:: FRIDAY, JANUARY 30 - THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Jafar Panahi's CRIMSON GOLD (Iran)

Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm

Abbas Kiarostami receives screenplay credit on Jafar Panahi’s fourth feature, CRIMSON GOLD, and one of the many compelling things about the film is how it plays like an inversion of Kiarostami’s TASTE OF CHERRY. That film told the story of one man’s efforts to find someone to bury him after he commits suicide; the hero’s quest, which confirms his connection to other people, is ultimately life-affirming in spite of its morbid nature. CRIMSON GOLD opens with a botched robbery that ends with the hero’s suicide, then flashes back to show the days leading up to that event; it’s a despairing journey that builds upon Panahi’s depiction of modern-day Tehran as an unforgiving hellhole that he introduced in THE CIRCLE. As in TASTE OF CHERRY, the hero’s progress is marked by three encounters, though here, the hero doesn’t initiate them. Hossain is a pizza delivery man, and the people he meets on his deliveries tend to regard him from the start as a social inferior. (Compare this with the gratitude with which the strangers regard Mr. Badii when he offers them rides in his SUV.) Each encounter reminds Hossain of his powerlessness within Iranian society, though, ironically, each one hinges on a moment of camaraderie. In the first, Hossain recognizes his customer as a military buddy from the Iran-Iraq War; the old acquaintance, embarrassed to see Hossain reduced to delivering pizzas, leaves Hossain with kind words and a handsome tip. The delivery man is unable to complete his second delivery, as the apartment building he’s supposed to enter has been surrounded by a police tactical unit, which waits in ambush for people leaving a party with illegal drinking and dancing on the second floor. The officer in charge of the unit berates Hossain for trying to enter the building, but forbids him from leaving the scene, since he could find a phone somewhere and warn the partygoers about their impending arrest. Hossain has a poignant conversation with a teenage soldier before deciding to share his undelivered pizzas with policemen lying in wait. The third key encounter of CRIMSON GOLD takes place in the high-rise condo of a rich man whose apartment has just been vacated by two female guests. Feeling spurned and lonely, the rich man invites Hossain in for dinner. He’s much nicer to Hossain than the wealthy jewelry store owner who’d condescended to him in an earlier scene; still, the apparent randomness of the rich man’s kindness—which Hossain clearly recognizes—speaks to the great, and likely insurmountable, social divide between him and Hossain. Like Kiarostami’s decision to place the hero’s death at the start of the movie, the scene in the high-rise makes Hossain’s act of desperation seem inevitable. Heightening the film’s morbid air is the ghostlike lead performance by Hossain Emadeddin, an actual pizza delivery man and an actual paranoid schizophrenic. Emaddedin’s deadpan under-reaction to practically everything borders on comical, yet it also reflects the inability of isolated, working-poor individuals to impact the system that degrades them. (2003, 96 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Patrick Yau’s (or Johnnie To’s) THE LONGEST NITE (Hong Kong)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm and Saturday, 9:30pm

“Macau is a melting pot of different gangs,” narrates Sam (Tony Leung) at the start of THE LONGEST NITE before he goes into the key alliances and rivalries that define the local scene. Sam is a crooked cop who acts as negotiator between two of the top Triads; he has his work cut out for him at present, seeing as the leaders of said Triads are contemplating a new coalition while a third boss may want to have both of them killed. Adding to Sam’s troubles is the arrival in Macau of a mysterious stranger named Tony (Lau Ching-wan), who immediately starts making trouble for the Triads by stirring up animosities between different gang members. THE LONGEST NITE alternates between the exploits of Sam and Tony over the course of one high-pressure evening and in doing so illuminates one of Johnnie To’s favorite themes, the interconnectedness between criminals and law enforcement agents.  Patrick Yau may be the credited director on the film, but To and Wai Ka-fai, the producers, claim to have fired him after he shot just five scenes; they then took over the rest of production, with Wai rewriting the script and To directing. The results certainly feel in keeping with To and Wai’s work, given the balletic camera movements, wild plot twists, and charismatic characters. There’s genuine star power on display here, most notably from the two leads. Leung is particularly strong, playing against type as a sadistic bully; the way he inverts his usual charm recalls Henry Fonda’s classic turn in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968). Lau is just as good as the agent of chaos, suggesting at times an avenging angel. As both protagonists behave unpredictably, the characterizations fuel the action, which is directed (characteristically) brilliantly. Screening as part of the Revolution of Their Time: 30 Years of Milkyway Image series. (1998, 81 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Frank Perry's DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 6pm

DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE is a comedy that makes adjectives like "blistering" and "astringent" feel hopelessly toothless, and its humor is so dark it could serve as protection against a midnight air raid. When it was originally released, it caused an immediate sensation. Carrie Snodgress became the next Bright Young Thing overnight, earning a Best Actress nomination. But Snodgress wanted no part of the Hollywood machine, even neglecting to show up at the Academy Awards ceremony. She dropped out of the movies at the height of her success when she married Neil Young and went off to raise their son Zeke on their ranch. Decades of spotty distribution and critical neglect have transformed DIARY into an almost forgotten film. Yet it anticipates movies such as CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, THE ICE STORM, most of Neil LaBute's best work (especially YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS), and possibly even AMERICAN BEAUTY. Director Frank Perry, whose wife Eleanor adapted Sue Kaufman's novel for the screenplay, displays astonishing prescience about how gender roles would play out over the coming years. Akin to Paddy Chayefsky's "institutional" satires THE HOSPITAL and NETWORK, Perry's film is nothing less than the ultimate satire of the institution of modern marriage. Screening as part of the Femalaise series. (1970, 103 min, 35mm) [Rob Christopher]

Lav Diaz’s MAGELLAN (International)

Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

There’s an awkwardness in MAGELLAN that belies its ethereal cinematography and nimble camerawork, but it’s studied rather than amateurish; one senses Filipino auteur Lav Diaz and star Gael Garcia Bernal’s consideration of the Portuguese explorer in what feels like real time, as they attempt to embody and understand him from different vantage points. The film begins not with the eponymous explorer, however, but with a Malay woman seeing an unidentified white man—in establishing a throughline of perspective, we the viewers do not see the man but just the Malay woman’s unnerved reaction. It’s a justified move, as the rest of the film amplifies this trepidation, spanning the Portuguese's capture of Malacca in 1511, where Ferdinand Magellan served under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque, to Magellan’s historic two-plus-year expedition on behalf of the Spanish crown, during which he died in the Philippines. (His voyage was completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano, making their journey the first circumnavigation of Earth, as well as the first documented European contact with the Philippines.) Many are calling this Diaz’s most accessible film, owing both to its comparatively short running time—not quite three hours, it's about the average length of a summer tentpole at this point—and its star, Gael García Bernal, about whom Diaz started a rumor at last year’s New York Film Festival that the Mexican actor had been cast while he, Diaz, had been having sex with the film’s producers, Albert Serra and Joaquim Sapinho. About whether or not that’s accurate—its relative accessibility, not Bernal’s casting during sex—Diaz said in an interview with IndieWire that he didn’t think that was necessarily the case, and that “it’s still part of the long, long work. I consider all my work as one. MAGELLAN is still part of this continuing dialogue in this medium, trying to talk about the human condition. It’s always about that.” This dialogue centers on colonialism and one of its messianic figures, who’s an integral part of Filipino culture. For example, as Diaz reveals in a Screen Slate interview, one of his country’s most popular songs is about the explorer; it’s a parody by Yoyoy Villame, and more or less lays out the latter half of Diaz’s film, culminating in Magellan’s defeat during the 1521 Battle of Mactan. Diaz has generated controversy by asserting that after several years of research he believes that Lapulapu, a chieftain who is said to have killed Magellan but who is presented in the film as a mythological decoy of sorts, was created by village leadership to rankle the colonizers and discourage them from continuing to convert the local population to Christianity. (If you’re interested in questions of historical fealty, this column by Filipino historian Ambeth Ocampo for the Philippine Daily Inquirer is an interesting read.) But as a dangling carrot for colonial hubris, it’s a compelling concept; Magellan initially gains the natives' trust by appearing to heal chieftain Rajah Humabon’s sick child using the Santo Niño de Cebú, a statue of the baby Jesus and now the oldest Christian artifact in the Philippines. Humabon subsequently became one of the first Christian converts, yet he later proved a traitor—first to his own people, steering Magellan into battle with the neighboring chieftain Lapulapu (though in Diaz’s revision this maneuver is framed as the aforementioned attempt to halt further conversions, with the Lapulapu figure being more folklorish than corporeal), and eventually to the remaining Spaniards after Magellan’s death. I was surprised to learn through interviews with Diaz that the director is committed to a Socratic mode of filmmaking; there’s an opacity to his films, reinforced by their extensive run times, that simultaneously rejects outright didacticism but in retrospect does seem to embrace filmmaking as discourse, a tool to inspire contemplation. Perhaps it’s this, too, that inspires the tentativeness of the staging, with feelings such as pride, ardor, uncertainty, and even prosaism (especially as it relates to the years-long circumnavigation) depicted as tenuous concepts rather than historical equanimity. Amidst the beautiful but still truer to reality cinematography that conveys much of the story, there are arbitrary interludes featuring Magellan and his wife, Beatriz (Ângela Azevedo), that are filmed dreamily, with Beatriz (who was the original inspiration for the film, which was announced several years back with the working title BEATRIZ, THE WIFE) a stand-in for an inner reverie that doesn’t redeem Magellan but does humanize him in the most literal sense of the word. Speaking of cinematography, between this and his work on Albert Serra’s AFTERNOONS OF SOLITUDE and PACIFICTION, Artur Tort is one of my new favorites in this space. Unrelated to the film itself but interesting to note also is that Diaz contracted tuberculosis whilst editing, and that there’s also a nine-hour version of the film that may someday be released. (2025, 163 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Andrew Bujalski's COMPUTER CHESS (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 8:30pm

COMPUTER CHESS is a triumph of erratic moves: call it a knight’s-tour-de-force. Made at a time when other notable “mumblecore” adherents like the Duplass brothers were starting to venture into more commercial, star-laden territory, Bujalski instead swerved hard in the opposite direction with a formally audacious, thematically arcane period experiment. Set in 1980, when both the homebrew computing movement and Cold War cybernetics were at their apogee, COMPUTER CHESS shrewdly evokes the era through its use of black-and-white vacuum-tube cameras and split-screen video editing effects. No mere gimmick, the choice of medium channels a McLuhan-fueled excitement for new electronic media possibilities, rather than an empty nostalgia for the aesthetics of the past. COMPUTER CHESS initially purports to be a documentary covering a tournament between chess-playing computers, hosted by an avuncular chess master (played by film critic Gerald Peary). Crowded into the windowless conference room of a nondescript Holiday Inn, the human participants—a formidable ensemble of dweebs, academics, and misanthropes—confront the stresses of both advanced technology and basic human interaction. But as soon as the competition gets underway, COMPUTER CHESS starts breaking its own rules, dropping the nonfiction pretense and following odd narrative tangents that cut across a spectrum of pre-Reagan cultural energies. A ghost-in-the-machine mystery plot, played with a lightly ironic touch, careens into new-age encounter groups, Pentagon paranoia and polyamory. What casually emerges, between the awkward hotel-bar conversations, regression therapy sessions and dreamlike interludes featuring elevator-riding cats, is nothing less than a shrewd prehistory of the “California Ideology” that dominates the tech industry today. (It’s easy to see comic figures like Michael Papageorge, a cash-strapped chess hustler indelibly played by Myles George, as a proto-techbro of the Elon Musk variety). For this largely improvisatory exercise, Bujalski cast non-professional actors, many of whom had a background in computers and mathematics; the presence of two Richard Linklater alumni (DAZED AND CONFUSED’s Wiley Wiggins and animator Bob Sabiston of WAKING LIFE) signals COMPUTER CHESS’ kinship with that Austin fixture’s discursive, digressive portraits of American subculture. Linklater’s made his share of period pieces, but as a creatively restless, medium-specific, psychically probing analysis of the recent past, I prefer to think of COMPUTER CHESS as a low-budget, cockeyed counterpart to Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER (2012) and INHERENT VICE (2014). Followed by Q&A with writer/director Andrew Bujalski, cast and crew member (and UChicago Computer Science professor) Gordon Kindlmann, and others. Screening as part of the Screen Play: Cinematic Visions of Video Games and Sports series. (2013, 91 min, 35mm) [Michael Metzger]

Frank Capra's THE MIRACLE WOMAN (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am

Frank Capra's THE MIRACLE WOMAN was one of only two films of his from the 1930s to lose money, and though this was later attributed to the film's censorship in Britain by their Board of Film Classification, it could also have been due in part to its initial critical reception. Critics at the time praised star Barbara Stanwyck's fiery opening monologue, in which she, as "Sister" Florence Fallon, takes a congregation to task after her priest father dies penniless and having recently been terminated from his position, but the film was largely criticized for opening on such a strong note, thus causing the rest of the film to simmer in comparison. Following Florence's impassioned outburst, the rest of the film details her decision to join forces with a con man and "punish" religious hypocrisy by fleecing those who attend her evangelical road show. She then meets John, a blind man who was previously shown as having decided not to commit suicide after hearing one of Florence's sermons on the radio. They soon fall in love, and Florence seeks to extricate herself from the con. Though the film is never as surprising or exciting as its vehement opening credo, it is exceptionally well written, and at times even genuinely humorous. It's based on the play Bless You Sister by John Meehan and Robert Riskin, which was inspired by evangelical superstar Aimee Semple McPherson, or "Sister Aimee" as she was more popularly known. Adapted to the screen by longtime Capra collaborator Jo Swerling, it's said to largely retain the play's witty dialogue and fast-paced narrative. Capra did compromise, though, by inserting the con man character (Bob Hornsby, played by Sam Hardy) and making Sister Florence appear to have been exploited rather than willfully complicit in the scheme. Perhaps decided upon in part because of objections raised by Harry Cohn, then head of Columbia Pictures, it eventually became Capra's greatest regret about the film that was largely forgotten until 1970, when it played in a retrospective sidebar at the New York Film Festival. According to Dr. James Robertson's book The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action 1913-1972, "some forty years after the event Capra was to admit that he had pulled his punches over the film by shifting the blame for religious confidence tricksterism onto an unscrupulous promoter and away from the disillusioned evangelist." The film's script is nonetheless estimable with its earnest ruminations and smart romantic dialogue, and the performances more than seal the deal. Capra once called Stanwyck a "primitive emotional," a characteristic that's evident in the pulpit and out. David Manners proficiently characterizes John, subtly transforming him from suicidal cynic to romantic jokester against Stanwyck's more outwardly emotive portrayal. Despite Capra's regret over his concession, there's still some moral ambiguity left in both the film and Stanwyck's performance. As he recounted in his autobiography, "[Hornsby] cons Fallon into it. He gets wealthy. She becomes his flamboyant stooge. Did she or did she not believe those 'inspiring' sermons delivered in diaphanous robes, with live lions at her side? I didn't know, Stanwyck didn't know, and neither did the audience." Though Capra is now remembered primarily for films such as MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, which are more conventionally constructed, THE MIRACLE WOMAN is two third-acts sandwiching a second, and altogether a delightful insight into the early careers of Capra and company. Screening as part of the Working Girl: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck series. (1931, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Chantal Akerman’s PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GIRL AT THE END OF THE 60s IN BRUSSELS (France)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 4pm

The French anthology series All the Boys and Girls of Their Age—commissioned for channel ARTE by producer Chantal Poupaud, formerly a publicist for films by Marguerite Duras, Aki Kaurismäki, and Chantal Akerman—asked a distinguished roster of directors to capture the period of their youth within a single hourlong episode, stipulating only that each contain an era-appropriate needledrop and a scene at a party. Three of these were eventually developed into features and released theatrically: WILD REEDS (André Téchiné), TOO MUCH HAPPINESS (Cédric Kahn), and COLD WATER (Olivier Assayas). If Assayas maximized the use of music (as did Claire Denis in her installment US GO HOME), Akerman structured her segment around the inner dialogue leading up to a perfectly soundtracked movie moment, a crosshatch view into an aestheticized mode of nostalgia. Circé Lethem plays heroine Michèle as a young mind on overdrive, looking to lose her innocence first at a cafe where she and friend Danielle (Joelle Marlier) meet boys, then at a cinema where she impulsively connects with Paul (Julien Rassam), a deserter from the French army—the month is April, 1968. Michèle connects with Paul but suggests that he might like her friend better, thinking like a filmmaker, crafting a romance in her head, the better to step inside it. Both youths are in a stormy mood, speaking of impending cataclysms as they walk through a modern Paris with no traces of period dressing, a Situationist gesture in which the now conceals the real—“sous les pavés, la plage.” It was in 1968 that Akerman directed her first short SAUT MA VILLE, staging a comic apocalypse inside her kitchen, and PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GIRL… expands upon the psychic and emotional terrain established in her brasher formal experiments. Not only do ordered domestic spaces contain unruly dramas, but films contain their own countervailing narratives. In the afternoon Michèle directs for herself, her sweet, trusting union with Paul is really the confirmation of a queer awakening. Their tryst (set to the melancholic lines of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”: “they are leaning out for love / and they will lean that way forever”) is a rehearsal for the ecstatic disappointment of the party climax, in which she clasps Danielle’s hands at the center of a circle dance (the music is Ritchie Valens, “La Bamba”) before losing her to an offscreen encounter. The motif of desertion, of battles deferred, fits this deceptively complex film about an adolescent flavor of alienation: the feeling that the real thing must be happening somewhere else. (1994, 60 min, DCP Digital) [Brendan Boyle]

Sergei Bondarchuk's WAR AND PEACE (USSR)

Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 11am [SOLD OUT]

Is it a surprise that the Soviet film system gave a blank check to a novice Turkish director so he could helm the nation’s most prized text? A Soviet nationalist, Sergei Bondarchuk attempted to make a film to settle the score at the height of the Cold War. Despite King Vidor’s WAR AND PEACE (1956) polling well in Russia with Audrey Hepburn starring as Natasha, the question remained: Why is it that this novel, the pride of Russian national character, was adapted in America? Bondarchuk sought to prove Vidor and capitalist Hollywood’s inferiority to Russian creativity, backed by the Soviet Union. While political pressure loomed large over production, the young director desired cachet amongst more well-known Russian auteurs, who gawked at his actor’s ambition. Leo Tolstoy once said, “To influence others, an artist must be a seeker, his work must be a search.” For his sophomore film, Bondarchuk began preparation in 1961; the process included hundreds of script pages and thousands of storyboards. Forging his team, Bondarchuk took from an adage of Gogol: nothing astonishes one more than a perfectly coordinated agreement between all the parts. During the yearlong preproduction, thousands of letters would pour in across the Soviet Union from citizens who knew Tolstoy’s words by heart, offering their support. Museums across the country offered to provide period props and costumes. The studio wanted the film to mark the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino, a pinnacle scene of the novel. The KGB and military offered access to helicopters, aircraft and fifteen thousand soldiers, one hundred twenty thousand extras, twenty-three tons of explosives, and ten thousand smoke grenades. After a long and tenuous casting and rehearsal process, the four-part epic began filming in September 1962 with a cast of three hundred speaking parts. With interiors shot on Mosfilm’s sound stages, the immense production design team constructed a life-size palace ballroom. For exterior sequences such as the burning of Moscow, an actual set prepared for demolition sat in a production lot. The first part opens with escalating battles of the Napoleonic wars, presenting bloody combat in counterpoint with the whimsical celebration of Saint Petersburg aristocracy. This introduces a core motif of the epic: the idle joys of the rich played against the backdrop of a burning and mortared countryside. As the viewer compares these two isolated worlds, the camera ascends through the clouds as an objective observer. In the second part, the story focuses on the betrayal of Natasha (Ludmila Savelyeva) to her betrothed Andrei. For long sequences, cameramen were placed on roller skates with handheld cameras to mingle between over one hundred waltzing extras. Expressing her agony over her wrongs, Natasha’s scenes of anguish prove some of the most violent sequences of the entire story. The final part took ten months of preproduction as the team planned to film the sacking and burning of Moscow. With limited takes, six cameras on foot and more overhead via helicopter captured the chaos as Napoleon’s army invaded the third Rome. During production, the director suffered two heart attacks (one which took place during a screening of Mikhail Kalatozov’s I AM CUBA [1964]). By the final scenes of the film, we witness our actor/director burst into laughter. The character, like director and audience, recognizes that while we may stand speechless by pure magnificence, we must remain aware we float between expansive existence containing both pleasure and horror where we have no control. In a postmortem, the director reflected: Our duty is to introduce our future viewer to the origins of sublime art, to visualize the innermost secrets of the novel War and Peace to convey the same sense of being fully alive, the joy of being human. In our very different time when peace is in danger, we must love life as never before and find a way to convey to everyone the feeling of love for life on our beautiful planet Earth. Screening as part of the Settle In series. Please note this screening is sold out. (1965, 453 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Djibril Diop Mambéty’s HYENAS (Senegal)

Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm

Djibril Diop Mambéty’s first feature, TOUKI BOUKI (1973), is one of the most important African films, a work that single-handedly brought an avant-garde sensibility to the cinema of Senegal and to that of the continent as a whole. (It’s also exuberant and laugh-out-loud funny—there’s nothing highfalutin’ about Mambéty’s experimentalism.) His second, HYENAS, is less groundbreaking in terms of imagery and découpage, but it’s hardly a minor work. A fierce satire of Africa’s colonial history, HYENAS advances a deceptively subdued aesthetic that allows the caustic themes to resonate loudly. It tells the story of a poverty-stricken village in the middle of the desert that receives a visit from a woman who grew up there but left years ago to seek her fortune. She’s filthy rich now; indeed, she seems to have nothing in common with the young woman the townspeople once knew. She’s also poised to lavish her wealth on the needy community... so long as the inhabitants agree to murder the shopkeeper who impregnated her and left her in the lurch when she was a teenager. Mambéty adapted the story from the 1956 play The Visit by the Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt, yet he tailors it so perfectly to the concerns of modern Africa that I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d learned after watching it that the writer-director conceived of it himself. Mambéty’s willingness to make both sides look bad may be the film’s most courageous aspect. Rather than vilify solely the capitalist/colonialist, HYENAS also critiques the colonial subjects who go along with them and end up internalizing their exploiters’ warped morality. This moral vision brings to mind Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s explanation for his satire MOTHER KUSTERS GOES TO HEAVEN: “I fire in all directions.” Screening as part of the African Cinema from Independence to Now Lecture series. (1992, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s NEPTUNE FROST (US/Rwanda)

Siskel Film Center – Sunday and Tuesday, 6pm

“The movie has a plot that defies common sense,” wrote Roger Ebert upon revisiting Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS some years back, “but its very discontinuity is a strength.” I watched Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s NEPTUNE FROST the night before I left on a trip to Berlin; the film came to mind as I read informational placards at an exhibit about Lang’s visionary achievement at the Deutsche Kinemathek’s Museum für Film und Fernsehen. Much like METROPOLIS, Williams and Uzeyman’s inspired Afrofuturist disquisition addresses a contemporary moment from so far into the future (spiritually if not in actuality; it's not made clear when it takes place) that solutions of the present look positively prehistoric by comparison. It’s the current juncture that the filmmakers interrogate through a meticulously constructed albeit intriguingly opaque narrative, rapidly confronting all means of social issues in such a way that defies "common sense" and is all the better for it. The film centers on two characters—Neptune (Elvis Ngabo/Cheryl Isheja), an intersex runaway who miraculously transitions from male to female toward the beginning of the film, and Matalusa (Bertrand "Kaya Free" Ninteretse), a coltan miner spurred by the death of his younger brother—and the impact their eventual coupling has on the remote Burundi hideaway where a radical cyberpunk hacker collective later endeavors to seek retribution from an unjust world. In summary it sounds cohesive enough, but in practice Williams (a multi-hyphenate talent who wrote the film’s script) wastes no opportunity in adding layer after layer to an already dense political mythology; the persistent refrain of the phrase “unanimous goldmine” used as a greeting is just one example. NEPTUNE FROST is also a musical, with memorable, politically charged songs written by Williams and performed as outré set pieces reminiscent of the cannily exuberant numbers in Bruno Dumont’s two Joan of Arc films. The costumes and production design are similarly memorable; both were created by Rwandan artist Cedric Mizero, who utilized recycled materials and what might otherwise be termed trash to create an out-of-this world, but still decidedly of this world, DIY milieu. Rwandan actress and filmmaker Uzeyman, who looked to shooting in her home country due to Burundi being too unstable, is also the film’s cinematographer, responsible for the nimbleness with which beautiful African landscapes and hacker dance parties both evince a similar halcyon beauty. NEPTUNE FROST is part of a larger project, titled MartyrLoserKing after the hacker collective; there’s reportedly more to come, a few more albums and even a graphic novel. The sheer ambition of its intent and the sublimity of its realization, marked by that brazen discontinuity, are what set it and others of its ilk—those films ahead of their time yet still very much of their time—definitively apart. Screening as part of the Lo-Fi Sci-Fi series. (2021, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Soft Systems Presents: Materials and Processes for an Expanding World

Parlour and Ramp (2130 W. 21st St.) – Saturday, 7pm

In defense of small files and unfinished work, Soft Systems’s curated program selects nine titles from a larger pool of mailed-in submissions of videos, including video submitted on USB drives. This program is a compilation of snippets—nothing longer than ten minutes—made from a hysterical or absurd performance and a low budget. Fragmented, raw, uncontrived yet sometimes baffling, together they reflect a post-truth reality. UNPITCHED INSTRUMENTS (2 min) by Noelle Whitaker resembles a whimsical remake of Martha Rosler’s SEMIOTICS OF THE KITCHEN: the silly presentations of bell, rattle, clave, and tools that make sound subvert the seriousness of its instruction-like format. Wonderful Cringe plays with the feedback loop between two phone cameras in YOU CAN BE ANYTHING (3 min), both a coincidental recording of a stream and a completely deep dive into the weird and eerie world of navel-gazing at a pixelated self on the screen. TAITAIxTina examines in close-ups what looks like a variation or process video in LIT LUZ (5 min) of her performance for the Lit & Luz Live Magazine show. During the five-minute runtime, we watch the artist glue together a sandal and a helmet with some kind of metallic epoxy and then try to destroy them by throwing them from the second floor. The sound passes for ASMR, but the images unleash a perverse, destructive energy. Vanessa Norton alleges that they float their friends’ underwear down the dirtiest rivers in America in DIRTY WET (2 min). What a weird thing to do. But maybe it can be cathartic to stare at a cotton boxer drifting into a fleet of dead reed, slime, and foam and think of it as a symbol for our broken climate and democracy. CRYO EXPLORATION ECO ENDURANCE TRAINING (5 min) by MMM is a slowed-down video documentation of the artist plunging into icy water in a shiny silver suit. Its soundtrack, also slowed down, morphs into a dubby, staticky, and nihilistic soundscape. Leah Sandler’s LE JETTY (9 min) follows in the footsteps of Chris Marker’s famed 1962 proto-cyberpunk film LA JETEE and tells another post-apocalyptic story through subverting the meaning of everyday images. THE SIGHT IS A WOUND (8 min) lectures on the impossibility of making art or images amidst broadcast and livestreamed genocide in Gaza as we see artist Parham Ghalamdar sets a pile of his paintings on fire and documents its destruction. Zoey Solomon’s internet cinema THE FIRE IN THE MADHOUSE (4 min), with its title culled from a video sample heavily used and manipulated in the film, features psychedelic advocate Terence McKenna’s final interview from 1996; it is yet another exhilarating techno-pessimistic pondering on the end of humanity. The program concludes with Anabelle Lee Dehm's TRUST FALL (2 min), a vivid body metaphor for the utter failure of our social support system. [Nicky Ni]

Ousmane Sembène's BLACK GIRL (Senegal/France)

Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm

Frequently cited as the greatest African filmmaker, Sembène was also a strike leader and novelist before working in cinema. His decision to begin making films grew out of his progressive politics, as he felt he could reach a larger audience with movies than with literature, especially in his native Senegal. Sembène's style was fittingly accessible, sometimes to the point of transparency: he often depicted controversial social issues in terms of everyday life, taking pleasure in human behavior and allowing larger themes to emerge organically from the characters' experiences. This is certainly true of his first feature, BLACK GIRL (LA NOIRE DE...), which broaches the subject of African labor in Europe by regarding the servant girl of the title as she accompanies her employers as they return to France to live. The film is based on one of Sembène's early stories; it exemplifies the concentration and eye for detail best associated with short fiction. Screening as part of the African Cinema from Independence to Now Lecture series. (1966, 59 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Georges Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE (France)

Alliance Francaise – Monday, 6:30pm

According to Billy Idol's memoir Dancing with Myself, "Eyes Without A Face" was written to keep himself from breaking. Lamenting relationships he had sacrificed to infidelity, he says he was, "on the edge of disintegrating into madness." Idol’s anthem tells of his own mask slipping and showing that only the eyes remain. Georges Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE was based on a 1959 novel by Jean Redon, a man half-erased by history—a journalist with no bio or other surviving work. The story was fleshed out by the writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the architects of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s DIABOLIQUE (1955) and authors of the novel The Living And the Dead, which would provide the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (1958). Franju entrusted the narrative to them with one caveat: no mystery sub-plot. He wanted his film to be distinctively non-Hitchcockian. EYES WITHOUT A FACE was sold as the first “adult” horror film: a Jean Cocteau nightmare with surgical precision in the vein of THE CORPSE VANISHES (1942). Instead of Bela Lugosi stealing glands to restore his wife's youth, Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) surgically removes faces for his daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), after she was left disfigured in a car accident. Face transplant horror became an inspiration for future filmmakers. Jess Franco’s THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (1962) features a similar transplant and led to multiple sequels, with FACELESS (1988) revisiting the concept explicitly. The film is also seen as a genesis for body horror and an early example of extreme cinema. Pauline Kael wrote that the film shows "a terrible parody of the scientific method." The doctor expounds theories to the public about “heterografting”—face-swap. Putting his theories into practice to save his daughter's beauty, Génessier commits himself to a scientific method that includes abuse of dogs, kidnapping, and murder. An extended sequence involving the removal of a face is filmed with documentary detail. Dr. Génessier's lack of ethics or morals in his procedures leave us with dread. The mad scientist here, like in many 1950s films and dating back to FRANKENSTEIN (1931), is a doctor whose credentials are sound until obsession makes him question the necessity of the Hippocratic Oath. The film opens with Louise, played by Alida Valli, dumping a body into the Seine. She is Génessier’s nurse, former patient, accomplice, and true believer. Composer Maurice Jarre gives her a jaunty carnival leitmotif when she stalks victims, while Christiane’s theme drifts with wounded innocence. Louise obeys without question, until the system she trusted turns on her. Her eventual death offers no hysteria, only confusion. “Why?” she asks, with a single tear. Our sympathy isn’t in her passing, but with her faith in an authoritative figure that promised progress beyond morality. With each graft the transplanted tissue rots from necrosis. Failure means another victim is around the corner. With Christiane's faked death, her fiancé Jacque is the only one suspicious. In league with the police, a sting operation is set up to investigate the doctor. Their plan fails and puts another victim in danger, leading to the ultimate finale. Through sincere conviction of story, Franju captures clinical horror with poetic beauty. Nothing in the film feels grafted on. After a decade of battling radiation monsters, overgrown insects, and aliens from far away worlds, Gothic horror became fashionable again. With the release of Hammer's CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) a new variation of monster was born, this time with Technicolor and blood. With Hammer’s success, French producers were seeking new heights in horror which Franju’s film more than provided. EYES WITHOUT A FACE along with PEEPING TOM and PSYCHO complete a triad of films released in 1960 that forever shaped the genre. John Carpenter would base his original design for Michael Myers on the mask worn by Edith Scob. Franju has said, "I'm led to give documentary realism the appearance of fiction." He would reverse this concept in 1960. As a co-founder of Cinématheque Française in 1936, he would meet and befriend other filmmakers whose work would leave a lasting impression. Longtime friend André Breton would instill the impact of surrealism as juxtaposition of ideologies. From his early film commissions, short documentaries, and connections to surrealism Franju was able to mix horror with irony as he commented on modern ideals of progress. The result is an art-house masterpiece suitable for any Grindhouse theater. The beauty of an emotionless mask is that one can project anything they wish onto it, but the eyes will always tell the truth. Screening as part of the February Fantastique Film Festival, followed by a post-screening discussion with Will Morris. (1960, 90 min, Digital Projection) [Shaun Huhn]

Paul Morrissey’s BLOOD FOR DRACULA (France/Italy/US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Friday, 9:45pm

Though initially released in the US as ANDY WARHOL’S DRACULA, the infamous pop artist had absolutely nothing, neither financially nor creatively, to do with previous collaborator Paul Morrissey’s “Dracula spoof.” As Roberto Curti writes in Italian Gothic Horror Films 1970-1979, it was, in part, Warhol’s “nominal aegis” that helped get the project into being, produced in quick succession alongside Morrissey’s FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1973) with the monetary support of Italian producer Carlo Ponti. Such bizarre dramaturgical backstory might give BLOOD FOR DRACULA the appearance of some slapdash production, spreading actors and crew members across two film shoots as a means of killing two monster movies with one stone. But Morrissey’s vampiric antics are gleefully barbaric in a way that demands your attention: it’s too vicious and sad to be considered genuine camp, yet too bizarre and horny to be considered genuine horror. This Dracula (a delightful and delirious Udo Kier), in desperate need of virgin blood to keep himself alive, has fled his opulent Romanian castle to try his luck with the seemingly chaste and pure women of Italy, eventually working to court the young daughters of the Di Fiore estate. Seeing the Count as a way of bringing potential fortune to their dwindling finances, the Di Fiores welcome him with open arms, unaware of the bloody fate that is about to befall these young seeming virgins. It’s to Dracula’s dismay, and our delight, that he is instead subjected to the whims of a family of incestuous lesbians and their Marxist day-laborer, Mario (played with hulking idiocy by Morrisey’s frequent collaborator Joe Dallesandro). Beneath the idiosyncratic line readings, flailing physical performances, and insanely hilarious bloodbath of a finale, there’s also something haunting about Mario, the seeming “hero” of the film. He perpetrates just as much misogynistic violence and abuse against the Di Fiore women as Dracula, but his seeming mortality and overtly leftist politics are the only things that makes him less villainous than the blood-thirsty Count. Perhaps the most strikingly haunting moment in the film is the opening shot of Dracula (or is it Udo?) applying makeup and dying his hair, steadfastly preparing himself for the journey (and the film) ahead. Not too shabby for a seeming afterthought of a horror film made in less than four weeks. (1974, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Joel Potrykus’ RELAXER (US)

The Davis Theater – Monday, 7:30pm

Reminiscent of the proto-punk plays of Alfred Jarry, Joel Potrykus’ RELAXER is a work of exhilarating contempt—the film’s assault on good taste is merely one aspect of its concentrated attack on the American success ethic. The bare-bones story, set in a single location, mocks the very concept of narrative progression, while the dialogue, which consists mainly of insults and non sequiturs, is defiantly juvenile. (Some of the more memorable lines: “If you played tic-tac-toe against yourself, do you think you’d win?” “Do you know if Chuck E. Cheese delivers?” “It smells like mouth-farts in here!”) Potrykus’ righteous anger can be felt even in his grungy mise-en-scene: RELAXER takes place in one of the dirtiest apartments you’ll ever see in a movie, and it only gets dirtier as the film begrudgingly moves forward in time, with bodily fluids, cockroaches, and a roasted bird carcass proudly staining the frames. More remarkable than the inspired gross-out humor is the writer-director’s steely formal control, as Potrykus demonstrates a meticulous sense of framing, camera movement, and pacing. (How surprising that a movie obsessed with wasting time doesn’t waste a minute itself.) He’s aided greatly by the deadpan lead performance of Joshua Burge (who previously starred in Potrykus’ APE and BUZZARD), a feat of naiveté that matches the sincerity of the script and direction. Burge plays Abbie, an unemployed man who spends his days sitting around his older brother’s apartment and subjecting himself to his sibling’s abuse. The brother, Cam (David Dastmalchian), enjoys challenging Abbie to absurd dares; when the movie opens, he’s forcing Abbie to stay put on the couch until he finishes a gallon of milk in record time. Abbie fails this challenge, and so Cam browbeats him into accepting another: not leaving the couch until he reaches the fabled 257th level of Pac-Man. The game goes on and on, and the childlike hero (who refuses to accept, decades after the man’s arrest, that his estranged father is likely a pedophile) keeps his word and stays glued to the couch. Nothing can get him to rise—not hunger, the presence of fumigators, or even a spectacular event that I won’t spoil here. As RELAXER evolves into a parody of survival stories, it comes to evoke another proto-punk classic, Luis Buñuel’s final Mexican masterpiece THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962). Free VHS screening presented by Analog, programmed by Cine-File contributor Olivia Willke, and followed by a live zoom Q&A with Potrykus. (2018, 91 min, Video Projection) [Ben Sachs]

Jim Jarmusch's NIGHT ON EARTH (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm

The phrase cinematic universe has become ubiquitous over the past decade, and while it’s mostly used in relation to comic book franchises and the myriad of ways they’re exploited for every penny, it’s nonetheless an interesting concept that embodies the way in which cinema—and its makers—can create worlds that are at once corporeal and transcendental. Jim Jarmusch is just one among a number of auteurs whose films seem to exist not only in their own world, but also on their own timeline—one can consider Jarmusch’s oeuvre and feel as if the plots of all his films are happening concurrently, even if they’re continents and eras apart. This concept is most explicit in his vignette and anthology films: MYSTERY TRAIN (1989), NIGHT ON EARTH (1991) and COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (2004). Where MYSTERY TRAIN features three sets of characters whose separate storylines unknowingly bring them to the same Memphis hotel, NIGHT ON EARTH takes place at the same time across five different cities around the world. In a 1992 interview with Sight and Sound, Jarmusch affirmed that he “still cling[s] to that need to order things in a classical way,” and that “the crossing time zones, being on the planet at the same time and the sun going down at the beginning and coming up at the end helped give...an overall form.” (COFFEE AND CIGARETTES is a little different in that its wholly separate vignettes are connected thematically by conversational and aesthetic motifs. One might also recognize Jarmusch’s 2013 film ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE as a culmination of this desire to defy any sublunary inclinations.) Jarmusch didn’t intend to follow MYSTERY TRAIN with a similarly episodic film; he wrote NIGHT ON EARTH “very fast, out of frustration” after another project centering on a single character got the kibosh. This urgency is felt through both the film’s structure and its tone—each vignette is about a taxi ride, varying in haste but still connected by an appropriately poetic inquietude. The first and last parts are my favorite: the first, set in LA and starring a young Winona Ryder as an irascible cabbie and a maturing Gena Rowlands as a slick casting agent (some of the film’s other stars include Giancarlo Esposito, Rosie Perez, Béatrice Dalle, and Roberto Benigni), reflects an assuring contentedness that oppugns any unease, and the last, set in Helsinki, about a cab driver whose sad story puts things into perspective for his discontented passengers, adds a sense of finality to an otherwise discrete, albeit winsome, construction. In spite of its perhaps unintentional incongruity, it still reflects Jarmusch’s unwavering commitment to and passion for the aforementioned “classical way,” which he uses to inform a distinct vision for each film. (Along these lines, Thom Andersen wrote in his essay for the film’s Criterion release that “[a]fter his first few films, it seems that critics, and maybe even some ordinary fans, started to take Jarmusch films for granted, in the same way that an older generation of critics and fans took Howard Hawks films for granted. The pleasures they offered were evident, but predictable. With Hawks, critics have come to value these pleasures more highly and to appreciate the variations he worked on recurring themes. Maybe Jarmusch’s day will come also.”) If you’re resolved to spending a night on earth—which, all told, no one would blame you for sitting one or 1,374 out—do so in Jarmusch’s world. Frederick Elmes’ ingenious cinematography and original music by Tom Waits should sweeten the deal. Screening as part of the City Serendipity series. (1991, 128 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Richard Linklater's BEFORE SUNSET (US)

The Davis Theater – Tuesday, 7pm

Each film in the Delpy/Hawke/Linklater BEFORE series has succeeded as a dialogue by being, in reality, a trialogue—with the screenwriting a collective process, the content is always closer to WAKING LIFE than MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, a lattice of thoughts and ideas, sequentially highlighted in each new setting and context. The character of Jesse, for example, can be initially characterized by an unlikely oscillation between "Ethan Hawke" mode—the disenchanted downtown celebrity who'd rather keep it real writing novels, turning down blockbusters, and picking up girls in the Chelsea Hotel lobby—and "Richard Linklater" mode: the everyman intellectual, reading voluminous quantities of philosophy and literature but deliberately never using any words a freshman UT stoner wouldn't use. And in BEFORE SUNSET, Celine becomes rather more "Julie Delpy"—a dedicated artist and musician (and now, composer and director)—with Delpy's own songs (from her self-titled 2003 album on the Belgian PIAS label) bookending the film. The ingeniously relaxed acting and Steadicam cinematography is especially impressive given that the location shooting here (much more so than 1990s Vienna in the middle of the night) was undoubtedly a total nightmare; more so than its engaged interrogation of the possibility of thoughtful and reflexive romantic love among creative artists, filming 15 straight summer mornings in Paris without filling the frame with tourists might be the most heroic achievement of the entire series. Screening as part of the Big Screen Classics series. (2004, 80 min, DCP Digital Restoration) [Michael Castelle]

Todd Haynes' SAFE (US)

Siskel Film Center – Friday, 5:45pm; Monday, 8:30pm; and Thursday, 5:45pm

Director Todd Haynes has restless eyes and ears that never linger in one aesthetic or time-period for longer than a film. And despite his continual shifts, it's the aesthetic that tends to star in his films, but this is never a shallow engagement. If Haynes can be said to have a formula, it is to find a pristine surface and scratch until we can see the uneasy construction underneath. His first (banned) public experiment was SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY, in which he used Barbie doll whittling as an inspired, literal representation of Karen Carpenter's struggle with her eating disorder. FAR FROM HEAVEN honored and interrogated the world of Douglas Sirk. In I'M NOT THERE, he chipped away at the impenetrable image of Bob Dylan, all the while pointing at the impossibility of his project with a graphic mix of sympathy and irony. SAFE takes a break from public images to get intimate with a housewife's health. Shot and lit with the peachy haloes of a douche commercial, SAFE's blurry suburban Los Angeles is an unlikely venue for horror. We follow Carol White on her errands, to her exercise classes, with her friendly acquaintances; no one seems to mean her any harm. But it's precisely this vagueness—of purpose, of symptoms, of identity—that begins to gnaw at Carol until she is reduced to her flintiest self-preservation impulse. She suffers from both the controversial Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and the middle-class affliction of Unlimited Healing Budget, and either condition could prove fatal. Haynes takes care not to fix any problems or to answer stupid questions; the ending lingers in one's mind like an unresolved chord. (1995, 119 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Josephine Ferorelli]

Léos Carax's THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE (France)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 4pm

THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE is one of the culminating works of the 20th century, channeling numerous great films and filmmakers of the previous several decades while advancing a romantic, almost innocent vision that harkens back to some of the very first movies. It begins like a blunt report on the homeless population of Paris (as though to honor the cinema’s roots in documentary realism) before it erupts into a full-blown spectacle about the titular characters, a former circus performer who can’t stop drinking (Denis Lavant, the leading man in four of Carax’s six features to date) and a painter who’s losing her sight (Juliette Binoche, who had been Carax’s girlfriend for several years when this was made). The writer-director famously rebuilt Paris’ Pont Neuf and its surrounding blocks on a lake outside Montpelier so he could shoot as much as he wanted, which made THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE one of the most expensive French productions of all time. Yet this is no populist spectacle in the tradition of Cecil B. DeMille and James Cameron, but rather something very personal, even delicate writ large. Jonathan Rosenbaum has likened it to Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927) and Tati’s PLAYTIME (1967) in how it treats the modern city as a playground, while Adrian Martin invoked everything from Abel Gance’s NAPOLEON (1927) to Francis Ford Coppola’s ONE FROM THE HEART (1982) in his writing on LOVERS. Carax’s film does operate in such grand gestures as to invite, and often merit, comparison to any of these cinematic zeppelins. What distinguishes it from most of these touchstones is the feeling of wild uncertainty it engenders; the surprising shifts in tone and the unpredictable camera setups suggest a film not entirely in control of itself, as if the movie were taking cues from the reckless abandon of its main characters. Screening as part of the City Serendipity series. (1991, 126 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Nagisa Oshima's MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE (Japan/UK)

Alamo Drafthouse – Wednesday, 7pm

At the 2014 MCA Chicago exhibition 'David Bowie Is,' there was a small room that held various artifacts from the British superstar's disparate acting career. It led to another room in which several of his performances were being projected in a loop; included was a scene from Nagisa Oshima's MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE in which Bowie, as Major Jack Celliers, a South African soldier who's been sentenced to death for participating in guerrilla warfare, mimes his way through some final "actions" leading up to his execution (which he inexplicably survives). Though Bowie studied miming under the great Lindsay Kemp, the scene is no mere shoutout to one of his (and subsequently Oshima's) more obscure influences; instead, Celliers' disaffected wit is a concise summation of the film's central theme, that of willfulness and Japanese repression of will through order and tradition. Plotwise, the film is about the dynamic among a group of men in a Javanese prisoner of war camp during World War II. More specifically, it's about the dynamic between two Allied prisoners of war and two Japanese prison camp workers. Next to Bowie, Tom Conti plays the titular Mr. Lawrence, a British POW who speaks Japanese and expresses a general understanding of the complex culture that's imprisoned him. The camp workers are Japanese soldiers Sergeant Hara and Captain Yonoi, the former a brutal guard who nevertheless makes friends with Lawrence and the latter a tradition-bound commandant who develops a fixation on the fair-haired Celliers. Much like Bowie the performer, MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE is often cited for its homoerotic undercurrent, an assessment heightened by the casting of Japanese electronic music star Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose androgynous beauty mirrors that of Bowie, as Capt. Yonoi. (In one scene, Sgt. Hara remarks that he had just been awoken from a dream featuring Marlene Dietrich, another high-cheekboned babe known for her transgressive sex appeal.) But just as Bowie's sexuality is often mistakenly taken at face value, so, too, is the film's homoerotic undercurrent often mistaken as its central theme. As Oshima himself has written, "homosexuality is the synthesis of friendship and violence: military men are attracted by their enemies, as men, in compensation for their frustration." Disregarding Oshima's problematic view towards homosexuality and sexual violence (rape is common in his films), it's evident that Yonoi's violent tendencies are brought about by the repression of his attraction to Celliers, which is an attraction that has as much to do with Celliers' willfulness as it does his physical beauty. Yonoi had been part of a coup to assassinate leading government officials and take control of the palace but was spared his life and restored to military standing, albeit at a low level, because he was out of the country during the actual attack. Thus, the repression of his will extends beyond sexuality and relates to both the oppression of his militarist ideology and the guilt he feels over not having been present at the insurgence. The film is widely considered to be one of Oshima's more accessible works owing to the cast, its similarities with other popular POW films (most notably David Lean's 1957 film BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI) and Oshima's use of long shots and symmetrical framing. Based on Sir Laurens Jan van der Post's novel The Seed and the Sower, it differs from other similarly acclaimed POW films in that it's a film made by the "other," reflecting the wartime cruelty of his own people. And even Oshima's use of traditional filmmaking devices lends itself to his alternative viewpoint; long shots allow for all the characters to be equally represented and thus equally contradicted, an element of craft mirrored by Lawrence's assertion that "we are all wrong," and the symmetrical framing in many scenes is meant to reflect the traditionalism that Oshima challenges throughout. (He employed a similar visual motif in his 1971 film THE CEREMONY.) The film's score is another aspect that enhances its subtle unconventionality. Composed almost entirely by Sakamoto, it's a delicate blend of traditional-sounding melodies and his own synth-pop sensibility. Bowie sings a bit in the film, but it's Strafer Jack who's most off tune. (1983, 122 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Ugo Bienvenu’s ARCO (France/Animation)

The Davis Theater  and the Music Box Theatre – See Venue websites for showtimes

Two lonely kids form a life-changing bond across space and time. It’s a familiar premise in children’s media (one that finds a variation in another four-letter 2025 animated sci-fi film named after its protagonist, Pixar’s lovely ELIO), but ARCO has enough idiosyncratic details and artistry to stand out. In some faraway future in which climate disasters have forced humanity to live on self-sustaining platforms in the clouds, young Arco longs for escape. Specifically, he wants to travel through time like the rest of his family, whose mode of transportation is rainbows. Disobeying their rules (children cannot rainbow time travel before the age of 12), Arco takes to the sky and ends up (literally) crashing down back in 2075. Unable to return to his reality, he befriends Iris, a budding artist raised by a robot nanny in lieu of her perpetually-away parents, who show up at the dinner table as holograms beaming in from work. Tailed by a trio of bumbling conspiracy theorists and imperiled by the effects of climate change, the kids seek to find Arco a way home. With his co-writer Félix de Givry, Ugo Bienvenu creates a bittersweet story of foundational childhood friendship subtly set within a larger portrait of societal anomie. Neither Arco’s time, with its isolated homes perched high above an uninhabitable Earth, nor Iris’, with its substitution of AI for human labor, offer reassuring views of our planet’s future. While it’s not clear how one reality grew into the other (one of many world-building mysteries audiences might find intriguing or frustratingly vague), what is clear is that ARCO sees a world of endangerment where hope rests in the younger generations and their ingenuity, reflected in Iris’ ability to imagine things through drawing. Her bright artistic sensibility is embodied by the film, which bursts with literal rainbows of color and contains a gorgeous score by Arnaud Toulon. Without being precious about it, ARCO self-reflexively celebrates its own handmade form—let’s just call it Art—as a way forward for humankind. The version being screened is dubbed in English from the original French; while I admired the clever layering of Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo’s voices as the nanny robot Mikki, I was more skeptical of the contributions from Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, and Flea, as well as the child voice actors. (2025, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

Mona Fastvold’s THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE (UK/US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE can be approached less as a historical biopic than as an inquiry into how belief is embodied, transmitted, and policed. Directed by Mona Fastvold, the film resists the reassuring grammar of prestige historical drama and instead situates Ann Lee’s life within a tactile, experiential framework that privileges ritual, movement, and collective sensation over narrative efficiency. History is not highlighted so much as recast as mythos, delivered through Thomasin McKenzie’s narration. What follows is a story reenacted as a series of pressures placed on women’s bodies. Childbirth and loss share the same breath. Bodily autonomy and antiquated notions of “wifely duty” collide again and again. Fastvold’s use of natural light, hand-painted backgrounds, and rigorously composed frames does more than evoke the 18th century. It places the image in a liminal space between realism and iconography, recalling Baroque painting as much as ethnographic observation. Many scenes conclude with tableaux that suggest Caravaggio-like figures emerging from shadow, poised to behead Holofernes. This painterly strategy mirrors the film’s broader refusal to isolate Ann Lee as a singular genius. Her authority is inseparable from the collective that gathers around her. The Shakers’ theology holds that the second coming of Christ will be female, because God encompasses both masculine and feminine principles. This belief positions Ann Lee as an existential challenge to patriarchal Christianity, and to patriarchal society more broadly. The film makes clear that persecution arises less from the Shakers’ ecstatic dances or celibacy than from their devotion to a woman permitted spiritual authority. Paganism becomes a convenient accusation; gender is the real heresy. Amanda Seyfried’s performance is remarkable for its range, capable of erupting into exuberance or retreating into stillness without signaling either as spectacle. She avoids charisma, presenting Lee as a figure shaped by grief, labor, and belief rather than destiny. This approach aligns with the film’s skepticism toward heroic individualism, even when engaging a figure historically framed as messianic. That THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE arrives at a moment when the world is grieving the unprovoked loss of an American citizen at the hands of their own government gives the film an unintended but piercing contemporary resonance. Upon arriving in America, Lee’s response to a slave auction, her cry of “Shame,” echoes beyond the frame and into daily life. Later, the detention and beating of Shaker congregants by British soldiers evokes modern immigration enforcement, reinforcing the film’s argument that institutional brutality tends to repeat itself with only minor cosmetic updates. What distinguishes THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE from more conventional faith-based narratives is its insistence on pacifism as praxis rather than abstraction. Though not depicted onscreen, later generations of Shakers would be exempt from the Civil War draft, an early instance of conscientious objection. They sheltered both Confederate and Union soldiers. Their commitment to nonviolence is not symbolic but disciplinary, an ethical system requiring continuous labor, restraint, and dancing. Stripped of theology, the film ultimately reveals a social model grounded in collective work, gender equality, and the rejection of violence. It suggests that radical change does not require divine intervention so much as the redistribution of authority. Fastvold’s film emerges as a punk-rock feminist manifesto, sketching the blueprint for utopia: believe women, follow women, dismantle the patriarchy, and live out our days under a matriarchy. History’s male-ruled societies seem to agree on one thing. The most threatening idea in any era is not heresy, but women governing themselves. (2025, 137 min, 70mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Kleber Mendonça Filho's THE SECRET AGENT (Brazil)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 6pm

The films of Kleber Mendonça Filho unfold like novels, immersing viewers in the specificities of place while gradually revealing aspects of the principal characters that aren’t immediately apparent. They also abound in digressions and supporting characters, neither of which advance the plot so much as expand on it so that the world of the movie seems as rich as the one we inhabit. The richness of THE SECRET AGENT has a lot to do with how the film engages with Brazilian history. Mendonça Filho doesn’t confront the legacy of his nation’s military dictatorship head-on, but rather obliquely and circuitously, dramatizing how citizens lived under the terror of the period until that terror enters the foreground of the action. The story takes place mainly in 1977, at the height of the dictatorship; per a title card that comes near the beginning, this is a time of “great mischief,” one of several euphemisms for state-sponsored violence that arise during the film. Wagner Moura stars as a technical analyst who returns to his hometown of Recife after an unspecified time away. He wants to reconnect with his young son, who’s currently living with his maternal grandparents, but circumstances (also unspecified) keep the two from residing together. Mendonça Filho evokes a climate of fear and secrecy through his presentation of the intricate community networks that Moura’s character must navigate to stay safe in Recife. The writer-director also sometimes jumps forward a few decades to consider some young women in the present who are researching the character’s life, suggesting that Brazil is far from done with its culture of surveillance. These flash-forwards aren’t the only curveballs in THE SECRET AGENT, which also features a fascinating subplot about a human leg found in the body of a shark that’s washed up on the Recife coast (an event that coincides with the local popularity of JAWS) as well as a thorough account of how Recife’s police department functioned under dictatorship. The sheer volume of narrative detail recalls the films of Arnaud Desplechin, and Mendonça Filho adds to the complexity with his inspired direction, employing innovative widescreen compositions, unpredictable montage, and daring shifts in tone. Indeed, the film’s technical brilliance is so astonishing as to almost distract from the story, which is another way of saying that this towering achievement probably requires multiple viewings to reveal all it has to offer. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2025, 160 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan’s JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Friday, 7pm

Despite its connection to a larger IP (Archie Comics), JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS feels more closely aligned with the brightly colored, yet darkly satirical teen comedies that came out in the late 90s and early 2000s—movies like DROP DEAD GORGEOUS, JAWBREAKER, SUGAR & SPICE, and DICK. The film has gained cult status not only for its tongue-in-cheek takedown of commercialism in the record industry, but also for its eccentric supporting performances, fourth-wall-breaking humor and genuine sense of fun. After the sudden, tragic loss of DuJour, the world’s most popular boy band, singer-guitarist Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook) and her pals—compassionate bassist Val (Rosario Dawson) and ditzy-but-sweet drummer Mel (Tara Reid)—take their Riverdale band to the next level and snag a record deal. The Pussycats land a contract with MegaRecords, but their friendship is tested by a speedy rise to success. Complicating things further, the record company is not at all interested in the band, but rather in using their music to sell products subliminally. Alan Cumming and Parker Posey scene-steal as the villainous MegaRecords higher-ups with a plan for world domination; another standout is Missi Pyle as Alexandra Cabot, sister to the Pussycats’ original manager, who slyly claims she’s only tagging along because she “was in the comic book.” While not every moment holds up perfectly, JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS’ overarching themes still feel extremely germane, especially in light of contemporary social media and influencer culture. The film also works as a time capsule of early aughties pop culture, which is unignorable in the bold fashions: all asymmetrical hemlines, body glitter, and chunky highlights. Perhaps most importantly, the film sports an authentically catchy soundtrack by its two fictional bands, with Josie’s vocals provided by Letters to Cleo lead singer Kay Hanley. (2001, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Kaouther Ben Hania’s 2025 film THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB (89 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.

David Greene’s 1991 made-for-TV version of WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (93 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday, 10pm, as part of the AGFADROME series.

Lucio Fulci’s 1982 film THE NEW YORK RIPPER (93 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Terror Tuesday series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
“Real shape of the earth”: Short Films with Ben Balcom, a program of works curated by the Milwaukee-based experimental filmmaker, is on Thursday at 7pm. The program features Balcom’s latest work THE PHALANX (2025, 14 min, Digital Projection), in addition to other works by the artist and two pieces by other artists “that employ kindred gestures to explore time and place.” Program total approx. 72 min. Balcom will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. More info here. 

⚫ Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.

⚫ The Davis Theater
Martin Scorsese’s 2013 film THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (180 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday at 7pm. Presented by Oscarbate. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Carl Brown and Rose Lowder’s films TWO PICTURES (1999, 12 min, 16mm) and L’INVIATION AU VOYAGE (2003, 33 min, 16mm) screen with Lowder’s 2011 film BEIJING 1988 (12 min, 16mm) on Sunday, 7pm, as part of the Cinema’s Garden: The Films of Rose Lowder series.

Anne-Marie Miéville and Jean-Luc Godard’s films SANG TITRE (2020, 10 min, DCP Digital), LIBERTY AND HOMELAND (2002, 21 min, DCP Digital), and HOW’S IT GOING? (1976, 78 min, Digital Projection) screen Tuesday, 7pm, as part of the Anne-Marie Miéville: Not Reconciled series.

Boris Barnet’s 1940 feature THE OLD JOCKEY (96 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Boris Barnet: A Cinema Despite Life series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS
The Big Teeth Small Shorts Film Festival takes place Thursday at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Mamoru Oshii’s 1985 anime film ANGEL’S EGG (71 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 11:30am and 11:30pm and Sunday at 11:30am. 

To mark its 10th anniversary, the Al Larvick Conservation Fund presents two programs from its touring screening series In Another Light: Cinema of Memory on Sunday at 6:30pm. This program is presented in partnership with the Media Burn Archive, a sponsor of the Al Larvick Conservation Fund, and the Chicago Film Archives. Media includes motion picture originals recorded on small gauge film and magnetic formats.

Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR (2006, 275 min, 70mm) screens Thursday, 6:30pm, in advance of a longer run beginning next Friday. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Siskel Film Center
Darren Aronofsky’s 1998 film PI (84 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday at 6pm and Thursday at 8:30pm as part of the Lo-Fi Sci-Fi series.

National Theatre Live’s production of Hamlet (2026, 180 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 2pm.

A special advance screening of Simón Mesa Soto’s 2025 film A POET (123 min, DCP Digital) is on Tuesday, 8:30pm, followed by a Q&A between Mesa Soto and Chicago International Film Festival programmer Sophie Gordon. The film begins a weeklong run next Friday. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
oliverio rodriguez and Victoria Stob's 2018 short film LYNDALE (24 min) and Sandi DuBowski's 1993 short film TOMBOYCHIK (15 min) stream for free on VDB-TV.  Programmed by Cine-File contributor Elise Schierbeek. More info here.

CINE-LIST: January 30 - February 5, 2026

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Brendan Boyle, Michael Castelle, Rob Christopher, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Josephine Ferorelli, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Michael Metzger, Nicky Ni