:: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 - THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Black Harvest Film Festival

Gene Siskel Film Center – See showtimes below

Daniel Oriahi’s THE WEEKEND (Nigeria)
Friday, 8:15pm
Clearly inspired by Jordan Peele’s GET OUT (2016), THE WEEKEND follows a similar trajectory as Peele’s film, but here, the underlying horror reflects tensions between urban and rural life in Nigeria. Nikiya wants to know everything about her fiancé Luke, including his family, whom he hasn’t seen in years. She persuades him to take him on a trip to the village where he grew up, where Luke’s sister is also visiting with her boyfriend. Luke’s parents seem all too welcoming, and naturally, they harbor a dark secret. THE WEEKEND generates a fair amount of suspense from alluding to what that secret may be, but the film is more interested in the fraught dynamic between Nikiya and the eerily protective community she finds herself in. The sister’s boyfriend is a frightening character too, a chauvinistic bully who represents the worst of masculine culture; his presence makes for a nervous atmosphere, especially when he’s alone in a room with Nikiya. He proves no match, however, for Luke’s parents, whose warm facade hides cold-blooded ruthlessness. It’s really the cast that makes or breaks a chamber piece like this, and thankfully everyone in THE WEEKEND is up to snuff. Director Daniel Oriahi focuses on the performances, allowing the characterizations to drive the movie’s horror; the larger theme of tribalism versus modernity is implied rather than stated outright. Yet it drives the film all the same, the ominous subtext asserted throughout. (2024, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Celia Boussebaa’s AMAKKI (Ethiopia/Documentary)
Saturday, 3pm
This beautiful and immersive documentary, shot in the Sidama region of Ethiopia, spends much of its first half focusing on a little girl named I’ni, who looks like she’s about two years old. Director Celia Boussebaa brings us in remarkable proximity to I’ni, presenting her warm relationships with her mother, grandmother, and older sister (who seems to be four or five) as well as her first steps in navigating the world. Nothing feels put-on for the camera—indeed, none of the participants even seem aware of its presence. Through quiet observation of I’ni’s daily life, a sense of the surrounding community emerges. We learn that her mother Dorite operates a restaurant in her village, where growing coffee beans appears to be the major industry. Boussebaa’s camera luxuriates in the food Dorite prepares just like it embraces the human subjects (it helps that all her recipes for the restaurant look delicious), resulting in a sensuous appreciation of her life and work. AMAKKI (which means “Your mother” in Sidaamu Afoo) can be quite uplifting in its depiction of family bonds and adorable children; however, the second half of the film dashes the good cheer of the first, as Boussebaa switches focus to consider Dorite’s unsuccessful attempts to divorce her husband. Apparently, any divorce in her community must be approved by the village elders, all of them men and none of them sympathetic to Dorite’s perspective. It’s an informative if infuriating portrait of systemic misogyny cloaked in religious fervor, and it feels especially upsetting after the depiction of loving, supportive relationships that shape I’ni’s life. Still, Boussebaa concludes the film on an optimistic note, returning to scenes of Dorite’s daily hard work and affectionate bond with I’ni—both of which create the impression that this headstrong woman will persevere despite her repressive surroundings. (2024, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Yashaddai Owens's JIMMY (France/Turkey)
Saturday, 5:30pm
Beautifully shot in 16mm black-and-white by director/writer Yashaddai Owen, JIMMY is impressionistic quasi-narrative about author James Baldwin’s early days in Paris, arriving there in 1948 at age 24. The film opens, though, in Istanbul, which Baldwin visited several times in the 1960s. We don’t see Baldwin there—it’s a long stretch (11 minutes) of observational footage of the people and streets of the city; footage where the filmmaker’s presence is felt as his subjects acknowledge him and his Bolex camera. This extended sequence of looking and discovery couples well with the main body of the film—Baldwin in Paris. Here, too, the focus is on observation and discovery. Young Jimmy (Benny O. Arthur, in a quiet and sensitive performance) is shown exploring the city, absorbing everything around him and experiencing a kind of freedom to just be that wasn’t possible in New York. Not much happens: Baldwin walks around, bikes the streets, hangs out in a park and cafés. He sits, and watches, and thinks. It’s an ambling film, framed by a gentle jazz score by Paco Andreo, that allows the viewer to share in Baldwin’s sense of wonder as a stranger in a strange land. It’s a speculative fiction—an idealized evocation of a world in which Baldwin seemingly hasn’t experienced the hardships he had in the States, wasn’t already a rising, published author, and experienced no prejudice or conflict in Paris. But this fairy-tale sensibility is grounded at the end with a voiceover by Arthur, quoting from a later text by Baldwin, perceptively delineating some of the differences between life in Paris and in the US, saying at one point “for once in my life I can sit and preserve.” (2024, 67 min, DCP Digital) [Patrick Friel]
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David Fortune's COLOR BOOK (US)
Saturday, 7:30pm
There’s a tension you can feel when watching a narrative about disability. Given the history of even the most well-meaning attempts to portray people with intellectual disabilities often lapsing into condescension, it can feel like a breath of fresh air just to see a film treat the subject neutrally. Thankfully, moving as it is, David Fortune’s COLOR BOOK walks its fine line with grace, treating its characters’ relationship with a tenderness that never becomes maudlin. Reeling from the death of his wife Tammy, widower Lucky (William Catlett) and his 11-year-old son Mason (Jeremiah Daniels) are left to pick up the pieces. We don’t see much of Tammy outside of a brief prologue, and we get the impression that, while loving Mason unconditionally, Lucky is still learning the ins and outs of parenting that came more naturally to his late wife. Mason has Down syndrome and struggles to express himself, especially in the face of indescribable grief. When Lucky’s friend offers to get the father and son into a baseball game, Lucky takes him up on the offer only to get caught up in numerous trials on the day-long odyssey to get there. But even in the film’s most tense moments, nearly every character (a bum car seller notwithstanding) is guided by an innate goodness. It’s like a feel-good variation on the social mechanics that drive a Dardennes or Safdie brothers film, where the variable characters that could make or break the men's journey always choose grace. The tension, where it exists, comes mostly from Lucky’s difficulty with communication or assumptions that things might go wrong when they never ultimately do; the world is an ultimately safe and forgiving place for the weary duo. Beautifully framing Lucky and Mason’s relationship, DP Nikolaus Summerer’s black and white photography should share top billing in the film, employing Atlanta location shots that feel both specific and generalizable. While the father-son relationship feels true-to-life in many ways, other elements of their shared life and background are either completely generic (constant references to "the game," for instance, never elaborate further on who might be playing, though one assumes it’s the Braves) or left to the imagination, so that the film becomes a more universal series of tableaux, two men picking up the pieces in the spare architecture of their home and community. The emotion is handsomely wrung from every word and gesture, the film radiating with love in every frame. (2024, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
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Nelson Makengo’s RISING UP AT NIGHT (Democratic Republic of the Congo/Documentary)
Sunday, 12:15pm
Nelson Makengo’s RISING UP AT NIGHT elucidates the issue of severe flooding that has left parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo underwater in a beautifully assembled, auspicious debut feature documentary that eschews the typical, information-forward format, instead favoring a mix of the poetic and prosaic in his depiction of this besieged society. A large issue at play in the film is that the city, Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, is assailed with blackouts, leaving many without power for long periods of time. Much of the film shows how they deal with the issue, forming community groups that raise money to acquire alternate power sources (some of the reasons, other than the obvious, why they’re so eager for power is that women are being raped and crimes are happening more frequently, the dark making it easier for men to attack) and scrambling for flashlights and batteries to power them. Another portion of the film addresses the flooding; residents must use canoes, often at a cost, to get to and fro. In an especially prolonged sequence we’re in a family’s residence, where they live with a few feet of water still in their house. A little boy swims and catches what looks to be small catfish—he seems unfazed by the scenario. Another story at play is religious fervor, to which people look as a solution to their problems. The film is both a powerful testament to organizing but also the problems that beleaguer it, such as corruption (important items and funds related to those attempting to pay for their own power source) and even misogyny (during one meeting, young men express hesitancy over the elder women in their community handling the money). Via on-screen text at various intervals, we also learn about the potential for China to invest in building a hydroelectric power plant, presented in the film as being something that investors pulled out of, but which recent articles inform me might be moving forward. Makengo also did the film’s cinematography, which is stunning; what I imagine is hidden from most of the world, intimate knowledge of these travesties, is illuminated, even where most of it is dark. (2023, 96 min, DCP Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]
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Raoul Peck's ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND (France/Documentary)
Monday, 6pm
Raoul Peck has made a career out of accessible portraits of the radical. Covering wide ground with films about Marx and Baldwin and two about Patrice Lumumba, he’s become one of our leading chroniclers of the ills of the last few hundred years via the great men who’ve articulated them. Entering the fray is the comparatively lesser-known Ernest Cole, the South African photographer who, despite (or maybe because of) his status as a leading documenter of apartheid South Africa, struggled with marginalization throughout his career and had his archive of negatives lost for years before being rediscovered in a bank vault in Sweden in 2017. Peck uses a multimodal approach to document the man, drawing largely on Cole’s own photographs but supplementing them with other historical materials and a voiceover by Lakeith Stanfield acting as the man. The archival approach is a wise one by Peck, allowing Cole’s words and images mostly to speak for themselves. We see the work that formed his most popular collection, the 1967 book House of Bondage, as well as his follow-up attempts to document life in the Jim Crow south that were largely ignored by publications at the time. But there’s a sadness embedded in this approach too, in the way that we largely come to understand the man through the images of poverty and racial strife that defined much of his output. He laments this in his letter seeking refuge outside of the United States, saying that this was only one of his interests and not how he wanted to define his career. While the work presented in the film is varied, this is still a defining feature, and the portrait is one of a poet trying to break the molds made for him by a racist and xenophobic public. This may be why the film opens up a bit in the latter half, documenting his estate’s attempts and ultimate success in tracking down his archive in the present day. It’s here that the film’s political text becomes even more explicit, cataloging the more contemporary history of South Africa following the end of apartheid and the emergence of the ANC. These final moments offer some bit of triumph after the obscurity of Cole’s later life and eventual death in exile in 1990. Mixed within Peck’s encyclopedic and angry montage, Cole’s work is ultimately reclaimed as the invaluable archive it is. (2024, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
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Charles Burnett’s THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 7pm
It all but goes without saying that Charles Burnett is a national treasure and any movie he’s made is crucial viewing. Yet these facts bear repeating in light of THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH, a deeply eccentric comedy that so bewildered some viewers that its original distributor was afraid to give it a proper release. While it may not be on the level of such masterpieces as KILLER OF SHEEP and NIGHTJOHN, the film nonetheless displays Burnett’s trademark empathy and cultural specificity. James Earl Jones plays Fish, a Jamaican immigrant who’s spent ten years in a New York mental hospital when the movie opens. Due to budget cuts, Fish is deinstitutionalized, despite the fact that he still occasionally sees—and wrestles with—a six-foot-tall demon. Around 70, widowed, and living on a small pension, he decides to move to Los Angeles and start life over again. Meanwhile in San Francisco, a woman named Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave) must end her love affair with the ghost of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini when she fails to find anyone who will marry them. She too heads for Los Angeles, where she finds a room to rent in the same apartment building as Fish, which is managed by a jovial widow (Margot Kidder) who’s almost as kooky as they are. Poinsettia keeps her distance from Fish at first (Burnett is upfront with presenting the character’s racism), but she comes to accept him after he nurses her off a bad hangover; gradually, a romance blossoms between them. One could get into how realistic the film’s depiction of mental illness is (not very), but the overall tone is so gentle and fable-like that to fault the movie for its unrealistic qualities would be missing the point. Burnett, working from a script by Anthony C. Winkler (a Jamaican writer who wound up in California), exhibits great tenderness to the characters, making you care about whether they succeed in life and love; it helps that Jones and Redgrave are both at their best, giving sensitive, even lovable performances. THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH makes the case that everyone is entitled to companionship, which makes it a radical statement in line with Burnett’s other work. Followed by a dialogue with Burnett. (1999, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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See Venue website for full schedule and more info here.

2024 Eyeworks Experimental Animation Series

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Saturday, 12pm (Program 1) and 2:45pm (Program 2)

Program 1
In the first program of this year’s Eyeworks, the experimental animation series zeroes in on speculative fiction and the bodily figure, framing material instantiation through poetic transcendence. MESSAGES (1972, 6 min), from Yvonne Andersen’s famous Yellow Ball Workshop (where the artist taught children animation in Massachusetts), is a series of fanciful and cheeky public service announcements. Tenderly cut-out scenes washed in modest watercolors spell out lighthearted concerns with consumerism and nutrition. Peggy Ahwesh’s THE FALLING SKY (2017, 9 min) fast forwards on consumerism, but opens with a quote from Shelley’s early 19th century Frankenstein—a snapshot of the doctor’s slip into melancholy in the face of nature’s vistas and in the wake of his own runaway creation. Such is the condition of Ahwesh’s suspenseful appropriation symphony, a cascade of idling digital figures in technocratic simulations culled from an animated YouTube news channel. Roomba vacuums, pollinating drones, blinking satellites, and gravestone QR codes serve up a void-space world of immanent capture and banal evils. Image production turns from the dispersed network back to the mirror stage, or rather, the staging of mirrors, in Annapurna Kumar’s MIRROR PRODUCTS CATALOG (2024, 5 min), a delightfully hypnotic synth-scored collage based on a vintage mirror catalog from the USSR. The film imagines the self-representational desires of the female models who advertise the catalog’s ornate mirrors, women rendered in 3D and seizing the printing-press means of production. Sci-fi flourishes in Louis Smits’ stunning PTERYPHLEGIA (1986, 6 min), a minimalist epic of primordial collisions wherein alien lifeforms molt and take flight, facing off with a cyborgian harvester on an unfamiliar planet. Wendell McShine’s formidable world-building vignette, RAT CITY (2024, 10 min), reimagines NYC as a rat-eat-wolf mob showdown of intricately remixed consumer veneers. While these works take us far from the lands we know, two indelible Inuit films bring us back to Earth in order to speculate in situ. Timmun Alariaq’s INUKSHUK (1973, 3 min) and Salamonie Pootoogook’s MAGIC MAN (1973, 2 min), each released by the National Film Board of Canada and born out of the Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset) Film Animation Workshop, defy gravity with stop-motion illusionism and megalithic aspirations. Alariaq animates boulders to form a human-shaped monument and Pootoogook enchants the human with monumental forces, shifting through and beyond the visible. More treasure awaits. László Moholy-Nagy’s ABC IN SOUND (1933, 2 min), demystifies the visual blueprint of film sound, enlarging and reprinting glyphs that constitute the soundtrack area of the filmstrip. Made during the transition between the silent and sound eras, ABC IN SOUND was considered missing for 80 years prior to 2018, when curators at the British Film Institute National Archive were inspecting Oskar Fischinger’s EARLY EXPERIMENTS IN HAND DRAWN SOUND (1931) and serendipitously discovered the Moholy-Nagy at the end of the reel. Pioneering investigation of burgeoning artistic medium is on further display with Lillian Schwartz’s APOTHEOSIS (1973, 4 min), a computer animation that contorts scans from cancer radiation treatment into a breathtaking kaleidoscope of increasingly layered cross-sections. Schwartz’s painterly interior biological mesh is followed up by Ruth Hayes’ BODY SKETCHES (1978, 6 min), which draws the body by hand from the outside. Shores and naked figures are scrawled in umber tones to the sound of draining bathwater and rushing tides, all in the quaking language of rotoscope. The program is concluded with Josh Shaffner’s IN DREAMS (2023, 17 min), a surreally elaborated dystopia about a burn victim’s hallucinatory unconscious in the midst of end-of-life care. Astral travels are guided by glowing vision floaters and an enigmatic red squiggle which moves like disembodied legs. [Elise Schierbeek]
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Program 2
Program 2 reflects the cyclical nature of life: the repetitions, the eternal return. A spinning circle recurs in many films—like a wheel that keeps turning—as a formal element that ties together a profound and stylistically substantial program featuring animations that span almost a century. Ed Counts’ lovely living room musical ROCKERS (1990, 5 min) has elegant line drawings that capture the poetics of the act of lounging. Light and shadows tiptoe across and caress the petalous sculptures in the absolutely stunning black-and-white abstract film PARABOLA (1938, 9 min) by Mary Ellen Bute & Ted Nemeth. Ezra Wube’s disorienting NOW OR NEVER (2024, 6 min) has a circular canvas that spins counterclockwise as though time is rewound. Over a voice so echoey that it is barely audible, episodes of hypnagogic memory layer on top of each other. The circular motif continues in Jodie Mack’s silent, meditative WASTELAND NO. 3: MOONS, SONS (2021, 5 min), where vibrant flowers that form frozen wreaths melt into one another’s embrace, serving quite a compelling visual segue to the next work. Care, affection, and tension are what link the two women—one made of clay and the other of felt—in EXYL’s SWEAT (2021, 3 min). What could be a nuanced mother-daughter relationship is quietly but powerfully expressed through the theatrical lighting and swiftly rotating camera angle. Then we have Jennifer Levonian’s color-penned SPEED READER (2024, 5 min) that speeds through the lives of twin sisters within mere minutes like how one of the sisters speeds through books. James Duesing takes the expression of lived experiences to a surrealist level in ADULTING (2024, 9 min), in which partially AI-supported storytelling leads the viewer through a sequence of nightmarish scenes not unlike that in Jon Rafman’s DREAM JOURNAL. Ira Vicari’s POMERIGGIO (2023, 4 min) mixes unsettling abstract crayon drawings, ink-and-water marbles on paper, and collages to imagine the secret life of a colorful shadow casted by the afternoon sun through a stained-glass window. Nicholas Brooks’ ghostly LAITUE (2008, 10 min) deploys minimally sketched drawings to recount a melancholic story of pass-over and coincidence. Provocative rotoscoped ink drawings in LOVE UNDER WILL OF THE HAG’S LONG TOOTH (2015, 4 min) by Mica O’Herlihy outspeaks bodily urges. And I can’t explain what’s happening in Jessica Wilson’s hysterical psychological thriller SMILE RIVER (2019, 8 min) that is inspired by the mysterious phenomena of somatic symptoms that simultaneously erupt in multiple bodies—like possessions. The program concludes with a highly spiritual work, AFTERLIFE (1978, 8 min) by Ishu Patel, in which psychedelic fractals conjure a trancelike state between the living and the deceased. [Nicky Ni]
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All of the above films will be projected digitally except for ROCKERS and WASTELAND NO. 3: MOONS, SONS, which will be screened on 16mm. Festival curators Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carré in person.

Walt Disney's FANTASIA (US/Animation)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, Midnight and Saturday, 11:30am

Arguably the only movie from the Walt Disney Animation Studios that could be labeled a full-on Art Film, FANTASIA is perhaps the crowning artistic achievement of the company’s history, try as they might to continue their tightening grip on the dominant culture to this very day. A gorgeous marriage of the formal possibilities of animated filmmaking and orchestral music, Disney’s grand vision of cinematic artistry is expressed through a series of short films, each underscored by a canonical piece of classical music. Music critic Deems Taylor acts as the emcee, introducing each segment and guiding the audience through the various styles on display. We begin with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, paired with the most abstract piece of animation of the program: billowing pools of light streaming through clouds to accompany the cascading strings and bombastic horns of Leopold Stokowski’s orchestra. This is followed by the Nutcracker Suite, removed from the Christmas iconography that is familiarly attached to Tchaikovsky’s piece to instead showcase a ballet set in nature, where mushrooms, thistles, fish, and fairies are free to cavort amongst the shadows of trees and the cobwebs glittering under the moonlight. The most famous and most narrative-bound segment follows: Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, where a young apprentice (portrayed onscreen by, who else, Disney’s lovable mascot Mickey Mouse) gets caught up in the power-hungry possibilities of his master’s spell book. The rest of the segments broadly feature various creatures parading around to the whims and wants of each respective musical piece. The early days of creation, from single-celled organisms to towering dinosaurs, evolve alongside Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. A paean of Greek mythical life regales in bacchanalian activity, rejoicing amidst Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. A full array of ballerina-clad animals, from ostriches to hippos to elephants to alligators, bombard an idyllic palace setting amidst the frantic mania of Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours. The program culminates with the Devil himself in Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, where a demonic cabal rejoices in carnal delight before being blinded out by the lights of the heavens, slowly transitioning into Schubert’s Ave Maria, where beacons of light transport themselves across the hillsides. FANTASIA ends as it began, with light, color, and music intermingled poetically, the rarest of occasions where profound, adventurous artistry found room to shine within one of the most commercial entities on the planet. Note that the version screening is the 1990 restoration version. (1940, 125 min, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]

Elaine May's THE HEARTBREAK KID (US)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am

To have the last laugh is to have “the satisfaction of ultimate triumph or success especially after being scorned or regarded as a failure.” A most pure realization of this is evident in Elaine May’s ingeniously nebulous comedies, specifically A NEW LEAF, THE HEARTBREAK KID, and ISHTAR; MIKEY AND NICKY, the third of her four feature-length films, may end too bleakly to be considered a triumph or success, even if there is some vindication to be felt through its caustic schadenfreude. THE HEARTBREAK KID, her second directorial effort following A NEW LEAF, and the first and only of her own films that she didn’t write herself (Neil Simon adapted the script from the short story “A Change of Plan” by Bruce Jay Friedman), is somewhat of an inversion on this adage, any satisfaction there is to extract from its ending felt only by the audience upon the protagonist’s resulting discontent owing to assuredly contemptuous aims. Lenny, a young, Jewish sports equipment salesman played with obdurate integrity by Charles Grodin—his nebbishness so convincing that he’s had to routinely defend himself against assumptions made about his own character after playing such a vexatious figure—is a quintessential schlemiel who rushes into marriage with Lila, a young, Jewish woman whose greatest fault is not being equal parts comely and insipid. (She’s played by Jeannie Berlin, May’s daughter, two and two that weren’t put together by much of the cast and crew until just before filming began. Simon reportedly thought Berlin wasn’t pretty enough—flames, flames on the side of my face—but she went on to not only deliver a fantastic performance—something altogether irrespective of her looks—but also to receive Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for it.) Their already tenuous union, hinging on Lila’s reluctance to have sex before marriage, begins to disintegrate on their honeymoon trip to Miami Beach, where Lenny meets shiksa-goddess Kelly, played perspicaciously by Cybill Shepherd, a classic fair-haired beauty who punishes men for their affection while simultaneously lavishing in it. To borrow an observation from Dave Kehr in his review of MIKEY AND NICKY, THE HEARTBREAK KID “takes the form’s mechanics—its dramatic conventions and tricks of structure—and turns them upside down, exposing just those elements that the form was meant to hide.” But where A NEW LEAF found light in the dark, THE HEARTBREAK KID finds darkness in the ostensibly lighthearted genre that is the rom-com. (Calling it an anti-romantic comedy is too simple, if not incorrect. It embodies all the tenets of traditional romantic comedies up to and including its “ironic” ending. To incorporate Kehr’s point, it doesn’t oppose these elements of the rom-com—it reveals them, which is all the more grim.) The most common dynamic in May's films is that of the pair, which makes for a prime jumping-off point from which to develop them as individual characters. If I had to apply, or in this case, make up, a narrative genre to the film, I’d label it a comedy of proportion. Each element, be it a character or a scene, fits perfectly—but not equally—within the whole. Such a sensibility is part of what accounts for May’s distinct brand of New York Jewish humor, a temperament that balances equitably divided self-loathing with genuine affection for all its targets. THE HEARTBREAK KID has been likened to Mike Nichols’ THE GRADUATE, a comparison which, on the surface, makes sense considering both Nichols and May’s longtime comedic partnership (May even had a bit part in the latter film) and the superficial commonalities in plot. Still, THE GRADUATE is perhaps too romantic, Benjamin Braddock’s banausic attitude presented as depth of character rather than what it really is: disaffected entitlement. About Braddock, Pauline Kael wrote that “[i]f he said anything or had any ideas, the audience would probably hate him....Nichols’ 'gift' is that he lets the audience direct him." May, on the other hand, leaves nothing unsaid in THE HEARTBREAK KID, culminating in a brilliantly vacuous monologue about honest vegetables and glib small talk about anything and everything at, of all places, Lenny and Kelly’s wedding. (Indeed, Simon wrote the script, but May’s signature improvisation comes through in these bits especially.) May is pragmatic, not romantic, in a tonal sense, a testament likely owed to her gender rather than her ethnic background. Lenny doesn’t know he’s a schmuck, but she does, and so do we—thus it’s we who have the last laugh. THE HEARTBREAK KID was May’s most critically and commercially successful film; MIKEY AND NICKY was virtually ignored upon its initial release, and we all know what happened with ISHTAR. Still, May hasn't been altogether forsaken: she received a National Medal of Arts in 2012 and is now the object of much veneration amongst cinephiles, young and old alike, who recognize her as a singular talent from one of American cinema’s most idiosyncratic eras. Whatever the reasons for May’s lack of broader success in the decades prior, she’s certainly having the last laugh now. Screening as part of a Dangerous Business: Elaine May Matinees series. (1972, 106 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Alan Arkin's LITTLE MURDERS (US)

Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm

Before LITTLE MURDERS was a film—and a superior one at that, one of the best I’ve seen in a while—it was a play, albeit one with a complicated history. Written by the estimable Academy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer (whose other forays into the film world include writing the scripts for Mike Nichols’ CARNAL KNOWLEDGE and Robert Altman’s POPEYE), it ran on Broadway for only a week before opening in London to much acclaim, thus catapulting it back to New York in 1969 for both a second, more celebrated run on Broadway and a longer, more mindfully appreciated Off-Broadway stint. Actor Alan Arkin directed the latter production, for which Feiffer won an Obie award (he won one the next year, too, for The White House Murder Case, which Arkin also helmed), and the film, originally intended for Nichols but bequeathed to Arkin for his feature debut. The result is something wonderful, bizarre, even stupefying in its esoteric jocularity, at once singular to its time and ripe for broad interpretation. What it’s not is an auteurist tract, belonging more to Feiffer and the performers—among them Elliott Gould as the protagonist, Marcia Rodd as his partner, and even Donald Sutherland as the kooky minister who marries them—than to Arkin, who himself appears in the film as a Melvillian detective (think TWO MEN IN MANHATTAN, but way more stressed out). Still, Arkin’s pat direction is what allows it to be greater than the sum of its parts; Feiffer’s madcap scenario and the actors’ idiosyncratic performances are so brilliantly eccentric that, like a gifted child, they benefit from structure. Gould’s Alfred is an apathetic photographer whose outlook begins to shift when he meets Rodd’s Patsy, an optimistic interior designer. Surrounding their bizarre romance is an antagonistic New York in which gangs indiscriminately beat up people while yelling an array of nonsensical slurs and anyone, anywhere, can be shot at any time, even in the comfort of their own home. Referring to his original text as a "post-assassination play,” Feiffer wrote that “[i]t was as if any shot from any window in any direction could kill a president, as if history could be voted out of office by a madman.” He continued: “Kennedy’s murder was intensely depressing. Oswald’s murder converted experience into farce. This was not a serious country anymore. This was not a place with meaning. A screw had come loose.” This more or less sums up the environment in which his characters live, that middle ground between society and anarchy where civilization hangs by a thread. Alfred copes with it via his camera and particular brand of indifference; Patsy deals by forging ahead, ready at a moment’s notice to replenish her apartment with material possessions. Both account for the meaning which Feiffer insists people need, be it through a willful lack of meaning or an overabundance of stuff. Despite the existential subtext, Alfred and Patsy’s relationship is endearing, even if impractical; Gould’s fond looks and Rodd’s frustrated infatuation add depth to the farce, leveling out its abstraction. The loveliness of their peculiar courtship makes the climax all the more affecting. “I suspected that Kennedy and Oswald were only the beginning,” Feiffer wrote, “that a wave of irrational violence was going to take over the society, random acts with no apparent political context—but quite political in that they symbolized our dementia.” The film’s narrative follows this path, burrowing itself deeper and deeper into paranoia. Gordon Willis’ cinematography complements the tone at every turn; shot just a year before THE GODFATHER, his signature lighting is discernible as being owned by him but still belonging to the film. Roger Ebert wrote that “LITTLE MURDERS is entirely self-contained, and once you get inside it, you've got to stay.” Indeed, once you’re wrapped up in it, you won’t be able to get out. LITTLE MURDERS remains with you, for better or worse, as long as at least one of you shall live. Presented by Oscarbate, with a post-screening discussion with film historian and author Samm Deighan. (1971, 110 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Marie-Claude Treilhou’s SIMONE BARBÈS OR VIRTUE (France)

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

There’s a lot to love about this little film. And here, little is good, little is all one needs. It’s little like its protagonist, the titular Simone (Ingrid Bourgoin), a tiny specimen of the night who is first seen working in a porno theater, incidentally the one where the director, Marie-Claude Treilhou had also worked. Clad in a tight black top and leather pants, she traipses around the small space of the theater’s lobby, taking tickets from random men who then dispense into the various dens of iniquity. She’s frustrated; her coworker, Martine (Martine Simonet), saunters in, apologizing for being late. Soon they enter into the dynamic that composes the first third of the film, the two women chatting while customers enter and the occasional tumult takes place outside its walls. Some of the male customers are creepy, while some seem to be friendly with the women, establishing nuance within the sordid proceedings. From there Simone goes to a lesbian bar, a near variety show of tricks and trade—on the stage and off—from an all-women's band, a sword fight, and a rock ‘n’ roll act, which is to say nothing of the servers who double as escorts. All this unfolds as Simone waits for her girlfriend, one of the servers; throughout this part she is most active as an observer, and we assume her position as such. When at the porno theater one might notice several neon lights shaped like eyes—though used primarily for the purpose of providing additional lighting, they also become the film’s totems, representing Simone who observes, the men who look, and us who watch. SIMONE BARBÈS definitely feels of a kind with the films of Paul Vecchiali, under whose subversive production company, Diagonale, it was made. The films of his I’ve seen ramble idly, saying nothing much but in doing so conveying quite a bit (ironic considering “Tout le mode au turbin,” “‘Everyone to work,” was his motto on set; he even subsidized his company by doing catering on the side), which is also how I’d characterize SIMONE BARBÈS OR VIRTUE, though of course there are idiosyncrasies that suggest Treilhou’s unique viewpoint. Where the first two parts involve some scrambling, moving to and fro, the third section centers on Simone driving the car of an older man who stopped to offer her a ride. The man wears a tux, a white scarf, and a tremendous mustache. As they commune he begins to cry silently, and soon thereafter he rips off the mustache, exposing his artifice and disarming himself in the process. Simone, too, seems to take off a proverbial mustache of her own, to some extent dropping the streetwise attitude of the previous sections. It feels trite to say it’s about a connection between two lonely people, but whatever kind of connection it might be comes through, even if ineffable. The sequence is shot through the car’s windshield, straight on, appropriate for the most straightforward of the three sections. Once finished it’s surprising to look back and realize just how much happened in 77 minutes. Yet it’s but one small story in these characters’ lives, and we’re but neon lights staring back at them, taking it all in. Screening as part of the Paul Vecchiali and Diagonale series. (1980, 77 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Douglas Sirk's ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (US)

Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm

Though originally intended by Universal to be a Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman vehicle—building upon their popularity in MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION rather than Sirk's popularity as a director—ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS is every bit as personal, even if only because of Sirk's hefty allowance (both artistically and economically). Wyman plays the pussyfooting Cary Scott, a recent widow in a tight knit, high strung, upper class American town. She falls in love with her gardener, Rock Hudson, and her children object and buy her a television to replace him. It's a film about people making things difficult for themselves and others because they have nothing more pressing to attend to. They impose tragedy on themselves as a matter of course, but Sirk is sympathetic. In all the stunning grandeur of his heavily saturated colors and Superscope composition, Sirk never lets his characters become washed out, or treats them as secondary elements to his visual style. His sympathies save films like ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS from their own absurdities, and the more ridiculous his storylines and intricate visual compositions become (take note of the way he frames characters within things like window frames and television sets), the more beautiful his films seem. Preceded by Charles and Ray Eames' 1957 short film TOCCATA FOR TOY TRAINS (14 min, 35mm). (1955, 89 min, 35mm) [Julian Antos]

John Huston's FAT CITY (US)

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

The oft-quoted Truffaut-ism contends that, “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film.” The genre is like quicksand, so the theory goes: Grappling with its multifarious complexities only makes it worse. The same principle could be applied to the boxing genre: You find me a grim, slice-of-life boxing flick and I’ll find you a moviegoer gleefully shadowboxing through the end credits. No matter the intent, the sweet science inevitably plays as an elegant ballet or a savage spectacle featuring a morally complex warrior. Leave it to John Huston, director of one of the quintessential anti-war films (the 1946 documentary LET THERE BE LIGHT), to craft the quintessential anti-boxing film. Or if not “anti-boxing,” then profoundly indifferent toward its subject. Huston’s FAT CITY follows a perfectly cast Stacy Keach—rail-thin and wispy-haired—as Tully, a Stockton, California-based boxer stumbling into the lowest stakes comeback in the history of the sport. Tully’s prospects are bleak: deemed unemployable by even the Stockton box factory—a thriving paper-goods concern—he finds work picking fruit and meets Ernie (Jeff Bridges), a naïve amateur boxer at a local gym. In convincing Ernie to pursue a pro career Tully convinces himself to give his own stalled career another go. Along the way Tully enters the orbit of Oma, played by Susan Tyrrel, with whom he pursues a boozy, codependent affair. FAT CITY is littered with dark humor and a pessimism bordering on nihilism: The protagonists are not talented fighters, but maybe they are, but also maybe it doesn’t matter. For those familiar only with Huston’s early Bogart-collaborations, FAT CITY is a must-see, both for the ways in which it’s stylistically unrecognizable as a John Huston production, and for the core themes that are ever-present in his work. Just as LET THERE BE LIGHT derives its power from denying viewers any semblance of glory and focuses instead on its protagonists’ fragile internal lives and comedown, FAT CITY barely acknowledges Tully’s previous life and instead stares with him into the abyss. In the aftermath of Tully’s big fight, one can easily imagine the Walter Huston voice over: “In faraway places men dreamed of this moment, but for some men the moment is very different from the dream.” Screening as part of the Columbia Pictures in the 1970s series. (1972, 96 min, 35mm) [James Stroble]

Sanctuary Stations: a Climate Crisis + Media Arts film showcase (night I) (US)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Thursday, 6:30pm [Free Admission]

Kicking off a series of climate related media projects supported in part by grants from Northwestern University, this screening features local premieres of a short film, a feature, and a work-in-progress. The feature is Brigid McCaffrey's SANCTUARY STATION (2024, 69 min), a graceful and handsome black-and-white multifaceted portrait of people living thoughtfully with the land. The landscape being considered is the redwoods covered lands in northwest California. The people being highlighted connect the land to their art, their livelihoods, their ancestral roots, and a desire to protect it all. The sensuously stark cinematography beautifully captures features both densely arboraceous and dynamically human. The central voice in the film is nun-turned-poet Mary Norbert Korte (1934-2022), who built a cabin deep in the woods off logging roads and serves as the films conscious reciting her poems about a life on one hand very isolated, on the other deeply connected to a community. Other segments of the film include a native mother dancing with her daughter, quiet protestors, goat milk farmers, small marijuana farmers, and, of course, the au courant obsession—mushroom foraging. One of the more compelling segments features a young woman first shown vigorously practicing acrobatic rope work in a gym, later shown putting those skills to good use as a masterfully nimble tree protector. The experimental cinematic flourishes are kept to a minimum—a few poetic superimpositions and jittering camera jaunts are thrown in—but mostly this is a straightforward lovely document of a place worth protecting. Also screening are Jesseca Simmons's short film HEAVEN IN A WILD FLOWER (2023, 6 min), which promises buggy microcinematography, and former Chicagoan Jessica Bardsley's work-in-progress THE CAVE WITHOUT A NAME (15 min), which is a nocturnal mediation on the meaning of darkness in nature. All films in the program will be screened digitally. [Josh B Mabe]

Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL (Ukraine/Documentary)

Claudia Cassidy Theater at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.)

What will be most rage-inducing about Ukrainian video journalist Mstyslav Chernov’s firsthand account of the siege of Mariupol at the start of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine is undoubtedly the graphic depictions of violence perpetrated against the port city’s helpless civilians. Footage of a pregnant woman being carried away from a bombed-out maternity hospital while she grips her lower midsection, in a daze of what appears to be pain and incredulity—we find out later that her pelvis had been completely crushed—will stay with me forever (we also find out later that she and the baby died, a nurse telling Chernov that her injuries were “incompatible with life”), as will the reactions of parents realizing that their children are dead. What may be most shocking, though, isn’t the violence itself; rather it’s the fact that, as the documentary touches upon at several intervals, many believed it to be manufactured. The implication is “fake news,” the two words an oft-mocked, counterfactual dictum that has become as opprobrious as, say, Sieg hiel. Hail victory, the latter means; it’s not too far off to bridge a connection with fake news, a recrimination that always puts its recipient at fault of manipulation and deceit. Thus the utterer is always the victor, never wrong even in the face of fact. It’s not a new concept (at least not anymore), but paired so closely with video documentation of atrocities it assumes that new meaning, becoming a salute to facism and its ability to turn reality into fiction. For example, “The [aforementioned maternity] hospital was turned into a film set with extras and actors,” proclaims a newscaster in a clip included in a montage of fake-news allegations from Russian journalists and military personnel, this person in particular calling one of Chernov’s AP colleagues, Evgeniy Maloletka, a “well-known Ukrainian propagandist.” (Chernov and Maloletka, implied to be the only international journalists who stayed in Mariupol after the siege, and two of their colleagues from the Associated Press would eventually be awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for their efforts.) Only segments of Chernov and the team’s footage was transmitted during the siege due to lack of reliable internet connection, but it’s now been more thoroughly assembled into this feature-length documentary; some of the interstitials that show how these images were used in world news are a tad self-admiring, but that’s the least of anything irksome going on here. One hopes to say that because all this footage exists it will be believed, but alas, that is not the case. What purpose, then, does this film serve, if the sheer credibility of its images are questioned by the people who theoretically should be most impacted by it, those seeming to need irrefutable proof that such events are occurring? The documentary doesn’t attempt to answer these questions, nor should it. Cinema transforms, but it’s long been the documentary’s ambition to assert, to act as a witness and record the truth for posterity; what does it mean, then, when people accuse journalists and filmmakers of using cinematic effect to documentary aim? One might be asking themselves these questions, but it’s just as likely that viewers will be so enraged by what they see, these 20 days of the terror being faced by civilians in Ukraine, that such Hegelianist ponderings become secondary to the immediacy of the images. The film seems to suggest that this may ultimately be more effective in the short term—some doctors in the film, for example, are nearly begging Chernov and his team to make these atrocities known, to make the world see—but the disquieting proposition put forth by the film’s assembly (it was edited by Frontline PBS staffer Michelle Mizner), combining the firsthand account with the fake-news speculation, suggests a larger, more ideological war that’s still on the horizon. Preceded by Dana Kavelina’s 2020 short film LETTER TO A TURTLEDOVE (21 min, Digital Projection). Both screen as part of the Dispatches from Ukraine event. (2023, 94 min, Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]

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Bryan Forbes’ THE STEPFORD WIVES (US)

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

As she realizes her new home in Stepford, Connecticut, is perhaps more conservative than she’s used to, Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross) mentions she “messed a little with women’s lib in New York” and decides to hold a “consciousness raising” group for the town’s women. It’s difficult to parse exactly what THE STEPFORD WIVES’ take is on second wave feminism, and certainly many second wave feminists had a negative reaction. I think there’s humor in its satirical look at the movement, but not necessarily dismissal; it’s certainly a feminist film, particularly in how it suggests the sinister depth and deep-rootedness of patriarchy and misogyny, so much beyond the work of a single consciousness raising session—in that way, it perhaps suggests a more radical approach is needed. THE STEPFORD WIVES is in ways a surprising film to be so singularly influential, so much so that “Stepford wife” is an expression that can stand on its own. Based on a novel by Ira Levin and featuring a script by William Goldman, Bryan Forbes’ film doesn’t look or feel particularly polished, especially compared to another '70s feminist paranoia horror like ROSEMARY’S BABY. It exists somewhere between a made-for-TV-movie, with its tinkling score and melodramatic tone, and documentary, with its grainy look and lingering camerawork. Its looseness is maybe why the film has held its cultural significance for almost fifty years. It’s quite legible while simultaneously inviting more complex analysis. Jordan Peele cites THE STEPFORD WIVES as a major influence on his GET OUT (2017), itself in turn the most significant satirical horror of recent years. With the rise of the tradwives trend and the reversal of Roe v. Wade, THE STEPFORD WIVES is, scarily, never far from relevant. Screening as part of the Women's Paranoia: Cassandras and Conspiracies series. (1975, 117 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

H. Tjut Djalil's LADY TERMINATOR (Indonesia)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, 11pm

For those unacquainted with Indonesian horror, LADY TERMINATOR is an ideal entry point. Directed by H. Tjut Djalil, who pioneered a blueprint for Indonesian horror with MYSTICS IN BALI (1981), this film plays like an unofficial remake of THE TERMINATOR (1984). Ocean waves crash as a penis-eating succubus finishes her latest conquest. While the body is hauled away, the queen stands at her balcony and requests a man who can satisfy her. Her wish is granted in the form of a shirtless muscle man. During their sexual encounter, our hero pulls a serpent from between the maneater's legs, and it magically transforms into a dagger. Enraged, she vows revenge on his future kin, vanishing into the sea as the mythical South Sea Queen. This prologue brims with Indonesian mysticism, reflecting the country's superstitious culture and the influences of dictator Suharto, who ruled from 1966 to 1998. Films under his regime faced stringent moral codes, enforced by the Film Council, which mandated strict adherence to “the one and only God” and required that immoral characters be punished, while virtuous ones find happiness. If you stuck to these moral codes your film could feature as much blood, violence, sex, and nudity as desired. In LADY TERMINATOR, anthropology student Tania Wilson (Barbara Anne Constable) crosses these moral boundaries when she seeks knowledge about a “false religious idol” the South Sea Queen. As “punishment,” she is possessed by the Queen, who then sets out to destroy the heir of her ancient rival. After a lightning strike brings her from the ocean, Tania, now the possessed Queen, makes her nude entrance in a scene mirroring Schwarzenegger’s arrival in THE TERMINATOR. From this moment forward we bask in the nostalgic glow of copyright infringement. Armed with a machine gun, the Lady Terminator goes on a bloody rampage, leaving a trail of mangled bodies. Local cop Max McNeil is pulled into the fray as he investigates the death toll, which includes multiple victims missing their genitals. Lady Terminator finds her target, Erica, an up-and-coming rock star. Erica performs a concert in a scene reminiscent of Linda Hamilton having a night out with the girls. Lady Terminator, Erica the singer-heir, and a cop looking for love all intersect on the dancefloor. From there, the action intensifies: foot chases, car crashes, police station shootouts, helicopter explosions, eye lasers, bazookas, and dagger fights relentlessly escalate, with only fleeting moments for Erica and Max to connect romantically. LADY TERMINATOR is a gleeful low-budget spectacle that feels dangerous and raw. Filmed with few production regulations, the cast performed their own stunts, which led to real injuries—Constable famously sliced her ankle on glass during a stunt. While a few Indonesian horror films reached Western audiences when they were released, most remained obscure until recently, when boutique labels like Severin, Terror Vision, and Vinegar Syndrome began restoring and distributing them. Through a deluge of bloody practical effects, bizarre storylines, and unapologetic intensity, these films still have the power to shock. Presented by Music Box Of Horrors. (1989, 82 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Frank Borzage's MAN'S CASTLE (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:30pm and Saturday, 4pm

Lewis Jacobs's influential 1939 survey The Rise of the American Film devotes its final chapter to Hollywood's increasingly topical output in the 1930s. Jacobs advances the thesis that the stark deprivations of the Depression, the civic engagement of the New Deal, and the rise of fascism in Europe had forced the Dream Factory to finally grow up. The New Hollywood ignored the gangster's glamor and sought out the sociological root of his criminality; it condemned mob violence instead of stoking desire for an American Mussolini. Absent in Jacobs's account is MAN'S CASTLE, perhaps the most complete picture of the era and its discontents. The exclusion is understandable: a romance set largely in a New York shantytown, MAN'S CASTLE is the polar opposite of a preachy social tract. Spencer Tracy's Bill is largely content to live as a tramp and listen for the next train whistle. He's no proletariat poster boy. (I know—I once had to conjure a way to make MAN'S CASTLE sound responsible when introducing it during a festival of labor films.) This casual political aloofness is actually the film's greatest strength, and its unique contribution to our understanding of urban life in the 1930s: MAN'S CASTLE simply takes poverty as the norm. It's just something inevitable—a source of shame and embarrassment only if you don't know how to score a free meal or parlay your spare time into kooky odd jobs like serving summonses to showgirls. (A portent of today's gig economy, brought to you by Uber and Task Rabbit?) MAN'S CASTLE is a fairy tale, devoted to equal parts enchantment and moral education. In that sense, it's also the purest expression of its director, Frank Borzage. A career filmmaker who began as an actor in Thomas Ince's silent two-reelers and ended as the director of the Walt Disney Company's three-hour Biblical epic THE BIG FISHERMAN, Borzage worked for every major Hollywood studio. Perhaps that's why Borzage's pair of films for Columbia Pictures, MAN'S CASTLE and NO GREATER GLORY, have historically played second fiddle to Gower Gulch golden boy Frank Capra's comparatively reactionary social fables from the same period. Borzage's films weren't bound up with the house style of a particular studio, in the way that Vincente Minnelli and George Cukor were part and parcel with MGM, or Michael Curtiz exemplified the zippy entertainment of Warner Bros. Instead Borzage was slowly allowed to forge his own style—a spiritual vision, sometimes explicitly Christian, but more often explicitly carnal. Who else but Borzage could direct a scene, as he did in LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW?, where a man's declaration that he loves his wife could come across so staidly sincere and so unambiguously lewd? Like LITTLE MAN, MAN'S CASTLE is obviously a pre-Code film, free in its sexuality but also downbeat in its assessment of human nature. (One reissue apparently moved the mid-film wedding ceremony to the first reel, to better contextualize the infamous skinny-dipping sequence, morally speaking.) Right when you think you know where MAN'S CASTLE is going, it swerves into new emotional territory. Borzage's concluding show of faith is one of the great revelations of American cinema. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (1933, 68 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]

Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley’s DAMES (US)

FACETS Cinema – Saturday, 7:30pm and Sunday, 1:30pm

For those longing for the days when the movie musical was as commonplace as a superhero flick, something like DAMES feels pretty exemplary of what the genre does best; it's a frothy, silly, charming piece of low-stakes entertainment committed to the genre in both its narrative leanness and its visual excess. The comedic setup is both bizarrely knotty and dubiously simple, involving a wealthy conservative benefactor who despises the “immoral” world of musical comedy diverting his $10 million inheritance away from his theatrically-inclined descendant, Jimmy Higgens (Dick Powell), and towards a distant relative who ends up—surprise surprise!—investing said inheritance into Jimmy’s new show, "Sweet and Hot." The hour-or-so leading up to the performance is delightful enough, with director Ray Enright keeping the action light and brisk, Delmer Daves’ screenplay filled with zippy one-liners and enough comic foibles to keep the feature floating along (a particular segue involving trying to procure a rare form of medicine is perhaps the most needlessly diverting). But once we get to the show itself, we find ourselves in musical comedy heaven thanks to the tremendous staging of Busby Berkeley and his commitment to  spectacle-driven performance. The songs filling this section are rather thin, a surprise since they come from the songwriting team of Harry Warren and Al Dubin, reuniting with Berkeley after previous collaborations on the previous year’s 42ND STREET (1933) and FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933). Only the tune "I Only Have Eyes For You" is able to dig its way into your skull as a bona fide ear worm, aided by its accompanying number, where leagues of cutout faces of the actor Ruby Keeler flood the screen. Berkeley’s innate sense of how to use the human body as a canvas for explosive movement and shape is fully realized in the closing number—titled, of course, "Dames"—where chorus girls shed their clothing to fill the screen with innumerable patterns of eye-catching sensational choreography. It’s silly, it’s inane, and it’s just what the movies were made for. (1934, 91 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Kaye]

Victor Erice's CLOSE YOUR EYES (Spain/Argentina)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm and Sunday, 3pm

Victor Erice’s first feature in over three decades, CLOSE YOUR EYES, is an epic eulogy for cinema as it was originally produced, exhibited, and preserved. Set in 2012—the year most theaters converted from 35mm to DCP projection—it frames the death of cinema as already a thing of the past; the pervading tone, though frequently enlivened by moments of levity and beauty, is extremely melancholic. The plot is reminiscent of such Paul Auster novels as Leviathan and The Book of Illusions: Miguel Garay, a reclusive writer and one-time filmmaker, embarks on a journey to track down the actor who walked off the set of his movie in 1990 and disappeared. It’s a decidedly laidback journey, though, which allows the hero plenty of time to reminisce with old friends and colleagues and reflect on whether the work he’s produced will leave any impression after he’s gone. The film might be best summed up in the moment when Miguel wanders upon a used book stand and finds a collection of stories he wrote decades ago and inscribed for an old lover—every scene has this bittersweet sense of loss. Sometimes that loss is personal: Miguel never finished his second feature, his lead actor (who was also his best friend) vanished, and he’s very conscious of the fact that he’s living alone in his 60s. But more often, CLOSE YOUR EYES is concerned with the universal loss of cinema as it was experienced in the 20th century, which is to say as a world discrete from our own. Yes, it’s sad that analog film is no longer the norm in terms of exhibition (and the movie certainly touches on this), but the greater deprivation is that general audiences no longer grant images the magic power they used to. “Miracles haven’t existed in movies since Dreyer died,” a character says at another critical moment, and while he may be speaking hyperbolically, he gets at the spiritual crisis that CLOSE YOUR EYES is addressing. What does it mean to live in a world where not only are there no more miracles, but nobody even seems to want them? There are few filmmakers better equipped to tackle this question than Victor Erice, arguably Spain’s most important director after Luis Buñuel. Though Erice directed just three features prior to CLOSE YOUR EYES, they are three of the greatest Spanish films. Every shot of THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973), EL SUR (1983), and THE QUINCE TREE SUN (1992) exhibits the utmost care and refinement, drawing viewers into the delicate private words of their central subjects. These movies are testaments to the cinema’s ability to render even the tiniest moments larger than life; compared to them, CLOSE YOUR EYES can feel at times disappointingly life-sized. But I suspect the film’s casualness is deceptive and that it will give way to many riches over time—making the film a descendant of Howard Hawks’ RIO BRAVO (1959), a movie that Erice quotes at length here. The quotation is significant, as it reminds us of how films can take root in our memories, their power carrying over into our real lives. CLOSE YOUR EYES may end on a sad, anticlimactic note, but not before Erice has exhorted his viewers to keep this film—and the spirit of cinephilia—alive within us. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2023, 169 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Nicholas Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 7pm

Let's set aside for a moment the convention that IN A LONELY PLACE is another of Nicholas Ray's sub rosa memoirs, charting the decline of his marriage to Gloria Grahame; that the apartment complex Bogart and Grahame's LONELY lovers live in is a replica of one of Ray's own early Hollywood residences; that screenwriter Dixon Steele (Bogart) is in some way a stand-in for Ray's own Hollywood disaffection: an "abnormal" man isolated among jocular thieves and pretty louts. What's up on the screen is enough to satisfy us without resorting to biographical criticism: that is, a film whose wit, maturity, and bruised romanticism defy us to subdue or deconstruct them. LONELY is the most perfect sort of romance: one that shows the lover revealed as a "tyrannical detective" (Bogart is Spade even when he isn't); one that squeezes out a little of our own optimism as we watch suspicion roast our heroes alive. It is the most perfect sort of mystery: one that succeeds in making its own solution entirely irrelevant before it's revealed. Finally, it is the most perfect sort of noir: one that isn't. The tropes are here, but LONELY is as much about the impossible hope of shoehorning real and immutable suffering into a Hollywood film circa 1950 as about the gruesome deaths of hat-check girls or the fatality of character. They don't make 'em like this anymore—and, like the man says, they never really did. If anyone's counting, LONELY may be the best Bogart movie ever made, and it certainly contains his best performance. More to the point, it is one of the great American sound films: turning star-power and genre both into deadly weapons for getting under our skin. Screening as part of Queer Film Theory 101. (1950, 94 min, 35mm) [Jeremy M. Davies]

John Cassavetes' A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Sunday, 12pm

Was John Cassavetes a realist? Yes and no. By the director’s own admission, Cassavetes conducted next to no research on mental illness or the Italian-American community before making his masterpiece, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, even though both are key components of the heroine’s identity. And as Jonathan Rosenbaum has pointed out, it seems dubious that the heroine’s husband and children never visit her in the mental hospital between the time she’s committed and when she’s released; the events of the film’s galvanic final section would likely be far less catastrophic in real life. One could nitpick at Cassavetes films all day with qualms like these, yet they’re rendered pretty much irrelevant by the films themselves, which convey worlds of emotion with such amazing precision that one never questions the authenticity of what the characters are feeling. Cassavetes didn’t build upon cinematic realism—he invented a cinematic hyperrealism that was no less revolutionary than Chantal Akerman’s and which has become more influential in the 21st century than it ever was when he was working. Where Akerman heightened cinematic reality by drawing attention to the sheer duration it takes routine behaviors to unfold, Cassavetes exaggerated the range of feelings, sensations, and insights that anyone can experience within a short passage of time, making everyday life seem exhaustive. (An achievement of Cristi Puiu’s AURORA [2010], one of the more revolutionary films of the 21st century, is that it marries these two extremes of hyperrealism.) A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE takes Cassavetes’ artistic concerns as far as they go, into the realm of madness, emotional breakdown, and devastation. It is simply one of the most wrenching American films. At the same time, it’s never less than exhilarating; Gena Rowlands’ landmark performance as a working-class housewife snapping under the strain of her responsibilities is so exuberant that you feel more alive by watching her. Peter Falk, playing her husband, is almost as good, creating a monumental portrait of a man who, in Kent Jones’ words, “believes so passionately in his idea of perfect happiness, no matter how wrongheadedly, that he’d rather destroy everyone around him than see it compromised.” Given the richness of the characterizations, it isn’t surprising that the acting in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (by a seamless mix of experienced and inexperienced performers) tends to dominate conversations about the film. Yet the way Cassavetes constructs a symphony out of his actors’ gestures is what makes the film much more than a performers’ showcase. And like a symphony, its themes are elusive to the end. To quote Jones again: “[I]t’s about… what? Men and women? Family life? The difficulty of distinguishing between your real and ideal selves? Male embarrassment? All of the above, none of the above. Tagging a movie like WOMAN with something as neat as a ‘subject’ is a fairly useless activity. ‘John had antennae like Proust,’ Peter Falk once wrote. A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE and FACES, probably his two greatest films, are both ultimately as impossible to pin down as In Search of Lost Time. Like Proust before him, Cassavetes rode the whims, upsets, vagaries, and mysterious impulses of humanity like a champion surfer.” Screening as part of Alamo Time Capsule 1974. (1974, 147 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Alice Maio Mackay’s CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS (Australia)

FACETS Cinema – Thursday, 9pm

With five feature films released over four years before even turning 20, Alice Maio Mackay has more than proved her mettle in the genre filmmaking realm, a prodigy with lo-fi spooky cred whose commitment to telling high-energy trans horror stories on her terms is nothing short of inspiring. Her latest, the delightfully disturbed yuletide thriller CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS, is yet another step in Mackay’s ever-maturing visual style comprised of garish colorful imagery and practical gore effects, aided by the editing and VFX work of collaborator Vera Drew (the visionary behind another 2024 trans genre epic, THE PEOPLE’S JOKER). Here, frames blend and dissolve into each other, a collage of images bursting through one another to keep the momentum pulsating as the film delves even further into its labyrinthine plotting. A simple rundown: Lola (Jeremy Moineau), the host of a murder podcast, goes back to her tiny hometown to visit her sister, where Soap Opera Bullshit gets her entangled in the lives and grievances of the community she left behind years ago. Such pettiness will soon be thrown to the side though once Lola gets entangled in the reemergence of the Toymaker, a murderous urban legend come to life in the form of a series of gruesome bloody murders perpetrated by a haunting figure donned in a torn-apart Santa suit. Mackay is eager to stuff the film with heaps of expository dialogue, almost like one of Lola’s podcast episodes come to life, and following the twists and turns and character revelations is exhausting if thrilling once the mystery at the center of things is finally unveiled. As ever, Mackay’s films are a delightful dose of messy queer glee injected into an artistic space where that can often feel in short supply, and CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS emerges as, what else, a delightfully bloody stocking stuffer. Preceded by FACETS Film Trivia. Presented by the film’s editor and THE PEOPLE’S JOKER director Vera Drew. (2024, 70 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Hayao Miyazaki's PONYO (Japan/Animation)

Davis Theater – Sunday, 1pm

Like its understood predecessor, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO–released 20 years prior–PONYO is a film about the magic and uncertainties of childhood, with the protagonists’ real-world experiences shaped by mythological creatures of nature. Director Hayao Miyazaki’s take on the tale of the Little Mermaid, PONYO stands out for its soft pastel watercolor visuals, which perfectly represent the life within and around the ocean. Its characters, too, are striking in their depictions, as Miyazaki weaves in themes not just of childhood, but aging and parental responsibility. Young but dependable Sōsuke lives in a house on a cliff by the ocean with his gregarious mother, Lisa–his father, a sailor, is often away at sea. While playing at the water’s edge, he discovers a goldfish stuck in a bottle and, naming her Ponyo, decides to keep her. Ponyo is not, however, an ordinary goldfish. She is the rebellious daughter of a wizard and longs to escape the confines of her father’s underwater lair. She uses her connection to Sōsuke and her father’s magic to turn herself into a human, and this sets off an imbalance in nature that results in dangerous winds, rain, and the moon falling from the sky. Most significantly, the ocean begins to rise, engulfing Sōsuke’s hometown. Sōsuke’s dedication to caring for Ponyo is ultimately put to the test to restore balance to the natural world. PONYO’s depictions of the ocean are pure wonder; this is evident from the film’s opening moments, and Ponyo’s journeys out of the ocean, but is particularly astonishing in the aftermath of the tsunami when the water has risen to Sōsuke’s doorstep and ancient ocean creatures swim above city streets. PONYO is often dialogue-less, which allows a focus on the dazzling imagery. The film’s magic doesn’t just reside in its enchanting visuals, but in the moments of ordinary childhood; the scene in which Ponyo sleeps over at Sōsuke’s is full of small moments of play and excitement as the two excitedly eat dinner and get ready for bed. Despite being one of the Studio Ghibli films that is most decidedly geared towards a young child audience, PONYO provides some complex themes. Key set pieces at both a school and senior living center, reflecting multiple stages of life and the childlike wonder to be found at all of them. The adults often act like children–especially Lisa, who throws a tantrum when she realizes her husband isn’t coming home when promised. These scenes aren’t a judgment of the film, but rather an exploration of the intersections between selflessness and childishness–PONYO gracefully argues these two things aren’t always too far apart. Screening as part of the Coming of Age series. (2008, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Cathy Yan's DEAD PIGS (China)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Writing for MUBI about the influences on her debut feature, DEAD PIGS, writer-director Cathy Yan cited two films—Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE and Paul Thomas Anderson’s MAGNOLIA—and several contemporary photographers. These influences play out clearly in DEAD PIGS, an ambitious, multi-character narrative that’s rich in striking imagery. Like NASHVILLE and MAGNOLIA, the movie is as much about its setting (in this case, rapidly evolving Shanghai and its outskirts) as it is about the characters, and both are portrayed with a mix of sympathy and cynicism. Yan’s storytelling feels more closely aligned with Anderson’s than Altman’s: DEAD PIGS is not a hazy hang-out movie where the characters cross paths by chance (if at all), but rather a fully orchestrated affair in which people come together by destiny and grand fictional devices. Yan’s narrative machinations don’t become obvious for a while; for its first 20 or 30 minutes, DEAD PIGS hums along on the energy of the gliding camerawork and hyped-up cross-cutting, both of which convey a sense of constant activity befitting the ever-changing environment. The film largely takes place in two settings, old neighborhoods on the brink of demolition and the modern skyscrapers taking their place. Embodying the first of those settings is Candy Wang, a beauty parlor owner who refuses to leave the two-story home she was raised in, despite the fact that every other homeowner on her block has sold their property to a large-scale development firm, which has already razed all the other buildings before the movie starts. (Yan based the character on a real-life woman who helped start China’s “nailhouse” phenomenon of homeowners who refuse to leave their homes when developers attempt to demolish them.) Representing the new Shanghai is Sean, an American architect embarking on a career with the firm that wants to buy Candy’s house. A naive westerner who sees China’s wild capitalist dog race as an opportunity to make it big, Sean resembles the hero of John Maringouin’s gonzo independent production GHOSTBOX COWBOY (which premiered the same year as this), though DEAD PIGS never becomes a nightmare like Maringouin’s film does. The closest it gets is in the hideous spectacle of the title. Throughout the story, Shanghai is plagued by a disease that kills pigs by the thousands; the region’s poor pig farmers abandon the corpses in the rivers, and the image serves as a metaphor for the displaced victims of China’s avalanche-like urbanization. Screening as part of the Propaganda and Counterculture Lecture series. (2018, 122 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Kazik Radwanski's MATT AND MARA (Canada)

FACETS Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes

Kazik Radwanski’s MATT AND MARA is an exciting release for those who have been paying attention to the last decade of Canadian indie film. Radwanski’s fourth feature is his highest-profile to date, made with his highest budget yet following the indie success of his previous film ANNE AT 13,000 FEET (2019). The film’s stars, Matt Johnson and Deragh Campbell, are a sort of king and queen of the current Canadian indie scene, with Johnson’s DIY production ethos building in scope up to last year’s breakthrough BLACKBERRY, and Campbell appearing as actor and collaborator in a spate of recent forward-thinking works by the likes of Sofia Bohdanowicz and Blake Williams. Their casting in this film is a study in contrasts, their characterizations almost playing like a referendum on their respective performance styles and broader tendencies in their work. Where Johnson has a freewheeling, charismatic extroversion that endears him to anyone he meets, Campbell’s steely interiority traps her in her own head, friendly and communicative but constantly dissecting. Mara’s a creative writing professor who gets a visit from her old friend Matt, a fellow writer back in town following the publication of his new book. As they resume their friendship, their obvious chemistry and differing priorities provoke difficult questions about what they expect from one another. While the events of the film touch on more conventional indie drama fare (a terminally ill relative factors into the plot), Radwanski and his regular editor Ajla Odobasic push the film through time, distilling scenes to small but pointed observations. Labor, or the lack thereof, is often the driver of action in Radwanski’s work, something that quite literally gives the characters something to do but mainly provides insight to their body language, the way their presence in the world is defined by gesture. This is his first film about intellectual laborers, and thus has a more discursive mode than his previous features, even more trained on actors’ faces and speech as their professional and private tendencies start to blend together. The film seems especially interested in modern identity fragmentation, acknowledging that a person’s general, professional, and artistic senses of identity are all distinct from one another. Radwanski gives us character exposition via author bios, a sort-of officially presented version of the self that gets attached to creative work and which is both intentionally and unintentionally revealing; Mara has passport photos taken in several scenes, an act where one must present their most "true" and identifiable self as one without any expression beyond a flat, forward-looking neutrality. In ways particular to each character, Matt and Mara mutually fail to read information that’s supposed to be apparent—they rely on friendship cues of time gone by, only to realize their basic interpersonal problems are still the same, and that these might not be specific to them, but rather a fundamental illegibility of all people. Radwanski cleanly fits these ideas into the shell of a Rohmer riff partly thanks to impressive work by DP Nikolay Michaylov, which allows the film’s Bressonian visual language to provide an analogue to the analytical but limited focus of the characters. It puts the film in conversation with recent indies like GOOD ONE, AFTERSUN, or the work of Eliza Hittman in how its reduced drama highlights the more affective qualities of memory and communication. It’s an impressive balancing act, and one that reaffirms Radwanski as one of the most compelling dramatic filmmakers working now, in Canada or anywhere. (2024, 80 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]

🎞️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Noriaki Yuasa’s 1968 Japanese film THE SNAKE GIRL AND THE SILVER-HAIRED WITCH (82 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of the  Terror Tuesday series, and Clay Westervelt’s 2009 documentary POPATOPOLIS (76 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info here. 

⚫ Alliance Française de Chicago (Enter via 54 W. Chicago Ave.)
As part of HotHouse's multipart program Re-Imagining Tropiques: An homage to Aimé And Suzanne Césaire, Euzhan Palcy’s 1994 film AIMÉ CÉSAIRE: A VOICE FOR HISTORY (165 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday at 2pm. The screening will be followed by a reception featuring complimentary French wine, sponsored by Villa Albertine. Non-alcoholic options will be available. 

The Champs-Élysées Film Festival: US Tour 2024 takes place Tuesday starting at 6:30pm. Free admission for members and students. More info here.

⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Not By Magic: Animated Films by Women from Serious Business Company, a showcase of films by women animators drawn from the catalogue of the 1970s independent, woman-run film distributor Serious Business Company, screen Friday at 7pm. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with CFA, presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, called we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station and will run day and night through March 15, 2026. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
As part of HotHouse's multipart program Re-Imagining Tropiques: An homage to Aimé And Suzanne Césaire, Sarah Maldoror’s 1976 film AIMÉ CÉSAIRE - UN HOMME UNE TERRE/ AT THE END OF DAYBREAK (57 min, Digital Projection) and Manthia Diawara’s 2015 film NÉGRITUDE: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN WOLE SOYINKA AND SENGHOR (59 min, Digital Projection) screen Friday starting at 7pm, followed by remarks from Tara Betts, author of three full-length poetry collections: Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit, and Arc & Hue. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Film Society
Two by Gottheim, featuring Larry Gottheim’s 1989 film MACHETE GILLETTE… MAMA (45 min, 16mm) and his 1991/2024 short film YOUR TELEVISION TRAVELER (18 min, 16mm), screen Monday at 7pm. Seating is very limited for this program, RSVP required.  More info here.

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

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Rana Segal’s 2024 documentary THE LIGHT OF TRUTH: RICHARD HUNT’S MONUMENT TO IDA B. WELLS (66 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday, 6:30pm, at the Hamilton Park Cultural Center (513 W 72nd St) as a Free Community Cinema Screening.

Christopher Zalla’s 2023 film RADICAL (126 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 2pm, at the National Museum of Mexican Art (1852 W. 19th S.t), also as a Free Community Cinema Screening. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Doc Films at the University of Chicago
Nathaniel Dorsky’s AUGUST AND AFTER, PASTOURELLE, INTIMATIONS, APRICITY, COLOPHON (2012, 2010, 2015, 2019, 2018; Total Approx. 87 min; 16mm ) screen Sunday at 8pm. 

The UChicago Champs-Elysées Film Festival presents free public screenings of six short French films in competition on Monday at 5pm. Also as part of the festival, El Hajj’s DIARIES FROM LEBANON (110 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 4pm. Both followed by post-screening Q&A led by Etienne Labbouz (UChicago) and Justine Lévèque (Artistic Director of the Paris Festival.) 

Bernando Ruiz’s 2023 film EL EQUIPO (80 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday at 6pm. Jan Švankmajer’s 2018 film INSECT (98 min, DCP Digital Projection) screens afterward at 8pm. 

Emilio Fernández’s 1946 film ENAMORADA (99 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 8pm, as part of the Mexican Romance: Through the Heart of the Nation series.

Maria Maggenti’s 1995 film THE INCREDIBLY TRUE ADVENTURE OF TWO GIRLS IN LOVE (94 min, DCP Digital) screens, 9:30pm, as part of the Subversive Histories: A Snapshot of Queer Cinema series. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Davis Theater
Another Trust Fall screening, presented by Oscarbate, takes place Thursday, 8:30pm, with special guest Samm Deighan, film scholar and editor of Revolution in 35mm: Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Arthouse to the Grindhouse. More info here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
As part of the Cold Sweat film series, Michael Rymer’s 2002 film QUEEN OF THE DAMNED (101 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday at 7pm and Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2002 film RESIDENT EVIL (100 min, Digital Projection) at 9pm. 

Robin Campillo’s 2023 film RED ISLAND (116 min, DCP Digital Projection) screens Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 1pm and 6pm. More info here. 

⚫ Leather Archives & Museum
Ryū Murakami’s 1992 film TOKYO DECADENCE (113 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 7pm, as part of the Fetish Film Forum series. Presented by Oscarbate. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ 2024 horror film HERETIC (110 min, 35mm and DCP Digital [check showtime for format]) and Sean Baker’s 2024 film ANORA (139 min, 35mm and DCP Digital [check showtime for format]) continue screening. See Venue website for showtimes.

Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 film THE ROOM (99 min, 35mm) screens Friday at midnight.

Professor O’s Producing Festival #2 - Make A Web Series! takes place Sunday at 11am.

Koji Shiraishi’s 2024 Japanese film HOUSE OF SAYURI (108 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 7pm. Programmed and presented by Chicago Japan Film Collective. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Sideshow Gelato (4819 N. Western Ave.)
SUPER-HORROR-RAMA! presents Lloyd Kaufman’s 2006 film POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD (103 min, Digital Projection) on Thursday, 7:30pm, as part of this month’s Flipping the Bird: A Thanksgiving Series. Every screening includes a social hour with live music starting at 6pm, a surprise short feature in keeping with the theme of Thanksgiving and killer giveaways donated by House of Movie Monsters and The Shadowboxery at 7pm, and a brand new video intro by Drive-In Asylum, a fanzine exploring classic eras of horror, sci-fi, cult, and exploitation films through vintage newsprint ads. More info here.

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Find more information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its full screening and workshop schedule, here.

CINE-LIST: November 15 - November 21, 2024

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Julian Antos, Maxwell Courtright, Jeremy M. Davies, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Patrick Friel, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Josh B Mabe, Nicky Ni, Elise Schierbeek, James Stroble, K.A. Westphal