CRUCIAL VIEWING
PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND (Experimental)
Conversations at the Edge (Gene Siskel Film Center) – Thursday, 6pm
The Conversations at the Edge series kicks off its fall offerings with one of the critical hits of 2007. John Gianvito's PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND is an unlikely film to have received the level of festival exposure and praise that it did. It's an hour-long experimental essay film, part travelogue and part landscape film, that, for the most part, quietly presents in an unadorned manner gravesites and historical markers from America's progressive past. Harriet Tubman, Eugene V. Debs, Sacco and Venzetti, and many others seem to haunt the all-but-forgotten physical reminders of their lives and actions. While the film has many champions (see Jonathan Rosenbaum's Critic's Choice), it also has its share of detractors, who feel that its passive parade is precious and an ineffectual means for spreading its gospel. The truth is somewhere in between. It pulls some punches and deviates from its formal rigor at times, which diffuses its impact, and the inclusion of Iraq War protest footage at the end comes across as an easy and overly obvious out. But the majority of the film provides a dignity to the sites Gianvito visits. We are left to contemplate meaning for ourselves instead of receiving the pre-digested cant political works often dish out. The complaint that for most viewers it is just a visual recitation of names we don't know is missing the point: the tragedy is that we don't know many or most of the names. Our political memory is disappearing and people whose lives should be celebrated and honored are nothing more than footnotes. Worse, not even footnotes. Just crumbling stone that no one sees and no one even looks for. Gianvito will appear in person to discuss his film. (2007, 61 min, video). Preceded by Hope Tucker's effective and moving short BESSIE COHEN, SURVIVOR OF 1911 SHIRTWAIST FIRE (2000, 3 min, video). Co-Presented by Chicago Cinema Forum. PF
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More info at www.chicagocinemaforum.org.
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Zeitgeist Films: "In the Spirit of the Times" (Retrospective)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes noted below
You can only see the spirit of an era in hindsight. We only get to read the results after the experiment of a decade, a generation, or a century is over. Distance breeds clarity with these sorts of things. So if any distributor's catalog invites the idea of a retrospective, it's Zeitgeist Films'. A name like that takes a little bit of presumption. When you say that you distribute the zeitgeist films, you suggest that everyone else doesn't—the same way Criterion's name has always invoked the idea that they, unlike everyone else, have standards. A name is never just a name; it's always a suggestion.
There is a problem with this suggestion: no one can consciously embrace zeitgeist. So by definition the Zeitgeist catalog should be a failure. But it isn't.
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The films of Abbas Kiarostami, whose TEN (2002, 94 min, 35mm; Sunday, 7:45pm & Thursday, 6pm) is screening in the first week of the traveling Zeitgeist retrospective, are not consciously trying to show an era or a fashion, but odds are that a century from now they'll be more representative of what it was like to live in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century than almost anything else.
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Did Guy Maddin know that he was a post-modernist when he made CAREFUL (1992, 100 min, 35mm; Friday 8pm & Sunday, 5pm), the way he knew it when he made the six-minute THE HEART OF THE WORLD (preceding both screenings of CAREFUL) eight years later? Did photographer-turned-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan and his actress wife Ebru know their film CLIMATES (2006, 97 min, 35mm; Saturday 8pm & Monday 5pm) would be distributed along with JELLYFISH (2007, 78 min, 35mm; Sunday 3:15pm, & Thursday, 8:15pm), by an Israeli writers-turned-directors husband and wife duo? Did Jacques Demy forsee while making THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964, 91 min, 35mm; Saturday 3pm, Monday 3pm) that people in other times and countries would one day think of early '60s France and his film as one in the same? IV
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DERRIDA & ZIZEK! – Saturday, 5pm & Tuesday, 6:30pm
The big screen is a place where we are usually focused on bodies, emotions, and action. Thinking, the act that defines such individuals as Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Zizek—each the subject of feature documentaries screening back-to-back as part of the Zeitgeist series—isn't as obviously filmable. Rodin's "The Thinker" worked in sculpture, but try showing a theater full of people a guy sitting still with his fist under his chin for ninety minutes. When movies depict people whose tribulations occur cheifly within their own heads, they tend to externalize these struggles as actions or special effects. When we see cinematic representations of thinking in the form of chess (SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER) or writing (MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE) or lucid dreaming (WAKING LIFE) or calculation (A BEAUTIFUL MIND), what we're focusing on are the ramifications of thought rather than the process itself. It's not that DERRIDA (2002, 85min, 35mm) or ZIZEK! (2005, 71 min, Beta) represent thinking in a novel way—depictions of each philosopher's social self belies the reality of a life spent deep in thought—but each documentary paints a compelling portrait of thinking as a way of being; a concept that narrative cinema has trouble grasping. KH
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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ALSO RECOMMENDED
Zummer Tapez: Jim Trainor (Experimental)
Roots & Culture Gallery – Saturday, 8pm (FREE, but donations welcome)
Local filmmaker and animator Jim Trainor does a bit of eclectic show and tell in this edition of R&C's mix-tape series. Trainor plans to show selections from his rarely-screened 31 FOUND FOOTAGE EXERCISES (ca. 1990), with tantalizing titles such as SOUL MURDER, NAMELESS DISASTER, and HIPPOPOTAMUS promised. The bulk of the show, though, will allow Trainor to showcase particular fascinations and obsessions through several found footage films ("I'm fond of a certain crocodile documentary"), educational films (the perverse and dark Sid Davis is certain to be represented), 1930s cartoons (expect Betty Boop or similar), and renowned documentarian Willard van Dyke's MARRIAGE FOR MODERNS, which Trainor describes as an "oddly moving and unexpectedly sophisticated 1950s counseling film." While specific selections may change, you can definitely expect the unexpected (and poetically strange or strangely poetic) from Trainor. PF
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More info at www.rootsandculturecac.org.
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Hawks Eternal: Two Films by Howard Hawks (Classic Revival)
BALL OF FIRE – Doc Films – Friday, 7 & 9:30pm
SCARFACE – Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday & Wednesday, 6pm
While Howard Hawks remains one of the great American directors, the true auteur of his BALL OF FIRE (1941, 111 min, 16mm) may be Billy Wilder, who co-authored the script with Charles Brackett. The comedy—about eight bookish professors who take in a nightclub singer to help co-write an encyclopedia entry on slang—is more rooted in caricature, Hawks’ greatest contributions to the genre (HIS GIRL FRIDAY, MONKEY BUSINESS), having more in common with the social satires Wilder would go on to direct (THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, ONE TWO THREE, THE FORTUNE COOKIE). In retrospect, the premise seems especially personal for Wilder, who learned English while writing his first Hollywood assignment and took from the experience a lifelong fascination with American idioms. But the film remains distinctly Hawksian in its collaborative approach: The look is unusually sophisticated thanks to cinematography by the great Gregg Toland (THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, CITIZEN KANE); and Barbara Stanwyck, playing the brassy singer, brings to the film the same feeling for character that deepened the other great comedies she acted in (BABY FACE, THE LADY EVE). While it’s welcome to see the revival of lesser Howard Hawks, the BALL OF FIRE screening is upstaged by Jonathan Rosenbaum’s presentation of SCARFACE (1932, 90 min, 35mm). A landmark in American crime films, Hawks and screenwriter Ben Hecht (one of eight writers who helped Hawks put together the script in just over a week) avoid the moralizing sensibility, already familiar in the genre, to create a movie that’s always excitingly (and scarily) in the moment. Dave Kehr has called the film a “comic nightmare,” which is true in more ways than one: It’s one of the only Hawks films to exhibit the influence of German expressionism (in theatrical lighting, symbolic imagery, and lucid camera movements), but his and Hecht’s ken for professional ethics gives the movie the hard logic of a dream. SCARFACE is the first film in Rosenbaum's fall lecture series on world cinema of the 1930s, which will feature an exceptional selection of masterpieces (Mizoguchi's THE STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTEHMUMS) and underrated gems (Frank Borzage’s MAN’S CASTLE). Note: Rosenbaum will only attend Wednesday night’s screening. BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu / www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
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Charlie Chaplin's CITY LIGHTS (Classic Revival)
Bank of America Cinema – Saturday, 8pm
Chaplin's perfectionism reached its apex with CITY LIGHTS. Production dragged on for over two years while he used the camera as an expensive way to brainstorm; a scene in which a blind girl offers the Little Tramp a flower nagged at him incessantly and he reshot it again and again. And yet, as with Kubrick, one can argue with his methods but not with the results. Even if its creation was protracted, CITY LIGHTS is beautifully economical, maintaining a perfect balance between slapstick and sentiment. That wonderful fusion is why, in the last ten minutes, you stop laughing and start crying. Like the concluding moments of UMBERTO D, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and THE ELEPHANT MAN, Chaplin's ending twists at your heart with sweet precision. (1931, 87 min, 16mm) RC
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More info at www.cine-file.info/venues/lasalle.html.
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Perpetual Ends (New Experimental)
Homeroom at Elastic Arts Foundation (2830 N Milwaukee Ave) – Tuesday, 7pm
A collection of mostly Chicago-made short films and videos curated by Colin Palombi (ex-Ice Capades series) which explore directly and indirectly the theme of the "end." The highlight is Michael Robinson's great THE GENERAL RETURNS FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER (2006), which evocatively juxtaposes lush floral images with a cool and disturbed (in more than one way) subtitled narration from Frank O'Hara's play of the same name. Also showing are two works (subtly disturbing in their own right) by Kent Lambert, Palombi's own DIAGRAM 1-5, and work by Brian Hank Henry, David Yun, Steve Reinke, and Daniel Barrow. PF
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More info at www.elasticrevolution.com/events.htm.
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THE AXE IN THE ATTIC (New Documentary)
Facets Cinémathèque – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Critics are torn damn near down the middle about this movie, which is often a signal to take note. Horrified by televised accounts of Hurricane Katrina, documentarian Lucia Small convinced her friend, Ed Pincus (BLACK NATCHEZ, 1967) to pick up a camera for the first time in twenty years and drive straight to the aftermath of the storm. Everyone agrees that THE AXE IN THE ATTIC is an adept and moving portrait full of humor and humanity; the concensus ends when the filmmakers step in front of the camera and start admitting to thier own limitations in the face of overwhelming catastrophe. Left in the final edit are moments where the filmmakers struggle with giving money to their subjects and fumble with issues of race, invoking the relentless conceptual problem of documentary objectivity. They allow the audience to see them act petty, scared, and tactical. They air their disagreements on how and what to shoot in front of the camera, creating a meta narrative about themselves. For Cinema Scope's Livia Bloom the collapse of the fourth wall is a brave attempt to provide insight: "the film's complex underlying questions give it a queasy relevance with implications far beyond this particular tragedy." For other critics, like Michael Joshua Rowin of Reverse Shot, it is a strategy unfitting the topic: "THE AXE IN THE ATTIC's self-reflexivity feels self-important, a gaze at the navel when a gaping wound hasn't even begun to heal." Regardless, the film supplies some of the rawest footage brought out of the storm and follows stories of people from all over the region, engaging the chaos on many levels. (2007, 110 min, 35 mm) CL
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Full details at www.facets.org.
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THE GROCER'S SON (New French)
Music Box – Check Reader Movies for showtimes
A patient and well-crafted sophomore effort written and directed by Eric Guirado, THE GROCER'S SON stages a tight family drama in the heartbreakingly picturesque locale of the Provence countryside. An embittered, discontent young man begrudgingly leaves the city to drive the family grocery van after his father suffers a severe heart attack. Nicolas Cazalé gives a detailed performance as the title character, an altogether unlikeable thirty year-old struggling through a return to the troubled family he had left behind. Guirado, also a documentarian (in researching this film he spent weeks filming portraits of mobile grocers in rural France), brings a soft-verite camera to his narrative works without resorting to the hackneyed, hand-held aesthetic. As in his previous feature narrative (2003's WHEN YOU COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN), the story builds a quiet plot out of regular people confronted with a tough economic reality but does not sacrifice humor or hope in the process. (2008, 96 min, 35 mm) CL
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
x George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (Classic Revival)
Doc Films - Saturday, 7pm & 9pm
George Romero would go on to make better films than NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD—movies that suggest the unlikely fusion of Mark Twain’s all-American satire, Michael Powell’s fanciful curiosity, and John Cassavetes’ intimate, handmade aesthetic within the confines of the horror genre. But his debut is still an object lesson in independent filmmaking: Rather than cover up his distance from Hollywood (budgetary and geographical ), Romero embraces it. The resulting film boasts a sharp sense of location—the suburbs and rural areas outlying Pittsburgh—and an understanding that the banal makes the horror all the more scary when it arrives. Much has been written about the radical implications of casting a black actor to play the heroic, gun-toting lead in 1968, though Romero (one of the few popular U.S. filmmakers so consistently open about his radical politics) claims to have no political motivation in this decision. More focused is the film’s pointed anger at middle-class conformity, which gives the film its enduring bitter rage. (1968, 96 min, 35mm) BS
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
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Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT (Redux Revival)
Music Box – Tuesday through Thursday, 5pm, 7:20pm & 9:45pm
The greatest of all SF-noir pulp fantasies, Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER receives a mini-run the Music Box in its recent "Final Cut" incarnation—the most satisfyingly complete version since its near-disastrous premiere twenty five years ago—and in what may be the most gorgeous print we've yet seen. Harshly dystopic, disjunctively contemporary, Scott's belated masterpiece combines the venture-capitalist exhilarations of the Reagan era with the crypto-Marxist leanings of Lang's METROPOLIS ("I'm not in the business, I am the business") to evoke a claustrophobic future LA divided between robot-proles who deal in black-market humanity and the overlord-savants who dwell in impossibly vast skyscraper-ziggurats. Even better, the extended final cut boasts some recently re-shot footage, as well as some tweaks in the editing, that go a long way toward emphasizing the brutal sensuality of the original. (1982, 117 min, 35mm) JB
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
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MORE SCREENINGS & EVENTS:
Light offerings at The Portage this week, with only the WWII pin-up darling Betty Grable in, you guessed it, PIN-UP GIRL (1944, 85 min, 35mm; Wednesday, 1:30pm).
Wendell B. Harris, Jr. is scheduled to appear with his acclaimed indie feature CHAMELEON STREET (1991), which was part of a wave of risk-taking African-American films in the late-1980s/early-90s. (Thursday, 7pm; Chatham 14, 210 W 87th St).
The Music Box heats things up with their midnight showing of the cult-item A BOY AND HIS DOG (1975) set in a sun-baked post-apocalyptic future (Friday and Saturday, Midnight) and with their weekend matinee film BODY HEAT (1981), in which William Hurt and Kathleen Turner burn up the screen (Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am). Also at midnight, Friday and Saturday, is Warren Beatty as the do-gooder detective DICK TRACY (1990) and Madonna as, well, Madonna. |
