CRUCIAL VIEWING
Nicholas Ray’s WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES (American Revival)
Chicago Film Society (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm
WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES was a troubled film before the cameras even rolled. Nicholas Ray—who made this right after one of his best films, BITTER VICTORY—found Budd Schulberg’s script to be ponderous and overlong, while Schulberg, accustomed to working closely with directors after his collaborations with Elia Kazan (ON THE WATERFRONT, A FACE IN THE CROWD), resented Ray for refusing his input and for being generally bellicose. (According to several sources, Ray was drinking heavily and possibly using heroin when this was being shot.) The movie was made entirely on location in and around the Florida Everglades, which was hit by one of the coldest winters in decades during the shoot, causing the production to fall behind schedule. After the cast and crew deemed Ray too crazy to continue directing, they directed the final scenes themselves in an anarchistic manner, with everyone offering suggestions and Schulberg trying his best to oversee the chaos. The film opened in America to poor box office and reviews, though it fared better in France, where the longtime Ray supporters at Cahiers du cinéma named it one of the best of the year. Given this backstory, you’d expect WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES to be an utter mess, yet it contains passages of tremendous beauty and power, and Ray’s distinctive vision shines through for much of the running time. Christopher Plummer (in one of his first screen performances) stars as a game warden trying to curb the widespread poaching of exotic birds in the Everglades around the beginning of the 20th century; Burl Ives plays his rival, the self-proclaimed chief of the backwoods hunters who are driving the birds extinct. Ray’s feeling for misfits and unhealthy passions can be felt the most strongly during the scenes of Ives lording it over his gang and during the heated encounters between the two leads. The supporting cast is so eclectic that it often draws attention away from the story: Gypsy Rose Lee plays the hostess of a music hall, author MacKinlay Kantor turns up as a judge, and among Ives’ gang are former boxer Tony Galento, former circus clown Emmett Kelly, and a young Peter Falk. The Technicolor photography is eye-catching as well—even the B roll footage of the Everglades looks beautiful, and the dialogue scenes maintain a visual intensity thanks to Ray’s brilliant sense of color coordination. Preceded by the 1964 short WEEKEND AT WEEKI WACHEE (12 min, 35mm). (1958, 93 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.chicagofilmsociety.org.
Frank Simon's THE QUEEN (Documentary Revival)
The Film Studies Center at the Logan Center for the Arts (University of Chicago, 915 E. 60th St.) - Friday, 7pm (Free Admission)
Difficult to find until quite recently, this legendary documentary focuses the limelight on a remarkable time in queer history: that of drag culture on the cusp of something like mainstream popularity and recognition. In New York in the late 1960s, drag culture was already a staple of nightlife for gay men and those in the arts scene, but was still considered something of the "underbelly" to other New Yorkers, and was virtually unknown to the world-at-large. Frank Simon, co-producing with the film's narrator, Flawless Sabrina (aka Jack Doroshow), and Andy Warhol, who greatly assisted in raising funds for THE QUEEN, shot the film in five days, with five cameras, using only verité footage and Sabrina's witty and occasionally biting narration to give a riveting, behind-the-scenes glimpse of the New York Finals, a national pageant judged by Warhol himself, as well as other notables of the day, including artist Larry Rivers (Judy Garland, who had judged several of Sabrina's pageants in the past, dropped out when she heard the 1967 pageant was being shot as a documentary.). Warhol's friend Mario Montez also makes an appearance singing an extra-campy rendition of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." The pageant gained notoriety for a variety of reasons, and ultimately the documentary became a surprise hit in 1968, with a favorable review in the New York Times, screenings in major cities across the country, and even a screening at Cannes, marking the beginning of mainstream awareness of not only the drag subculture, but gender variance and the as-yet-unnamed trans movement. Yet that historical notoriety takes second stage to the most fascinating and beautifully shot moments of the documentary. In the hotel rooms shared by the contestants, the queens lounge together before rehearsals, help each other prepare makeup and costumes, share a glass of scotch, and offhandedly relate stories of coming out, being rejected from the draft (I won't ruin the laugh by quoting some of the stories here; the delivery is everything, if you've ever heard a drag queen read anybody.), and whether or not they would undergo the (until 1966, unavailable) sex-change surgery if they had the money. Hearing these candid discussions highlights just what a strange time it was in trans and queer history, before identity politics, before hormones, before the term genderqueer; it was a time of gender and sexual fluidity before identities and possibilities had solidified, and a time when drag was the only way for some to express their felt gender and perform in ways that made them feel truly free. This documentary even provides the fabled genesis of the ballroom scene memorialized in PARIS IS BURNING: black contestant Crystal LaBeija went on to found the first official House of LaBeija in the ballroom scene after losing dramatically to Miss Harlow, a protegé of Flawless Sabrina, and delivering a blistering reading backstage. Preceded by LIPSTICK CITY (2016, 9 min, Digital Projection), an experimental narrative film, produced by local drag performer Shea Couleé. Couleé and Marlow La Fantastique (Miss Chicago in THE QUEEN) in person. (1968, 68 min, Unconfirmed Format) AE
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More info at https://filmstudiescenter.uchicago.edu.
Lewis Milestone's THE FRONT PAGE (American Revival)
The Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7:30pm
There are three major film versions of THE FRONT PAGE, each with distinct and considerable virtues. The most famous, Howard Hawks' HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940), rewrites the Hecht-MacArthur play with the insight that Hildy Johnson would make a very fine woman—a brilliant conceit that doesn't so much reveal the truth of the play as the depths beneath it. Billy Wilder's THE FRONT PAGE (1974) is scarcely among its director's finest works—it's agreeable where it should be acid—but it's animated by a certain impulse of restorative fidelity, as if Hollywood's new permissiveness finally allowed an accurate transcription of Hecht and MacArthur's bawdy Chicago milieu. Perhaps the movie only exists so that Walter Matthau's Walter Burns can finally deliver an unexpurgated version of the play's iconic curtain line—even Lewis Milestone's pre-Code version of 1931 finds a clean way around it. (A strategic typewriter carriage return is involved.) If we can overlook its odd bits of censorship and flashes of skittishness, Milestone's FRONT PAGE stands as an entertaining, thoroughly sincere engagement with a most insincere text. Locating a cinematic analog to Hecht and MacArthur's staccato dialogue, this FRONT PAGE is rendered in faux Russian montage style—a choice that briefly elevated Milestone to the front ranks of the Marxist-formalist left. (Critic Harry Alan Potamkin hailed Milestone as Griffith's successor and praised THE FRONT PAGE as "the first American contribution to the 'philosophy' of the sound-sight cinema.") Spiritual kin to SCARFACE (another Howard Hughes production) and Raoul Walsh's contemporaneous cycle of urban proletariat scuzz, THE FRONT PAGE possesses an undeniable vulgar dynamism. If its reputation is in eclipse today, this has less to do with taste than circumstance. Much of the 1931 version's innovation is blunted in dupey prints and ropey video transfers, but such is the fate of many a public domain chestnut. Some years ago, the only decent 35mm print of THE FRONT PAGE had to be imported from England for theatrical exhibition; more recently, a decent archival print (from the Library of Congress) of the European cut of the film has been available. This screening features a new restoration of the rare American cut; the differences are apparently minor, but the sound quality is reportedly vastly superior (so important for a film known for it’s machine-gun-rapid dialogue). Preceded by Dave Fleischer’s 1932 Betty Boop cartoon ADMISSION FREE (7 min, 16mm). (1931, 101 min, 35mm) KAW
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More info at www.chicagofilmsociety.org.
Mia Hansen-Løve’s THINGS TO COME (New French)
Music Box Theatre – Check Venue website for showtimes
Mia Hansen-Løve, the best French director of her generation, teams up with Isabelle Huppert—one of the best French actors, period—for a subdued drama about a philosophy professor whose life undergoes great changes over the course of a year. The results may not be instantly flooring like Hansen-Løve’s previous movies were, but that seems to be deliberate. The power of THINGS TO COME exists below its placid surface, much like the heroine’s rock-like resolve is belied by an oh-so-French politesse. (That’s not to say the movie feels dry or boring. Hansen-Løve’s mother was a professor, and you can sense the filmmaker's very personal connection to the material at every turn.) The sense of time slipping inexorably away from you, which has been central to Hansen-Løve’s art, is woven into the staging of individual moments and the overall rhythm of the film. The professor’s interactions with her husband (who divorces her relatively early in the story), her mother (a former fashion model who’s as histrionic as her daughter is becalmed), and a dashing former student (who seems like a potential love interest until it becomes clear that Hansen-Løve isn’t interested in any simple dramatic payoffs) all point to years of compromise, regret, and hard-won life lessons; the unexpected shifts forward in time make it feel as though the film is withholding important information. What exists between those gaps, behind Huppert’s carefully modulated performance? The mystery of human nature, perhaps. (2016, 102 min, DCP Digital) BS
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Masaki Kobayashi’s SAMURAI REBELLION (Japanese Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 5:15pm and Thursday, 6pm
Over the course of his career, Masaki Kobayashi’s films focused on a myriad of topics, from the mysticism of Japanese folklore in KWAIDAN to the experiences of the Japanese people during World War II in THE HUMAN CONDITION trilogy. One of the common themes that ran throughout his oeuvre was that of an idealistic protagonist who stands up in the face of oppression and who tries to right the wrongs that are seen. In SAMURAI REBELLION, Toshiro Mifune fills this role quite nicely. Set in the Edo Era of Japanese history (around 1725), Mifune plays an older swordsman whose son reluctantly must take their clan leader’s former lover as his wife. Surprisingly, the marriage is a happy one and the two have a child, but when the clan leader’s heir dies, he kidnaps his former concubine back, leading to a crisis of ethics and honor. Mifune’s character is roused from his otherwise peaceful existence to support his family. Kobayashi’s film is starkly anti-feudalism and is more than happy to denigrate the excesses found within it. While its title may be misleading given the nature of Kobayashi’s previous film, HARAKARI, SAMURAI REBELLION touches more on the ethos of the samurai rather than the usual traditional fighting. This broader exploration includes a series of tense negotiations about morality, and much like 12 ANGRY MEN, a sense of claustrophobia sets in as the framing of each individual comes tighter and tighter. The garden sequence near the film’s climax is a stunning work of choreography, lightning, and blocking. Kobayashi’s film is a well-crafted narrative about the rising of the common man against his oppressors, and whose bleak tone expresses the realities of life for those that lived during the era. (1967, 128 min, 35mm) KC
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Alfred Green’s BABY FACE (American Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
Perhaps remembered best for his prolific output, Alfred Green had a flair for eliciting compelling performances from his lead actors and actresses (witness Bette Davis in DANGEROUS for one example). BABY FACE is no exception. This sultry Pre-Code Hollywood picture finds Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) fleeing her hometown after the death of her father and heading to New York where she uses her sexuality to achieve newfound fortune and power. Very early in the film, Lily is given a Nietzsche book by one of the few men in the world she seems to trust, and we can infer much of the film’s philosophical intentions from there. Be it to sneak aboard a freight train or to land a job as a secretary, Lily has no qualms about manipulating the revolving door of men she comes across to get what she wants, and easily discards them like pieces of trash once she’s outgrown their use. This sexual openness, both implied and realized, is quite shocking even for the laxness associated with Pre-Code era Hollywood (one year later, with the Production Code in effect, it would have been impossible). Stanwyck’s performance is the film’s high point and its one where she approaches the femme fatales of the next decade. Upon release, the film’s original ending was altered to one that was more upbeat in order to appease New York State censors (but the print showing is a restoration of the original uncensored version, thought lost until 2004, followed by the alternate censored ending). More than eight decades later, BABY FACE remains a stirring and timely tale about greed, promiscuity, and the willingness to rebrand oneself in order to get ahead in life. (1933, 75 min, 35mm; Restored Print of the Original Uncensored Version) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Charlie Chaplin’s THE GOLD RUSH (Silent American Classic)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Wednesday, 7 and 9:30pm
THE GOLD RUSH contains some of Chaplin’s most beloved sequences: the “dance” of the dinner rolls, the Tramp eating his shoe, the ramshackle house nearly falling over a cliff, and more. It also contains some of the most spectacular images of his filmmaking career, namely the scene occurring near the beginning of the film that shows a great mass of prospectors (played by 2,500 extras!) marching up a mountain. The character of the Tramp was always struggling to survive, but in no film is his struggle so intense as it is here. A good deal of the film concerns the Tramp trying not to starve to death, and the aforementioned sequence involving house and cliff achieves a sense of white-knuckle suspense rarely encountered in Chaplin’s filmography. Yet THE GOLD RUSH is still a riot in spite of the despair, as Chaplin manages to find humor in even the most desperate situations—a talent derived, no doubt, from growing up in abject poverty. This also holds the distinction of featuring what is perhaps Chaplin’s best performance as the Tramp. To quote Mordaunt Hall’s 1925 New York Times review: “Chaplin obtains the maximum effect out of every scene, and a fine example of this is where he stands with his back to the audience. He is watching the throng in a Klondike dancing hall, garbed, in his ridiculous loose trousers, his little derby, his big shoes and his cane. He is lonely, and with a bunch of the shoulders and a gesture of his left hand he tells more than many a player can do with his eyes and mouth. He is just thinking of the girl Georgia, the dancing hall queen, who is not even conscious of the little man who adores her.” (1925, 88 min, 35mm; Restored Print of the Original 1925 version, not the 1940’s “sound” re-issue) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Akira Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO (Japanese Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 3pm and Tuesday, 6pm
Kurosawa’s loose and darkly funny adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest is a visually expressive marvel, with the director taking full advantage of the lateral possibilities of the widescreen frame. One scans the screen for details as if watching a tennis match—the garish visuals pop up on one side of the screen, then the other, then the other. (It’s hard to imagine Kurosawa having more fun on a picture than he did with this one.) Directed to behave like a mangy dog, Toshiro Mifune stars as Sanjuro, a wandering samurai who arrives in a small town and takes up work as a bodyguard (yojimbo) for two warring gangs. He cynically pits one group against the other, killing several baddies himself and allowing the gangs to take care of the rest. “Kurosawa converts the impending melodrama to comedy by abandoning his [usual] quest for fully human characters,” wrote Alexander Sesonske for the Criterion Collection in 2006. “Sanjuro is a Supersamurai, a whirlwind in combat; the village gangs are so grotesquely wicked, they become ludicrous and enlist neither our sympathy nor our belief. By the film’s end most are dead, but we feel no regret at the slaughter, nor cringe at its execution. The exaggerated evil of the gangs leaves them no other appropriate fate, and theirs is achieved with such style and cinematic verve that we are exhilarated by the spectacle and not at all dismayed by its content.” (1961, 110 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Derek Jarman’s BLUE (British Revival/Experimental Documentary)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm
“‘How vain a thing is painting,’” André Bazin wrote in his seminal book, What is Cinema?, paraphrasing Blaise Pascal, “if underneath our fond admiration for its works we do not discern man’s primitive need to have the last word in the argument with death by means of the form that endures.” One could also apply this deliberation to Derek Jarman’s BLUE, his final feature-length film before he died of AIDS-related complications in 1994. I’d argue that Jarman didn’t just have the last word—he won the argument; BLUE not only endures, it perseveres. Made as Jarman was losing his eyesight, it consists entirely of a static, monochrome blue “shot,” meant to mimic his evanescent vision, over which he and others (including Tilda Swinton and Nigel Terry) discuss life and art, both his personally and in general, to a haunting score by Simon Fisher Turner. Inspired by the monochrome work of French artist Yves Klein, specifically his painting IKB 79, Jarman achieves with this effect something at once intimate and immense. According to the Tate Modern’s website, Klein considered his monochrome work “to be a way of rejecting the idea of representation” and thought that blue “had a quality close to pure space and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched.” The latter sentiment resonates with Jarman’s tragic predicament, while the former is at war with the Bazinian dilemma of effigial mortality. Perhaps by eliminating straightforward representation, one can focus on the soul rather than its vessel. In this regard, it’s unique in how it merges experimental and narrative qualities. What may at first seem alienating for viewers unfamiliar with Jarman soon becomes inviting in its courageous closeness. BLUE is the essence of cinema as ontological study, a staggeringly afflictive experience that illuminates film’s most transcendent qualities. (1993, 79 min, 35mm) KS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Terrence Malick's BADLANDS (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Sunday, 7pm
[Plot Spoilers] Terrence Malick's first feature film remains as opaque and seductive as it must have been for audiences upon its release in 1973; none of the four films he's made in the intervening 38 years has given us a Rosetta Stone to de-code his unique language of deadpan narration, breathless romance, horror (BADLANDS is screening as part of the Siskel's Psychological Horror series), and whispering tall-grass. Later films have tinkered with the proportions (more romance in THE NEW WORLD, more grass in DAYS OF HEAVEN), but never the unsettling combination of ingredients. In BADLANDS, Sissy Spacek (as 15 year-old Holly) provides the flattened voice-over that suggests both teenage sass and PTSD. As Kit (a full-bore Martin Sheen) seduces her, murders her father, and takes her on the run, it's Holly's voice that pulls the viewer by the nose so deep into their world that conditioned reactions don't work. Playfully sexy shots of Spacek in short-shorts and Sheen in his Canadian Tuxedo block efforts to moralize about their ages (Kit is 25). The weapons and traps Kit builds to defend their forest hideout are as cartoon-stupid as they are dead-serious. We aren't shocked because there's no room for shock under this heavy blanket of affectless style; if Kip is Holly's captor, Holly and Malick are our captors, and we all have Stockholm Syndrome. (1973, 95 min, DCP Digital) JF
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Anna Biller’s THE LOVE WITCH (New American)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Friday, 7 and 9:30pm and Sunday, 1:30pm
THE LOVE WITCH is a remarkably dense pastiche, recreating elements of American melodramas, sexploitation comedies, and low-budget horror films from the 60s and early 70s with loving care and deadpan assurance. Writer-director Anna Biller (who also designed the sets and costumes) invokes Radley Metzger, Elizabeth Taylor vehicles like BUTTERFIELD 8, Stephanie Rothman’s THE VELVET VAMPIRE, George Romero’s SEASON OF THE WITCH, and likely many other cult films and filmmakers. The mise-en-scene is striking and loud, at times verging on Kenneth Anger levels of expressiveness; the sex is lurid and silly, the politics blunt and sincere; and Biller demonstrates such command over tone that even the odd pauses in the dialogue feel carefully considered. The heroine, Elaine, is a California witch living a life of leisure and looking for a man to love. While she manages to lures a number of men to her bed—employing a combination of sexual allure, magic spells, and burlesque dancing—she never lands on a lasting relationship. Part of the problem is that Elaine’s magic turns her lovers into pathetic devotees; another is that Elaine’s lovers keep dying on her. The lovers’ demises represent grotesque exaggerations of the ways in which women can feel disappointed by men; these scenes communicate a certain raw honesty that used to exist commonly in disreputable genres when filmmakers were given a high degree of creative freedom. THE LOVE WITCH is a tribute to that era and a provocation for ours, calling into question the expectations that women have of men, and vice-versa. (2016, 120 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Tommy Wiseau's THE ROOM (Cult Revival)
Music Box Theatre - Friday, Midnight
A woman announces, "Well, the results came back - I definitely have breast cancer," and that's the last we ever hear of it. A group of men don tuxedos for no apparent reason and then toss around a football. A drug dealer threatens to kill someone and then disappears for the rest of the movie. Upon awaking, a man picks up a rose from his night table, smells it, and throws it on top of his sleeping girlfriend. A recurring rooftop "exterior" is obviously a studio set, with a backdrop of the San Francisco skyline digitally composited behind the action. Accidental surrealism can be even more potent than the conscious kind, and THE ROOM is some kind of zenith of its type, the equal to anything Ed Wood committed to celluloid. Although what's on screen looks like it cost about $14.99, the actual budget was upwards of $6 million, in part because actor/producer/writer/director Wiseau shot simultaneously in 35mm and HD (supposedly he didn't understand the differences between the two formats). Now the film has become a worthy successor to THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, with enthusiastic fans performing a series of rituals at each screening. Ross Morin, assistant professor of film studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, calls it "one of the most important films of the past decade. Through the complete excess in every area of production, THE ROOM reveals to us just how empty, preposterous and silly the films and television programs we've watched over the past couple of decades have been." (2003, 99 min, 35mm) RC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Martin Scorsese’s SILENCE (New American/International)
Music Box Theatre – Check Venue website for showtimes
Throughout his long and accomplished career, Martin Scorsese has incorporated religion into many of his films—be it thematically, iconographically, or overtly, as in THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST and KUNDUN. After twenty years in the making, his latest film, SILENCE, is a combination of all three. In the 16th century, a pair of Portuguese missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) embarks on a trip to feudal Japan to discover the whereabouts of Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), a priest who is believed to have apostatized due to the intense persecution Christians have been subjected to in that country. SILENCE is the sort of film where one’s personal beliefs or lack thereof will surely shape the one’s reconciliation of the events transpiring on-screen. It is emotionally-tolling and psychologically-straining. Interestingly enough, it is as pro-religion as it is anti-religion. Akira Kurosawa’s influence looms large here, with RASHOMON and SEVEN SAMURAI coming quickly to mind, and Scorsese flirts with other works of Eastern cinema by paying homage to several Japanese greats. The film’s bleak tone and heavy subject matter is aided by a muted color palette before, roughly halfway through, a shift occurs and there is an explosion of color and vibrancy while still maintaining the same somber undertones. In a land where to be Christian is essentially a death sentence to many, it’s captivating and at times, a bit perplexing that Father Rodrigues (Garfield) and the other Japanese converts remain so resolute in their faith. The biggest question raised is the notion of religious truth and whether that truth can be universal to all or not. Although lacking in the subtlety found in some of his other works, Scorsese’s SILENCE is a well-crafted test in the face of hardship and one that is sure to evoke a strong reaction by all. (2016, 161 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Pablo Larrain’s NERUDA (New Chilean)
Music Box Theatre – Check Venue website for showtimes
In a year where Pablo Larrain is best known to American audiences for his film JACKIE, NERUDA slides in at the end of 2016 with a bang. Following the political life and exile of famed poet Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco), the film is an atypical biopic. In the late 1940s, Pablo Neruda is a Senator in the Chilean political machine who is discovered to be a communist and forced to go on the lam. Chased by the son of a well-known Chilean police detective (Gael García Bernal), what follows is an amalgamation and deconstruction of historical facts plus a romanticized narrative from the viewpoint of Neruda. Larrain’s film seeks to blur the lines of the past and humanizes the poet in profound manner. What’s most striking about the film is the dual-tiered plot lines, one following the titular character and the other Bernal’s character and the way in which they both manage to coexist despite their obvious differences. The film’s verisimilitude brings Neruda’s legacy to the forefront: will he be remembered as the master wordsmith he was or as the Red political figure who fled his country as an outcast? In the end, NERUDA is a film that delves into the backstory of one of the most influential poets of the 20th century, encapsulating not only his impact on the common people but also his effect on Chile’s political climate in the 1940s. (2016, 107 min, DCP Digital) KC
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
BING Art Books at the Stony Island Arts Bank (6760 S. Stony Island Ave.) hosts the program Reading Fluxus Films on Friday at 4pm. Screening are ENTRANCE TO EXIT (George Brecht, 1965), 10 FEET (George Maciunas, 1966), WORD MOVIE (Paul Sharits, 1966), SCENARIO (Dick Higgins, 1968), and POETIC JUSTICE (Hollis Frampton, 1972), all on 16mm, and a digital projection of NOTSTANDSBORDSTEIN (Wolf Vostell, 1969). Approximately 60 min total. Followed by a panel discussion featuring Bruce Jenkins (SAIC), Caroline Schopp (U of C), Lisa Zaher (U of C), and Jacob Proctor (Neubauer Collegium). Presented by UChicago Arts and the Department of Art History. Free admission
The City Winery (1200 W. Randolph) screens Aaron Faulls and Nate Gowtham’s 2015 documentary COLIN HAY - WAITING FOR MY REAL LIFE (84 min, Video Projection) on Monday at 8pm, with former front-man for Men at Work Colin Hay in person
The Italian Cultural Institute (500 N. Michigan Ave.) presents Roberto Faenza’s 1993 film LOOK TO THE SKY (100 min, Digital Projection) on Thursday at 6pm, showing in commemoration of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Holocaust survivor Judy Strauss will speak briefly after the screening. Free admission (RSVP: https://holocaustremembranceday2017.eventbrite.com).
The Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Lane, Northbrook) screens Chris Renaud and Yarrow Cheney’s 2016 animated film THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS (87 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Saturday at 2pm; and David Frankel’s 2006 film THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (109 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday at 1 and 7:30pm. Free admission. www.northbrook.info
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Tony Stone’s 2016 documentary PETER AND THE FARM (91 min, DCP Digital), Roger Spottiswoode’s 2016 British film A STREET CAT NAMED BOB (103 min, DCP Digital) and Justin Kelly’s 2016 film KING COBRA (91 min, DCP Digital) all play for a week; Benjamin Lear’s 2016 documentary THEY CALL US MONSTERS (82 min, DCP Digital) is on Friday at 6pm and Wednesday at 7:45pm; Seth McClellan’s 2016 documentary LITTLE WOUND’S WARRIORS (57 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 7:45pm, with McClellan and producers and Pine Ridge residents Mark Hetzel and Mikayla Mitzel in person; Susan Morgan Cooper’s 2016 documentary TO THE MOON AND BACK (85 min, DCP Digital) is on Sunday at 5pm and Monday at 7:45pm, with Cooper and subjects Jessica Long and Miles Harrison in person at both shows; and an 89th Academy Awards Nominations Panel is on Tuesday at 4:30pm (Free admission, but the advance RSVPs are full; limited admission in person may be available).
Also at Doc Films (University of Chicago) this week: Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film ARRIVAL (116 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday at 7 and 9:30pm and Sunday at 4pm; Hafsteinn G. Sigurðsson’s 2011 Icelandic film EITHER WAY (84 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday at 7pm; John Schlesinger’s 1976 film MARATHON MAN (125 min, 35mm) is on Thursday at 7pm; and Robert Zemeckis’ 1989 film BACK TO THE FUTURE II (108 min, DCP Digital) is on Thursday at 9:45pm.
Also at the Music Box Theatre this week: David Bickerstaff’s 2016 documentary THE CURIOUS WORLD OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH (87 min, DCP Digital) is on Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am; Jim Sharman’s 1975 cult film THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) is on Saturday at Midnight; and Sang-ho Yeon’s 2016 South Korean film TRAIN TO BUSAN (118 min, Digital Projection) is on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.
At Facets Cinémathèque this week: Pietro Marcello’s 2015 Italian/French film LOST AND BEAUTIFUL (87 min, Digital Projection) and Gustavo Ron’s 2015 Spanish/US film MY BAKERY IN BROOKLYN (100 min, Digital Projection) both play for a week-long run.
The Chicago Cultural Center presents the program WTTW Film Screening & Discussion - Youth Voice and Vision with Free Spirit Media on Saturday at 2pm. Screening are two 2016 documentary shorts: NIA & KIM (14 min) and UBUNTU: THE PEACE EXCHANGE (14 min). Free admission.
The DuSable Museum screens John Sorensen’s 2013 documentary THE QUILTED CONSCIENCE (60 min, Digital Projection) on Sunday at 2pm. The event includes a discussion with Sorensen and African-American quilt maker Peggie Hartnell. Free admission.
ONGOING FILM/VIDEO INSTALLATIONS
Olympia Centre (737 N. Michigan Ave. - entrance at 151 E. Chicago Ave.) presents Virginio Ferrari & Marco G. Ferrari: Spirit Level through April 6. The show features sculpture, 16mm film, video and installations by artists Virginio Ferrari and Marco G. Ferrari, including Marco Ferrari’s SPIRIT LEVEL (2015-16, 30 min) and CONTRAILS WITH BODY (2011-16, 3 min).
The Art Institute of Chicago (Modern Wing Galleries) has Dara Birnbaum’s 1979 two-channel video KISS THE GIRLS: MAKE THEM CRY (6 min) currently on view.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Gallery 186) has Rodney McMillian: A Great Society on view through March 26. The exhibition features three video works by McMillian: UNTITLED (THE GREAT SOCIETY) I (2006, 16 min loop), A MIGRATION TALE (2014-15, 10 min loop), and PREACHER MAN (2015, 6 min loop).
