CRUCIAL VIEWING
Bert Williams, Rediscovered: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark in Black Film History - LIME KILN CLUB FIELD DAY (Special Event)
Film Studies Center at the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) - Friday, 7pm (Free Admission*)
In 1913 the Biograph Company began production on a black-cast feature film for the prominent theater-producing duo Klaw & Erlanger. For unknown reasons, the film was never completed, and the filmed rushes sat in Biograph's storage for two decades. In 1939, Museum of Modern Art film curator Iris Barry saved the footage when she acquired the holdings of Biograph's film materials just before its imminent destruction. The rushes then sat in MoMA's storage for another several decades, before it was cursorily cataloged and labeled in the 1970s. It took another couple of decades before MoMA curator Ron Magliozzi finally noted the importance of the footage: not only the oldest surviving black-cast feature (albeit unfinished), but one starring the celebrated performer Bert Williams, whose fame at the time of the film's production was far-reaching. Magliozzi began multi-year detective work to determine exactly what the footage was, reconstruct the narrative, and produce a restored version. The result is an important document of early American cinema and a fascinating representation of African-American life on screen (the film traffics in some of the usual stereotypes, but, based on descriptions--I wasn't able to preview it--is also unusually sensitive in its portrayal of black life and customs, even presenting a black romantic relationship, nearly unthinkable in 1913). More exciting is that it is only one of four known film appearances by Bert Williams (he also stars in a lost 1914 short and two from 1916, which survive). Williams (1847-1922) was a Bahamas-born performer who rose to fame on the vaudeville stage at the turn of the century with his partner George Walker. The two broke color barriers, appearing on Broadway and recording hit records, before Williams went on to a solo career following Walker's stroke and then death. Williams' fame continued. He appeared in multiple editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, continued recording, directed and starred in two films for Biograph, and was lauded as one of the greatest comedians of the stage. The discovery of additional film material of Williams is remarkable, a vital and important look at the leading black performer of his generation. This is perhaps the film event of the year in Chicago. Original musical accompaniment by Theaster Gates and the Black Monks of Mississippi, featuring Marvin Tate. Introduced by U of C Professor Jacqueline Najuma Stewart and with MoMA curator Ron Magliozzi in person. (1913/2014, approx. 60 min, 35mm) PF
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* Free Admission, but ticketed event; reserve tickets at the FSC website
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More info at filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
Orson Welles' THE IMMORTAL STORY (French Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 7 and 9pm
If Orson Welles' post-RKO career can be said to have a shape, it culminated with his previous film, the magisterial CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT. His final completed works, F FOR FAKE, FILMING OTHELLO, and this adaptation of a Karen Blixen work, come from a different kind of filmmaker, working in a different sort of mode. The grand themes of Welles' career up until this--the radical, impossible tactility of shapes on screen, the masculine body made monstrous, the prisonhouse of cinematic space, and the infectious evil of bigotry as the engine of capitalism--effervesce away in his last three features. With Welles working now for the first time in color, THE IMMORTAL STORY, made for French television in 1966 and released theatrically in 1968, reveals a him to be fascinated suddenly more than ever before with the material basis of cinema, with the fakery of its mechanisms and how that very falsity is responsible for its capacity for beauty. Something of a four-character chamber piece, the film features Welles playing a fabulously rich merchant dying in 19th century China, heavily made-up with a grotesque false nose and an astonishing mustache. Lost within his pains, Clay, Welles' character, commands his private secretary to read to him every night, but, lost within his own avarice, Clay finds solace only within bound copies of his own financial records. When at last these are exhausted, he remembers a story he once heard, perhaps the only story he has ever truly heard, of a sailor paid to sleep with the young wife of a dying millionaire. Disgusted when he realizes the story is fiction, he determines to engineer it from lie to prophesy and finally to honest fact. What follows is a somber, somewhat awkward, explosion of narrative recursion as Clay induces a prostitute to pretend to be his bride so that he can hire a sailor to deflower her, all the while ignorant that she is actually the daughter of Clay's former business partner whom he had betrayed in her youth. Jagged, uncomfortable cuts slash through people's movements. Weirdly off-putting compositions turn private conversations into zoo-like displays of sadness and misunderstanding. A sex scene erupts on screen with all the discordant horrors of a natural disaster. His next feature, F FOR FAKE, would turn the understated and quiet ruminations here into a tour-de-force of experimentation, reinventing the very form of cinema, but THE IMMORTAL STORY has less flamboyant ambitions: merely to dwell within the impossible world of deceitful excellence. (1968, 60 min, 35mm) KB
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Dominique Benicheti's COUSIN JULES (French Documentary Revival)
Chicago Filmmakers and Beguiled Cinema at Columbia College (Film Row Cinema, 1104 S. Wabash Ave., 8th Floor) - Thursday, 7pm
A film unreleased in the U.S. until its recent restoration, COUSIN JULES shows the daily life of blacksmith Jules Guiteaux on his farm in rural France. Dominique Benicheti's documentary is an exceptional example of pure filmmaking. Much of the film is devoid of speaking, instead focusing on Guiteaux at work. Hammers pounding on anvils, Guiteaux shaving with a straight razor, and the noise of wooden clogs substitute for dialogue. These simple sounds invite the viewer to immerse themselves into Guiteaux's tasks and routines. Benicheti's film is an ode to the workingman. The gorgeous widescreen cinematography is contrasted with subtle camera movements that linger on modest moments like a cup of coffee rippling or a fire raging. Benicheti has a way of making even the most mundane of actions utterly fascinating and enrapturing. Guiteaux is self-disciplined, hardworking, and dedicated to his craft. All of these qualities make for a very forthright documentary that rarely forces an agenda but instead leaves itself open a number of interpretations. Is Jules happy with his life? Does he feel fulfilled? What does he gain from his work? Benicheti's film unfolds like a set of home movies edited together, but with purpose. COUSIN JULES is an unabashed masterpiece that meditates on the proletarian farming lifestyle, and thereby invites consideration of larger themes. (1972, 91 min, DCP Digital; New Restoration) KC
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More info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
William Friedkin's THE PEOPLE VERSUS PAUL CRUMP (Documentary Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) - Thursday, 7pm
In 1962, William Friedkin, a moderately successful television director in Chicago, made an experimental documentary about Paul Crump, convicted and sentenced to death in 1953 for murdering a security guard during a payroll robbery at a meatpacking plant. The film boldly dramatizes key events from Crump's life as well as the crime he may or may not have committed, shot in an ostentatious, wildly expressionistic style, interspersing this novelistic narrative with apparently unstaged interviews with Crump and several principals involved in his defense, flatly, anonymously done from clinical camera positions. As the film progresses, it delivers a portrait of Crump as an unjustly prosecuted and persecuted man, tortured by police officers and betrayed by his friends. Awkward and rough, it is obviously the work of a filmmaker still yet to achieve mastery over his medium, and many sequences display an amateurism and sloppiness that undercut the seriousness of the subject matter. However, there are remarkable echoes already in this nascent work of the tremendous greatness of Friedkin's mature masterpieces, CRUISING, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., and THE HUNTED. With those, the film shares an obsession with procedure, the cold, unflinching gaze of the professional within his domain, and the expertly staged brutalization of a body under authority. The finest moment, a brief, though haunting, examination of the mechanics of the electric chair, is as shocking and nightmarish as anything Friedkin would show in THE EXORCIST. The film was withdrawn from broadcast, deemed too inflammatory in its unabashed advocacy of a brutalized black man and open condemnation of police racism and tactics, and for many years languished unseen in archives. Five decades have passed since Friedkin's film shouted for justice, six decades since Crump was tortured into confessing to murder. For all its flaws, THE PEOPLE VERSUS PAUL CRUMP remains a very upsetting and sadly relevant work. Would that it could be viewed as mere history and not so easily mistaken for current events. (1962, 60 min, Archival 16mm Print) KB
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath (Documentary Revival)
South Side Projections at Black Cinema House (7200 S. Kimbark Ave.) - Saturday 4pm (Free Admission)
As its title indicates, the fourth and final program in South Side Projections' "The Streets and the Classrooms" series is a pithy examination of urban renewal and its aftermath. Over the course of three short films that span nearly five decades, we're shown everything from the overly simplistic beginnings of urban renewal to its varied effects on modern city dwellers. Haskell Wexler's Oscar-nominated THE LIVING CITY (1952, 25 min) considers urban renewal as a one-size-fits-all approach to helping inner-city people of every race and color. Made only a few years after the Housing Act of 1949 called for the removal of "substandard and other inadequate housing through the clearance of slums and blighted areas, and the realization as soon as feasible of a goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family," THE LIVING CITY takes a naive, if not propagandistic approach towards the idea of urban renewal, surmising that the government and its citizens can simply work together to salvage America's great cities. (Though that's a reasonable idea in theory, its successful execution would obviously be much more complex.) And despite its seemingly equitable stance on the issue, the film more so considers the plight of the white businessman and the stay-at-home mother of his children than the little black child, whom it addresses almost as an afterthought. Altogether, it's vaguely reminiscent of King Vidor's 1949 film THE FOUNTAINHEAD, an adaptation of Ayn Rand's infamous novel, complete with a closing shot of an elevator shooting up a high-rise construction site that's redolent of Patricia Neal's ascent towards a superiorly virile Gary Cooper. Indiana University's INNER CITY DWELLER: HOUSING (1973, 19 min)--which, like the other film from the second program, was made in cooperation with the Black Arts Theater--addresses the white community's perception of urban renewal and its after-effects. More specifically, it explains why many inner-city homeowners can't get ahead due to both exorbitant costs and absentee landlords. The INNER CITY DWELLER series is particularly valuable for its straightforward methods of educating the white community; this episode is constructed around a conversation between two white men in which one explains to the other that keeping up with repairs or calling upon a landlord to do them aren't simple tasks for those in blighted areas. Ronit Bezalel's acclaimed short documentary VOICES OF CABRINI: REMAKING CHICAGO'S PUBLIC HOUSING (1999, 31 min) somewhat ties the first two films together in a local context. The Cabrini-Green Homes are an example of what MIT professor Lawrence J. Vale refers to as a "twice-cleared community," having undergone bouts of urban renewal that many times since the end of World War II. Bezalel's film documents the most recent "clearing." It follows a few families and a small business owner as they're compelled to relocate in the midst of reconstruction. Perhaps the most affecting scene is one where a soon-to-be-displaced Cabrini-Green resident examines the newly constructed "mixed-income" apartments and their inhabitants. Not surprisingly, the two people he sees are white, and the one he speaks to says his black neighbors are in nearby subsidized housing. At the end, we learn that only 16 families from Cabrini-Green were moved into the nice, new buildings that replaced their tenements, the rest having been moved to other neighborhoods. It both deconstructs the inculcation put forward in THE LIVING CITY and highlights ongoing disparity in the aftermath of urban renewal. Bezalel and VOICES producer Judy Hoffman (University of Chicago, Kartemquin Films member) in person. (1953-99, 85 min total, 16mm and Video Projection) KS
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More info at http://southsideprojections.org.
The Chicago Underground Film Festival
At the Logan Theatre - continues through Sunday
The Chicago Underground Film Festival continues through this Sunday with a mixture of features, shorts programs, artist discussions, and after parties. Check the link below for complete details.
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Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan's FOR THE PLASMA (New American)
Saturday, 8pm
Living in a secluded house in rural Maine, Helen invites an old friend to join her laidback vocation as a forest fire lookout. There's nothing too remarkable about this set-up until she explains, somewhat ominously, that she's made a side job out of staring at trees on CCTV monitors, turning her visual analysis of light and shape into financial projections that unspecified clients are apparently willing to pay for. It's a premise that would be at home in a Shane Carruth movie, though when Helen describes transforming the act of looking by consciously altering its purpose, it sounds more like something out of Thom Andersen. FOR THE PLASMA doesn't invite straightforward comparisons, though. Rather, it pursues its own off-kilter trajectory with a tone that feels relentlessly casual, if occasionally foreboding (ditto the electronic score and eccentric lighthouse attendant character). It seems like the film could go off in any direction at any given moment, but it leaves most of its enigmas vague, allowing the intermingling of nature, surveillance, and capitalism to hum in the background of what is for the most part a leisurely tale of filling up downtime on an easy job. It's a film that's about a lot at the same time that it isn't about very much at all, with plenty of room for the audience to extrapolate meaning beyond the surface pleasures of its 16mm summer idyll. (2014, 94 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) AK
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More info and full schedule at www.cuff.org.
Stanley Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON (British Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Friday, 6 and 9:30pm, Saturday, 1pm, and Sunday, 1:30pm
Borrowing many of the 18th century costumes directly from European museums and selecting his score after listening (allegedly) to every piece of 18th century music ever recorded, Stanley Kubrick brought an unprecedented level of verisimilitude to the historical drama with BARRY LYNDON. But rather than revel in the details for their own sake, Kubrick used them to create the eerie effect of a past existing autonomously from us as something like an alien planet--which may explain why Jonathan Rosenbaum has called the film a follow-up of sorts to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Rosenbaum has singled out "John Alcott['s] slow backward zooms" as key to the movie's impact, since they "distance us, both historically and emotionally, from its rambling picaresque narrative." Kubrick manages another great distancing effect with the film's wry, clinical-sounding narration (read by Michael Hordern), which often explains the action before it occurs. This has the immediate impact of making the spectacular, pageant-like mise-en-scene feel anticlimactic: It would be a fine nose-thumbing gesture in itself, but the movie is more complicated than that. Beneath the pomp and technical perfection (This is also the film for which Kubrick developed a special lens that allowed him to shoot scenes entirely by candlelight) is a fable about one man's rise and fall along the conventions of his time. Since the conventions themselves remain just beyond comprehension, Ryan O'Neal, as the title character, seems less of an antihero upon repeated viewings and more of a tragic figure--every bit the victim of systems beyond his control as Dave Bowman in 2001. (1975, 184 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Elia Kazan's A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Monday, 7pm
Film history pop trivia might have you believe that Elia Kazan's film version of Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire would have been much better had Jessica Tandy been allowed to transplant her stage performance to screen. However, for anyone with a soft spot for Vivian Leigh's staunch Southern belle act (a la GONE WITH THE WIND), Kazan's film still renders the play into a unique slice of Hollywood melodrama, albeit quite different from Williams' original. The critics at the time agreed. Kazan won 5 Oscars for STREETCAR, and many felt that Brando was born to play Stanley Kowalski. Although Kazan produced a number of plays for the stage and directed many films, STREETCAR was the only time he filmed a play he had previously directed for the stage. Melodrama aside, it endures as a haunting dissection of female desire and denial--a stunning and vicious pendulum of violence: physical, sexual, and linguistic. (1951, 125 min, 35mm) BC
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Isao Takahata's GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (Japanese Animation Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 3pm and Tuesday, 6pm
In his period animation GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES Isao Takahata creates a proud Japan during the Second World War where, despite the numerous air raids, the people seem to be eerily firm in their belief in their Emperor and their country's power. Seita, brother to young Setsuko, is a young boy who is left in charge of his even young sister after an American air raid caused their mother's death. With their father away on war duty, Seita bears the burden and stress of surviving and remaining spirited while everywhere the pair goes, bombs destroy familiar villages. Nationalism is personified in Seita, who continues to hold his country in high esteem even after rations and much-needed items are restricted even more as the war continues. The duo descends further into despair; Japan declines until its ultimate surrender to the American government. Emotionally-draining in a most positive manner, the audience will know the film's outcome but may wish for another alternative in order to ease the plight of hero and heroine. Takahata creates an animation that is more human than many live-action war films. (1988, 89 min, DCP Digital; Subtitled Version) SW
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
John Coney's SPACE IS THE PLACE (American Revival)
The Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago) - Thursday, 7pm (Free Admission)
SPACE IS THE PLACE is a very odd film, written by and starring the brilliant composer slash prophet from space Sun Ra. The main plot is basically that of Sun Ra's own reinvention as an interstellar prophet: he plays Sun Ra, who finds enlightenment on another planet and returns to Earth to save his African American brethren from a supernatural pimp-overlord, using his music to spread his message. Ra intended it as a lighthearted homage to cheap 1950s science fiction, but a lengthy subplot involving pimps and prostitutes clashed with Ra's scenes and placed it firmly in the Blacksploitation genre. Ra decided that these elements were unnecessary pandering that detracted from his message (and he was right), and for decades the film was available only in a shortened 63-minute version that stuck more closely to his vision. The suppressed footage was eventually restored for the 2003 DVD release. Genre digressions aside, SPACE IS THE PLACE is a unique creation, a foggy window into one of the most creative minds of the twentieth century: equal parts maddening and enlightening, off-putting in its sometimes-amateurish construction but hypnotizing nonetheless. Screening as part of the "Sun Ra: Astro Black Mythology and Black Resistance" symposium. (1974, 85 min, Unconfirmed Format) MWP
Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi's WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (New New Zealand/American)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Saturday, 7 and 9pm and Sunday, 5pm
Once upon a full moon, vampires were considered to be pure horror. With Bram Stoker's original Dracula, Bela Lugosi's 1930s and 40s Universal films, the iconic German expressionist film NOSFERATU, and Carl Theodor Dreyer's VAMPYR, their gothic mythology was firmly rooted in the collective conscious. These immortal creatures of the night relied on charm, sexuality, and dark magic to enchant and lure their victims. Over time, filmic (and other popular culture) representations of vampires strayed from the original formula, delving into comedy, romance, science fiction, and more. All of these varieties inevitably led to the ill-conceived TWILIGHT and its unavoidable sequels. The vampire film had reached a point of stagnation. WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS breaks free of this vampire-moribundity, and is also one of the most original and refreshing comedies in recent memory. This mockumentary combination of The Office meets LET THE RIGHT ONE IN meets The Real World satirizes what life would be like for a vampire living today, dealing with the mundane aspects of contemporary urban life. SHADOWS dares to asks such questions as who's going to clean the dishes, what clothes should vampires wear to the club, and is a human an appropriate plus one to bring to an undead masquerade ball. The answers play out in droll, hilarious fashion, aided by FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS' Jermaine Clement and Rhys Darby, who dazzle as two of the bloodsucking flatmates. Bram Stoker may be rolling over in his grave seeing what has transpired since his vaunted masterpiece, but for the viewers, SHADOWS rewardingly proves that there is still blood left in the veins of the vampire movie. (2015, 86 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
Live to Tape: Artist Television Festival takes place from Monday (May 18) through May 24. The seven-day, eight-program festival, curated by local artist Jesse Malmed, includes thematic programs of film, video, and performance work that "take television as object, as concept, as antagonist, as material, as form, as inspiration." Full schedule and more details at http://livetotapefestival.tumblr.com.
The Graham Foundation (Madlener House, 4 W. Burton Place) screens Pablo Bujosa Rodríguez's 2013 documentary JOSEP LLUÍS SERT: A NOMADIC DREAM (73 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 6pm. Free admission; RSVP at http://grahamfoundation.org/public_events.
Black Cinema House (7200 S. Kimbark Ave.) screens Carl Franklin's 1995 film DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (102 min), along with Jean Renoir's 1927 short CHARLESTON PARADE (17 min) on Sunday at 4pm. Screening as part of the series "Archibald Motley and the Matter of Film." Free admission, but limited seating; RSVP at http://rebuild-foundation.squarespace.com.
The Chicago Cinema Society screens Till Kleinert's 2014 film DER SAMURAI (79 min, Blu-Ray Projection) on Friday at 8pm at Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.). Preceded by Ben Steiner's 2014 short THE STOMACH (15 min, Digital Projection). http://chicagocinemasociety.org
Transistor (3441 N. Broadway) will be screening the recent restored version of E.A. Dupont's 1925 silent film VARIETY (Unconfirmed Running Time, Blu-Ray Projection), presented by local film writer/filmmaker Michael Smith, on Saturday at 8pm. Free admission. www.transistorchicago.com/51615.
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Robert C. Hughes' 1989 film ZADAR! COW FROM HELL (87 min, DVD Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission.
Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.) hosts an Open Screening on Saturday at 8pm. Bring work to show (DVD only; 20 minutes max.) or just go to watch. Free admission.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Dave La Mattina and Chad N. Walker's 2014 documentary I AM BIG BIRD (90 min, DCP Digital) begins a two-week run; Damián Szifrón's 2014 Argentinean film WILD TALES (122 min, DCP Digital) plays for a week; Anja Marquardt's 2014 film SHE'S LOST CONTROL (90 min, DCP Digital) screens on Friday and Thursday at 8:15pm, Sunday at 5:30pm, and Tuesday at 6pm; George Hencken's 2014 documentary SOUL BOYS OF THE WESTERN WORLD (110 min, DCP Digital) screens on Friday and Wednesday at 8:30pm, Saturday at 8pm, and Monday at 8:15pm; and Mami Sunada's 2013 documentary THE KINGDOM OF DREAMS AND MADNESS (118 min, DCP Digital) screens on Saturday at 4:45pm and Thursday at 6pm.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Frank Tashlin's 1958 film ROCK-A-BYE BABY (103 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 7pm; Frederick Wiseman's 1995 documentary BALLET (170 min, 16mm) is on Tuesday at 7pm; Mario Bava's 1974 film KIDNAPPED (96 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 7pm; and Clive Barker's 1990 film NIGHTBREED (102 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 9:15pm.
At the Music Box Theatre this week: Albert Maysles' 2014 documentary IRIS (83 min) and Hernán Guerschuny's 2013 Chilean/Argentinean film THE FILM CRITIC (98 min) both open; Shira Piven's 2014 film WELCOME TO ME (105 min) continues; Nicholas Ray's 1949 film A WOMAN'S SECRET (84 min, 35mm) is on Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am; Noel Marshall's 1981 film ROAR (102 min, Digital Projection - Unconfirmed Format) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight; Tommy Wiseau's 2003 film THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) is on Friday at Midnight; and Jim Sharman's 1975 film THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at Midnight. Unconfirmed Formats except where noted.
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week: Errol Morris' 1988 documentary THE THIN BLUE LINE (103 min, Blu-Ray Projection) on Friday at 7pm.
Facets Cinémathèque plays both Gil Kofman and Tanner King Barklow's 2014 film LOST IN THE WHITE CITY (91 min, Unconfirmed Format) and Ragnar Bragason's 2013 Icelandic film METALHEAD (100 min, Unconfirmed Format) for a week's run.
Park Ridge Classic Film Series at the Park Ridge Public Library (20 S. Prospect Ave., Park Ridge) screens Frank Borzage's 1940 film STRANGE CARGO (113 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Thursday at 7pm. Free admission.
The Chicago Cultural Center screens Thomas Miller's 2014 documentary LIMITED PARTNERSHIP (54 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Saturday at 2pm; and Ekachai Uekrongtham's 2004 Thai film BEAUTIFUL BOXER (118 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Thursday at 6:30pm in the Cinema Q series. Free admission for both.
Alliance Française (54 W. Chicago Ave.) screens Cédric Klapicsh's 2014 film CHINESE PUZZLE (120 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Thursday at 6:30pm.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
I Am Logan Square (2644 ½ N. Milwaukee Ave.) continues the exhibition The Underground Prop Art Show through May 22. It features various props and other items from films showing in the 2015 Chicago Underground Film Festival, by filmmakers including Jennifer Reeder, Mike Olenick, Jerzy Rose, Kenny Reed, Ali Aschman, Chris Sullivan, Laura Ann Harrison, Mike Lopez, Spencer Parsons, Lyra Hill and Todd Mattei.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presents an exhibition of nine video works by artist Keren Cytter. On view through October 4.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presents German artist Clemens von Wedemeyer's HD video installation Muster (Rushes) (2012). On view through July 26.
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. They plan to do occasional screenings as opportunities arise.
