CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The Chicago International Film Festival enters its first full week, and continues through October 27. Selected highlights below. Check the festival’s website for the most up-to-date showtime information: www.chicagofilmfestival.com.

Alain Guiraudie’s STAYING VERTICAL (New French)
Alain Guiraudie’s unique brand of pansexual Surrealism has accrued a steady cinephile following since 2001 when his second feature, THAT OLD DREAM THAT MOVES, drew praise from no less a luminary than Jean-Luc Godard. The transgressive director’s international breakthrough didn’t come until 2013, however, when his sexually explicit serial-killer thriller STRANGER BY THE LAKE took Cannes by storm. STAYING VERTICAL, Guiraudie’s darkly comedic follow-up, is as narratively loose and shaggy as STRANGER is tight and compressed, and is likely to puzzle viewers unfamiliar with his non-narrative earlier work. The digressive plot follows the misadventures of Leo (Damien Bonnard), a creatively blocked screenwriter who traverses the French countryside in search of inspiration. After fathering a child with a shepherdess (India Hair) who abandons him to raise the baby alone, Leo encounters a menagerie of male caretakers and father figures of ambiguous sexuality in a series of dreamlike scenes that increasingly gain power in both hilarity and allegorical resonance. Although Guiraudie is more of a poet than a polemicist, this delightfully off-the-wall oddity is perhaps best understood as a provocative defense of gay parenthood in a country where such a notion remains a lightning rod for controversy. (2016, 100 min, DCP Digital) MGS
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Marco Bellocchio’s SWEET DREAMS (New Italian)
Even if his films no longer make as big of a splash on these shores as those of younger contemporaries like Paolo Sorrentino or Matteo Garrone, Marco Bellocchio (FISTS IN THE POCKET) remains Italy’s greatest living director. Eschewing the controversial subject matter of recent works like VINCERE and DORMANT BEAUTY, the maestro’s latest feature is a bittersweet drama about the lifelong attempts of journalist Massimo (Valeria Mastrandrea) to come to terms with his mother’s death. By examining how childhood trauma can cast a shadow over an individual’s entire life, this adaptation of Massimo Gramellini’s novel seems both quintessentially Italian (the theme of the cult of “mamma”) and specific to Bellocchio (shuttling between multiple characters and timelines and featuring gorgeous “Rembrandt lighting” throughout). While the sentimentality inherent in the source material will not be for all tastes, I would gladly trade most of the movies I’ve seen in the 2010s for one sequence, a blast of pure cinema, in which the adult Massimo cuts loose on a dance floor to the tune of the Trashmen’s immortal “Surfin’ Bird.” Not a masterwork, perhaps, but certainly the work of a master. (2016, 134 min, DCP Digital) MGS
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Bertrand Tavernier's JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA (New French Documentary)
The first of a projected series, this is Bertrand Tavernier's very personal, illuminating three-hour-plus waltz through my favorite of the great world cinemas. Gazing upon Jacques Becker's cinema, and the incandescent Simone Signoret, Tavernier muses we can feel his characters' heartbeats. He honors Jean Gabin, in the words of Roger Ebert "the greatest of all French leading men," with passages from Becker, Jean Renoir and Julien Duvivier. Screenwriter Jacques Prévert gets love for his work with Marcel Carne, as do composers Antoine Duhamel and Georges Delarue for the beauty of their scores for François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Tavernier takes a long look at Jean-Pierre Melville, his first mentor, and celebrates Claude Sautet. Given one lifetime, we may never get to see all of the films quoted here, but at least a lifelong connoisseur has given us a taste of the best. (2016, 192 min, DCP Digital) SP
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Luis Sampieri's THE DAUGHTER (New Argentinean)
As the Amado family enjoys a meal at their decaying country estate, the patriarch's caregiver goes into labor and gives birth to a baby girl. The youngest sibling interrupts the newborn's cries by declaring, “What a bitch!” THE DAUGHTER is the third feature film by director Luis Sampieri, and it uses the family's ignorance of the maid's pregnancy as a means of articulating the Amado clan's lack of perspective—the irony being that as their fortunes dwindle, the divide between them and their help grows smaller (and yet here, empathy is a trait largely tied with the older generation and the working class). Sampieri foregrounds the pointless bickering of the family while the maid's drama visually reaches its tragic conclusion in bitter silence. The lush Argentinean countryside is photographed beautifully in long takes, and the immediate aftermath of the childbirth is positively Buñuelian in the way it interrupts social niceties for a shocking display of human ugliness. (2016, 89 min, DCP Digital) EF
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Steve James' ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL (New Documentary)
True stories can be just as absorbing as narratives, and real people as memorable as characters, as Steve James' suspenseful courtroom documentary demonstrates. This David versus Goliath story chronicles the five-year trial pitting the inexhaustible resources of the Manhattan DA's office against the small Abacus Federal Savings Bank. Founded by a Chinese immigrant and run today by himself and his daughters (the Sung family), Abacus was the only bank indicted during the 2008 global financial crisis. Ironically, Mr. Sung has the integrity of a real-life George Bailey (and Mrs. Sung's favorite movie is Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE), having founded Abacus expressly to serve New York's Chinatown. James gives us a rare glimpse into this somewhat unmelted immigrant community. The steely, whip-smart daughters turn out to be not so easy to push around, and their loving bickering banter with their parents is a delight. (2016, 88 min, DCP Digital) SP
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Juho Kuosmanen's THE HAPPIEST DAY IN THE LIFE OF OLLI MAKI (New Finnish)
Juho Kuosmanen's first feature, touching and true, is a naturalistic black-and-white boxing film/love story. It is formally audacious, with a glorified verité style and no score, but it also shows a wise, warm understanding of people. It's the story of the lead-up to Olli Mäki's (Jarkko Lahti) fight against Davey Moore in Helsinki in 1962 for the world featherweight championship. The American was defending his title; the modest, scrappy Olli was Finland's rather reluctant contender. Eero Milonoff is charismatic as his desperate, fantasizing manager, who hypes the match as historic, and Olli as a national hero. The heart of the film, though, is the radiant Oona Airola as the good-humored, playful woman with whom he falls in love in the middle of training. A documentary crew trails Olli, staging scenes, and the movie sounds themes of image construction and the true meaning of happiness. (2016, 92 min, DCP Digital) SP

CRUCIAL VIEWING

Nicholas Ray's THE LUSTY MEN (American Revival) Northwest Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm
A bare synopsis of THE LUSTY MEN makes it sounds like a standard-issue sports movie: a head-strong wannabe with dreams of fame and fortune, a grizzled veteran itching to get back in the game, a love triangle that threatens everything inside and outside the stadium. Much of the rodeo footage comes from stock shots so poorly integrated that they may as well be kinescope discards. The screenplay is functional and nothing more, chiefly notable for its power to inculcate the audience with the conviction that 'rodeo' is a verb as much as a noun. And yet I know no one who has failed to come away from THE LUSTY MEN reporting anything less than total emotional devastation. THE LUSTY MEN possesses the power to inspire great and unassailable personal devotion. I once hung a lobby card for THE LUSTY MEN in my office and anybody who had ever seen the film remarked upon it automatically. THE LUSTY MEN exudes an anguished fragility, attributable to the sensitive direction of Nicholas Ray or to the heart-aching performances of Robert Mitchum, Arthur Kennedy, and, yes, Susan Hayward. Either way, it's a movie under perpetual threat of floating away, or perhaps of becoming one with the dirt. Lee Garmes's cinematography, one of the movie's major assets, captures trailer parks and dance halls with an unfussy solidity; they're present-tense ruins for a trio of stubborn ghosts. Preceded by Thomas Mead’s 1957 short UNIVERSAL COLOR PARADE: JUNIOR JAMBOREE (9 min, 35mm). (1952, 114 min, 35mm Restored Print) KAW
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More info at www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org.

George Cukor’s A STAR IS BORN / Pedro Almodovar’s ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER / John Carpenter’s THE THING (American and Spanish Revivals)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Showtimes noted below
Apparently it’s widescreen week at Doc Films, with three films in four nights that demonstrate expressive, artful, and very personal approaches to the format. (As an added bonus, they’re all on 35mm, too.) First up is George Cukor’s A STAR IS BORN (1954, 154 or 176 min—the longer restored cut is advertised, but it’s possible that it will be the shorter version, 35mm; Monday, 7pm), one of the early masterpieces of CinemaScope filmmaking. STAR came out just one year after THE ROBE (the first feature released in ‘Scope), and one of the remarkable things about it is how assuredly Cukor uses the format—it feels as though he had been directing with it for years. (Not only was it the first movie he made in widescreen; it was also his first musical and his first feature in color.) Cukor gets plenty of mileage out of the inherent spectacle of ‘Scope, particularly during the musical numbers and the scenes involving lots of extras. Even the more intimate, interior scenes—such as the ones depicting nervous breakdowns and the dissolution of a marriage—exhibit a sense of spectacle, as Cukor stages action all around the frame to suggest an epic geography to the characters’ emotional lives. Judy Garland gives her richest performance here, and James Mason is at his most compelling; their performances are well-calibrated to Cukor’s mise-en-scene. In ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999, 112 min, 35mm; Wednesday, 7 and 9pm), Pedro Almodovar uses widescreen in a manner similar to Cukor and other such early masters of color-and-‘Scope melodrama as Douglas Sirk and Vincente Minnelli, using widescreen to show off the lushness of his production design and augment the presence of his actors. MOTHER was the movie that cemented Almodovar’s international reputation as a modern master, and for obvious reasons. The mix of comedy and melodrama feels natural and confident (not provocative or intentionally jarring, as it was in the director’s early films), and it offers numerous life lessons that make you feel good. Like the melodramas of Sirk, Cukor, and Minnelli, it’s also an actors’ showcase, featuring at least a dozen roles that allow the actors inhabiting them to shine. Not for nothing did Almodovar dedicate the film to three major actresses (Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, and Romy Schneider); MOTHER celebrates not just actresses, but assertive, highly present women in general. John Carpenter’s approach both to mise-en-scene and dramatics—at least in THE THING (1982, 109 min, 35mm; Thursday, 9:30pm)—might be described as the inverse of Almodovar’s. Carpenter’s always been a minimalist when it comes to framing, using widescreen (his preferred format) to create a pronounced sense of negative space and, with it, a pronounced sense of dread. Similarly he tends to sculpt performances that are understated and direct, much as they are in the work of Carpenter’s favorite filmmaker, Howard Hawks. THE THING is a remake of Hawks’ foray into sci-fi horror, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), and one can sense Carpenter’s reverence for the original in his Hawksian depiction of the professional community that makes up the principal characters. Yet where Hawks’ film was a portrait of heroism, showing how a group of scientists bands together to fight off a hostile extraterrestrial life form, Carpenter’s is a pessimistic work that shows a community coming apart as the result of an alien invasion. (It’s widely suspected that the film was a commercial flop because it came out only a few months after E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL, which presented a much rosier view of human-alien relations; Carpenter’s pessimism just wasn’t welcome at the time.) That breakdown is presented in exquisite, gory detail, with some of the most lauded special effects make-up work in movie history used to depict people and animals mutating into hideous half-alien creatures and meeting even more hideous demises. This was Carpenter’s first major studio film, and he took full advantage of the resources available to him. In addition to the first-rate effects, THE THING features a brilliant mix of studio sets and location shooting (with British Columbia standing in for Antarctica) and a fine Ennio Morricone score. BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.

ALSO RECOMMENDED

Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s SHIN GODZILLA (New Japanese)
Music Box Theatre – Check Venue website for showtimes
Over the course of sixty plus years, Toho Studios has released nearly 30 Godzilla films. Although the series has been rebooted a few times, with THE RETURN OF GODZILLA (1984) and again with GODZILLA 2000 (1999), Ishiro Honda’s original GOJIRA (1954) has always served as a reference point in terms of continuity and canon. SHIN GODZILLA marks the first Toho release in twelve years and is a complete reboot overall. Where the original played more like an analogy to the destructive force of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan’s fears over what another such attack might do, SHIN serves more as allegory for the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that nearly caused the Fukushima Power Plant to suffer several, severe nuclear meltdowns. One such sequence includes several cranes equipped with hoses to dispense an extreme freezing coolant much like those used to try to reduce the temperatures of the reactor cores that had suffered meltdowns. The film raises interesting questions about democracy and its usefulness to act promptly when total disaster strikes. Is the use of a nuclear weapon, especially on one’s own state, to stop an all-powerful force a reasonable and ethical response? Does bureaucratic red tape interfere more than an un-tiered approach to government? Bilateralism is thrown around a few times as America is brought in to help consult on the sudden atomic/biological force threatening Tokyo. SHIN does to the Godzilla franchise what CASINO ROYALE did to the James Bond franchise— rebuilt their collective brands to fit in line with today’s more global world and rooted in a sense of realism. Overall SHIN GODZILLA is a triumphant return to the cinema of one of filmdom’s most memorable creatures and an entertaining study on what modern approaches to disasters could encompass. (2016, 120 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.

DeWitt Beall's LORD THING (Documentary Revival)
Chicago Film Archives, Place Lab, and Black Cinema House at Arts Incubator (301 E. Garfield Blvd.) – Tuesday, 7pm (Free Admission)
For most of its history, Chicago has been a hotbed of gang culture in America. Although the street gangs of Los Angeles get more attention from the national media and Hollywood screenwriters, the Chicago gangs that formed in the late 1950s and expanded throughout the Civil Rights era really created the model for what we know today. The beginnings of the Vice Lords, one of the oldest and largest street gangs to emerge from this era, is the subject of DeWitt Beall's LORD THING (1970), which chronicles the Vice Lord's growth into a large coalition of gangs with over 20,000 members, and its emergence as both a community and business force. During the late 60s and early 70s, the leaders of the gang, now sometimes know as the Conservative Vice Lords (or even CVL, Inc.), began thinking well beyond their immediate surroundings and utilized their collective confidence in completely new ways. Beall gives us a fair amount of back-story, presented through re-enactments of historical fights with rival gangs, played by a cast of actual CVL members. He also documents numerous meetings of gang leaders that look and feel like town-hall meetings, and show both their increasing size and expanding concerns. Political actions such as protests carried out at construction sites, and a march on city hall--conducted as a joint action with other large Chicago gangs--illustrate how the CVL chose to use their power to influence the economic and social conditions in their turf and beyond. At times, Beall's film feels rather propagandistic--pro VL--but this may only be due to the desire that leaders like Bobby Gore have for using the VL's power to effect social and economic change. Perhaps this sympathetic depiction is the reason the film was never shown in the US, despite screening at Cannes and winning an award at the Venice Film Festival. After funding the film, the Xerox Corporation decided not to release it. Allegedly, they bowed to pressure from Richard J. Daley and the Chicago Democratic Machine, both of whom are roundly criticized in the film's final moments. Followed by a conversation with Jacqueline Stewart (Professor, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago), Benny Lee (Co-founder, National Alliance for the Empowerment of the Formerly Incarcerated; Professor, Criminal Justice, Northeastern Illinois University), Isis Ferguson (Associate Director of City and Community Strategy, Place Lab), Sam Darrigrand (Workforce Development Manager, Rebuild Foundation). (1971, 58 min, 16mm Restored Print) JH

Home Movie Day (Special Event)
Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.) – Saturday, 11am-3pm (Free Admission)
This yearly, worldwide celebration of home movies is absolutely essential viewing for anyone who cares a whit about motion picture art, history, sociology, ethnography, science, or technology. Anyone who loves the sound of a projector. Anyone who loves deep, luscious Kodachrome II stock that is as gorgeous as the day it was shot. Anyone who loves dated, faded, scratched, and bruised film—every emulsion scar a sacred glyph created by your grandfather's careless handling 60 years ago. Anyone who wants to revel in the performance of the primping and strutting families readying for their close up. Anyone who wants to see what the neighborhood looked like before you got there. So find your 100 foot reels of 16mm you just had processed from your sister's Quinceañera or your grandfather's thousands of feet of Super 8mm from your uncle's Bar Mitzvah in 1976 or that 8mm your great aunt shot from Dealey Plaza in 1963 and come out for Home Movie Day. From 11am-2pm, just walk in with your films for staff and volunteers from the Chicago Film Archives and The Northwest Chicago Film Society to inspect your home movies that day! At 2pm, a screening of a selection of those works (and possibly some from the CFA’s collection) will be screened. Co-Presented by the Chicago Film Archives and the Northwest Chicago Film Society. JBM
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More info at www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org.

MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS

South Side Projections screens Jac Venza, Janet Sternburg, and Victoria Hochberg’s 1970 documentary EL TEATRO COMPESINO (61 min, 16mm Archival Print) on Wednesday at 7pm at La Catrina Cafe (1011 W. 18th St.). Followed by a discussion with Jacqueline Lazú (Associate Professor of Spanish, Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, and Coordinator of the Heritage Speakers program at DePaul University), Marcopolo Soto (novelist, ensemble member at Aguijón Theater, and member of the editorial group at Contratiempo), and Martin Unzueta (Executive Director of Chicago Community & Workers’ Rights). Free admission.

The Conversations at the Edge series at the Gene Siskel Film Center presents Sara Magenheimer: Slow Zoom Long Pause, with video artist Magenheimer in person, on Thursday at 6pm. More info at saic.edu/cate.

The Nightingale (1084 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Sky Hopinka: Simple Movements, Complications, Fainting Spells and Present Joys on Friday at 7pm, with Hopinka in person. Screening are a selection of his films from 2014-16 (approx. 63 min total, Digital Projection); the shorts program A Rule by Nobody, curated by Third Object, is on Sunday at 7pm. Included are works by Hanne Lippard, Kay Rosen, Liz Magic Laser, Simon Denny, Ellen Nielsen, Jodie Mack, Lawrence Weiner, and Andrew Norman Wilson. (1972 and 2008-2016, approx. 53 min, Digital Projection); and Between Worlds: Spirits, Psychics, Vortex, curated by Wretched Nobles, is on Wednesday at 7:30pm. Program details not available.

Chicago Filmmakers (5243 N. Clark St.) screens Ronit Bezalel’s 2015 documentary 70 ACRES IN CHICAGO: CABRINI GREEN (56 min, Digital Projection) on Saturday at 7pm. Additional short work TBA. Showing in collaboration with the Collected Voices Film Festival.

Block Cinema (Northwestern University) screens Arthur Marks’ 1975 “Blaxploitation” film BUCKTOWN (94 min, 35mm) on Friday at 7pm, with actor Fred Williamson in person. Free admission; and Bahram Beyzaie’s 1971 Iranian film DOWNPOUR (122 min, DCP Digital; New Restoration) on Thursday at 7pm.

The Northwest Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E., 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) screens Yasujir? Ozu’s 1958 film EQUINOX FLOWER (118 min, 35mm) on Tuesday at 7:30pm. Preceded by Caleb Deschanel’s 1976 short TRAINS (15 min, 35mm).

The Film Studies Center screens Seijun Suzuki’s 1963 Japanese film AKUTARO (95 min, 35mm) on Friday at 7pm at the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St., University of Chicago). Free admission.

The Chicago Film Seminar presents Aymar Jean Christian (Northwestern University), who will present a lecture titled "The Art of Scale: Production Value in Networked Television," on Thursday at 7:30pm. It’s at DePaul’s Loop Campus in the Daley Building (14 E. Jackson Blvd., Room LL 102; use the State St. entrance located at 247 S. State St.). http://chicagofilmseminar.blogspot.com

Black Cinema House at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6760 S Stony Island Ave.) presents the panel discussion Black Lives Matter and the Power of Media on Sunday at 4pm. Participants include Anton Seals, Jr. (moderator), Damon Davis (“Whose Streets?”), Aemilia Scot (“Shot”), Charles Alexander Preston (BYP100 activist), and William Calloway (journalist/activist). Presented with the Chicago International Film Festival and the Chicago Media Project. Free admission.

The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens Delbert Mann’s 1958 film SEPARATE TABLES (100 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Wednesday at 1 and 7:30pm. Free admission.

The Chicago Cultural Center screens Ines Sommer’s 2016 documentary COUNT ME IN (Unconfirmed Running Time, Digital Projection) on Saturday at 2pm. Followed by a panel discussion with: Paris Schutz, Chicago Tonight Correspondent, WTTW (Moderator); Amanda Cortés, Office of Alderman Ricardo Muñoz; Thea Crum, Director of Neighborhoods Initiative, UIC Great Cities Institute; Ines Sommer, Filmmaker; and Joann Williams, PB22 Community Representative. Free admission.

Comfort Film at Comfort Station Logan Square (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) screens Mitchell Linden’s 1988 horror film THE AMERICAN SCREAM (85 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission.

Sung-su Kim’s 2016 Korean film ASURA: THE CITY OF MADNESS (136 min, Digital Projection) opens at the AMC Showplace in Niles.

Instituto Cervantes (31 W. Ohio St.) screens Achero Mañas’ 2010 Spanish film TODO LO QUE TÚ QUIERAS (101 min, DVD Projection) on Tuesday at 6pm. Free admission.

At the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Heidi Brandenburg and Mathew Orzel’s 2016 documentary WHEN TWO WORLDS COLLIDE (103 min, DCP Digital; co-director Brandenburg in person at the Saturday show) and Stephen Frears’ 2016 film FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS (111 min, DCP Digital) both play for a week; Humberto Hinojosa Ozcariz’s 2016 Mexican film PARADISE LOST (87 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 8pm and Thursday at 8:15pm; Bobby J. Brown’s 2016 documentary TEAR THE ROOF OFF: THE UNTOLD STORY OF PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC (58 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday and Saturday at 8:15pm and Sunday at 5:15pm; Michele Pannetta’s 2016 Swiss documentary FISHING BODIES (64 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 3:15pm; Patricio Guzmán’s 2015 Chilean documentary THE PEARL BUTTON (82 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 5:15pm and Tuesday at 6pm, with a lecture by SAIC Professor Daniel R. Quiles at the Tuesday show; Rafael Montero’s 2016 Mexican film PARALLEL ROADS (90 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 5:15pm and Monday at 6pm; Mallory Sohmer and Kate Benzschawel’s 2016 documentary WALK ALL NIGHT: A DRUM BEAT JOURNEY (86 min, DCP Digital) is on Monday at 8pm and Wednesday at 8:15pm, with the directors and select cast in person at both shows; and Kristopher Avedisian’s 2016 film DONALD CRIED (85 min, DCP Digital) is on Wednesday at 6pm.

Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Ira Sachs’ 2016 film LITTLE MEN (85 min, Digital Projection) is on Friday at 7 and 9pm and Saturday at 4pm; Justin Lin’s 2016 film STAR TREK BEYOND (122 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at 7 and 9:30pm and Sunday at 3:30pm; Akira Kurosawa’s 1990 film DREAMS (119 min, 35mm) is on Sunday at 7pm; Amber Fares’ 2015 Palestinian film SPEED SISTERS (78 min, Digital Projection) is on Tuesday at 7pm; and Takeshi Koike’s 2009 Japanese animated film REDLINE (102 min, Digital Projection) is on Thursday at 7pm.

The Music Box of Horrors 24-hour screening at the Music Box Theatre runs from Saturday at Noon to Sunday at Noon. Apart from Benjamin Christensen’s 1929 silent film SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN and Carson D. Mell’s 2016 film ANOTHER EVIL, all other feature films are showing in 35mm (and one 16mm, noted below). Screening are: SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN (Noon), Shorts Program (1:15pm), ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST (Marino Girolami, 1980; 2:20pm), TORSO (Sergio Martino, 1973; 4pm), RAW MEAT (Gary Sherman, 1972; 6pm, with Sherman and John McNaughton in person), STREET TRASH (J. Michael Muro, 1987; 8:30pm, with Muro in person), ANOTHER EVIL (10:45pm), JEEPERS CREEPERS 2 (Victor Salva, 2003; 12:30am), HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1982, 16mm Archival Print; 2:30am), EYES OF FIRE (Avery Crounse, 1983; 4:30am), EYE OF THE CAT (David Lowell Rich, 1969; 6:45am), POPCORN (Mark Herrier and Alan Ormsby, 1991; 8:45am), and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (Charles Barton, 1948; 10:45am).

Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 film THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (121 min, DCP Digital; New Restoration) opens; Ron Howard’s 2016 documentary THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS (138 min, DCP Digital) continues daily at 1:30pm and one 4:15pm screening on Thursday (no show on Saturday); Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones’ 1975 film MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (91 min, Unconfirmed Format) is on Wednesday at 7:30pm, as part of critic Mark Caro’s Is It Still Funny? series; Aaron Fronk’s 2016 film IT’S ALL GOOD (96 min, DCP Digital) is on Thursday at 7:30pm; and Jim Hosking’s 2016 film THE GREASY STRANGLER (93 min, Unconfirmed Format) is on Saturday at Midnight.

Facets Cinémathèque plays Nicolas Boukhrief’s 2015 French film MADE IN FRANCE (89 min, Unconfirmed Format) for a week-long run.

ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS

The Art Institute of Chicago (Modern Wing Galleries) has Dara Birnbaum’s 1979 two-channel video KISS THE GIRLS: MAKE THEM CRY (6 min) on currently on view.

Roosevelt University’s Murray Green Library has Salome Chasnoff’s video installation PRESENT ABSENCE on display from October 17 through October 27, as part of the Gone But Not Forgotten exhibit, which features a quilt made by survivors of victims of police killings in Chicago.

SAIC’s Sullivan Galleries (33 S. State St., 7th Floor) screens local filmmaker Jim Trainor’s 2016 live-action feature THE PINK EGG through October 15 (showing daily, Tuesdays-Saturdays, at 11am, 12:15pm, 1:30pm, 2:45pm, and 4:15pm). Free admission.

Camille Henrot’s 2013 video GROSSE FATIGUE (14 min) is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago through December 18.

Block Museum (Northwestern University) presents Salaam Cinema! 50 Years of Iranian Movie Posters through December 11.

Iceberg Gallery (7714 N. Sheridan Rd.) presents George Kuchar: Bocko through October 30. The show includes Kuchar’s 1978 film THE MONGRELOID, paintings, and photographic ephemera—all related to Kuchar’s pet dog Bocko.

The Renaissance Society (5811 S. Ellis Ave., Cobb Hall, University of Chicago) presents a solo show of UK filmmaker Ben Rivers’ moving image works, Urth, through November 6.

The Art Institute of Chicago presents Ragnar Kjartansson and the National's single-channel video work A LOT OF SORROW (2014, 6 hours 9 min looping) through October 23.