CRUCIAL VIEWING

ENDURING ENDS: A Film & Video Program for End Times (Experimental)
The Butcher Shop (1319 W Lake St) – Saturday, 7pm
This weekend there are two great experimental shows screening at alternative venues in Chicago. One is a monumental program of films by an avant-garde legend (see below), and the other is an exciting collection of shorts by local artists, organized around the theme of perpetually eminent apocalypse. The Enduring Ends show, assembled by local programmer Colin Palombi, showcases work by some established Chicago artists, such as Northwestern University's Steve Reinke, and emerging talents like Michael Robinson and Kent Lambert, confronting the chief ambiguities of the contemporary age in a variety of cinematic modes. (2004-2006, 66 min, various formats).This FREE screening takes place in the Lasso Gallery on the 3rd floor of the Butcher Shop (1319 W. Lake St). Additional filmmakers featured include Brian Hank Henry, Cynthia Madansky, Alma Boro, Brian Boyce and Daniel Barrow.
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Directions to The Butcher Shop.
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STAN BRAKHAGE: Rare Masterpieces from the 1970s (Experimental)
Cinema Borealis (1550 N Milwaukee) – Sunday, 7pm
White Light Cinema, the new exciting project from Patrick Friel (former programmer at Chicago Filmmakers), kicks off what is hopefully a long, happy life this week with a screening of Stan Brakhage films from the early 1970s. These years were a period of great change in Brakhage's work–having just finished two major series (the Songs, and Scenes From Under Childhood)–and creating, from 1972-1974, probably his most consistently brilliant years of work. THE WEIR-FALCOLN SAGA (1970, 29 min, 16mm) is the first and longest film of a loose trilogy featuring his children and home life. Brakhage himself called the Edward Hicks inspired THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM (1971, 8 min, 16mm), "one of the most perfect it has ever been given to me to make." THE PROCESS (1972, 9 min, 16mm) is a staggering masterpiece, and is the closest Brakhage ever got to making a flicker film. THE WOLD-SHADOW (1972, 3 min, 16mm) is a gorgeous little film that mixes a single image of the woods, and an overlaid, "laboriously painted vision of the god of the forest." THE SHORES OF PHOS: A FABLE (1972, 10 min, 16mm) mixes images of pure light with winter scenes. SKEIN (1974, 4 min, 16mm) is an early example of an entirely handpainted work, and is very highly rated by critic Fred Camper. Admission: $7.00-10.00 sliding scale. Image from THE PROCESS courtesy of the Estate of Stan Brakhage and Fred Camper. JM
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Full details at www.whitelightcinema.com.
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Jacques Demy's MODEL SHOP (Classic Revival)
Doc Films – Tuesday, 7pm
Jean-Pierre Meville lived and slept on his movie sets and Wes Anderson slowly evolved into one of his own characters, but neither had an escapism as obsessive as Jacques Demy's. Every film he made, whether it had singing in it or not, was essentially a musical; he could make the sad streets of Nantes into an MGM back lot. This sequel to Demy's first feature, LOLA, was the only film he actually made in Hollywood; along with his other English-language film, the Japanese-financed Manga adaptation LADY OSCAR, it's one of his most rarely seen. Anouk Aimée, now in color, has made the transition from cabaret "dancer" to the equally dubious "model," and from the gray French seaside to the busy sprawl of Los Angeles. Doc Films' screening presents a rare opportunity to see a film most cinephiles are only familiar with via the clips used in Thom Andersen's LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF. (1970, 90 min, 35mm). IV
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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Cassavetes' SHADOWS (Classic Revival w/ Lecture)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 6:15pm & Wednesday, 6pm (w/ lecture)
Independent filmmaking, warts and all: the first available film by Cassavetes (an earlier version of SHADOWS has only screened once since it was made, and has been withheld from view by Gena Rowlands) contains every error and every virtue of a non-studio creation. It's still an unprecedented experience, filled with a bursting energy that makes every cut, every line of dialogue a world unto itself. The episodic, loosely developed story details three black siblings in jazzy, beat-era Manhattan going through racial and romantic tensions, professional disappointments, and trying to overcome an overall ennui about being set apart from one another in the big city. Benny (Ben Carruthers) might have easily been a Kerouac character ("What the hell's a literary party?" he smirks to his friends in a coffee shop conversation), while Lelia (Lelia Goldoni) plants the seeds for what would evolve as the free-thinking Cassavetes female (which Lynn Carlin would embody so well in his next feature, FACES). Here is the creation of the modern American cinema virtually overnight. Jonathan Rosenbaum, who kicks off the second part of his "The Great Transition" series with this film, will surely discuss why SHADOWS is his favorite Cassavetes. (1959, 82 min, 35mm blown up from 16). GK
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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IMAMURA: Week 4 (Classic Revival)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
Whether it's medieval human ritual or sharks preying upon pigs, Shohei Imamura's matter-of-factness in showing the entire animal chain from casual barbarism to natural order and survival denies our species its superior status. The result, invariably, is a terrifying view of humanity. PROFOUND DESIRE OF THE GODS (1968, 170 min, 35mm; Saturday, 3pm & Tuesday, 6:30pm), called his greatest film by Cahiers du Cinema critic Antoine de Baecque, is at once a contemporary fable (developers come to the southern Japanese island Kuragejima and are confronted by locals) and stark, anthropological study of the primitive villagers. The film was made in 1968, a year in which the drastic social upheavals of the world were allegorized in revolutionary cinematic masterpieces like Parajanov's THE COLOR OF THE POMEGRANATES, Fassbinder's KATZLEMACHER, Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and Sganzerla's THE RED LIGHT BANDIT. Imamura's film, in contrast, stands apart from nearly everything made in this period for its spectacular insularity and stubborn refusal of metaphors. A MAN VANISHES (1967, 130 min, 35mm; Sunday, 3pm), an equally impressive Imamura effort financed by the Art Theatre Guild (an adventurous if little-known Japanese production and distribution company that also produced some of the best films by Nagisa Oshima and Kiju Yoshida) the year before, is a meta-fiction about a director (Imamura playing himself) who starts on a project about a fiancee's quest to find her missing husband but that turns increasingly complex when the filmmaker--both off and on screen--reveals several layers of contrivance at play. There aren't two better films in the Imamura canon if one had to choose -- and neither are on DVD. Take advantage. GK
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED

ED WOOD Double Feature (Cult Revival)
Portage Theater – Friday, 8 & 10pm
Horrorbles, a Horror/Sci-Fi memorabilia shop in the Northern suburbs, kicks off a monthly Creature Feature series at the Portage with a double bill of the Ed Wood/Bela Lugosi classics: the unintentionally terrible BRIDE OF THE MONSTER (1938, 68 min) and the accidentally brilliant PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959, 79 min). Says Dave Kehr of the latter in the Reader: "Bela Lugosi died during the making of this low-budget science fiction programmer, but that didn't faze director Edward Wood: the Lugosi footage, which consists of the actor skulking around a suburban garage, is replayed over and over, to highly surreal effect. Wood is notorious for his 1952 transvestite saga GLEN OR GLENDA?... but for my money this 1959 effort is twice as strange and appealing in its undisguised incompetence." There will be an intermission show, featuring interview with actor Conrad Brooks and a GLEN OR GLENDA? costume contest. $10 gets you into both shows.
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More info at www.portagetheater.org.
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George Cukor's HOLIDAY (Classic Revival)
LaSalle Bank Cinema – Saturday, 7:30pm
George Cukor directed a number of great movies, but none of them balance humor and pathos as beautifully as HOLIDAY. Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn play star-crossed lovers united by a desire to transcend the rigor of high society as represented by Hepburn's repressive old-money family. What starts as screwball comedy becomes something more adult and poignant, colored by what Dave Kehr calls "Cukor's serious concern for the ways in which we choose to live our lives." Like much of the director's best work, this was adapted from a Broadway play, a Philip Barry hit from ten years earlier. Cukor clearly loved the material: He rehearsed the actors until they knew the characters inside and out, which enabled him to shoot longer takes that retained the rhythm of Barry's writing--And besides, these performances are so three-dimensional they don't need to be enhanced with editing. It's only through his deep understanding of theatrical conventions that Cukor could produce something so vitally cinematic. This film may be revived often (The Music Box screened it less than six months ago), but you owe it to yourself to go if you haven't seen this on a big screen. The elegance here, both in image and in spirit, virtually defines Hollywood glamour. (1938, 95 min, 35mm). BS
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Venue Information here.
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LIPSTICK AND DYNAMITE (Documentary)
Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 8pm
Chicago Filmmakers presents Ruth Leitman's delightfully tawdry cinema-scrapbook about the birth of female wrestling in the 1930s and 40s–a world full of sexualized glamour, bad beats, and life-long rivalries. Or as Johnnie Mae Young puts it in the film: "You gotta have the angel and you gotta have the heel." Mae (who, at age 76, was named the WWF's "Miss Royal Rumble 2000" in an impressive career come back), is just one of several brash and indomitable women that recount the heyday of one of America's most deliciously seedy pop culture phenomenons. Kenneth Truman from the LA Times writes, "What makes LIPSTICK AND DYNAMITE its own animal is that, intentionally or not, the director has allowed… a glimpse of the unvarnished and the unsanitized. The uneasy, unnerving air of the carny hangs over this film, and it gives a whiff of how rough, rowdy and raucous, how inescapably down and dirty, these women's world could be." (2004, 83 min). CL
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More info at www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
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42ND STREET (Classic Revival)
Portage Theater – Friday, 8 & 10pm
Between this, FOOTLIGHT PARADE, and the inaugural GOLD DIGGERS installment, Busby Berkeley launched a delirious overhaul of the movie musical in 1933, a genre previously dominated by staid Broadway recreations. Following Rouben Mamoulian's lead, Berkeley scrapped the proscenium arch and extravagantly embraced the possibilities of the medium, conjuring enough geometric choreography, bird's-eye camera angles, and endless rows of anonymous pawns to earn a famous (if unfortunate) comparison to Leni Riefenstahl by Susan Sontag. But for all Berkeley's grand indulgence, the let's-put-on-a-show plots propping up his spectacles are mired in the Depression-era desperation that was by now Warner Brothers' streetwise trademark (William Wellman crafted WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD and HEROES FOR SALE there that same year). While Ernst Lubitsch's contemporaneous Paramount confections promised audiences all-encompasing escapism, 42ND STREET's show-stoppers were an ecstatic release for the characters and spectators alike, an 11th-hour liberation Berkeley neatly subverted with the audaciously morbid finale of GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935. (1933, 89 min). MK
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More info at www.portagetheater.org.
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FOCUS ON ASIAN CINEMA AT BLOCK (Classic & Contemporary Revival)
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Jia Zhang-Ke's PICKPOCKET – Friday, 8pm
"This is a film about our worries and our uneasiness. Having to cope with a disfunctional society, we take refuge in solitude which is a substitute for dignity… It is finally a film about my native town and about contemporary China." Jia Zhang-Ke's remarks about his first feature (his very first film, 1995's XIAOSHAN HIJIA, is 59 minutes) leaves little else to say. It's rarely, if ever, screened and it's shot on video then blown up to 35mm so it has a distinctive grainy look. Jia is a talented director who examines modern China with an unrivaled and penetrating critical eye. (1997, 105 min, 35mm). Jonathan Rosenbaum understandably chose the film as his Critics Choice this week. KH
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Kenji Mizoguchi's THE LIFE OF OHARU – Wednesday, 8pm
Continuing Block's Kenji Mizoguchi primer is THE LIFE OF OHARU. Like Mizoguchi's other masterpieces, it shows Japanese culture through a descent: the further the subject's fortunes decline, the closer we come to society's true face—and, possibly, to human nature. (1952, 148 min, 35mm). IV
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Kim Ki-Duk's ADDRESS UNKNOWN – Thursday, 8pm
South Korea is Asia's most Western country. It's given the nation a sort of identity crisis, which has in turn become the key theme of contemporary Korean cinema. It binds the work of traditionalists like Im Kwon-Taek with agitators like Kim Ki-Duk, whose 2001 feature ADDRESS UNKNOWN explores the lingering effect of Westernization, that feeling of being a stranger in your own country, like driving down a back road at night. (2001, 117 min, 35mm). IV
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
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THIS WEEK AT DOC FILMS
Doc Films' weekend audience of college kids born circa 1988 are unlikely to comprehend the long-lost world of arcade-parlour high-score competitions that set the stage for THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS (2007, 79 min; Friday, 7/9/11pm; Sunday, 4pm), but the critically-acclaimed documentary's time-worn underdog dramatics are all but guaranteed to entertain any generation of self-styled freaks and geeks. Box-office disaster THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (2007, 160 min, 35mm; Saturday, 7 & 10pm; Sunday, 1pm) has been compared by various critics to HEAVEN'S GATE, MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER, and DEAD MAN--revisionist westerns of initially mixed reception which have been essentially lifted, in the last decade or so, into the cinephiliac canon; these area screenings could be the film's last until its revival in 2027. The Lubitsch silent series (featuring live piano accompaniment by talented undergrad Daniel Sefik) continues with CARMEN (aka GYPSY BLOOD) (1919 45 min, 16mm; Sunday, 7pm). Sam Fuller's noirish Cinemascope Western oddity FORTY GUNS (1957, 79 min, 35mm; Monday, 7pm), shot in ten days, showcases his penchant for flamboyant visual and theatrical experimentation even under extreme temporal and monetary constraints. The social surrealism of Almodóvar was locked at a feverish pitch even in WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? (1984, 101 min, 16mm; Wednesday, 7 & 9:15pm), the earliest film in Doc's retrospective of the director's work, with fixture Carmen Maura's pill-popping housewife positioned at the center of a domestic maelstrom of prostitution, drug-dealing, pedophilia, and telekinesis. Latter-era noir THE BIG COMBO (1955, 84min; Thursday, 7pm) is so overloaded with what eventually became perceived as the "genre's" clichés that it's easy to project its atmosphere onto its progenitors, none of which possess to quite the same extent an amalgamation of high-contrast cinematography, non-stop lurid innuendo, and incomprehensible plotting. Finally, Doc's odd "sexploitation" series arrives on one of the genre's auteurs with Joe Sarno's SWEDISH WILDCATS (1972, 83 min, 35mm; Thursday, 9pm), incidentally filmed in Denmark. Originally released at a time when many of Chicago's smaller theaters were converting to grindhouses, this is a rare chance to undergo the forgotten, awkward experience of attending publically screened softcore. MC
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Also screening: Jacques Demy's MODEL SHOP (see Crucial Viewing above).
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Full details at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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MORE FROM THE FILM CENTER
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Mae West in I'M NO ANGEL – Saturday, 6:15pm & Sunday, 8pm
The Film Center's ICONOCLASSICS series culminates in this classic from classic cinema's sex maven. From the program: "West’s second film of 1933 was even more successful than SHE DONE HIM WRONG and marked the peak of her all-too-brief heyday before the reinforced Production Code cut her larger-than-life lustiness down to size. An exercise in self-mythologizing, ANGEL incorporates numerous elements from West’s own life to tell the story of a carnival shimmy dancer who rises to fame as a circus lion-tamer and becomes embroiled in a breach-of-promise suit with Park Avenue beau Cary Grant. The courtroom climax, with Mae in glorious command, can be read as wish-fulfillment revision of her various obscenity trials." (1933, 85 min, 35mm).
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CHICAGO SHORT FILM BRIGADE: BEST OF '07 – Sunday, 5:30pm
From the program: "This weekend, the Film Center The Chicago Short Film Brigade celebrates the culmination of this premiere year with a selection of its best films. Culled from 52 films featured as part of the Film Brigade’s quarterly screenings, this program highlights a full range of genres, budgets, and formats. Films included MACHINE WITH CHAIR, OYSTER PUFFS, PIE CYCLE, RIDE OF THE MERGANSERS, and more! Many of the filmmakers will be present." (2006-7, 100 min, various formats).
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ZACH STIGLICZ: POSTHUMOUSLY YOURS – Thursday, 6pm
Conversations at the Edge kicks off its Spring calendar with a program of film and video by recently deceased Chicago experimental filmmaker Zach Stiglicz. From the program: "Stiglicz passed away this past fall, leaving behind a singular body of work. Richly textured and visually dense, his films and videos weave together meditations on desire, violence, masculinity, and metaphysics; 'literally shred[ding] images of dreams, desires, memories, symbols, and myths into a multi-layered, molten, fin-de-siècle statement'. (MoMA). This program is an overview of his career and a tribute to his vision." (1990-2005, 90 min, various formats).
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STRANGER THAN FICTION – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
The Film Center finishes up its "Stranger Than Fiction" documentary series with two Chicago Premieres. ELECTION DAY (2007, 82 min, HD video) provides a well-crafted verite response to all those who woke up on November 3, 2004 asking themselves, What the fuck just happened? This is what democracy looks like from the perspective of fourteen documentary all-star camera crews scattered throughout the country, charged with capturing the personal stories behind the potentially explosive issues brought to light by the 2000 presidential election. In a nearly unimaginable feat of pre-production, director Katy Chevigny and producer Maggie Bowman, combed the nation for subjects, cleared rights to film in a variety of polling places and recruited some documentary heavy hitters, including Kirsten Johnson (DEADLINE) and Dana Kupper (STEVIE), to capture different facets of election day 2004. Thankfully devoid of any talking heads, the doc still manages to touch on all of the topics that would later become pundit fodder–the effect of poll-watchers, the disenfranchisement of felon voters, provisional ballots and the hectic Ohio polls. From Florida to New York to Chicago to Oklahoma, ELECTION DAY reminds us the devil is in the details. Katy Chevigny and Maggie Bowman will be present for an audience discussion at the Friday screening; Bowman will be present on Monday. Also playing this week is Morgan Neville's THE COOL SCHOOL (2007, 86 min, DigiBeta), depicting the rise of Ferus Gallery under the direction of Walter Hopps from unknown storefront to the center of the Los Angeles Modern Art world. Patricia C. Johnson of the Houston Chronicle writes, "THE COOL SCHOOL is a thoughtful slice of a critical moment in American art history. It's also a fast-paced educational and entertaining romp through L.A. of the late 1950s to early 1960s." Members of the Ferus crowd, including artists patrons and critics, recount the mishaps and successes of a vibrant scene that could count Andy Warhol, Ed Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, Larry Bell and Billy Al Bengston among their own. CL
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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MORE NOTABLE SCREENINGS

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CINE-LIST: January 25 - 31, 2008

EDITOR / Darnell Witt
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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS / Mike King, Ben Sachs
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ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTORS / Michael Castelle, Kalvin Henely, Gabe Klinger, Christy LeMaster, Josh Mabe, Ignatius Vishnevetsky

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