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| a weekly guide to alternative cinema- -
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:: Friday, FEB. 3 -
Thursday, FEB. 9 :: |
CRUCIAL VIEWING
Bill Douglas' MY CHILDHOOD & MY AIN FOLK (British Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Sunday, 7pm
Like his contemporary Terence Davies, Bill Douglas began his career with a trilogy of unsentimental, autobiographical black-and-white films; the first two--the longish shorts MY CHILDHOOD and MY AIN FOLK--depict the impoverished childhood of Douglas' alter ego, Jamie (Stephen Archibald), in 1940s Scotland. A lifelong collector of early cinema artifacts, Douglas approached filmmaking with a silent movie mindset; his use of landscapes, visual rhyme, and--in MY AIN FOLK--fast, associative editing suggests a sort of ultra-bleak Aleksandr Dovzhenko. Despite their meager government-funded budgets, Douglas' films are first-and-foremost sensory experiences; this screening presents a rare opportunity to see them on the big screen. (1972 / 1973, 101 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Robert Bresson's FOUR NIGHTS OF
A DREAMER & MOUCHETTE (French Revivals)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday,
6pm and Saturday, 5pm (Four Nights) & Sunday, 3:15pm and Monday, 8pm (Mouchette)
A film so good it ought to be illegal,
FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER has been so inaccessible in the last 30
years it might as well have been illegal: the best existing copy is
a rip of an atrocious, low-res projectionist cam, and perhaps its comparative
unavailability inspired the legions of filmmakers who have cribbed from
it profitably. Adapted (like James Gray's TWO LOVERS) from Dostoyevsky's
White Nights, one immediately recognizes its sensitive, romantically
misguided flâneur protagonist from TAXI DRIVER or José Luis Guerín's
IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA; and certainly the great recent films of Eugène
Green (LE PONT DES ARTS, THE PORTUGUESE NUN) can be seen as reworkings
of the essential FOUR NIGHTS vibe: the urban contradictions of expressionless
emotion, passionate observation, and effortless virtuosity. Produced
just as the radical innovations of the late 1960s in American (and South
American) folk music were reaching France, the plot is increasingly
interrupted by unforgettably sublime outdoor musical performances, as
if the film itself had become lost in some reverie, undistracted by
the demands of narrative. (Those demands are also comically parodied
in a film-within-a-film that basically resembles RESERVOIR DOGS.) Today,
above all, FOUR NIGHTS represents the opposing art-house pole of the
Oscar-nominated MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: on the same dimly lit streets that
led Woody Allen to celebrate the self-congratulatory, nostalgic aesthetics
of institutionally-educated dilettantes, Bresson divines what infinite
melancholy remains for the increasingly individualized, isolated connoisseurs.
If only there was a way to tell them to come see this on 35mm. (1971,
87 min, 35mm) MC
---
The bleakest of Bresson's meditations
on misery, MOUCHETTE feels every bit the logical extension of
his previous AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, but here with specific focus on the
realm of human suffering. Abused and overburdened at home, ridiculed
at school by classmates and teachers alike, the life of country schoolgirl
Mouchette is presented on no uncertain terms; the world for her is a
living hell. In the title role, Nadine Nortier is the apotheosis of
Bresson's actor/model doctrine. Her one-off performance is heartbreaking,
but also honest and raw, stripped of artifice to a degree rarely seen
in child actors. Her finest moment lies in the joyful release of the
carnival scene, where an oppressive world takes a backseat to bumper
cars and a boy, and from under her downtrodden façade emerges genuine
warmth. But with the arrival of her alcoholic father, this exuberant
reprieve is cut unceremoniously short, and Mouchette slides back into
her role as supreme pariah of 60s cinema. Bresson had always possessed
a fascination with the human spirit under desperate times (he had, after
all, spent a year in a POW camp during World War II), but by 1967, this
was coupled with an underlying cynicism present in the 65-year-old director's
films. That cloud hangs over MOUCHETTE right up through the cold and
uncompromising final scene, a testament to the devastating punch minimalism
can pack, and an all-around unshakable slice of filmmaking. (1967, 78
min, 35mm) TJ
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Robert Clampett's THE GREAT PIGGY
BANK ROBBERY (Cartoon Revival) & Billy
Wilder's THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (American Revival)
Northwest Chicago Film Society (at
the Portage) — Wednesday, 7:30pm
One of the few unqualified masterpieces
of world cinema, Clampett's tremendous THE GREAT PIGGY BANK ROBBERY showcases the director's unsurpassed mastery of drawn animation like
no other. As 'Duck Twacy,' Daffy Duck contorts himself in a series of
rigorously impossible ways: his eyeballs peer around corners, his head
squishes and elongates as he twists to answer the telephone, his body
disintegrates itself to escape from fisticuffs, fleeing the fight like
milk squeezed from a fist. The most controversial and brilliant of the
Warner Bros. animators, Clampett eschewed at all times the merely possible
in pursuit of the flabbergasting, developing in the short years of his
active career an aesthetic perhaps more truly violent and terrifying
than any seen since: in its willingness to destroy the world for the
sake of a joke consisting in a single distortion in it, comedy and horror,
pain and pleasure are made ruthlessly identical. This very late entry
in his tenure at Warner Bros. displays his interests at their purest,
fully exploited and integrated into the structure of seven minutes of
madness. Under no circumstances should this be missed. It's screening
alongside Billy Wilder's uncomfortable THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK
HOLMES, as different a film as can be imagined. Where Clampett's
frame practically explodes with energy, Wilder stages his foray into
Holmesiana in luxurious exactitude, excited at any opportunity to linger
on a dusty track, a bit of new-old-fashioned machinery, or an obsolete
article of clothing. Subtle anamorphic compositions perform elaborate
suspension acts, refusing to reveal their secrets not to heighten suspense
but to tease out yet another big-hearted joke within the mise-en-scene,
while Wilder's Holmes is a figure not just of cliché genius but of
genuine filthiness, a leering, metrosexual detective inhabiting a world
staged and shot as though every shadow contains a clue, and every clue
a dirty pun. Holmes purists tend to loathe Wilder's revisionist reading,
for it turns every convention from the A. C. Doyle stories entirely
inside-out and renders the Great Detective not just a fool but very
nearly a precipitator of the first World War. Wilder purists tend to
view it with despair, as nearly an hour was excised over Wilder's strenuous
objections by the studio, never to return. But even in mutilated form,
this is Wilder's crowning achievement, a work that deeply reimagines
an indelible character by treating his historicity more seriously than
any other Sherlock Holmes film. (Piggy Bank: 1946, 7 min, 16mm; Holmes:
1970, 125 min, 35mm) KB
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More info at www.northwestchicagofilmsociety.org.
Mikio Naruse's UNTAMED (Japanese Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Monday, 7pm
Like many of Mikio Naruse's longer features, this Meiji Era-set drama has an episodic, cyclical plot, following headstrong Oshima (Hideko Takamine) from one dramatic vignette to another, each one ending with our heroine more or less where she started--if not worse off. The vision that emerges is overwhelmingly pessimistic; Oshima is easily one of the most independent protagonists in the Naruse-Takamine oeuvre (Naruse himself described her as the "opposite" of the Takamine character in FLOATING CLOUDS), which makes her plight--betrayed, abandoned, and shunted off at every available opportunity--seem even more desperate and gives the nominally happy ending a sour aftertaste. (1957, 120 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
ALSO RECOMMENDED
Bela Tarr's THE MAN FROM LONDON
(Contemporary International)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Friday,
7:45pm and Tuesday, 6pm
By the late 2000s, we finally found
a place for Bela Tarr movies. But maybe not for new Bela Tarr movies. When Facets finally put SATANTANGO (1994) out on DVD
in 2008, it was that release that was heralded while THE MAN FROM LONDON
was ignored on the festival circuit. Many have complained that the film
is "style for the sake of style," as though cinema consists
of something other than style and that a tracking shot represents less
substance than dialogue. At this point, Tarr's style can't be separated
from what he means to express: he isn't trying to bend the world to
fit a set of techniques, but using those techniques (slow zooms, long
takes, black-and-white film stock, post-synced sound) as a launching
point for the creation of a world; every movement of the dolly establishes
a new geography. If you're gonna complain that the action of a Tarr
is "unrealistically" slow, you might as well complain about
the coincidences of a Hitchcock or the rapport police and thieves enjoy
in a Mann. The film's soundtrack, which is as musique concrete as PLAYTIME's, combines Mihaly Vig's synth strings with Tarkovsky's
(or are they Fassbinder's? or maybe even Welles'?) post-synced voices.
Yeah, sure, even the current version of THE MAN FROM LONDON, re-dubbed
following complaints about the voice-acting at Cannes, is as jarring
in its mismatch of voices as an Americanized giallo. But that isn't
a deficiency. There are no deficiencies in a movie where everything
is intentional. THE MAN FROM LONDON's capriccio is a glum French port,
populated with little lost men imported wholesale from the opening shot
of WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES. Maloin (Miroslav Krobot), his jacket collar
permanently turned up, operates a railroad switchyard by the docks.
The half-hour opening sequence, a virtuoso example of Tarr's directing,
has more than a little of De Palma's SNAKE EYES to it: the first visible
cut occurs roughly 13 1/2 minutes in, and this dialogue-less series
of dollies, zoom-ins, zoom-outs, and measured movements of the camera
crane creates a tiny universe of half-noticed intrigues and sleepy tension,
introducing every mystery the remainder of the film unpacks, if not
solves. There's a suitcase, a ship (as menacing as that ferry in THE
GHOST WRITER) and a few men who hide in the shadows. Whatever you may
think of the slow movement of camera in THE MAN FROM LONDON, you can
never be completely sure where that camera will go. THE MAN FROM LONDON
restores mystery to mysteries. The wind, fog and rain, which always
arrive on cue, may be fake, but the sense of wonder is genuine. SAIC
professor and filmmaker Dan Eisenberg lectures at the Tuesday screening.
(2007, 139 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
Dennis Hopper's THE LAST MOVIE (American
Revival)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) — Friday, 7pm
Hot off the unexpected success of EASY RIDER, Dennis Hopper was
give complete creative control and a considerable amount of studio funding
to make this quasi-fable about a stuntman (Hopper) who gets roped into
a movie cargo cult in the jungles of Peru. Shot on location with a cast
seemingly composed of whoever Hopper felt like hanging out with at the
time—including Sam Fuller, Kris Kristofferson, Michelle Phillips, Peter
Fonda, Sylvia Miles and Dean Stockwell—and edited over the course of
a year at Hopper's remote, gun-and-groupie-filled compound, it's a jumbled,
intentionally-fragmentary mess—but also a singular and serious (albeit
coked-up) artistic statement by a man attempting to make an anti-Hollywood
movie on Hollywood's dime. Hopper might've not accomplished everything
he set out to do, but the result is still unpredictable and one-of-a-kind. (1971,
108 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.
Sergio Corbucci's NAVAJO JOE (Italian
Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Wednesday, 7 and 9pm
Brusquer and visually more brutish than his contemporary (and longtime
friend) Sergio Leone, the prolific Sergio Corbucci had an equal—if not
greater—influence on the development of the Italian Western; while
Leone made the genre respectable by giving it a highfalutin' patina
of decay and decline, Corbucci brought on the blood'n'guts, cranking
up the meanspiritedness until it solidified into something like a worldview.
Made the same year as his seminal DJANGO, NAVAJO JOE centers on a Navajo
Indian (Burt Reynolds, of all people) seeking vengeance against the
bandits who attacked his village; the revenge set-up is typically Corbuccian,
as is the brutal, bloody conclusion. (1966, 93 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
John Huston's THE TREASURE OF THE
SIERRA MADRE (American Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Tuesday, 7pm
THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE stars Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt
as drifters named Dobbs and Curtin who eagerly join an old prospector,
Howard (Walter Huston), in the search for gold in Mexico. They find
and mine the gold very early, so the story is about keeping it. Although "civilized," the determined prospectors cause a greater threat to
one another than any other factor in the wilds. Huston's plot and dialogue
explore the theme of greed, which gives rise to theft and murder. Can
a moral individual exist in a capitalist society, or are we all corrupted
by money? Toward the beginning of the film, another drifter tells Howard
that gold is valuable because it is scarce. Howard disagrees, "A thousand
men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky,
one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but
that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand
months, five hundred years, scrabblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry
and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of
the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it...There's
no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothing except
makin' jewelry with and gold teeth." Yet, Dobbs and Curtin do not
treasure gold for Howard's reason nor the labor of men other than themselves. They
imbue it with the qualities of a chimera, and as a result, it immediately
transcends mere objecthood. The men's greed, especially Dobbs', leads
Huston to also explore the theme of illusion, which does not constitute
an object but exists in the human mind. When Dobbs wrongly believes that
he spots gold, he becomes transfixed as it glitters in the sunshine,
although it is in fact pyrite or fool's gold; he displays the same reaction
when it turns into his property. The early fascination escalates to paranoia
that Howard or Curtin will steal his gold. His delusions ultimately devolve
into madness and the actions that such a state of mind commands. In his
review of the film, James Agee celebrated the quality that Jacques Rivette
later determined as the secret to Howard Hawk's genius. Agee revealed,
"Nominally an adventure story, this is really an exploration of character
as revealed in vivid action; and character and action yield revelations
of their own, political, metaphysical, moral, and above all, poetic." (1948, 126 min, 16mm) CW
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Ti West's THE INNKEEPERS (New American)
Music Box — Check Venue website for showtimes
A couple of schmoes (Sara Paxton, Pat Healy) work their last shifts
at a bankrupt—and possibly haunted—New England hotel in the latest
from low-key throwback horror specialist Ti West. The essence of West's
style is a reversal of the usual ratio of drama to genre action: the
shocking stuff is reduced to a compact minimum (in this case, the last
20 or so minutes), and build-up and details are expanded upon until
they nearly swallow up the whole movie. West knows how to craft a creepy,
suspenseful sequence (one scene involving Paxton wandering the hotel's
first floor with a microphone comes to mind), but even more impressive
is his willingness to apply his chops to more mundane stuff; in many
ways, this is one of the most accurate portrayals of what it's like
to work a boring, repetitive minimum-wage job to make its way to American
screens in some time. Also screening on Friday at 9:45pm and at Midnight
Saturday is West's breakthrough THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009,
93 min, 35mm); West will be present for Q&As with the A.V. Club's
Scott Tobias on Friday at the 7:20pm screening of THE INNKEEPERS and
the 9:45pm screening of HOUSE. (2011, 100 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.musicboxtheatre.com.
Ralph Fiennes' CORIOLANUS (New British)
Landmark's Century Centre Cinema — Check Venue website for showtimes
Lo, by what feat of contrivance came
this picture to us? Though Ralph Fiennes produced, directed, and stars
in the film, "vanity project" is not quite the phrase to describe
CORIOLANUS, as a vain man would not willingly debase himself in this
manner, covered in his own blood and spittle, eyes wild with rage, and
then placed so damn close to the camera's lens. Nay, this is a Voldemort
Project. Fiennes' penchant for terrifying children is put to use here
as an increasingly-crazed general of a fictitious Roman-esque nation.
Banished for his disdain of the common people, he returns as the de
facto leader of an invading army in a single-minded quest for revenge.
Like Kenneth Branagh, Baz Luhrmann and Julie Taymor before, Fiennes
manages to make of a modernized Shakespeare play not exactly a good
movie, but a curious one. A film in which television news anchors speak
in iambic pentameter and Gerard Butler changes accents mid-sentence,
his tongue stumbling over antique phrasings. Ignoring for a moment the
clear camp factor, Fiennes' directorial decisions continually surprise:
his eye for shot composition is well developed. Should he be so lucky
as to direct another feature, we can only hope that film will follow
in CORIOLANUS' mad footsteps. (2011, 122 min, Unknown Format) DM
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More info here.
Jeff Nichols' TAKE SHELTER (New
American)
Doc Films (University of Chicago)
— Saturday, 7 and 9:15pm and Sunday, 3pm
Quite likely the Most Jacques Tourneur-esque
Movie of 2011, Jeff Nichols' second feature stars Michael Shannon as
Curtis LaForche, an Ohio construction worker with a family history of
schizophrenia who begins having nightmares and hallucinations about
an apocalyptic thunderstorm. Hinging on what's probably the most sympathetic
portrayal of mental illness you'll ever find in a psychological horror
film, it's a patient, uneasy movie that—paradoxically—derives most
of its ambiguity from its straightforwardness; instead of playing is-he-or-isn't-he
games with LaForche's sanity, Nichols makes his protagonist aware of
his condition—and then turns his struggle to lead something resembling
a normal life into the center of the film. Shifting the brunt of the
ambiguity away from LaForche's nightmares (which resemble outtakes from
a Richard Kelly film—in the best way possible) to his ability to deal
with them is a bold move; that Nichols is able to pull it off is a testament
to his deft control of form: the non-anamorphic widescreen images (by
Adam Stone, David Gordon Green's second-unit DP during the director's
"massive arthouse cred" days) have a disquieting evenness,
and Nichols knows how to stitch them together to make an unnerving sequence.
This is a genuine oddity, and one of the most singular (and enigmatic)
American films of the last few years. (2011, 120 min, 35mm) IV
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More info at www.docfilms.uchicago.edu.
Preston Sturges' SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS
(American Revival)
Transistor (3819 N. Lincoln Ave.) — Monday, 8pm
To kick-off his month of programming as Guest Curator at Transistor,
Gene Booth, editor of The Molten Rectangle (a local periodical
that comes with DVDs of short films by local filmmakers, including Booth's),
starts with the well-chosen Preston Sturges classic SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS.
About a privileged studio director (Joel McCrea) who sets out to find
the sufferings of real people in greater America after proclaiming to
his producers that he wants to make a more meaningful picture, SULLIVAN'S
TRAVELS mixes Sturges' signature sharp dialogue and with "autobiographical
fantasy" (Dave Kehr) that manages dignity to those featured in
the Walter Evans-like scenes of the less fortunate while maintaining
the charm and humor of its main storyline. Corny as it is, Sullivan
finds his truth and inspiration after he ditches the studio crew that
set out with him and witnesses an audience in an African American church
rolling in laughter at a Mickey Mouse cartoon, causing him to drop his idea of a message
picture and declare his next film will be a comedy. Fast-forward to
2010, another time up political and economic instability and Walt Disney's
TOY STORY 3 is the top-grossing domestic film of the year, lending some
credence to Sturges' prescription of cartoon funnies as a cure-all (although,
given prior years' breadwinners—mostly adaptations of children's books,
comics, and Walt Disney's last theme-park attraction that he oversaw—the
success of TOY STORY 3 may be more indicative of America's need to hold
on to its more reassuring past). Let's hope America holds on to SULLIVAN'S
TRAVELS, a film that champions escapism even as it explores class differences.
(1942, 90 min, DVD Projection) KH
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More info at transistorchicago.com.
Gereon Wetzel's
EL BULLI: COOKING IN PROGRESS (New Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center — Check
Venue website for showtimes
Earlier this week, the well-attended
Facebook page of Grant Achatz' $$$$ Fulton Market restaurant Next attempted
to give away a few passes for one of this week's screenings of the EL
BULLI film, and over three thousand people—most of whom believed the
restaurant was actually giving away reservations for their upcoming
simulation of the titular Catalonian molecular gastronomy destination—publically
pleaded for a chance to spend $350 on fancy dinner. Which is to say—for
the 99 percent not well-connected enough to hook up and/or afford a
reservation—let them eat HDCAM: here, the untrained can puzzle over
the first half of the film, a sort of unannotated laboratory ethnography,
in which typically idiosyncratic El Bulli chef Ferran Adrià and his
staff attempt to deconstruct and reconstruct some seemingly basic ingredients
(tangerines, olive oil, pasta) in aggressively novel forms. The latter
half, taking place on opening night and thereby conforming more closely
to reality-show pacing conventions, curiously manages to avoid a seemingly
relevant creature: the El Bulli customer, those epicurean global
citizens with time and money to burn. So if you're wondering who's actually
supporting this outrageous, hyperefficient, avant-garde barnacle of
inequality on our tumbling planet, well, you can take a number on that,
too. (2010, 108 min, HDCAM) MC
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Check the venue website for possible
sold-out shows.
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More info at www.siskelfilmcenter.org.
MORE SCREENINGS AND EVENTS
The Milk Factory (907 N. Winchester Ave., Rear Apt.) hosts
From the Sea to the Stars on Saturday at 5pm. The program, curated
by filmmaker Jeremy Bessoff, is a "collection of short films describing
the wonders of the night sky, the frigid mystery of the abyss and human-kind's
desire to understand their unreachable mysteries." Screening are FIRE,
AIR WATER (Jason Halprin), DANCING ON ACCIDENT UNDERWATER (Jeremy Bessoff
and Nick Osborn), WHAT HITS THE MOON (Lilli Carré), LONG VOCATION (Vicky
Yen), BIRTH OF THE STAR CHILD (Jeremy Bessoff), THE DREAMLESS SLEEP
(Nancy Andrews), and A CONVERSATION OVER LUNCH (Shelly Dodson). Unconfirmed
format(s). This event is part of 2nd Floor Rear, a 24-hour festival
of alternative art spaces. More info at http://2ndfloorrear.wordpress.com.
Chicago Filmmakers
presents Group 312 Films on Saturday at 8pm. Member of this local
digital filmmaking collective will be on hand to screen and discuss
nearly twenty short works. Directors include Kevin B. Chatham, Sean
Hopp, Brian Klein, Chris Mann, Satan2000, Galina Shevchenko, Richard
Syska, and Brian Wyrick. Video Projection.
The Conversations at the Edge
series (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) kicks off its fall season with
We Began By Measuring Distance, a program of short works from 1989
to 2011 by women makers from or connected to Palestine. The screening
was curated and will be introduced by SAIC professor Tirtza Even and
will include work by Basma al-Sharif (in person), Jumana Emil Abboud,
Mona Hatoum, and Annemarie Jacir. Various projection formats.
Cinema Minima at Cole's Bar
(2338 N. Milwaukee Ave.) presents Cinema Culture "Independent
Film Night" on Sunday at 8pm. The program includes work by
David Madry, Tommy Heffron, Nelson Carvajal, Amanda Daniels, Lewis Vaughn,
Andy Cahill, and Amir George. DVD Projection. Free admission.
The Salonathon series at
Beauty Bar (1444 W. Chicago Ave.) welcomes back the Chicago Underground
Film Festival with the program Love & Sex (Mostly sex) on
Monday at 9pm (hosted bar from 8-9pm). Screening are THE COLOR OF LOVE
(Peggy Ahwesh), REMOVED (Naomi Uman), I'D RATHER BE DEAD THAN LIVE IN
THIS WORLD (Andrew Semans), BLUE MOVIE (Mark Street), PACIFIER (Oscar
Perez), and THE OPERATION (Marne Lucas and Jacob Pander). Unconfirmed
format(s).
Also at Block Cinema (Northwestern University) this week: Rowland Brown's 1933 film BLOOD
MONEY (35mm) screens on Saturday at 2pm; and Michael Curtiz's classic
CASABLANCA (35mm) screens for free on Thursday at 7pm
The Film Studies Center (University
of Chicago) screens Marjane Satrapi's 2007 French/US animated film
PERSEPOLIS (35mm) on Friday at 7pm. The RSVP list is full, but you
can get on the wait list if you arrive by 6:45pm.
Also at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week: Robert Bresson's classic 1956 film A MAN ESCAPED (35mm) screens on Saturday (3pm), Sunday (5pm), and Monday (6pm); Cédric
Klapisch's 2011 French film MY PIECE OF THE PIE (HDCam Video)
screens for a week; and Ian Cheney's 2011 documentary THE CITY DARK (HDCam Video) shows on Saturday (8pm), Wednesday (6:15 and 8pm), and
Thursday (8:15pm).
Also at Doc Films (University
of Chicago) this week: Wes Anderson's THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (Unconfirmed format) is Friday at 7, 9:15, and 11:30pm and Sunday at
1pm; Joseph Sargent's 1974 thriller THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO
THREE (35mm) is on Thursday at 7pm; and Adrian Lyne's 1980 film
FOXES (35mm) is on Thursday at 9:15pm.
Also at the Music Box this week:
Asghar Farhadi's new Iranian film A SEPARATION continues; Céline
Sciamma's new French film is held over in the Saturday and Sunday matinee
slot; the other weekend matinee is Norman Jewison's 1967 film IN
THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT; and John Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS screens
Friday and Saturday at Midnight. All 35mm.
Facets Cinémathèque screens Laura Israel's 2010 documentary WINDFALL this week. Unconfirmed
format.
High Concept Laboratories
(1401 W. Wabansia) hosts Fukushima: 1 Year After the Meltdown on Sunday from 5-8pm. This is a reception for the film UNCANNY TERRAIN,
with proceeds benefiting the filmmakers' return to Japan.
The evening will a feature a video
preview of footage from the film, with live accompaniment by the film's
composer Tatsu Aoki and his band The Miyumi Project. Japanese American
artist David Tanimura will showcase his digital collages inspired by
the nuclear crisis. Refreshments will be served.
Alliance Française (54 W. Chicago
Ave.) presents Cine-Teen Les Lutins
on Thursday at 5pm. This program, intended for a teen audience, will
include the films DOUNOUIA, LA VIE (20 min), DEYROUTH (17 min), AGLAEE
(20 min), and CLIMAX (15 min). Unconfirmed format(s).
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