange of film noir, Philip K. Dick, action-heavy cineplex sadism, and horny chinoiserie. A critically-derided flop upon its initial release, BLADE RUNNER carries the uncanny suggestion that its story not only revolves around androids, but may actually have been conceived and shaped by non-human intelligence--a quality it shares with that other misunderstood Summer of '82 sci-fi spectacular, TRON. When viewed alongside director Ridley Scott's prior effort, the masterfully controlled and minutely calibrated terror show ALIEN, BLADE RUNNER feels programmatic and kludgy, as if all decisions about staging, atmospherics, and rhythm were simply fed into an overheated circuit board. (The original ending--an improbably sunny coda repurposed from second-unit outtakes from THE SHINING--plays like the product of an inelegant Surefire BoxOffice algorithm.) It's not so much that art direction, set design, cinematography, editing, music, and acting are working at cross-purposes--instead, they're merely zipping along semi-autonomously, without being shaped into a grammatical whole. So, it's odd and kind of touching that Ridley Scott has repeatedly re-asserted his authorship of this unruly, seemingly author-less masterwork--first in a hastily-produced 'Director's Cut' in 1992, subsequently in a 'Final Cut' released in 2007. (If Scott follows Oliver Stone's example with ALEXANDER, the 'Final Cut' need not really be final; there's always the promise of an 'Ultimate Cut' peeking out over the smoggy horizon.) It now takes on the impossible grandeur of a medieval saga, a lumbering epic embroidered and corrupted by countless textual variants. Most of the major changes were performed for the so-called Director's Cut: Harrison Ford's sleepy voice-over is gone, an origami unicorn rhymes with and undercuts a re-inserted dream sequence, and the freak ending is excised. The Final Cut, by contrast, services superfans, correcting gaffes imperceptible to the uninitiated: matte lines are cleaned up, lip sync is fixed with lines re-dubbed by Ford's son, Joanna Cassidy's face is digitally plastered over the body of a stunt double, Rutger Hauer treats his father more decorously. I still prefer the original 1982 theatrical cut above all others--it really heightens the contradictions, as the student Marxists used to say. But the Final Cut is still queer and ungainly enough to slosh around in--and the opportunity to see it again in 35mm after several years of unavailability is reason enough. (1982/2007, 117 min, 35mm) KAW
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Jean-Luc Godard's GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D (New French)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
In Jean-Luc Godard's 1996 film FOR EVER MOZART, the director poses the question, "In the 'I think, therefore I am,' is the 'I' of 'I am' no longer the same as the 'I' of 'I think' and why?" GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D seeks to answer this Cartesian inquiry with a resounding "no" by offering a philosophical meditation on the fractured nature of identity in our era of mass communication. In his astonishing first feature in 3-D, the now-84-year-old Godard pointedly shows, through an almost impossibly rich tapestry of stereoscopic images and sounds, how language and technology have conspired to create barriers that separate humans not only from each other but also from themselves ("Soon everyone will need an interpreter to understand the words coming from their own mouths," is one characteristically epigrammatic line of dialogue.) The film is split into three parts: "Nature" (a section demarcated by a title card reading "1"), which focuses on Josette and Gedeon (Héloïse Godet and Kamel Abdelli); "Metaphor" (a section demarcated by a title card reading "2"), which focuses on Ivitch and Marcus (Zoé Bruneau and Richard Chevallier); and a short third part (beginning with a title card reading "3D"), which introduces a third couple--Godard and his longtime collaborator Anne-Marie Mieville, who are not seen but whose voices are heard on the soundtrack. The real "star" of GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D, however, is not a human at all but rather Godard's mixed-breed dog Roxy, who is frequently depicted alone, frolicking in nature, commanding both the most screen time and serving as the subject of some of the film's most dazzling stereoscopic effects. The shots of Roxy's handsome snout in the maw of Godard and cinematographer Fabrice Aragno's homemade 3-D-camera rig, which convey an overwhelming feeling of love for the animal on the part of his owner/director, are so rapturously beautiful they may make you want to cry. The film ends by juxtaposing the sounds of a dog barking with that of a baby wailing on the soundtrack, thus linking Roxy not only to nature but, implicitly, to a state of unspoiled innocence that humans possess only prior to learning to speak. Godard's poetic use of 3-D in GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D, the best such use of the technology in any movie I've seen, puts this groundbreaking work in the class of his (and the cinema's) great achievements. (2013, 70 min, 3-D DCP Digital) MGS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Alfred Hitchcock's DIAL M FOR MURDER (3-D Version) (American Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Friday and Thursday, 6pm and Sunday, 3pm
Adapted by Frederick Knott from his play of the same name, DIAL M FOR MURDER stars an exceptional Ray Milland as Tony Wendice, a retired tennis pro who decides to murder his wife, Margot (Grace Kelly), after he finds out she is cheating on him. Similar to LIFEBOAT (1944), ROPE (1948), and REAR WINDOW (1954), Hitchcock contains the drama of the film in a single set--the cramped living room of Tony and Margot's London apartment. Enclosing the few characters and their audience in this unhappy couple's living room, Hitchcock creates the film's suspense through our inherent claustrophobia. The small room often forces the characters close together; Hitchcock captures their faces in close-ups, revealing how they look at each other and how much those looks betray. Sometimes they purposely turn their backs to others and/or to the camera in fear of being caught. No one can escape from this room and the interrogation of gazes inside it. While Hitchcock's camera focuses on Tony, Margot, and the supporting characters, it gives equal attention to the couple's things, particularly a key, letter, and telephone. The film and its murder plot hinge on these objects, and Hitchcock fills them with dread; he shoots them in close-ups similar to those that frame his actors' faces. Sometimes the characters see the objects, but often they are not so lucky; Tony and Margot's knowledge of the very small, but complex world in which they live rests in their very things. In his wondrous HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA (1988-1998), Godard described Hitchcock as a poete maudit whose life's work pivoted on the role of the object. Through objects, which override the conventions of narrative and logic, Hitchcock became "the greatest creator of forms of the twentieth century...it is forms which tell us, finally, what there is at the bottom of things." DIAL M FOR MURDER is a great investigation into the prison of claustrophobia and the objects such fear leaves in its wake. (1954, 105 min, 3-D DCP Digital) CW
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Luis Buñuel's VIRIDIANA (French Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Thursday, 9:15pm
The selection of Buñuel's VIRIDIANA as the Palme d'Or winner in 1961 was more than the validation of a zeitgeist--it was a display of political solidarity. The film's making and arrival at Cannes have become the stuff of legend: Its satire of both greed and piety attacked the primary totems of a Catholic, Fascist country--Franco's Spain; the film was banned upon completion and a print had to be smuggled out of the country for its premiere. But Buñuel is not among the greatest of all filmmakers simply for courting controversy. Each of his formal decisions, even when seemingly anarchic, reveals a piercing worldview. Michael Wood writes in his notes for the Criterion Collection's DVD release: "The film is divided very clearly into two parts: the story of an elderly man's hopeless love and suicide, and his near violation of a young woman; and that of the young woman's attempt to rescue a small portion of the world's unfortunates. There is desperation in the first part and grimly comic failure in the second, but the overall effect is more spirited than that sounds--because of the endless, irreverent life in the filmmaking itself, and because of Buñuel's commitment to the possibility of change, even when it seems impossible." (1961, 90 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Jean-Luc Godard's PIERROT LE FOU (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 3pm and Thursday, 6pm
This favorite of Godardophiles marked a transition between the aspirations towards narrative and genre of the director's early films and the more essayistic style to come. Godard's final collaboration with his two most iconic actors--Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina--PIERROT is formally playful while maintaining an emotional tug unlike any that would be seen in his work for a decade (the film famously mirrors Godard and Karina's own crumbling relationship). Belmondo and Karina play two lovers on the run, as they escape from civilization. Their desert island fantasy doesn't last, of course, and things rapidly deteriorate, leaving Belmondo's character to pine after his lost love. More than any of his other works, PIERROT masterfully walks the line between Godard's expressed intention to throw everything he can into a film and the compelling, immediate charms of classical cinema-the result being a surprisingly accessible film that will richly repay repeat viewings. (1965, 110 min, 35mm) AH
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Jean-Luc Godard's BAND OF OUTSIDERS (French Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 5:15pm 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. (1964, 97 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Werner Herzog's CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS 3D (Contemporary Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 4:45pm and Monday, 7:45pm
Taking advantage of cinema's unique capabilities, Werner Herzog once again brings us to a place few people have traveled, or can travel, and offers us another glimpse into the wonderful and unknown. That Herzog routinely does this has caused some to decry him as more of a showman than a director, but for this very reason Herzog is one of cinema's most natural talents. His ability to show us marvelous things, real and imaginary, is without peer. In CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, a documentary so concrete yet seemingly so imaginary--two qualities Herzog combines like a lucid dreamer whether he's working in fiction or non-fiction. With CAVE, Herzog gives us a privileged look at some of the earliest examples of art made by humankind, the paintings of animals in Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in the South of France. Herzog is accustomed to exploration without boundaries and trespassing at whim, however in this film Herzog and his small crew are relegated to a narrow walkway as they navigate the cave--a limit he tries to circumvent by placing the camera on a pole to extend beyond arm's length. This technique falls short of capturing a desired viewpoint of a painting of a woman, the only depiction of a human; a rare defeat for Herzog caused, no doubt, by the privatization of the cave. Herzog tries to make up for the fact that most of the world will never see these paintings up close by shooting the movie in 3D, somewhat mitigating the feeling of distance from them and creating a greater sense of awe (though the music at times can over-saturate this sense). As if the technological gimmick and the uncanniness of actually seeing the paintings on video wasn't enough, Herzog heights the imaginary sense in a postscript in which he shows us some albino alligators thriving in a nearby greenhouse-cum-jungle that gets its warm water from a neighboring nuclear plant. Herzog's proclivity to find and marvel at the irrational in nature is welcoming and refreshing in an age of scientific explanation. (2010, 89 min, 3-D DCP Digital) KH
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Alfred Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Friday, 7, 9, and 11pm and Sunday, 1:30pm
Hitchcock was rarely, if ever, judgmental of his characters, but it seems the judgment he spared them was instead reserved for his audience. It's evident in many of his films as he forces the audience, along with the "innocents" of the stories, to identify with the criminal or the accused while likewise punishing them for doing so. This dynamic is particularly pronounced in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, a film in which one character, Guy, is harassed by another, Bruno, after he kills Guy's estranged wife in hopes that he'll return the favor and murder his domineering father. An element of condescension plays into both the plot and Hitchcock's assessment of those watching; at the beginning, Guy patronizingly tells Bruno that his idea of a "you-do-mine-I'll-do-yours" murder plot is okay, that all his ideas are okay. Guy is obviously dismissive of the idea, but Bruno takes his patronizing agreement as confirmation that Guy is on board with his plan. In that scene, Hitchcock shows us just how grey the area is between good and evil, and how something as simple as a throwaway platitude can have such disastrous implications. (It was recently announced that the creative duo behind last year's GONE GIRL--director David Fincher and author-screenwriter Gillian Flynn--will again team up with Ben Affleck to remake STRANGERS. Affleck's Nick Dunne is essentially Guy Haines; both are inherently flawed anti-heroes who are innocent only in that they didn't actually commit the crimes in question. What Fincher lacks is Hitchcock's studied equilibrium, as his allegiance clearly lies with Nick.) Despite Hitchcock's sympathy for the killer, he allots sympathy to the victim as well, but only so far as he can use it to further indict the audience. In a telling scene, Barbara, the sister of Guy's love interest, remarks that his deceased ex-wife was a tramp, thus implying that her status as a "lesser person" justified her brutal murder. Barbara's father, the senator whom Guy hopes to emulate, tells her that the dead woman was also a human being. Considerably less wordy than Jimmy Stewart's impassioned epiphany at the end of ROPE, the scene is like a swift smack in the face from Hitchcock. Bruno's easygoing and almost infectious attitude towards murder is brought from the dark into the light--it's all fun and games until humanity becomes a factor. Another key motif that Hitchcock uses in several of his films is that of the rhetorical "perfect murder," scenes in which innocent characters participate with the real criminals in surmising how to commit a foolproof crime. During a party at the senator's house, Bruno convinces two elderly aristocratic ladies to indulge in fantasies of committing murder while Barbara looks on. The scene serves dual functions: It reveals the sinisterness that lurks beneath the genteel surface and, as Barbara notices Bruno staring at her, transfixed by her resemblance to Guy's wife, punishes her and therefore us for previously being so quick to dismiss the victim. That's Hitchcock reminding us that we could so easily be the murderer or the one being murdered, exposing both our hubris and our fragility along with that of his characters. (1951, 101 min, 35mm) KS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Peter Segal's TOMMY BOY (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Tuesday, 7pm
Holy Schnikes, was there ever a better time to be an SNL alum than the mid-1990's? Chris Farley stars in this cult classic as the titular Tommy Callahan, the socially and emotionally inept son of a successful auto parts plant owner in Sandusky, Ohio. After barely graduating from an overextended seven years at Marquette University, Tommy returns home to work for his father, "Big Tom" (Brian Dennehy), at Callahan Autoparts. When tragedy strikes, it's up to Tommy to take over the family business and to go out on his father's big cross-country sales trip to save the company from being bought out by Ray Zalinsky (Dan Aykroyd). Along with some help from the antagonistic and sarcastic Richard Hayden (David Spade), Tommy embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns that selling brake pads is not as easy as it seems. With a great side cast that also includes Rob Lowe and Bo Derek, TOMMY BOY is full of belly laughs and some fantastic physical comedy. Farley's performance dominates the screen throughout. His role as Tommy is as big and as rambunctious as some of Farley's most memorable SNL skits. If you're looking for some 90's nostalgia with a little bit of heart and plenty of comedy, TOMMY BOY is one not to miss. (1995, 95 mins, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Chicago Cultural Center and the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival present Daniel Barrow's live 2014 "manual animation" performance The Thief of Mirrors on Friday at 7:30pm (we missed listing the Thursday performance last week). At the Storefront Theater (66 E. Randolph St.). Admission is free, on a first-come basis; box office opens at 7pm.
The Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) presents Untitled (Just Kidding): Works for the Screen by Jesse Malmed on Friday at 6:30pm, with local experimental media maker Malmed in person. At the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.) Free admission.
The Spertus Institute (610 S. Michigan Ave.) screens This Is Your Life: Hanna Bloch Kohner (1953, approx. 30 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Tuesday at 7pm. The episode, which features Holocaust survivor Kohner, will be accompanied by a presentation and discussion by Kohner's daughter, Julie Kohner.
The Black Cinema House (7200 S. Kimbark Ave.) screens William Pope.L's 2014 film THE LONG WHITE CLOUD (37 min, HD Video) on Thursday at 7pm, with William Pope.L in person. Free admission, but limited seating; RSVP at www.blackcinemahouse.org.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Stephen Belber's 2014 film MATCH (90 min, DCP Digital) plays for a week; and Sterlin Harjo's 2014 documentary THIS MAY BE THE LAST TIME (90 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 4:45pm and Wednesday at 7:45pm.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Isao Takahata's 2013 Japanese animation THE TALE OF PRINCESS KAGUYA (137 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 7 and 9:45pm (subtitled Japanese) and Sunday at 3:45pm (English-dubbed); Jacques Doillon's 1979 film THE HUSSY (90 min, 35mm) is on Monday at 7pm; Sharon Karp and Silvia Malagrino's 2014 documentary A SONG FOR YOU (87 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) is on Tuesday at 4:30pm; Federico Fellini's 1960 film LA DOLCE VITA (180 min, 35mm) is on Wednesday at 6pm and 9:30pm; and Jules Dassin's 1947 film BRUTE FORCE (98 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 7pm.
At the Music Box Theatre this week: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's 2014 film TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT (95 min) and Andrey Zvyagintsev's 2014 Russian film LEVIATHAN (140 min) both continue; Frank Capra's 1939 film MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (129 min) is on Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am; Hitoshi Matsumoto's 2013 film R100 (100 min) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight; and Tod Browning's 1931 film DRACULA (75 min) is on Wednesday at 7:30pm, in an exclusive screening for WBEZ and Cinema/Chicago members (visit the Music Box website for links to join either organization or to RSVP if you are already a member). Unconfirmed Formats.
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week: Ventura Durall, Salvador Sunyer, and Sergi Cameron's 2014 documentary BUGARACH (90 min, DCP Digital) on Thursday at 7pm.
Facets Cinémathèque plays Teodora Ana Mihai's 2014 Belgian/Romanian film WAITING FOR AUGUST (88 min, Unconfirmed Format) for a week's run; and the Chicago Latino Reel Film Club presents Ariel Winograd's 2013 Argentinean film TO FOOL A THIEF (105 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Tuesday at 7pm (reception at 6pm). Special admission applies.
Goethe-Institut Chicago (150 N. Michigan Ave.) screens Erwin Leiser's 1991 documentary ART AND POWER - 1937 (58 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Tuesday at 6pm. Free Admission.
The Whistler (2421 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents the Odd Obsession Foreign Film Series and Dance Party Ting on Saturday at 7pm (film) and 9pm (DJ). The film screening (Video Projection) is not listed.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
Threewalls (119 N. Peoria St., Suite 2C) opens Jaime Davidovich: Outreach 1974-1984 on Friday (reception 6-9pm). The exhibition, which features video and television work by the Argentinean artist, continues through March 21. Three programs of work will rotate over the course of the exhibition; check http://three-walls.org for the schedule.
Melika Bass' solo exhibition The Latest Sun Is Sinking Fast, an immersive multi-channel video and sound installation, continues through April 19 at the Hyde Park Art Center.
Gallery 400 (400 S. Peoria, UIC) continues the exhibition Visibility Machines: Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen through March 14.
The Renaissance Society presents Mathias Polenda's 35mm film installation Substance (7 min loop) through February 8.
Anri Sala's 2003 digital video installation Mixed Behavior (8 min loop) runs through March 1 at the Art Institute of Chicago.
UPDATES/CLOSURES
Chicago Public Library screenings: Due to the frequency of late-additions (past our deadlines) and to their frequent inability (due to licensing restrictions) of publicly listing the titles of films they are screening, we will no longer be listing specific CPL screenings. Check their website for any films that may be showing.
The Patio Theater and the Portage Theater calendars have been confusing and constantly shifting--adding and removing events with little notice--and reportedly have been unexpectedly closed for scheduled events. We will no longer attempt to list any screenings there.
The Northbrook Public Library film series is on hiatus during renovations at the library. Expected completion is Spring 2015.
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.
