We will highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that are open, grouped in our standard Crucial Viewing and Also Recommended sections, as well as all other physical screenings, and list streaming/online screenings below.
Remember to check venue websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place for COVID prevention. We recommend verifying those before every trip to the theater.
Note: We recommend checking the Doc Films website before attending a screening, to verify that it is still happening and in the format advertised.
🔊 CINE-CAST: The Cine-File Podcast
Episode #23 - New!
On this special episode of the Cine-Cast, co-managing editor Kat Sachs interviews London-based non-fiction filmmaker Charlie Shackleton about his 2021 film THE AFTERLIGHT (82 min, 35mm), which screens Wednesday at 7:30pm, at Northeastern Illinois University, as part of the Chicago Film Society's new season. Sachs and Shackleton chat about TikTok, what makes this a particularly unique screening, and why the print's first real scratch will be a rite of passage. This event is the essence of Crucial Viewing—it’s a singular film-going experience that you're unlikely to encounter again. Preceded by Paul Weiland's 1991 short MR. BEAN GOES TO A PREMIÈRE (6 min, 35mm), selected by Shackleton from the Chicago Film Society's collection.
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Listen to the Cine-Cast here!
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Céline Sciamma’s PETITE MAMAN (France)
AMC River East 21, Gene Siskel Film Center, and Landmark's Century Centre Cinema – See Venue websites for showtimes
An old woman fills out a crossword puzzle with the help of an 8-year-old girl. After they fill in the last word, the girl, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), says good-bye. She moves to the next room down the hall and says good-bye to the elderly woman in that room and then does the same in a third room. When she reaches the fourth room, a 30ish woman is packing up some belongings. The woman is Nelly’s mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse), who gives her assent when Nelly asks if she can keep a walking stick. This brief, skillfully rendered sequence tells us all we need to know about the circumstances that will dominate the remainder of the film—Marion’s mother has died, and she, Nelly, and Nelly’s father (Stéphane Varupenne) will go to Marion’s childhood home to pack up the old woman’s belongings. French director Céline Sciamma expands her examination of women’s lives by turning to their generational connections and, specifically, the formative moments of girlhood. Marion encounters artifacts from her childhood—books, drawings, old wallpaper. She tries to answer Nelly’s questions about her youth, but overcome by grief, she leaves the house. Left to her own devices, Nelly searches for remnants of a treehouse Marion built in the woods and encounters her mother at the age of 8 (Gabrielle Sanz). It is sheer genius for Sciamma, who also wrote the screenplay, to level the playing field by bringing mother and daughter together as peers to talk about the things that really matter to them—young Marion’s fear of an operation she is to undergo in three days’ time and Nelly’s worry that she is the cause of her mother’s melancholy (young Marion reassures her as only the honesty of a child can that “you didn’t invent my sadness.”) Nelly, who confesses to her older mother that she wishes she had given her grandmother a proper good-bye, gets a chance at a do-over, albeit with a younger version (Margot Abascal). Sciamma brings her camera down to a child’s eye level and favors close-ups that match the curiosity the girls have for each other. Perhaps Nelly is simply tapping into the ghosts of Marion’s past, but whether actual time travel is involved is somewhat beside the point. The simple, but never childish dialogue, the rapport and generosity of spirit between the girls, and the willingness to believe each other in a way that is so true of girlhood is the real miracle in this film. Sciamma has given us a story we all would like to believe in and imagine for ourselves in our own way. (2021, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
John Cassavetes' FACES (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm
An exhausting masterpiece and one of the most galvanizing experiences in American cinema, John Cassavetes’ FACES will never diminish in its power despite having influenced scores of lesser movies. Many have compared the film to a direct-cinema documentary, and it certainly resembles one in its gritty 16mm cinematography, rough editing, and ineloquent dialogue. Yet the documentary-like aesthetic was actually the result of scrupulous work by Cassavetes and his crew. The director had cinematographer Al Ruban light every corner of every room they shot in, allowing the actors to move about spontaneously; the actors also wore body microphones so that the crew could forgo a boom operator. Cassavetes wrote multiple drafts of the screenplay and engaged in lengthy workshops with his actors—the dialogue only sounds improvised. If the montage makes FACES resemble the shards of a much longer film, that’s because it is: the final draft of the script ran about 250 pages, and the rough cut ran about six hours. Cassavetes’ prodigious skill as a director of actors has justifiably overshadowed his innovations as an editor, but FACES demonstrates how he could masterfully manipulate the flow of a drama so that it consisted entirely of emotional climaxes. (Kent Jones has compared the sustained intensity of his films to the compositions of Gustav Mahler.) One of the most electrifying cuts occurs early on in the film, after middle-aged louse Richard Forst (John Marley) abruptly ends an argument with his wife Maria (Lynn Carlin) to shoot some pool in the billiard room of his home. After maybe a couple seconds of downtime, Cassavetes jumps ahead to Richard and Maria reconciling in bed, laughing nervously over his dumb jokes. Indeed, there’s plenty of nervous laughter in FACES—it reflects the characters’ fear of their own feelings and their inability to articulate what bothers them—and Cassavetes uses it as dagger-like punctuation in dialogue comprised largely of false starts and interruptions. The narrative might be described as one grand interruption in Richard and Maria’s lives, following the characters as they attempt to assuage their mid-life crises by pursuing younger lovers (played brilliantly by Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel). Their rocky paths to self-realization culminate with a terrifying passage that sees one character at the brink of death. Cassel’s character interrupts that downward trajectory with one of the greatest monologues in Cassavetes’ filmography, an exhortation to feel more deeply that also describes the motivation behind the filmmaker’s aesthetic. “Cry! Cry! That’s life!” Screening as part of the Haskell Wexler Centennial series. (1968, 130 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Elaine May's THE HEARTBREAK KID (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Wednesday, 7pm
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 foresaken: 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 Doc’s Wednesday series: They Thought I Was a Nice Girl: The Films of Elaine May. (1972, 106 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
Mounia Akl’s COSTA BRAVA, LEBANON (Lebanon)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 6:30pm
The story begins several years after Walid (Sales Bakri) has moved with his mother, wife, and daughters from Beirut to “the last green spot in Lebanon,” a few acres of farm land in the mountains that’s been in his family for generations. He appreciates how isolated the spot is, though the solitude has been getting to his wife (Nadine Labaki), a onetime famous singer, and their older daughter Tala, who likes to remind everyone she’s “17 going on 18” and wants to make friends and begin dating. Sensitive yet stubborn, Walid recognizes how unhappy rural life has made his family, but he refuses to go back to the tumultuous capital city, even after his sister (who emigrated to Colombia years ago) sells some of the family property to be turned into a landfill. As developers descend upon the farm and rebellion shakes the family from within, Walid stands firm in his connection to the land. It’s easy to see why COSTA BRAVA, LEBANON was chosen to open this year’s Chicago Palestine Film Festival; Walid’s plight can be easily read as a metaphor for that of the Palestinian people, whose relationship to their homeland has been tested by even greater challenges than the ones Walid faces. At the same time, the film is no open-and-shut metaphor—Mounia Akl (making her feature debut as a writer-director) roots the characters’ situation in specifics of Lebanese society, and she’s also astute with regards to tensions that arise in any family. The film has a pleasingly vibrant quality that heightens the drama. Screening as part of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival; more information about the full festival here. Preceded by Matteo Servente and Molly J. Wexler’s 2020 short THE LITTLE TEA SHOP (17 min, DCP Digital). (2021, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Abbas Kiarostami’s CLOSE-UP (Iran)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm
CLOSE-UP is an almost unclassifiable film: part documentary, part fiction, a film about fakery and the illusion of cinema, but an illusion that still resonates and weaves a story somehow that is deeply personal, moving, and tragic. An early Kiarostami work from 1990, CLOSE-UP revolves around a man named Hossein Sabzian who is obsessed with cinema, and especially with Mohsen Makhmalbaf, one of the greatest directors of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. Makhmalbaf's films THE CYCLIST and MARRIAGE OF THE BLESSED (the plot of which draws an interesting parallel to CLOSE-UP, which would require a much longer discussion) have made a deep impression on Sabzian. In a tale that is baffling and complex, Sabzian is mistaken for Makhmalbaf on a bus by Mrs. Ahankhah, a woman whose sons are both obsessed with the cinema as well. Sabzian bizarrely decides to impersonate Makhmalbaf and pretends that he would like to shoot a film starring the Ahankhah brothers, and is later found out and arrested. Kiarostami learned of Sabzian’s impersonation and his upcoming trial through a short news story and became obsessed. After a sleepless night, Kiarostami asked his producer if he could postpone his next film and shoot Sabzian's trial instead. Writing the script and designing the film concurrent with the 40 days of shooting allowed Kiarostami to create something that melds documentary and fiction in a way that calls into question the very limits and possibilities of cinema. We watch Sabzian on trial in extreme close-up for long, excruciating, vulnerable minutes, as he confesses his motives for impersonating Makhmalbaf, and the wounded Ahankhah brothers complain about their betrayal. Miraculously, Kiarostami got the judge to agree to let him film the trial, and in an especially fascinating turn, Kiarostami becomes an integral part of the trial, something of a prosecutor, asking probing off-screen questions interspersed with the judge's on-screen fact-finding. Before the trial we see re-enactments of Sabzian's arrest starring all of the real people involved, including the journalist who broke the story and the deceived family, and throughout the trial we cut to further re-enactments of Sabzian on the bus with Mrs. Ahankhah and in the family’s home. In an especially poignant scene closing the film, Kiarostami arranges for the real Makhmalbaf to meet Sabzian as he leaves the prison, but deliberately does not warn Sabzian in advance—Kiarostami's manipulation of actors in his films is a source of valid criticism, but elicits unforgettable cinematic moments, much like Dreyer's brutal treatment of Maria Falconetti in THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, a film I am always reminded of when I experience the intensity of CLOSE-UP on a big screen. Makhmalbaf drives Sabzian to the Ahankhah's house on his motorcycle (in a very long shot—the close-ups seem deliberately saved for Sabzian, not the real Makhmalbaf), and Kiarostami and crew follow in what seems to be the most verité-style shooting of the entire film. But with Kiarostami, nothing is ever what it seems: interviews with the filmmaker reveal that Kiarostami deliberately cut out the sound and masked the silence with a plot device, because Makhmalbaf's conversation was too "sentimental" and "ruined" the ending. Like all of Kiarostami's work, CLOSE-UP is at once a story about an individual and also a collective documentary-fiction about the nature and limits of truth and reality, class struggle, the role of the director and spectator in manipulating narrative... honestly, every time I watch this movie, I find new themes emerge. The spiraling nature of the meta-narrative rewards every re-viewing. And much like his other works, CLOSE-UP is both beautiful to watch and beautiful to listen to: each frame and sound is thoughtfully orchestrated and considered. For the rest of his life, Kiarostami talked about CLOSE-UP as his most personal work, and one of his best. This reviewer agrees. Screening as part of 50/50, the Film Center’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (1990, 98 min, 35mm) [Alexandra Ensign]
Jan Troell’s ZANDY’S BRIDE (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:45am and Tuesday, 7:15pm
A chief innovation of the New Hollywood movies of the 1960s and ‘70s was how they fused American stories with European-style storytelling. Visconti’s towering influence over the protracted wedding sequences of THE GODFATHER (1972) and THE DEER HUNTER (1978) may be the most obvious example, but one can cite many others: the Godardian genre play of Brian De Palma’s SISTERS (1973); the Resaisian editing of Sidney Lumet’s THE PAWNBROKER (1964) and Frank Perry’s PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (1972); the Bergmanesque psychosexual drama of Mike Nichols’ CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (1971). Throughout this period, Hollywood studios even recruited prominent European filmmakers to do their thing in the United States, as in the case of Jacques Demy’s MODEL SHOP (1969), Michelangelo Antonioni’s ZABRISKIE POINT (1970), and ZANDY’S BRIDE, a Pacific Northwestern directed by Swedish luminary Jan Troell at the height of his international popularity. ZANDY’S BRIDE isn’t discussed or revived as often as any of the other aforementioned films, likely because it isn’t especially flashy or boundary-pushing—indeed, the story (about a rough homesteader in Big Sur who unexpectedly falls in love with his Swedish mail-order bride after she shows her mettle on the frontier) is the sort of character-driven Western that regularly got produced in Old Hollywood. Yet the film feels modern in its sensitivity, understatement, and relaxed pacing. Liv Ullman, who had starred in Troell’s diptych THE EMIGRANTS (1971) and THE NEW LAND (1972), more than holds her own against Gene Hackman, who always shines when playing an unapologetically gruff masculine archetype. The interplay between their two acting styles is fascinating to watch, as is Jordan Cronenweth’s handsome nature photography. (Troell reportedly disliked that Warner Bros. wouldn’t let him shoot the film himself, as he customarily did in Sweden, but Cronenweth’s work is more than serviceable.) Perhaps the most compelling thing about ZANDY’S BRIDE is the perspective that Troell brings to the story as a foreigner; one readily empathizes with the title character’s wonder and terror in an unfamiliar terrain. Screening as part of the “Hell on the Homestead: Surviving the Frontier” series. (1974, 97 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Hal Ashby's BOUND FOR GLORY (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 3pm
Described by Roger Ebert as “the most visually accomplished film since BARRY LYNDON," BOUND FOR GLORY tells the story of a young Woody Guthrie as he makes his way through poverty-stricken America and navigates the capital-driven music industry early in his career. At its center, the film is a portrait of an artist finding the balance between having enough to support his family and not sell out his principles as an activist. Based on Guthrie’s autobiography, the film embraces the union solidarity politics central to the singer’s work, and the class consciousness of the artist biopic fits the director like a glove. Ashby, best known for the cult classic HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971), had established his leftwing politics within the Hollywood New Wave as an editor on films like IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967) and as the director of THE LANDLORD (1970). Through his collaboration with cinematographer Haskell Wexler, he creates some of the most stunning images ever put to celluloid of a traumatized country in financial ruin. The film picked up multiple nominations at the 49th Academy Awards and won for its cinematography; it’s important to note this contains the first Steadicam shot in film history. David Carradine, playing Woody, grounds the world of the film. The viewer follows him in a broken America from the turmoil of the Dustbowl to the elegant greed within the recording studios of Los Angeles. It’s a slow burn, but a masterclass in world-building. Screening as part of the Haskell Wexler Centennial series. (1976, 147 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]
Preston Sturges' THE LADY EVE (US)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
Preston Sturges' THE LADY EVE may be one of the best revenge movies ever made. Jean (Barbara Stanwyck) is a beautiful con artist; Charles (Henry Fonda) is a wealthy snake enthusiast. They fall in love aboard an ocean liner, only to break up when he learns of her cardsharp predilections. She gets her revenge by posing as an English aristocrat—Lady Eve—and seducing him into (another) marriage proposal. They wed, and hilarity ensues. By the end, Jean has likewise exacted her revenge and gotten exactly what she'd wanted, leaving the audience as smitten and bewildered as Charles. Sturges' nimble direction lends itself to the narrative finesse of this befuddling romantic comedy, which, as the title suggests, is a play on Adam and Eve, the snake and the apple, and the rest of that Biblical nonsense. But the moral lesson at its core doesn't warn against temptation. Rather, it warns against judgment and an inability to forgive, though it's not beyond reproach—Jean makes her swindler self seem more appealing by having Lady Eve be something of a floozy. On one hand, it's sort of a backhanded commentary on censorship; on the other, it's odd to see sl*t shaming in a film that's arguably sexier than it is humorous—and it's pretty darn funny. But I don't mean sexy like Marilyn Monroe in SOME LIKE IT HOT is sexy; I mean sexy as in ‘I can imagine them having sex,’ something I can't say about many other films. Sturges expertly balances the sensuous, screwball comedy and the straight-up slapstick that further complements the sexiness. For example, Charles can't seem to stop falling over things when in Jean/Eve's presence, which is not only humorous, but also emphasizes the strength of their attraction. Whereas Lubitsch had his touch—and Wilder his slap—writer-turned-director Sturges seems to abide by Jean's father's motto: "Let us be crooked but never common." Some of it may be crooked, but, certainly, nothing in the film is common. Screening as part of the weekend “Anchors Aweigh Matinees!” series. (1941, 94 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
So few digitally-shot features dare to place the medium's technical limitations at the front and center of their aesthetic. Mostly filmmakers just hope that the audience ignores how crappy everything looks. Not David Lynch. INLAND EMPIRE obsessively fixates on the look of mid-grade digital video: blocky smears of light, washed-out colors, hazy and peculiar. It's literally a dreamworld. As in a dream, you can't always tell what you're seeing—or what it means. There is only the eternal now; in the film's world, memory can just as easily refer to tomorrow as to yesterday. Memory is as blurry as the degraded visuals. We're forced to squint between the pixels, trying to remember. Lynch marries this to a soundtrack that's arrestingly intricate, populated with all manner of industrial noises and hair-raising sound effects. It's an image/sound mashup as scary and bewildering as any nightmare. Seen in a darkened theater we're caught in its brilliant grip. (2006, 180 min, DCP Digital — New 4K Picture and Sound Remaster) [Rob Christopher]
Howard Hawks' SCARFACE (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 9pm
Howard Hawks' early talkie SCARFACE finds him adapting Armitage Trail's nigh-unreadable novel of booze slinging and unbridled incestuous lust into a free-for-all of cinematic show-offery. The perversely mannered, highly symbolic cinematography and visual patterns Hawks brings to this dirty and unwholesome tale are justly famous: the fortuitous 'X' appearing within the mise-en-scene just as death approaches, the playful long-take of murder the opens the film that's been stolen out of Josef von Sternberg's UNDERWORLD, the tommy gun that blasts away the pages of a calendar to mark the days of Tony Camonte's mob rule. As Camonte, Paul Muni seems to move through the frame like a caged animal, infinitely furious and simultaneously perpetually calculating, a monster whose body exists only because his desires need physical form to be satisfied. Screening as part of the Fringe Benefits series; preceded by movie trivia, hosted by the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Associate Producers. (1932, 93 min, DCP Digital — New 4K Restoration) [Kian Bergstrom]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Sam Raimi’s DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
It’s May again, which signals the beginning of Marvel Studios' yearly releases. DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS is the first of 2022, and it comes accompanied by a trailer for an upcoming Thor film and who knows how many Disney+ shows they have prepared for the rest of the year. Regardless of whether you're experiencing superhero flick fatigue, Sam Raimi delivers a movie for both Raimi-heads and Marvel Cinematic Universe diehards. At times it's tense, with a great Danny Elfman score paired with sound design and effects that push and pull at all the right moments. Other times, it's gross and surprising; viewers will collectively vocalize their disgust as things decay, burst, or split in eye-popping ways. There's sometimes a disharmony in the elements, and the tension can be undermined by the standard MCU look that every film under the company umbrella shares. While this stops certain scenes from hitting their highs, it doesn't harm the film much as a whole. There's a cheesiness baked into certain scenes, and it works more effectively here than in other MCU outings. Maybe that's because Raimi already nailed this style with his first foray with Marvel characters, 2002's SPIDER-MAN. The film demonstrates for the second time this year that if studios are hellbent on bringing us the same IPs over and over, they need to let the creatives involved do their thing and leave their mark. Whether you’re grinning from the Raimi-isms or cheering the plethora of cameos, DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS gives you something to enjoy. (2022, 126 mins, 35mm) [Drew Van Weelden]
Dennis Hopper's OUT OF THE BLUE (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm
It’s the start of the 1980s. Michael Cimino's HEAVEN'S GATE signaled the end of New Hollywood's opulence and seemingly unlimited power, while Dennis Hopper's OUT OF THE BLUE signaled the demise of New Hollywood's intimate and piercing fragility. Along with Robert Bresson's THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (1977), this may be the most "punk" film of all-time. Hopper's previous film, THE LAST MOVIE, was already nine years past when he took the reins of this project, which follows Linda Manz, the unbelievably talented teen actress from DAYS OF HEAVEN, as she navigates a new era and counterculture, namely the punk years of the early '80s. Oddly enough, this was also an era whose golden age was waning, almost gone. Seeing it in contrast to the counterculture of the late '60s, we can better understand the world the adult characters inhabit: a fallout town on the outskirts of a city, where dreams go to garbage dumps—perhaps the very same where Manz's father, Hopper himself, now works following a tragic accident that landed him in prison. His daughter, who was witness to the accident, lives with her oftentimes drug-addled and partner-swapping mother. In order to escape her existence, she occasionally sneaks off to the city to catch punk shows and smoke pot. The world she inhabits is a mostly unsentimental world, similar to those found in the work of Maurice Pialat and Abel Ferrara (who cast Hopper in his own reality-shattering film, THE BLACKOUT, almost two decades later). This is not a world where characters change or become better people. These are characters grounded in the reality of stagnation, unable to make adjustments to their lives, only able to continue along, hoping their flaws don't affect the lives of others. It's tempting to view this as a follow-up to Hopper's EASY RIDER, the film that launched the initial flare for the '60s counter-culture movement, so it's not unreasonable to see these characters as shades of those characters, provided they survived the ending of the previous film. At one point Hopper says to a friend of his, "I really fucked up man", a line that echoes the line he said to Peter Fonda over a decade before: "We blew it, man." And just like the title (taken from a song on Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps LP), these characters search in bottles, joints, needles, music, and sex, for a way to escape into the blackness, a zone whose calling attracts only because it isn't the present; it's the unavoidable unknown, the place deep within those who lasted long enough to see their hopes bleed out before the steps of reality. Where EASY RIDER provided a shocking ending to a beginning full of wonder and freedom, this story is well past the expansive camera positions, open road, and various psych-folk-rock jams, to a world where the camera stays at a cautious distance, the songs never change, and their words wrap the characters in a thicket of prophetic repetition and foreboding. Screening as part of Doc’s second Thursday series: Punks Behind the Camera. (1980, 94 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]
Haskler Wexler's MEDIUM COOL (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 6pm
How many times have you gone somewhere expecting a massive riot? And if you did go, did you also expect to come away with cinematic gold? That's pretty much what Chicago native Haskell Wexler did in 1968 when he decided to shoot footage of protesters outside the Democratic National Convention. Already an Oscar-winning cinematographer for his work on WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, he set a fictional film about the ethics of a TV news cameraman amongst the actual chaos in the city. In MEDIUM COOL he used what was essentially a documentary crew (operating the camera himself), and had the actors intermingle with real protesters and police as all hell broke loose in Chicago. Other documentary footage was repurposed and additional narrative scenes were shot to fill in the gaps of the superficial plot, and Wexler used these elements to walk the line between fact and fiction while addressing the political climate of the times. Perhaps more than any other filmmaker, Wexler is responsible for the shooting style used in films by directors like John Cassavetes, John Sayles, and Kelly Reichardt, who all seem to have taken his advice: "If your film can reflect areas of life where people feel passion, then it will have genuine drama." Screening as part of the Haskell Wexler Centennial series. (1969, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Jason Halprin]
Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (Italy)
Facets Cinema – Friday, 7pm
Life imitates art and art imitates life in Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece, a thinly disguised autobiographical study of an Italian filmmaker, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni, naturally), fighting director's block while making a science-fiction epic. 8 1/2 proved to be exactly the right movie for its cultural moment, as cinematic new waves were cropping up all over the world and the auteurist notion that a film could be (and indeed should be) seen as the personal expression of a single individual was filtering down from critics to the general moviegoing public. Of course, an intuitive director like Fellini wasn't consciously trying to capture the zeitgeist but merely throwing his own confusion about life, love, and art up on the screen (the film's original title, THE BEAUTIFUL CONFUSION, would have been apt). Fellini also had no way of knowing that the innovative way he showed the collision of his protagonist's fantasies, dreams, and childhood memories—most of which pertain to Guido’s struggles with religion and/or the women in his life—would exert such a massive influence on future filmmakers. Everyone from Woody Allen (STARDUST MEMORIES) to Bob Fosse (ALL THAT JAZZ) to Paul Mazursky (ALEX IN WONDERLAND and THE PICKLE) unofficially remade it (while, ironically, the official remake, the Hollywood musical NINE, proved to be an impersonal work-for-hire for director Rob Marshall). As Dave Kehr perceptively noted, "There's something about the concept (stuck for an idea for his new movie, a director takes a long, hard look at his own life) that appeals irresistibly to the ego of the professional filmmaker. For directors frustrated by the eternal obscurity of life behind the camera, the 8 1/2 formula gives them a way to step forward and grab the spotlight they've trained so long on others." Fellini may never again have ascended to the level of greatness he displayed here, even though he repeatedly mined similar subject matter, but 8 1/2 remains a dizzying career high. Screening as part of the Milos’s Picks series in conjunction with Facets’ 47th anniversary celebration. (1963, 138 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
Robert Eggers’ THE NORTHMAN (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Vikings are having a moment in pop culture, but Robert Eggers is less than thrilled. Saying that "recent television, film, and video game representations of Viking mythology and Old Norse culture are romanticized and made to look flashy and cool," he decided to make the ultimate Viking film, aiming for historical accuracy. But THE NORTHMAN plays more like an '80s action movie, full of macho masochism à la Mel Gibson and sporting a revenge-driven plot influenced by HAMLET that could be set in the present day—of course, with some major details changed. Prince Amleth (played by Alexander Skarsgard as an adult) watches his father (Ethan Hawke) murdered by his uncle Fjolnir (Claes Bang), leading to a lifelong vow of revenge. Years later, he disguises himself as a slave and arranges to be sold into servitude in Iceland, where Fjolnir rules. Toiling on Fjolnir’s farm, he bides his time till he can enact his revenge. But that conflict takes place in a world where reality and fantasy blend together and the worlds of humans and animals seem very close. For all the period research that went into it, THE NORTHMAN, like Eggers’ THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019), boils down to a conflict between two men; and like the earlier film, it risks succumbing to making the extensive world-building a background for that struggle. Yet THE NORTHMAN has a far more seductive look, embracing blatant artifice—if the crows in the first scene aren't CGI, they're giving the film's best performances—and monochrome tones through which a fire’s golden glow bursts. (Tinted silent cinema is a touchstone for this film's cinematography.) Like Eggers’ first two films, both period pieces, THE NORTHMAN combines a trippy tone with extremely detailed production design. It’s most intriguing when Eggers’ direction hints at a world where reality and fantasy blend together, with the style rejecting the rationalist tendencies of contemporary Europe. THE NORTHMAN tries to embody Viking culture instead of merely depicting it. The sound design is purposefully overwhelming, with music blending into foley effects. Eggers still hasn’t topped his debut, THE WITCH (2015), but he’s made the leap from A24 folk horror to a $90 million studio project without watering down or changing his aesthetic. (2022, 136 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
“Looking at Listening: Films on Women and Experimental Music” screens on Friday at 7pm. The short film program includes Sam Green’s A FILM ABOUT LISTENING (2020, 33 min, Digital Projection); Aura Satz’s HACER UNA DIAGONAL CON LA MUSICA (2019, 10 min, Digital Projection; Sophia Feuer’s SPACE LADY (2020, 17 min, Digital Projection); and Emily Eddy’s AMOUR POUR UNE FEMME (2019, 9 min, Digital Projection). The latter, originally commissioned by the Chicago Film Archives for the annual CFA Media Mixer, will include a live performance by electronic musician Natalie Chami (TALsounds), followed by a panel discussion with Chami and filmmakers Eddy and Feuer, moderated by guest curator and NU Screen Cultures Ph.D. candidate Jennifer Smart.
Miryam Charles’ 2022 feature debut CETTE MAISON (75 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday at 7pm; Charles will appear in-person for a post-screening discussion with Lakshmi Padmanabhan, assistant professor in Screen Cultures at Northwestern. Free admission to both events. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Kenneth Branagh's 2021 film BELFAST (98 min, DCP Digital) screens on Saturday at 7pm as part of the New Releases series.
Sandra Nettelbeck’s 2001 film MOSTLY MARTHA (109 min, 35mm) screens on Sunday at 7pm as part of the “Food, the Common Tongue: Loves, Rages, and Delights of Gastro-Cinema” series.
Alice Diop’s 2016 film TOWARDS TENDERNESS (113 min, DCP Digital), Jocelyn Taylor’s 1995 short film BODILY FUNCTION (13 min, Digital Projection), and Fanta Régina Nacro’s 1995 short film PUK NINI (30 min, Digital Projection) screen on Monday at 7pm as part of the “An Open Window: Black Female Directors Across the Diaspora” series.
Gregg Araki’s 1992 film THE LIVING END (84 min, DCP Digital) screens on Tuesday at 7pm as part of the “Neo-Noir ‘92” series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Facets Cinema
Graham Moore’s 2022 film THE OUTFIT (105 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday and Sunday. See Venue website for showtimes.
Raul Zaritsky and Linda Williams’ 1981 documentary MAXWELL STREET BLUES (56 min, Digital Projection) screens all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday on a loop. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Ameen Nayfah’s 20202 film 200 METERS (96 min, DCP Digital) screens on Sunday at 1pm, preceded by Iyad Alasttal’s 2021 short film GAZA FOOTBULLET (35 min, Digital Projection), and Anne Paq and Dror Dayan’s 2019 film NOT JUST YOUR PICTURE - THE STORY OF THE KILANI FAMILY (56 min, DCP Digital) screens on Wednesday at 6:30pm, along with the Palestinian Short Film Series. These screenings are all part of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, going through May 21.
Norman Jewison’s 1967 film IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (110 min, 4K Digital Restoration) screens on Sunday at 4pm as part of the Haskell Wexler Centennial series.
The Waveforms Festival, the bi-annual sound and multimedia festival organized by graduate students in SAIC's Sound Department, screens on Sunday at 7pm. Open to the public and free admission.
The SAIC Film, Video, New Media, Animation and Sound Festival 2022 begins on Thursday and goes through Saturday, May 14. This event is also Open to the public and offers free admission. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
This weekend’s midnight movies are Tommy Wiseau’s THE ROOM (2003, 99 min, 35mm) on Friday and Jim Sharman’s ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975, 100 min, 35mm) on Saturday.
Andrew Dominik’s 2021 documentary THIS MUCH I KNOW TO BE TRUE (105 min, DCP Digital), about musicians Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, screens on Thursday at 7pm. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ South Side Home Movie Project
The South Side Home Movie Project is participating in the Key/Change exhibition at the Weinberg/Newton Gallery, ongoing through July 16. The exhibition centers on housing; per the event description, “silent home movies and idiosyncratic sculpture subsequently suggest that housing is a productive place in which intimate moments, lifelong memories, and nurturing meals are made and shared.” More info here.
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING
⚫ Media Burn Archive
On Thursday at 6pm, veteran writer-producer Allen Rucker will participate in a virtual screening and discussion, featuring clips from some of his most important work with TVTV, as well as the mockumentary series he produced with Martin Mull, A HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE IN AMERICA. More info here.
⚫ Video Data Bank
“Spring with Mike Kuchar” is available to stream for free on VDB TV. The program includes Kuchar’s SUNLIT SORCERY (2022, 34 min), composed of his works ECHO’S GARDEN (2010), A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHTMARE (2008) and THE VERNAL ZONE (2008), and Oscar Oldershaw’s AN AFTERNOON WITH MIKE KUCHAR (2014, 32 min). More info here.
🎞️ ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Prismatic Ground (May 4 - 8)
Now in its second year, Prismatic Ground, a NYC-based festival focusing on experimental documentary, again offers a free streaming option via their website in addition to the in-person screenings taking place in NYC. We reviewed a few of the streaming programs (divided into waves and all available to stream through Sunday) below; though it’s free to view, we suggest donating if you can, to help support the festival’s mission. More info here.
Wave 1: look at that round ass shit
Available to stream here
The first wave of the Prismatic Ground festival, titled look at that round ass shit, is focused on circles. Circles dominate the frames of the shorts (though they’re all presented in regular rectangular aspect ratios, a missed opportunity), with circular motion and measurement also featuring across the shorts. The refreshing title comes from the program’s opening film, MEMORY PLAYTHROUGH (2022, 2 min), where a narrator briefly tells a story of the house and city they grew up in, represented as a Dreamcast-filtered dog house inside of a cage. The narrator insists they are a real person sharing real feelings at the outset—their halting delivery supports this, but the insistence on this at the outset paired with the fact that the filmmaker’s name is Sim Hahahah feels meant to toy with the audience’s expectation of "real." It’s a playful miniature to open the program, but one that sets the stage for the following films. The circle can be as big as life itself, but it can also represent the ephemeral nature of things (short film programs included); the "round ass shit" in question here is the moon, which our narrator says probably won’t disappear, but we should prepare just in case. And what makes the moon disappear and reappear each night? An even bigger circle: its orbit. The rest of the program runs a gamut of filmmaking styles, with observational documentary shorts like G Anthony Svatek’s GLOBAL FRUIT (2022, 5 min) sharing space with the purer abstraction of Lydia Nsiah’s VS (2022, 8 min). Fabio Andrade’s CONTOUR (2021, 10 min) goes as far as to do both, beginning with the camera tracing a shoreline as its operator runs along a beach, the edited footage doubling back on itself to make each rock exist as a series of echos of itself. This blurred speed eventually gives way to a still shot of a crab that takes up the second half of the runtime, striking a balance between the information overload of human perception vs. near complete stillness from crab, hyperkinetic and slow cinema wrapped in one. Matt Whitman’s THAT WAS WHEN I THOUGHT I COULD HEAR YOU (2021, 9 min) is also interested in perception, but his variations are more a matter of distance than speed. Stillman places phone and tablet screens in the center of the frame, with the screens showing alternately higher- and lower-quality images of what is behind them. The starkest contrast comes when a phone showing high-def fire footage is held on a selfie stick in front of a blown-up image of fire on an LED grid, bringing the parts and the whole in relief at once and casting circles as the constituent parts of all images. The remainder of the program comes from some relative heavyweights in experimental film. The most explicitly circle-focused of the bunch, Jodie Mack’s WASTELAND NO. 3: MOONS, SONS (2021, 5 min) continues a stylistic development for Mack, who has turned away from her usually textile-animating approach to more natural foliage in recent work. This was the case for the first two films in the WASTELAND series, but those still placed flowers and roots into the flickering editing style Mack is known for. Using sped-up time-lapse footage, Mack photographs cylinders of ice that melt to reveal floral arrangements inside giving the dead plants a blooming quality, setting into place and letting flowers unfurl back into life gracefully. Sasha Litvinseva and Beny Wagner’s CONSTANT (2022, 40 min) caps the program with a winding journey through the history of measurement which, in true avant-garde fashion, is told through a wraparound story of the filmmakers attempting to make a film about measurement. Litvintseva and Wagner create most of the film in point-cloud animation, cutting through with dramatic reenactments of French explorers plotting the earliest attempts at codifying the meter. But even the live-action bits are significantly warped, molding the frame into circles that completely abstract shape and continuity. This roundness, artificial as it is, also seems meant to call attention to the failure of humans to recreate the true wonders of a curve—our systems, according to Litvinseva and Wagner, are built to be inhuman, and thus unnatural to the very world they hope to describe. This may seem a little deflating at the end of such a celebration of circles, but at its core CONSTANT is like many other films on the program in that it recognizes circles as forms that are bigger than us precisely because they’re so fundamental to our existence. And there’s no better place to explore artistic futility in the face of the natural world than an experimental film festival. [Maxwell Courtright]
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Wave 2: wings
Available to stream here
Prismatic Ground’s wave 2 shorts program, simply titled “wings,” looks at the angels among us, unique individuals whose crystalline oneness emanates from them like the glow of a halo. The title of Helen Peña’s WHEN ANGELS SPEAK OF LOVE (2021, 13 min) addresses the subject most directly; it presents Sheshebazzar, a woman from Miami, who’s reeling after the death of her beloved sister. Peña’s viewpoint is gorgeously empathetic, giving Sheshe space and freedom to articulate her feelings. Some sequences are nearly magic realist in their execution, like one of Sheshe in a wooded area, goddess-like in her inner and outer beauty, and one of her as a purple-painted mermaid; these elevate the film as they do Sheshe, drawing out the innate magic of her being. The radiance of self and the power of healing are the lights that give form to Maliyamungu Muhande’s celluloid opus ALIVE IN DEATH (2022, 6 min), composed entirely of maimed film. The medium becomes skin, bearing the scars of oppression and revealing the tattoos of selfhood. Interacting with the staggeringly beautiful images, created from strong materials being manipulated by destructive forces, is the poignant narration, which speaks of reclamation and resistance. Paige Taul’s GOAT (2021, 3 min) is likewise beguiling, a black-and-white micro-portrait of a young girl whose Air Jordans are a pivotal aspect of her identity. “I’d like to think that I’m someone who wears the shoe,” she says, “and not the other way around.” The potent simplicity of this film inspires questions about individuality and the often-arbitrary, but nevertheless crucial, symbols that come to define a person. Yashaddai Owens’ D'HOMME A HOMME (2022, 3 min) has much in common with its predecessor: it’s shot in black-and-white and packs a whole perspective into a brief duration. Though set entirely to music, it’s less like a music video, as its structure and duration might suggest, and more like a silent film with musical accompaniment. As it follows a Black trumpeter through the streets of Chicago, the subjects’ movement tells a story at once separate from and complemented by the overhanging rap music. The shadowy cinematography and ambulatory city symphony vibes oddly recall Wim Wenders’ WINGS OF DESIRE; appropriately, the two films share a pursuit for the self. This is more literally evoked in Iván Reina Ortiz’s AUTOETHNOGRAPHY (2021, 15 min). Ortiz, a nonbinary trans filmmaker, not only turns the camera on themselves but also looks to images from the past to help tell them who they are and how they got there. This self-inquiry (established straightforwardly at the beginning and continuing through voiceover) along with footage from Ortiz’s personal history are interwoven with images and sounds that convey philosophical rumination, wondering as they do—as we all do—how they became who they are. [Kat Sachs]
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Wave 5: after months of total darkness
Available to stream here
In wave 5 of Prismatic Ground, titled after months of total darkness, the festival continues to organize films around loose, evocative themes. These are films about being in the midst of change, when nostalgia for the past and fear for the future combine in an unsteady present. They’re also about memory, specifically how personal and collective memories are the main ways to maintain identities of place. Again, the ace programmers lead off the program with a short that contextualizes the rest, Katie Colosimo’s PRETEND YOU’RE THERE (2021, 2 min). Over softened, home movie-esque photography, text on the screen instructs the viewer to "remember the last good thing that happened," hold onto good memories, and let those guide the expectation of what will happen next. It’s a sweet, disarming sentiment that softens the blow of the more pessimistic films on the program. Gloria Chung’s TRUE PLACES (2022, 7 min) is one of these; it discusses indigenous Greenlandic hunters who hunt on ice floes after the sun comes out in the spring (it’s this dawn of sunlight after the complete darkness of winter that gives the program its title). The terrain being free-floating, hunters often have the pieces of ground move under them overnight and wake up to completely different layouts in the morning. Chung’s editing mirrors this obfuscation, capturing horizon lines and drifting snow caps through her vantage point on planes, letting the land get blurred by portholes and clouds. It’s a handy analogue for more urban concerns about gentrification, this discombobulation of having a home change literally before your eyes, so much so that any static interpretation of the place fails. Gillian Waldo’s DIARY (2021, 17 min) similarly observes a changing Baltimore, but where Chung operates at a remove, casting her eye on the deeper global problem of climate change, Waldo has made a more personal and loving document of the present state of things. She laments the ways Baltimore has changed for the worse, but also gives time to contemporary activists and others that are providing a positive path forward for the city. Sofia Theodore Pierce’s OTHER TIDAL EFFECTS (2021, 7 min) also operates in a personal vein, exploring the filmmaker’s own dissociative experiences with epilepsy by cutting together disparate material including dyed and scratched celluloid as well as some audio delivered by her friends and family. Again, a filmmaker is using film to fossilize the present and make sense of a discontinuous existence, mixing predilections for the past with a formal stab at the future. Though it’s not available in the online program, I would be remiss not mentioning the standout film of the program, THE HAND THAT SINGS (2021, 23 min) by Alex Reynolds and Alma Söderberg. In it, the filmmakers strike images with what seems to be diegetic sound, such as an axe cutting away at tree bark, whose sounds are then revealed to be created by Söderberg off-camera. The filmmakers then film themselves on city rooftops, asking one another to repeat words back to them. The call-and-response evokes bird training, with Söderberg seemingly building up her ability as a mimic in real time. It’s the film that most explicitly approaches the themes of the program, wherein humans are the databanks for culture and history. While the present moment can feel unsteady in its precipice between the past and future, the steadying agents will always be us. [Maxwell Courtright]
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Wave 11: the blessings of liberty
Available to stream here
Each film in this program, ironically titled “the blessings of liberty,” examines the myriad ways that American imperialism abroad and jingoism here at home have stripped our country of just that, as well as how those consequences reverberate within our cities and around the globe. Jason Oder’s CONDITION/DECONDITION (8 min) looks at footage from the Navy Motion Picture Film Archives, specifically three 5-minute films labeled Combat Psychiatric Casualties A, B and C, respectively. Out of context, the footage seems standard, even banal, until Oder begins layering in disconcerting observations that links the footage (otherwise unsubstantiated by accompanying documentation) to information that casts it in a new light, namely facts about psychological experimentations intended to desensitize soldiers. The implications of this desensitization are examined in Esy Casey’s ONE SURVIVES BY HIDING (2021, 6 min), wherein archival material is again used to interrogate the sins of our fathers. Accordingly, Casey considers the struggles of her mother and grandmother, Filipino women affected by the United States’ longtime military occupation of their country. The film is striking, with footage of American soldiers finely layered with images of Casey’s family members, all with the same light-brown tint. This nimble maneuvering is not only beautiful, but it evinces the complicated reality of these womens’ circumstances, which are intertwined with foreign imperialism. In both the first two films, the seeming benevolence of historical documentation, whether political or personal, is mined for the questions it raises to already prescribed answers. Such ‘answers’ to those questions are explored in Alex Johnston and Kelly Sears’ WE CANNOT LOVE WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW (2021, 3 min), which has as its narration segments of text from the 1776 Report, generated by the eponymous commission to support patriotic education. (Read: Don’t remind us of our racism.) Sears’ uncanny animated collage work accompanies the troubling prose, here images of white men and women building a house. As evidenced, propaganda provided the foundation on which America was built, resulting in a house that is not truly a home for many of its inhabitants. When Christopher Harris’ DREAMS UNDER CONFINEMENT (2020, 3 min) screened last week in Chicago, I wrote of it: “Focusing… on the egregiously expansive Cook County Department of Corrections single-site jail compound [via images on Google Earth], Harris emphasizes the site’s imposed authority over the surrounding populations. It’s a neighborhood in and of itself, composed of an involuntarily relocated populace and overseen by a carceral behemoth, a monster sweeping the streets for its prey.” This segues not-so-nicely into the final film, Katie Mathews and Jess Shane’s SIGNAL AND NOISE (2021, 13 min), which centers on audio (and some footage) taken by Canadian poet Jordan Scott at another carceral behemoth, Guantanamo Bay, where he intentionally focused on recording sound as a means of circumventing media censorship. In doing so, he created a new way of exploring the Kafkaesque hellscape, where the hum of fans and echoes of silence become the sounds of warfare. Former detainee Mansoor Adayfi lends his perspective with bouts of narration, thereby providing a voice to be heard among the din of injustice. The films in this program each provide clarion calls amidst an increasingly disharmonic panorama. [Kat Sachs]
Nobuhiko Obayashi’s SADA (Japan)
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel here (Subscription required)
One of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s slickest, most accessible films, SADA is also one of the few legally available for streaming in the US. (A Criterion box set of his best ‘80s films would be very welcome!) Like Nagisa Oshima’s IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976), it adapts the life story of Sada Abe (played here by Hitomi Kuroki), a woman who strangled her lover and cut off his penis on May 18, 1936. The two films are quite different, with SADA telling a longer stretch of Abe’s life and placing less emphasis on sex (which was famously unsimulated in IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES). Japanese cinema is full of tragic melodramas about sex workers; SADA flirts with that genre, but it exists in a world of its own. Actor Kyusaku Shimada, who portrays Sada's brother-in-law Takiguchi, stands outside a movie theater and introduces himself to the audience. The first hour of SADA uses a playful style, influenced by silent comedies, to present a brutally violent life. Born poor, Abe is sexually assaulted at 14. She finds love with Okada (Kippei Shiina), who rescues her at the time, but he succumbs to leprosy and gets exiled to an island colony. She's then forced into prostitution, but finds love again with Tatsuzo (Tsurutaro Kataoka), a married restaurant owner. Obayashi’s style veers disorientingly between black-and-white and a stylized color scheme bleeding red. Disturbing scenes of voyeurism and sexual abuse are rendered even nastier by their overtones of silent comedy. The film sobers up to some extent as Abe grows older, switching to a style reminiscent of ‘50s American melodramas, but even then, Obayashi treats a fight between Abe and Tatsuzo’s wife as slapstick. SADA never reduces its heroine to the sum of her trauma or treats her as a monster. If it indulges a subtle Brechtianism, its ultimate goal is empathy, even treating Abe’s story with a dark romanticism. Though she finds a fulfilling, pleasurable relationship with Tatsuzo, her idea of love was permanently scarred by the disappearance of Okada. (She eats donuts, which she associates with him, compulsively.) Her desire to possess one’s lover permanently, even through violence, makes a kind of sense based on her life experience. Abe is an iconic figure in Japanese cinema; SADA and IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES are only two of the six films based on her life. While less explicitly political than Oshima’s film, SADA envisions her through the lens of her time, including the cinema of its day and an increasing militarism leading to Japan’s participation in World War II. But she remains mysterious while coming across as a fully fleshed-out person. (1998, 138 min) [Steve Erickson]
CINE-LIST: May 6 - May 12, 2022
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Rob Christopher, Maxwell Courtright, John Dickson, Ray Ebarb, Alexandra Ensign, Steve Erickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jason Halprin, Michael Glover Smith, Drew Van Weelden