CRUCIAL VIEWING
Edgar G. Ulmer's THE NAKED DAWN (American Revival)
The Northwest Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E., 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) - Wednesday, 7:30pm
Many auteurists consider Edgar G. Ulmer a saint, as he struggled for decades (and generally succeeded) to make artful, personal films in the least auspicious conditions. Ulmer spent most of the 40s at Producers Releasing Corporation (widely known as "Poverty Row Corporation" due to the meager budgets, quick production schedules, and tawdry stories of many of their films), and he practically ended his feature-film career with a pair of Z-grade sci-fi films made at an abandoned amusement park. Yet in even his cheapest and most risible films, one sees traces of Ulmer's background in high-toned expressionism (he served as an assistant to Max Reinhardt and F.W. Murnau)--behold the expert chiaroscuro, baroque camera movements, and stark, fatalistic worldview that ennoble something like CLUB HAVANA (1943) or THE MAN FROM PLANET X (1951). Occasionally Ulmer got a big enough budget to show the world what he was capable of, as in the cases of THE BLACK CAT (1934), THE STRANGE WOMAN (1946), or THE NAKED DAWN. Released by a major studio (Universal) and starring an accomplished actor (Arthur Kennedy), DAWN is a Technicolor western adapted (by black-listed screenwriter Julian Zimet) from a Maxim Gorky short story called "Chelkash" and set in post-revolutionary Mexico. The hero, Santiago, is a failed revolutionary-turned-bandit (Kennedy) who enters into a murderous love triangle with an Indio farmer and the farmer's wife. "Ulmer's fondness for the dramatic tension of a love triangle comes to passionate articulation," writes Noah Isenberg in his biography Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins. "Santiago's worldliness, his libertine attitudes and his penchant for wandering, serve as a sharp contrast to Manuel's seeming desire for bourgeois conventionality, respectability, and rootlessness, making him a gradual source of attraction for the shackled Maria." Isenberg notes that DAWN was a particular favorite of the young auteurists at Cahiers du Cinema, who championed the film's baroque style. A 24-year-old François Truffaut wrote that it's "one of those movies we know was made with joy; every shot shows a love of cinema, and pleasure in working in it." Preceded by George Robinson's 1956 short AROUND THE WORLD REVIEW (16 min, 35mm). (1955, 82 min, 35mm IB Technicolor Print) BS
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More info at www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org.
Aleksandr Sokurov's FRANCOFONIA (New Russian)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Check Venue website for showtimes
To say FRANCOFONIA is about the Louvre is like saying F FOR FAKE is about an artist, or MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA is about ... well. Aleksandr Sokurov (RUSSIAN ARK, FAUST) narrates his latest feature, which tackles at once Paris' crown jewel, the price of peace in Vichy France, and mankind's impulse first to create and then to collect. Like the Louvre itself where artifacts from across millennia--many of them facsimiles of still longer lost items--coexist under one roof, FRANCOFONIA is a formal mix of the old, new, and the deliberately difficult to define. Genuine archival footage mingles with digitally processed re-enactments that flicker and alter aspect ratio moment-to-moment, evincing the uncanny feeling of getting lost in a museum. While at its heart FRANCOFONIA is an unrepentant history lesson and Sokurov seems content to teach, the work has moments that cut across eras and reveal the true cost of art. (2015, 88 min, DCP Digital) JS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Deborah Stratman's THE ILLINOIS PARABLES (New Documentary)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) - Thursday, 7pm
When I was in the second semester of my senior year of high school, drenched with that special hyperactive glee that can only come from being a teenager about to change the world through the power of having read very serious books by very dead people, I came across an unhinged and hyperbolic profile in the New York Times of a young writer of prodigious passion, voluminous productivity, and dangerous proclivities. He had embarked, the author of the article said, on a multi-novel project that set out to do nothing less than reconstitute the history of the European conquests in the North American continent, from the Viking settlements to the present day, through myth, autobiographical recreation, vividly poetic deconstruction, and obsessive archival research. The man being discussed was William T. Vollmann, arguably the greatest novelist in America today, and his cycle of books about America, 'Seven Dreams,' had its fifth volume published just last summer. As I was watching, and obsessively rewatching, Deborah Stratman's beautiful new film, THE ILLINOIS PARABLES, I was unavoidably reminded of the gargantuan ambition and microhistorical approach that Vollmann has taken in his series. Stratman's lyrical documentary takes the form, not of dreams, but of parables, eleven of them, each a loving, sometimes poignant and often terrible, frozen moment from Illinois' past. A parable, in contrast to a dream, is a tale that encapsulates a spiritual truth, a way through story to teach a difficult lesson about a higher, better way of life, a grander, more virtuous kind of world, and how we might find a way to deserve those. THE ILLINOIS PARABLES is about the land of Illinois as much as it's about the people who live here. Stratman shows it as a grand, expansive place, a landscape of fecundity and cruelty and catastrophe. Each of the parable-sections of the film offers a miniature meditation on an event from Illinois history, lushly photographed in gorgeous, complex shots combined in mesmerizing patterns. We see a wilderness, a pre-Columbian ruin, a snow-drowned dirt road, a crime scene recreation, a close-up of a painting, of a monument. The lives that once inhabited and once brought life to these images have been expelled: by the force of nature, by the force of racism, by the force of religious bigotry, by the force of greed, by the force of police assassination. Over the dense soundtrack, the sounds of nature form a peculiar and funereal music, punctuated only by the recitations, in voice-over, of unforgiving and blunt first-person narratives culled from our state's past. The heart of the film for me is parable 9, an exploration of the Macomb Poltergeist, one of the most notorious poltergeist hauntings in American history. In the film, a young girl sits alone in a room. Slowly, a small spot appears on the wallpaper opposite her. It darkens, spreads, begins to glow hot. Small tongues of flame start to lick up out of the growing hole. Stratman cuts to found footage of a house mid-conflagration, moments away from collapsing entirely. The incomprehensible has become the palpable. The ineffable has descended to flesh. But the mystery has only deepened, and the state of emergency, the state of Illinois, is always just about to burst into fire. Stratman, like Vollmann, gives us each moment as a vision of how a place, how a person might have been, and what that possibility can mean to us now as we glacially awaken from our long nightmares into an incandescent present. Stratman in person. (2016, 60 min, 16mm) KB
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
René Clément's FORBIDDEN GAMES and LES MAUDITS (French Revivals)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Showtimes listed below
The Siskel Center's month-long series "French Auteurs: Restorations, Rarities, and Reevaluations" is big news because it gives Chicagoans a rare chance to see two greatly under-appreciated Claude Sautet features, CESAR AND ROSALIE and LES CHOSES DE LA VIE, on a big screen. (Mark your calendars--they're on Saturday, May 21, with one later repeat screening each.) The rest of the series is nicely curated too, a mix of classics, films that ought to be considered classics, and deep cuts. Playing this week are a pair of films by René Clément, FORBIDDEN GAMES (1952, 86 minutes, DCP Digital; Saturday, 3pm and Monday, 6pm) and the lesser-known LES MAUDITS (1947, 105 min, DCP Digital; Friday, 6pm and Saturday, 4:45pm). In his gazette notes for the Siskel, programmer Martin Rubin ranks GAMES with THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES as "one of the most haunting films about children in peril," while David Ehrenstein has claimed, in a piece written for the Criterion Collection, that "this deeply touching French drama has stirred the emotions of every moviegoer who has had the good fortune to see it." What inspires such hyperbole? Ehrenstein explains: "In dramatic terms, it's a fairly simple story, one whose connection to war's ghastliness may seem slight at first; yet so subtle and thoughtful is Clément's direction, and so insightful is the script Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost adapted from François Boyer's story, we don't miss a single telling point. And, Brigitte Fossey's remarkable performance plays no small part in all of this. Fossey's is quite simply one of the most uncanny pieces of acting ever attempted by a youngster. Clément's sensitivity doubtless accounts for much of what we see here, but the rest is Fossey's own. With the solid support of Georges Poujouly as Michel, FORBIDDEN GAMES lets us experience a child's coming to grips with the facts of death from their perspective. At the same time, the filmmaker also provides us with a sharply critical picture of provincial French life." LES MAUDITS is another wartime story, and like FORBIDDEN GAMES it enjoyed much critical respectability when first released in this country. The New York Times, which described it as "a melodrama with pronounced psychological overtones," praised Clément and the "excellent cast [who] microscopically dissect the oppressor and collaborator under the harrowing duress of fear of impending retribution after the end of the conflict. The view is realistic--not pretty--but the end result is a film, which except for a somewhat flamboyant finish, is a taut, wholly believable adventure." BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Yasujir? Ozu's TOKYO STORY (Japanese Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Wednesday, 7 and 9:40pm
Yasujir? Ozu's films tend to bring out the inner poet of the critics writing about them, and I suspect it's because his work is as paradoxically straightforward and inexplicable as that very medium. Much like one might read a poem and reflect on its ability to impart awe in such an assuming way, so one watches an Ozu film and feels utterly perplexed by its sublimity. TOKYO STORY is the film that introduced him to American audiences; it's also a prime example of his elegiac approach to filmmaking. Just as in other Ozu films, the plot doesn't matter. Rather, it's the particular societal arrangement and the depth of characterization that gives each film its distinction. TOKYO STORY is about an elderly couple who go to the city to visit their grown children, and, well, as with other Ozu films, that's basically the gist of it. Generational differences between the old, young, and even younger provide most of the 'conflict,' as does the question of place within a family. Setsuko Hara plays Noriko, the wife of the parents' son who died in the war; she remains attached to them even eight years after her husband's death. It's she who bonds with the mother, redeems the father, and departs wisdom on their youngest daughter. (In perhaps one of the most heartbreaking scenes in cinema, the young daughter asks Noriko, "Isn't life disappointing?" Noriko responds, "Yes, it is," with a guileless smile on her face, one that she wears throughout the film until an uncharacteristic breakdown at the end.) The film also embodies Ozu's signature style, which consists of seemingly slow-moving plot and humbly low camera placement. It's widely considered his masterpiece, yet it rejects critical examination. It exists just as his characters do, wholly and unremarkably, and alive in the truest sense of the word. To scrutinize an Ozu film is, like poetry, to vitiate its essence; to ask "why?" is to miss the point completely. (1953, 136 min, 35mm) KS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Lotfy Nathan's 12 O'CLOCK BOYS (Contemporary Documentary)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Saturday, 2pm
The distributor's chosen pull quote for 12 O'CLOCK BOYS is "THE WIRE with Wheelies", but a better summary might be: "come for the wheelies, stay for the documentary ethics" (n.b. I am not a marketing professional.) Lotfy Nathan's directorial debut is an ecstatic survey of many sticking points that viewers, programmers, and critics encounter reckoning with cinematic non-fiction (as it were.) The logline is simple: over the course of three years, the film follows Pug, a precocious young teen obsessed with joining the "12 O'Clock Boys", a Baltimore dirt-bike-riding group named after their fetish for the most vertical wheelie achievable on city streets. Though illegal, some locals hold up the activity as a valid outlet for young men, in contrast to the alternatives on offer in a community devoid of civic and economic investment. Almost all the subjects are black, and at least one reviewer took issue with their story being told through the aesthetic of a white filmmaker. That's certainly an angle worthy of consideration, but complicated by Nathan's Egyptian descent. How does that fact change the politics of representation? Based in Baltimore for college, Nathan is certainly an outsider from the milieu he documents, but his success should be judged on the empathy and insight he can bring to the lives of others that compelled him to undertake the project in the first place. And if anyone is still clinging to a notion of documentary as objective, dispassionately-observed truth in 2016, 12 O'CLOCK BOYS will certainly unsettle their monocle. Nathan and crew colluded with the bikers to record their exploits in ultra-slow-motion, yielding footage that rivals the sensuous visuals of the most indulgent nature doc. But we shouldn't ascribe any less veracity to these images of the riders, who are clearly accustomed to performing for the camera from VHS to YouTube to a Vision Research Phantom. A trickier conundrum comes in the last sequence, where the question of staging vs. observation carries the greatest stakes, both for the director and his subject ("That sounds like something I'd do.") Pug ages from 13 to 15 over the course of the film, and in this final ambiguous context we are brought back to the movie's first sequence, of Pug riding in the back of a van while the soundtrack is dominated by a talk-radio host expressing his disdain for the bikers, hoping for their injury or death. We are rudely reminded that our protagonist, now looking old enough to carry the moniker "young man," has grown into the target for societal violence that comes with being a black man in urban America. This isn't to make 12 O'CLOCK BOYS sound overly heavy (which it can be when you think about it), but to indicate how much depth and pathos is contained in a movie that is so unapologetically, deliriously entertaining. (2013, 76 min, Digital Projection) AK
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More info at http://renaissancesociety.org.
Jason Bateman's THE FAMILY FANG (New American)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
Jason Bateman's second directorial feature finds the filmmaker delving into the melodramatic, a far different approach than the one taken for the rebellious BAD WORDS. Growing up, Annie (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter (Jason Bateman) are cast in a series of performance pieces by their parents in which they seek to record shocking moments (a child robbing a bank with a gun for all its lollipops is one such example) and film the unknowing bystanders' reactions. Jumping to modern times, Annie is now a struggling actress striving for relevancy and Baxter is an uninspired writer. After a freak accident involving a potato gun, the siblings are reunited with their exhibitionist parents, who go missing shortly after. The film questions the nature of art in all its forms and the evolutions it's gone through over the years. In this era of YouTube and social media, anyone can record a piece of video but does that make it art? The definitions vary from character to character in this film; however, their thought processes remain the same. Art should be created in a way that allows people to view the world from a different perspective. Narratively speaking, FANG is fairly standard but its take on family units and their effect on creative output truly stand out. Is it a form of creative expression to include children as a part of the performance or is it exploitation? The answer lies on either side the generational gap present between the two elder Fang's and their kids. Ultimately, THE FAMILY FANG finds Bateman honing his focus on building more developed characters and reveals his abilities to tell a compelling story. (2015, 105 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Douglas Sirk's WRITTEN ON THE WIND (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Sunday, 7pm
On their bright, Technicolor surfaces, the films of Douglas Sirk can appear as so many reiterations of the well-worn genre of the classical Hollywood melodrama. Lush domestic interiors, weeping women, maudlin mothers, betrayal, and heartbreak all make their obligatory appearances; all are familiar markers of a predictable narrative structure that will inevitably deliver the triumph of heterosexual union and affirm the solidity of the patriarchal family. This, however, is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg, with vicious currents stirring underwater. WRITTEN ON THE WIND, undoubtedly one of Sirk's strongest films, demonstrates precisely why the director underwent significant critical reevaluation in the 1970s, leaving behind a reputation of glitz and fluff to become the darling of cinephiles, feminists, and Fassbinder alike. Working within and against the conventions of genre, Sirk's over-the-top excess forces the recognition of fissures and cracks that lurk within the dominant ideology the film superficially endorses. The glossiness and artificiality of Sirk's surfaces gives way to a complex meditation on the contradictions of gender, class, and sexuality. Dave Kehr sees the film as "a screaming Brechtian essay on the shared impotence of American family and business life...that draws attention to the artificiality of the film medium, in turn commenting on the hollowness of middle-class American life." The film stands as an excellent introduction to Sirk for those unfamiliar, but repeat viewings do not disappoint: as Pedro Almodovar said, "I have seen WRITTEN ON THE WIND a thousand times, and I cannot wait to see it again.'' (1956, 99 min, 35mm) EB
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Abbas Kiarostami's TEN (Contemporary Iranian)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) - Monday, 7pm
Leave it to Abbas Kiarostami to make one of the decade's most contentious movies simply by fixing two cameras to the dashboard of a car, but TEN triggered numerous debates about authorship in digital cinema. Kiarostami chose to direct the film "like a football coach" rehearsing the actors for weeks, then remaining off-site while they performed the scenes themselves. The resulting film has an unaffected, almost voyeuristic aspect: The highly formal structure--ten encounters between a single mother and the people she drives around Tehran, each introduced with a number--only adds to the effect of seeing unstructured conversation. What the film may lack in pictorial beauty it gains in documentary revelation, as the women speak with a candor virtually unseen in Iranian cinema. (Naturally, it was banned in Iran.) TEN is deliberate in its lack of resolution, making it a frustrating experience for some viewers. But Kiarostami's attempt to create a new aesthetic out of recent technology (and to find an analogue for contemporary alienation with such formal transparency) makes this an integral work of recent years. (2002, 94 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Richard Linklater's BOYHOOD (Contemporary American)
Gene Siskel Film Center - Saturday, 7pm and Tuesday, 6pm
Why revisit BOYHOOD? Exhibit A: with unthinking universal acclaim more befitting a generic Pixar or Marvel endeavor, the collective corpus of extant BOYHOOD reviews are a sign that contemporary film criticism (and its extraordinarily brief post-screening turnaround times) needs to be burned to the ground and its ashes tossed to sea. This is not because the movie isn't any good--it's because the myth of its diachronic production revealed the majority of pundits' inability to distinguish between fiction, documentary, and/or real life. (Even a relatively reflective late submission in the New York Review of Books explicitly assumed that there must be footage left over for one or "several" features.) Once one accepts that BOYHOOD is a conventional narrative fiction, with actors, a script, and the usual Linklater IRL influences (such as the armchair philosophy and/or unsubtle musical taste of Ethan Hawke) that happens to have had an extraordinarily staggered production schedule, it might become possible to consider--as few critics seemed to have managed to do--what the subject matter of the film might be. For example, it's not about "time" (none of the scripted content has anything interesting to say about that). A little bit is about adolescent psychological development--note the academic lectures moving from teacher to student: Pavlov replaced with Bowlby. But now observe the film's morality of technicity: 35mm cameras, cars, guns, blues-rock, (small amounts of) drugs: good, everything else (TV, beer, steroids): bad. It's pure Austin, TX, but Linklater's take on video games, cell phones, and the mobile Internet is far from incidental (no director points a camera at Halo on Xbox--or holds a lengthy Facetime conversation within a single static frame--by accident). Ellar Coltrane's Max Weber-esque speech on the iron cage of social media is the film's passionate précis; and its suggestive conclusion for the youth of today--to tune in, drop out and Be Here Now at Big Bend National Park--as radical a statement as one would find in any 2014 film festival. What Twitter-crippled, deskilled scribe could resist it? Pamela Robertson Wojcik lectures at the Tuesday screening. (2014, 163 min, DCP Digital) MC
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Joel and Ethan Coen's THE BIG LEBOWSKI (American Revival)
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) - Wednesday, 1 and 7:30pm (Free Admission)
Dude, people love this movie--and with good reason. THE BIG LEBOWSKI is what so few modern comedies are: legitimately good. Between all the "dudes" and "fucks," it's easy to miss some of the underlying themes of the film; but beyond its oft-quoted dialogue and obsessive fan base, THE BIG LEBOWSKI is an LA noir for the modern age. It's also a gigantic metaphor for the Gulf War, a true testament to the time in which it is set, and eerily prophetic to watch today. A Bush is in office, we're in a recession, and we're fighting a fatuous war in the Middle East, so boy is this film still relevant. Don't forget, though, that it's also hilarious. Fix yourself a White Russian, folks. Let's see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass. (1998, 117 min, DCP Digital) CS
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More info at http://www.northbrook.info/visit/events.
Jeremy Saulnier's GREEN ROOM (New American)
Music Box Theatre - Check Venue website for showtimes
Director Jeremy Saulnier's follow up to 2013's BLUE RUIN is an audacious new thriller that draws inspiration from SID AND NANCY and AMERICAN HISTORY X. A struggling punk band books a show at a backwoods bar after which they witness a murder and fight to survive against a group of Neo-Nazis. Patrick Stewart's Darcy, the bar/concert venue owner, is ruthless and methodical, akin to Brian Cranston's Heisenberg in BREAKING BAD. Saulnier's mise en scene is gritty, dirty, and claustrophobic. Characters hang along the peripheries of the frame, constantly looking for a way to escape their "nightmare" situation. Saulnier's narrative plays out like a scuba diving expedition: escape attempt excursions that end unsuccessfully, forcing a return to the haven of the green room for 'air'. The film is self-aware and never succumbs to its baser undertones as a horror movie. Instead, it eases some of the razor-thin tension with tongue in cheek dialogue punctuated by punk rock jargon and music references. The prevalent extreme violence is showcased in a way that only Alex DeLarge in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE could approve of. GREEN ROOM doesn't pretend to any profound statements; rather it embarks on a thrilling ride that's entertaining and taut throughout. (2016, 94 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Karyn Kusama's THE INVITATION (New American)
Music Box Theatre - Friday and Saturday, Midnight
After a brief foray into the Hollywood system with her two most recent efforts (AEON FLUX, JENNIFER'S BODY), Karyn Kusama returns to the world of independent cinema with THE INVITATION, a taut thriller set in the hills of Los Angeles. The morose yet reserved Will (Logan-Marshall Green), along with his girlfriend and some other old friends, is invited to his ex-wife Eden's (Tammy Blanchard) home for a dinner party after having not seen her for two years following the loss of their son. As the evening progresses, Eden and her new husband reveal they were able to overcome the loss thanks to The Invitation, a support group that Will likens to Heaven's Gate or the Branch Davidians. Kusama's use of space within the frame creates senses of isolation, community, and isolation from that community. Her use of the color red, à la THE SHINING or SUSPIRIA, creates an unnerving feeling that lies ominously dormant in the first two acts before boldly reasserting its presence as the film takes a dramatic tone shift. Religious symbolism in the forms of wine, Will's Christ-like appearance, and a Last Supper-style motif juxtapose gratingly against The Invitation's new-age ideologies. Kusama's willingness to deconstruct religious archetypes and reassemble them toward menacing effects makes for captivating viewing. THE INVITATION opts to avoid the standard clichés and tropes in films of its ilk and instead branches into grander, more refreshing ideas. (2016, 100 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) presents a lecture by renowned film and literature theorist and critic Raymond Bellour entitled "Art Is What Resists, Even If It Is Not the Only Thing That Resists" on Friday at 4pm; and screens Ross Lipman's 2015 documentary NOTFILM (128 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 7pm, with Lipman in person. The film is about the making of Samuel Beckett and Alan Schneider's 1965 short FILM, starring Buster Keaton. Both events take place at the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.). Free admission for both.
The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents First Year SAIC MFA Students on Friday at 7pm; the shorts program The Rearview Mirror, with work by OJOBOCA, Samuel Delgado & Helena Girón, Ben Rivers, Ralitsa Doncheva, Josh Gibson, on Saturday at 7pm; and The Past in Relief: Recent Work by Ana Vaz on Sunday at 6pm, with Vaz in person.
Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.) presents An Evening with Ox-Bow on Saturday at 8pm. The screening of works produced at the Ox-Bow artists' residency includes UNTITLED (Mitsu Salmon), LANDSCAPE PORTRAIT (Jesse Malmed), COLLECTING RECTANGLES SERIES (Ellen Mueller), NO CHICK IS AN ISLAND (Emily Eddy), ONE FINE DAY (Molly Hewitt), VIVIAN (Danielle Campbell), SWITCH (Ruby Thorkelson), WHY HAVE THERE BEEN NO GREAT WOMEN MAGICIANS? (Claire Arctander), and WHIRLIGIG (Cooper Collier). The program repeats at Columbia College (Hokin Hall, 623 S. Wabash Ave.) on Tuesday at 6:30pm.
Double Frame Gallery at Mana Contemporary Chicago (2233 S. Throop St., Room 418) presents Oceanic_.bin, a program of 3D animation from students in SAIC's Atmospheric Animation class, on Friday at 6pm. Included are work by Anna Romanova, Antonio Manaligod, Bobby Swainhart, Dachuan Hang, Daniel Brookman, Dohee Kim, Hadyn Dortez, Jackie Shin, Mario Acosta-Warren, Max Crider, Minsuh Kim, Nick Flaherty, Peishi Zhang, and Stefan Glowacki.
Wretched Nobles & YC present the shorts program Stand Up! Social Justice, Human Rights, Activism on Saturday at 9pm at 3036 N. Lincoln Ave. Screening are: JEAN GENET IN CHICAGO (Frédéric Moffet), REFFUGEES (Olga Guse), KETCHUP & BLOOD (Ryan Nanni and Bret Hamilton), UNTITED (16mm Occupy Protest Projections) (Josh Mabe), CATALYST (Serena Fath), OCCUPY (Emily Esperanza), MARKTOWN IS EARTHAIUJAHVILLE! (Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir) (Savitri D, Jeff Goglinski and Gretchen Hasse), and THE AIR WE BREATHE: PETCOKE POLLUTION IN SOUTH EAST CHICAGO (Gretchen Hasse and Jeff Goglinski).
Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Output: SAIC 1st Year MFA Screening on Sunday at 7pm; and a shorts program, Reconsolidation (no titles or details available) on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission for both. www.comfortstationlogansquare.org
Danielle Beverly's 2015 documentary OLD SOUTH (54 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) screens at Northwestern University (John. J. Louis Hall, Room 119) on Monday at 6pm, with Beverly in person. Free admission.
Black Cinema House (7200 S. Kimbark Ave.) screens Douglas Sirk's 1959 film IMITATION OF LIFE (125 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Friday at 7pm. Free admission.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci's 2015 animated French film APRIL AND THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD (105 min, DCP Digital; check the Siskel website for subtitled vs. English-dubbed screening times) plays for a week; Boris Wexler's 2014 film CHAT (86 min, DCP Digital) screens on Friday at 8:15pm (Wexler in person) and Sunday at 5:15pm (writer/co-producer Paul Peditto in person); and the SAIC Film, Video, New Media, Animation, and Sound Festival includes ten events this week (Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday) and continues on May 13. A list of participating artists is at http://sites.saic.edu/fvnma2016. Free admission for these student screenings.
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Jason Reitman's 2007 film JUNO (96 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 7 and 9pm and Sunday at 1:30pm; Joel and Ethan Coen's 2016 film HAIL, CAESAR! (106 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 7 and 9pm and Sunday at 3:30pm; Umetsugu Inoue's 1957 Japanese film THE STORMY MAN (101 min, 35mm; Free admission) is on Tuesday at 7pm; Tetsuya Nakashima's 2006 Japanese film MEMORIES OF MATSUKO (130 min, 35mm; Free admission) is on Thursday at 7pm; and Alexander Mackendrick's 1955 British film THE LADYKILLERS (91 min, DCP Digital) is on Thursday at 9:45pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Shoko Nakajima's 2016 Japanese animation DOU KYU SEI - CLASSMATES (60 min, Blu-Ray Projection) is on Saturday at Noon and Wednesday at 7:30pm; Andrew Rossi's 2016 documentary THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAY (90 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 12:30pm; Ross Lipman's 2015 documentary NOTFILM (128 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at Noon, with Lipman in person; Phyllida Lloyd's 2008 film MAMMA MIA! (108 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 2pm, as a "interactive" Mother's Day event; Su Rynard's 2015 documentary THE MESSENGER (89 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday at 7pm, with an introduction by Peter Marra, Director of Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center; and George Miller's 2015 film MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (120 min, 35mm) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week: Sonic Celluloid, presented in conjunction with NU's student-run radio station WNUR, is on Friday at 8pm. The program features a selection of short films (not announced) with live musical accompaniment by Zs, Wesley Levers, and Walter Jesse Kitundu; and Philippe Loiret's 2009 French film WELCOME (110 min, 35mm) is on Wednesday at 6pm. Free admission for WELCOME.
Facets Cinémathèque plays Laura Bispuri's 2015 film SWORN VIRGIN (88 min, Unconfirmed Format) and Derek Shimoda's US/Japanese film JUNE BRIDE: REDEPTION OF A YAKUZA (80 min, Unconfirmed Format) for week-long runs.
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series at the Park Ridge Public Library (20 S. Prospect Ave., Park Ridge) screens James W. Horne's 1937 Laurel and Hardy comedy WAY OUT WEST (64 min, Video Projection - Unconfirmed Format) on Thursday at 7pm. Free admission. http://parkridgeclassicfilm.com
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
Scottish artist Luke Fowler has an exhibition of work at the University of Chicago's Neubauer Collegium (5701 S. Woodlawn Ave.). The show runs through July 1. Included are Fowler's 2016 film FOR CHRISTIAN and his 2009 film series TENEMENT FILMS.
The Art Institute of Chicago presents Dennis Oppenheim: Projections through May 30. On view are three slide-projection works: 2000' SHADOW PROJECTION (1972), GROUND GEL #2 (1972), and POLARITIES (1972).
