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🎞️ CELLULOID NOW

Celluloid Now, a project of the Chicago Film Society, begins Thursday and ends Sunday, September 18. The four days include screenings, workshops, and other events showcasing work by analog filmmakers and artists alongside archival rediscoveries and restorations. The opening-night screening is reviewed below; we’ll have additional coverage on next week’s list. Full schedule and screening lineup here.

Program 1: 35mm: Industry Standard
Gene Siskel Film Center – 7pm
35mm is my favorite film gauge. Not an unpopular opinion, but a personal one nonetheless. I imagine that’s the case for most cinephiles, as a “preferred film gauge” can represent any number of connections to the form. In the accompanying text to the first program of their Celluloid Now festival, the appropriately celluloid-loving folks at the Chicago Film Society ruminate on that so-called industry standard (and the format in which all the following films are being screened), noting that, “[t]en years ago, if you walked into a random first-run movie theater, there was still a chance that whatever you were watching would be projected on 35mm motion picture film. Ten years before that, it was almost a guarantee.” As I’m nearing in years the exact number of my fave gauge, it follows that I was one of many moviegoers who regularly saw films on 35mm. What is now limited mainly to repertory and art house theaters was once not just the industry standard, but the audience standard, the commonplace material on which most films were shot, printed, and projected. Though the Chicago Film Society shows the majority of their programming on 35mm—not only my preferred gauge, but the preferred gauge of most exhibitors who show repertory cinema and the occasional contemporary movie shot on film—this program illuminates the way some filmmakers nowadays continue to utilize and even expand the form via narrative and experimental cinema. Mike Gibisser’s SLOW VOLUMES (2019, 5 min) is a visual tour de force, tour here being literal as images traverse the frame like landscapes flying past the window of a train. The effect of what appear to be otherwise nondescript scenes at times being segmented into painterly lines is the result of a hand-built 35mm camera in which the “film is drawn past a thin vertical aperture, organizing the image temporally,” per Gibisser’s description. Drew Hanks and Riley Lynch’s STONE (2021, 20 min) utilizes not just one but two types of supposedly “outdated” media: it was shot on VHS and then transferred to 35mm. The resulting aesthetic fits the film, which centers on a caveman-like protagonist, TJ, who refers to himself in the third person and clings to his collection of rocks in a rural, post-apocalyptic landscape. Similarly beguiling is Ted Fendt’s BROKEN SPECS (2012, 6 min), about an awkward young man contending with broken glasses as he ambles through a regular day in his life. A stringent dichotomy of tension and apathy makes it both droll and melancholy. (This film also has the distinction of having been printed directly from A/B rolls.) Jessica Dunn Rovinelli’s MARRIAGE STORY (2020, 9 min) is perhaps the exact opposite of Noah Baumbach’s 2019 film of the same name; comparing them may even be futile. This is pure atmosphere, pure essence. Narrative is naught—rather it’s a tropological sojourn, an auto-fiction “under the eyes of a female Christ, a marriage as a step into the forbidden land of the holy, a lesbian poem in the language of the divine, a paean to the color red, the world’s slowest rave,” per Rovinelli’s onerous description. Part of a series comprising several films and installations, Alexandre Larose’s BROUILLARD – PASSAGE #14 (2013, 10 min) includes 39 different exposures, all of areas near his parent’s house, on a 1000-foot strip of 35mm color reversal film. The resulting effect might remind one of that Immersive Monet exhibit, where the artist’s tempered landscapes fade in and out with seemingly little logic. Except here that accounts for something beautiful and bewildering. The appropriation of recognizable cinematic imagery seems to be the impulse behind Scott Stark’s ONE WAY TO FIND OUT (2012, 6 min) and Justin Clifford Rhody, et al.’s POTEMKIN PIECE (2022, 2 min). In the former (of which I was only able to view an excerpt), footage from trailers of Hollywood films is combined to make something “[l]oosely about desire, fear of coupling, and the consequences of moving forward, with results both catastrophic and ecstatic,” per Stark’s website, the latter descriptors evident in glimpses of disaster films such as VOLCANO and INDEPENDENCE DAY. Mellow guitar music, however, defies the tone set by its images. Rhody’s film has a rather unique concept; during the pandemic lockdown, he sent half-second long strips of Eisenstein’s film to various collaborators to alter their segments at will. Once returned, the strips were combined to make this “collaborative deconstruction/destruction” of the film’s trailer, whose images and soundtrack are intentionally jumbled. An endearing reflection on the concept of montage, the participants’ contributions—ranging from “ACAB” scratched onto the frame to neon color tinting—form a less perfect whole that’s all the better for it. John Klacsmann, an archivist for the Anthology Film Archives, took a digital malfunction and created with it an ELEGY FOR J.M. (2019, 4 min), those initials standing for pioneering experimental filmmaker and Anthology co-founder Jonas Mekas. The frantically moving but ethereally beautiful images are the result of an encoding issue that occurred while Klacsmann was preparing a clip of Mekas’ LOST LOST LOST (1976). Combined with the music by Thee Oh Sees, it’s rather moving. The limitations and implications of carceral confinement are explored freely in Fern Silva’s THE WATCHMEN (2017, 10 min), the expanse of the frame and juxtaposing shots of places from life on the outside enhancing the sense of circumscription one feels from various images of prisons, real and in the movies. Its thematic opacity and aesthetic beauty evoke a sense of unease considering the implicit commentary. There’s a playful irony to Viktoria Schmid´s A PROPOSAL TO PROJECT IN SCOPE (2008, 8 min), wherein a screen sized to accommodate CinemaScope dimensions is placed amid a region in Lithuania with landscapes cinematically befitting it. The screen then becomes a canvas onto which impressions of the locale are projected. Other natural spaces in the area also become de facto screens by way of Schmid’s focus on how light and shadows play on them. Rainer Kohlberger ‘s KEEP THAT DREAM BURNING (2017, 8 min) is pure sensory overload, supposedly based on the process of algorithmic compositions. Recognizable imagery is manipulated—compressed or expanded, however one wants to look at it—into a throbbing essence of representation. It sometimes resembles items seen under a microscope, revealing a whole new world of animated beings and objects. Also screening is Johann Lurf’s TWELVE TALES TOLD (2014, 4 min) and a selection of ads, trailers, and other surprises. Total runtime is approximately two hours with an intermission. [Kat Sachs]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s MEDEA (Italy)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 7:30pm

MEDEA is the Pasolini-directed film that I’ve longed to see. Unlike THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW (1964), a dialogue-heavy film of his I tried to watch but ended up reading, MEDEA is a nearly wordless evocation of the Greek myth of the archetypal woman scorned with some of the most gorgeous images ever committed to film. As opposed to the sadism of SALÒ (1975), a human sacrifice at the beginning of the film is done quite humanely, as is Medea’s murder of her children, an act we are barely aware is happening as Medea cradles each of her sons in turn and urges them to sleep. Rarely have I felt as immersed in an ancient and alien world as in the locations Pasolini chose in Italy, Syria, and Turkey for filming. The jagged cave dwellings that stand in for Medea’s home city look like a warren created from molten rock. The mound dwellings in Jason’s world resemble sunbaked igloos. Medea’s male attendants dress in massive, boxy costumes, and Medea herself wears heavy robes and long strands of metal jewelry that take several minutes to don and remove. The rituals Medea oversees suggest the roots of Christianity—the sacrifice of a young man who is tied to a wooden rack and whose blood is used by the peasants to anoint their crops in hopes of a good harvest. When Jason and his men enter this world with careless abandon, stealing horses and whatever else they can find as they search for the golden fleece, they bring a modern speed and casualness that the members of Medea’s society seem helpless to combat. Pasolini did well to cast Maria Callas as Medea. Her charisma and regal bearing convince one immediately that she is an important and powerful person in her world. Giuseppe Gentile as Jason has a strong bearing that one can believe Medea would betray her people and kill her own brother, Apsirto (Sergio Tramonti), to be with. The scene in which Medea kills, hacks up, and throws Apsirto’s body parts piecemeal along the road she, Jason, and his men are traveling to their raft at the shore is a more logical chase than the original one at sea, and is quite touching and sad. Everything about this film is intimate and, as others have noted, almost neorealist in its approach. Only twice does Pasolini depart from the immediacy of his tale. The first is at the beginning, when we watch Jason pass quickly from young boy, to teenager, to man under the care of a philosophizing centaur (Laurent Terzieff) who is shown to be a mere mortal of ordinary form by the time Jason is grown. The second is when Jason’s bride-to-be, Glauce (Margareth Clementi), dons the raiment Medea sends to her. The scene is played twice, first with Glauce catching fire and dying in flames with her distraught father (Massimo Girotti) and then with both of them leaping to their deaths. The meaning of this repetition isn’t entirely clear, but a guess would be that Medea rehearsed the murder in her mind as she would have liked it to happen, but that the loss of her power forced her to guilt Glauce into killing herself. The pathos of Medea, who lost her country and her significance when she ran away with Jason, could be the story of any woman who loved an unworthy man. Her revenge is extreme, but her impulse to annihilate anything that arose from her love of Jason is something many of us can understand. Screening as part of the Pier Paolo Pasolini series. (1969, 118 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Larry Cohen’s IT’S ALIVE (US)

Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 7pm

“The ‘70s crisis in ideological confidence temporarily released our culture’s monsters from the shackles of repression,” wrote Robin Wood in his landmark critical study Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan. “The interesting horror films of the period, without a single exception, are characterized by the recognition not only that the monster is the product of normality, but that it is no longer possible to view normality itself as other than monstrous.” Wood held up Larry Cohen’s IT’S ALIVE as a superlative example of ‘70s horror, as the film’s monster—a mutant newborn baby that kills when it’s frightened—is the literal product of a “normal” American nuclear family. While the film is not without effective horror set pieces (thanks in large part to Bernard Herrmann’s characteristically brilliant score), its most profound sense of unease derives from Cohen’s pessimistic characterization of upper-middle-class family life. The film begins in the middle of the night, which casts a literal darkness over the impending birth of Frank and Lenore’s child; the businesslike way the couple prepares for their trip to the hospital creates, per Wood, “the impression of a marriage held together more by determination and willpower than by genuine desire.” Cohen adds to this characterization in the scenes following the birth of the monstrous baby, who goes on a killing rampage as soon as it enters the world. Frank tries to forget about the crisis by losing himself in work (he gets fired from his job in public relations, however, since his newfound infamy as the father of a killer mutant has brought negative attention to his employer), then by assisting with the police manhunt for his child. He’s able to do this without equivocation because, for most of IT’S ALIVE, Frank doesn’t acknowledge the baby as his own—his denial is in keeping with the common instinct of American families to repress anything that makes them deviate from accepted cultural norms. The pursuit of the monster dovetails with Frank’s journey to taking responsibility for its monstrousness; the pain associated with his acceptance prevents the movie from achieving a sense of catharsis. Lacking resolution, IT’S ALIVE ends with the door open for a sequel (indeed, Cohen would go on to make two), but more importantly, it leaves audiences primed to continue seeing the film’s horror in the world outside the theater. Presented by Shudder and screening as part of the Music Box of Horrors Presents series. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Midwest Access Coalitions’s mission of providing practical assistance to abortion-seekers across the Midwest. (1974, 91 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Krzysztof Kieslowski’s THREE COLORS TRILOGY (France/Poland/Switzerland) at the Music Box Theatre

One of the big movie events of the 1990s, Krzystof Kieslowski’s final films as director return to the big screen in new 4K digital restorations. The Music Box is screening the films individually, but the theater is also selling $25 passes that provide admission to all three. See Venue website for showtimes. More information about the series can be found here.

THREE COLORS: BLUE
In THREE COLORS: BLUE, the first in his French flag-inspired trilogy, Krzysztof Kieslowski puts forward the radical notion that liberty—here connected, like the later WHITE and RED (both 1994), with France’s national motto, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”—can be attained through loss. Juliette Binoche stars as Julie, a young woman who loses both her husband and young daughter in a car accident at the beginning of the film. Rather than piece her life back together after surviving the tragedy, she decides to leave it all behind, devoid of anything from her previous life except the blue crystal chandelier from her daughter's bedroom. Her husband was a famous composer (though it’s implied that Julie actually wrote his music, or at least helped more than anyone knew), and pieces of his last, unfinished symphony—a concert for the reunification of Europe—haunt her at particularly blue (pun intended) moments. She’s unable to fully escape her past, however, in large part because of that music. She’s pursued by a shrewd journalist and an eager public, both curious about her husband’s final work, as well as his creative partner, who’s in love with her. (Then there’s the weight of her husband’s secrets, which, naturally, include a mistress.) Compelling as the narrative is, it’s Julie’s vacuousness, realized exquisitely by Binoche, that resounds most beautifully. Grief is an inherently cinematic emotion—or, rather, a range of emotions brought about by some sort of drama, the action and aesthetic of which (e.g., the build to a devastating car crash, a somber funeral broadcast on television, two coffins: one big, the other small, etc.) make for compelling cinema. In BLUE, however, referred to as an anti-tragedy just as WHITE and RED are referred to as an anti-comedy and an anti-romance, respectively, Kieslowski cuts it off at the quick, allowing for only said external indulgences before beginning to interiorize Julie’s mourning. In concert with Binoche’s stunning performance, he employs a series of clever tricks to make such scenes understandable to an audience otherwise severed from Julie’s inner dialogue, namely his conceptual use of the French tricolor (mostly blue), musical interludes that signify her preoccupation with the unfinished score, and blunt fade-outs meant to indicate a lapse in focus rather than a shot change or scene transition. Throughout the trilogy as a whole, Kieslowski succeeds in humanizing the symbolism behind the flag’s complicated ideals, but, with BLUE, the canny motifs do not entirely blunt the piercing idea that only without emotional ties one can truly be free. (1993, 100 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]
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THREE COLORS: WHITE 
The second installment in the Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy takes a lighter tone than the first and third. Following Karol Karol (a bumbling Zbigniew Zamachowski) as he seeks the love and then the downfall of his ex-wife (Julie Delpy), the Polish filmmaker crafts an anti-romance, a series of convoluted situations that aren’t actually that funny. He doesn’t intend to play these moments for laughs, but rather gives the audience a straight-laced version of a dark, absurdist comedy. Though WHITE has become the most forgotten of the trilogy, it lands its affecting blows near the end of the story, never opting for cheap twists or decisions that run contrary to the behavior of its central character. Zamachowski gives a slight performance as Karol, a man destined to lose even as he’s winning, and Delpy fills in the gaps in her limited screen time, always a welcome presence in any movie. But this film is a chance for Kieslowski to once again prove his ability to contort expectations and offer up something new in a vein that many of us can recognize. In WHITE, he’s reshaping our idea of the romantic comedy, putting forward a portrayal of love that’s far different than what was common in hits of the 1990s. WHITE isn’t the funniest film, or the gushiest, but it still has heart and appeal, even in a drab color palette and a disheartening story about the power and perils of love. (1994, 91 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Michael Frank]
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Krzysztof Kieslowski's THREE COLORS: RED 
One of the culminating films of the 20th century, RED not only brings Krzysztof Kieslowki’s “Three Colors” trilogy to a grand close, but stands at the summation of one of the great careers in modern European movies. Kieslowski and his longtime co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz symphonically interweave their major themes (fate, coincidence, the possibility of transcendence in modern life), creating a story that’s remarkable for being both dense and flowing. Where BLUE was inspired by the idea of liberty and WHITE by the idea of equality, RED tackles the concept of fraternity, inviting viewers to contemplate how individuals are connected to one another in society at large. It centers on the relationship between a burgeoning fashion model (Irène Jacob) and the retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) she meets by chance after she hits his dog with her car. The young woman wants to do good by the judge, but doubts her mission as she gets to know him; the old man turns out to be a misanthrope and a voyeur who uses audio surveillance technology to spy on his neighbors. Kieslowski and Piesiewicz counterpose this story with one about an aspiring young judge who comes to suspect his lover of being unfaithful, and while this tale is more comic in nature, it gains resonance from its parallels with the principal narrative. Like few other directors, Kieslowski was able to suggest the perspective of a compassionate deity looking out on humankind, and in RED, he uses that gift to advance a perspective that’s at once intimate and broad. These characters could be anybody (Kieslowski’s camera could have followed any telephone wire from that opening montage, could have landed on any subject); that they experience individual desires and moral aspirations inspires wonder with the depth and variety of human existence. Piotr Sobocinski’s cinematography, with its emphasis on deep reds and blacks, adds to the film’s inviting power. (1994, 99 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! (UK)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am

A rebuke of materialism and the wonton acquisition of wealth, Powell and Pressburger's atmospheric romance is also a soft-sell for British wartime bonhomie. Set in the Hebrides of Scotland, a determined woman intends to meet her industrialist fiancé on the Island of Kiloran, but is held on shore by fate and bad weather. When the woman meets the Laird of Kiloran—an upstanding man on leave from active duty, unconcerned with the value of his land—her faith in upper class wealth is undermined. The film plays like a parable, with the Laird acting as the romantic lead and a model for its war-weary audience: honorable, selfless, moralistic, and satisfied with what he has. I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! is never didactic and its precisely paced romance leads its characters gently to its theme. Complete with its own mythology of curses and legends, the film uses the island's people to mirror the woman's conflict. Gaelic is spoken casually and an affecting Scottish dance ritual celebrating a couple's enduring marriage provokes her further. Both picturesque and portentous, the Hebrides' fog gives way to gales, then to heavy seas and a massive ocean whirlpool. Through an enveloping sound design and striking photography, Powell and Pressburger's mastery of the elemental is on full display. The effect is a profound diagnosis of their audience's restlessness with war's humbleness and sacrifice, and a lyrical romance that simultaneously allows them to escape. Screening as part of the Music Box Staff Picks! Series. (1945, 91 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Brian Welesko]

Tod Browning's FREAKS (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 9pm

After stumbling dumbfounded out of a senior matinee of TODAY WE LIVE some years ago, I formulated a rudimentary theory about M-G-M's output in the 1930s: every film the studio released in that decade would easily be improved by losing at least twenty minutes. Granted, that wouldn't have much helped TODAY WE LIVE (Howard Hawks' worst film by a mile, from a Faulkner script, no less!), but it illuminated a general bloat that persisted throughout the Louis B. Mayer-Irving Thalberg years. Opulence was always superior to economy, exposition preferable to concision, even when introduced in the last reel when things should rightly have been winding down. Parochial conceptions of narrative progression and dramatic unity always won out over formal innovation, forward momentum, or simple entertainment value. While Warner Bros. pictures represented the surly bleatings of the proletariat and Paramount specialized in the cosmopolitan fantasies and emotional dilemmas of grown-ups, M-G-M fare catered to the starchy pretensions of school marms, small businessmen, undernourished Anglophiles, country club Republicans, and the like. The holy reputation of Thalberg—namesake of an honorary Academy Award, subject of numerous fawning biographies, and the thinly-veiled inspiration for Monroe Starr in Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon—is scarcely justified by the films he oversaw, today remembered mostly for the anti-septic ubiquity of their white telephones. The M-G-M films play like a striver's gangly conception of sophistication. The exception that proves the rule is Tod Browning's FREAKS, a masterpiece that draws blood and convulses with orgasmic transference. (It's also, at 64 minutes, the only M-G-M film of its era that demands to be longer; blame Thalberg, who chopped roughly thirty minutes out of it after a disastrous preview screening.) It is the culmination of Browning's career-long interest in the grotesque: the armless aspirations of Lon Chaney in THE UNKNOWN, the homicide-by-gorilla machinations of WHERE EAST IS EAST, the incestuous air of WEST OF ZANZIBAR. Without Chaney's star magnetism or the familiar conventions of the popular stage melodramas that had formed the basis of earlier Browning films, FREAKS has nothing to blunt its rough edges; it goes down like wood alcohol. It is also, of course, one of the most compassionate and empathetic films ever made, unsullied even by the sub-distribution efforts of exploitation maven Dwain Esper. Screening as part of the Fringe Benefits series and paired with Salome Chasnoff’s CODE OF THE FREAKS (screening September 9-11 at the Film Center; see below for our review). Preceded by movie trivia, hosted by the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Associate Producers. (1932, 64 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]

Lewis Klahr’s FALSE AGING (US/Experimental Short)

Corbett vs. Dempsey (2156 W. Fulton St.) – Tuesday through Saturday, 10am – 5pm

Combining whimsy and wistfulness, prolific experimental filmmaker Lewis Klahr tackles the experience of aging in FALSE AGING, a short film in three parts that combines animation and collage. Artist/filmmaker Joseph Cornell could have been an inspiration for Klahr, but the latter skews much more pessimistic than the sunny Cornell. Part one focuses on leaving the nest, exemplified by homey wallpaper and the recurring images of migratory birds as Dionne Warwick sings “(Theme From) VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.” The theme, hailing from a tragic film about young women assuming adult responsibilities and finding all is not as they dreamed it would be, might as well be screaming “go back!” Another sad entry into adulthood is narrated by Grace Slick’s intense rendering of “Lather,” a case of arrested development imagined by Klahr as the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The final part takes place in the Big City, as John Cale recites Andy Warhol’s aggrieved diary entry “A Dream” from his and Lou Reed’s album Songs for Drella. Klahr uses an alarm clock on which a round object rotates like a second hand to segue between the film’s segments. Amusingly, when Slick sings that Lather draws mountains that look like bumps, a tiny, plastic woman with well-formed breasts emerges from a slit in the background paper. Klahr reclaims the past with the recurring image of an obsolete points program—a redemption book filled with stamps earned from purchases. Warhol’s final lament from his diary that no one invites him out or comes to see him anymore is a warning that old age and infirmity know no friends. The naïveté and immaturity of each of the sung and spoken narratives suggest that the concept of aging truly is false to our understanding of ourselves. Screening in the Vault through October 8. (2008, 15 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Mathieu Amalric’s HOLD ME TIGHT (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Much like Mia Hansen-Løve’s recent BERGMAN ISLAND functioned on one level as a personal argument for why Ingmar Bergman still matters, HOLD ME TIGHT can be read as a personal argument by writer-director Mathieu Amalric for the continued relevance of another towering figure of modern cinema, Alain Resnais. Resnais’ gift to movies wasn’t his flashy editing schemes (as many of his lesser imitators would have you believe), but in how he employed narrative form to represent the geography of the mind. This mission is made explicit in MON ONCLE D’AMÉRIQUE (1980), which features neurobiologist Henri Laborit explaining his theories of human behavior, but it informs all of Resnais’ features through the early ‘80s. Consider his use of “future conditional” time in LA GUERRE EST FINIE (1966) to visualize events that could potentially happen to the hero, or the intricate montage in MURIEL (1963), which interweaves memories and present-tense action to suggest an audiovisual version of stream-of-consciousness writing. Such innovations brought a literary kind of self-awareness to cinema—Resnais made movies that not only replicated how we think, but interrogated how we think. Amalric acted in WILD GRASS (2009) and YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET (2012), two films from Resnais’ widely misunderstood late period, which transfers his career-long questions about identity and chance from montage to mise-en-scène and direction of actors. HOLD ME TIGHT pays tribute to both the early and later phases of Resnais’ career: the narrative structure is overtly complex, while the performances are rich and expressive in their own right (as one might expect from Amalric, who’s well known for his sensitive onscreen work). Vicky Krieps stars as a middle-class wife and mother of two young children. At the start of the film, she impulsively leaves her family in the middle of the night and starts driving; she gradually takes on a nomadic existence, going from one scenic location to another and working odd jobs. As her absence progresses, her husband and kids try to make sense of the situation; when they fail, they return to some sort of normality as a family of three. About 20 minutes or so into HOLD ME TIGHT, Amalric starts cutting to scenes about Krieps with her family, suggesting a parallel reality in which she either returns home or never left in the first place. The effect is jarring, since Amalric doesn’t foreground the shift from one narrative to the other—he cuts unobtrusively between radically different scenarios. Adding to the complexity, most scenes begin in medias res, with crucial information about the characters or where they are remaining obscure. At one point Amalric even advances the action several years into the future without signaling it. This is challenging stuff, but the film’s greatest virtue may be its humility. HOLD ME TIGHT thrives in small, tender moments that showcase Amalric’s nuanced understanding of intimate relationships. (2021, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Alexander Kluge's STRONGMAN FERDINAND (West Germany)

Goethe-Institut Chicago – Wednesday, 6pm

Alexander Kluge, one of the more experimental directors associated with the New German Cinema movement, turned in his most straightforward narrative work with STRONGMAN FERDINAND, a tale about Rieche, a former police detective hired to head up security at a factory. He is far more proficient at matters of security than are his superiors and his constant pursuit of absolute security earns him no friends amongst either the workers he polices or his bosses, only his security team seems accepting of his ways. Rieche's obstinate stance on knowing all there is to know about security mirrors the position Kluge himself took for the 15 years prior to this film, as he signed every manifesto and declaration that passed by his desk, proclaiming that those in charge of the German film industry needed to open their eyes and expand cinema beyond a mere revenue stream to transform it into a gateway for political and artistic expression. Never mind, of course, that the loudmouthed positions both Kluge and Rieche embrace allows for the indulgence of a few liberties. Kluge muddies the waters a bit when Rieche's pursuit for a perfect system begins to erode his ability for rational action, proving the radical adage that "the most dangerous opponents of a system are its protectors." Screening as part of the Goethe-Institut Chicago’s Kino x 3: Alexander Kluge series. (1976, 91 min, Digital Projection) [Doug McLaren]

Hannes Wesendonk’s THE BERLIN ART SOCIETY (Germany)

Analog Video — Tuesday, 7pm

Hannes Wesendonk’s debut feature THE BERLIN ART SOCIETY is a droll black-and-white comedy about 20-somethings who form an art collective in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin. Wesendonk and cinematographer Nathan Juno have done an impressive job of giving the film the look and rhythm of the French New Wave; what’s more, Wesendonk has skillfully adapted that movement’s concern with the mores of youth culture into a portrait of his own creative generation. I smiled a lot and chuckled more than once, enjoying the picture as an homage to one of my favorite film eras, but also because it took me back to my own late 20s, way back in the 1990s. I recognized a lot of the feelings expressed: the hope to contribute somehow to the zeitgeist, the inchoate anger. The implication is that this crew (which includes a writer, a musician, a poet, a painter, and conceptualists of some kind) may not have much talent, though one of them paints some groovy cows. What’s important is they have the right attitude, a kind of poker-faced self-satire that hints that art is a put-on, combined with a burning desire to create nonetheless and a genuine reverence for the numinous role of art in human life. We watch these bohemians, like their predecessors, try to figure out their relationship to capitalism, have bull sessions, get drunk, make out with each other, and smoke more cigarettes than anyone outside of a classic film noir. They even have occasion to contemplate their own mortality. Whether they actually have anything to say is unclear, but they have the chutzpah to say it anyway. Sure it’s a satire of these counterculture young people, but an affectionate one—the kind that could only have been made by people who are products of that culture themselves. Wesendork co-wrote the script with Josefine Rieks, who has a wry turn as a writer who wears aviator sunglasses indoors. Followed by a Q&A with Wesendonk, moderated by Cine-File contributor Michael Glover Smith. (2021, 71 min, Digital Projection) [Scott Pfeiffer]

Bianca Stigler’s THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING (UK/Netherlands/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

This film delivers exactly what the title promises. It opens with amateur movie footage shot in 1938 in the Polish city of Nasielk. These scenes are full of life, with children filling the frame. One boy keeps walking so that he can stay in the shot as the camera moves to the right. The image alternates between black and white and color. The film is silent, but director Bianca Stigter overdubs the creak of a projector. Only when the clip ends do we understand its full significance. Shot by David Kurtz and found by his grandson Glenn (who gave the footage to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, for preservation), it documents the town’s Jewish community only a year before the Nazis would round them up and force them into ghettos. For a film aimed at a fairly wide audience, THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING is surprisingly experimental and rigorous. Its methods suggest Ken Jacobs’ TOM, TOM, THE PIPER’S SON (1969) and Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s LETTER TO JANE (1972), two very different movies that obsessively analyze and re-interpret the same footage for their entire length. While THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING uses a voice-over by Helena Bonham Carter, the interviews conducted by Stigter are audio only. All the film’s images come from Kurtz. At times, THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING delves deep into the information it can dig up. A grocery store’s sign is analyzed in great detail, with its tiny, blurry letters electronically enhanced to discern the name of the woman who owned it. Stigter takes devices from Ken Burns’ banal TV work, like slow zooms in and out of still images, and uses them to help depict the full horror of the Holocaust without sensationalism. As a voice-over describes the Nazis gathering Nasielk’s Jews, humiliating them in public and loading them on trains to Polish ghettos in preparation for their later incarceration in Treblinka, THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING stares into a dark, fuzzed-out image suggesting an endless void. It treats the question of representing the Holocaust with great care. The film knows that cinema can’t bring Nasielk’s Jews back to life, but it investigates their lives as thoroughly as it can. (2021, 71 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson] 

Gareth Evans' THE RAID: REDEMPTION (Indonesia)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight

THE RAID: REDEMPTION is, by and large, an extremely action-packed film and a ripe example of a culmination of one shift in aesthetic tastes in contemporary cinema, an increased and more explicit level of violence. Here, an Indonesian SWAT team is tasked with taking down a crime lord who lives in a 15-story apartment complex that is both a safe haven for criminals and a fortress designed to keep rivals out. Floor by floor, this police squad must fight their way to the top to take down their prime target. THE RAID features some of the finest fight choreography in recent memory with roughly two-thirds of the film depicting some form of combat. Gareth Evans’ blocking maximizes the brutality shown on screen and the imagery recalls ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 as well as STARSHIP TROOPERS. The storyline is fairly straightforward, but the frantic pacing and high tempo editing makes for an enthralling viewing experience. THE RAID: REDEMPTION belongs near the top of the pantheon of contemporary Pan-Asian cinema and is a modern action classic. Screening as part of the Music Box Staff Picks! series. (2011, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

Salome Chasnoff's CODE OF THE FREAKS (US/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Chicago-based filmmaker Salome Chasnoff and writer-interviewees Susan Nussbaum, Alyson Patsavas, and Carrie Sandah did the world a favor by creating this breezy and informative 69-minute documentary about the depiction—and frequent misrepresentation—of people with physical and/or mental disabilities in narrative cinema. Utilizing film clips spanning nearly 100 years, from Robert Wiene's THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI in 1920 through to Hollywood movies in the 21st century, CODE OF THE FREAKS provides a welcome corrective to the myriad, dangerous distortions and falsehoods offered by depictions of the differently abled in cinema‚ almost none of which were made by filmmakers who were actually disabled themselves. The most provocative aspect of CODE OF THE FREAKS (the title of which affectionately nods to Tod Browning's 1932 masterpiece FREAKS) may be the way it illustrates how narrative cinema's need for traditional "resolution" does a particular disservice to stories centering on disabled characters by providing the same few tidy endings over and over again (i.e., the "miracle cure," death, and institutionalization). But, in spite of the seriousness of the subject matter, most of the disabled artists and activists interviewed for Chasnoff's camera come across as witty and good-humored, and the director herself gets a surprising amount of comic mileage out of the way she juxtaposes these interview clips with relevant film scenes (a case in point: disability advocate Candace Coleman's balking at the subtext of M. Night Shyamalan's UNBREAKABLE followed by a shot from that movie where Samuel L. Jackson's character says "No!" half a dozen times). Even better is the way Chasnoff creates clever montages incorporating a range of different films about disability in order to show how pervasive some of the most unfortunate tropes are (e.g., the way a disabled character's highest function seems to be to serve merely as an inspiration for non-disabled characters; or the absurd frequency of scenes in which blind men are able to successfully drive cars as a means of reclaiming the masculinity that disability has otherwise threatened to take away from them). Chasnoff in attendance for a post-screening Q&A after the Friday showtime. (2020, 69 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]

Joel and Ethan Coen’s NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

America ain’t what it used to be, and what it used to be, ain’t what it used to be. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN places us in West Texas during the 1980s, with the Coen brothers bringing us another facet of Americana. Presented as a mishmash of western and thriller, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN investigates the myth of the quiet, heroic cowboy through a contemporary lens. Here, our cowboy Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, questions the only life he’s ever known as a descendent in a line of sheriffs. He sarcastically jests as he's reluctantly dragged into a new case, one that slowly starts to seem beyond his means. What is an aging small town sheriff to do when the playing field continues to expand and the players themselves have grown more elusive and powerful? Shortly after investigating one of a multitude of crime scenes, Bell and another older sheriff amusingly suggest the issue is teens with green hair. They are right—something has certainly changed—but green-haired punks have and will always exist. Roger Deakins' cinematography depicts massive empty landscape shots of Texas at day and night, beautiful views we’ve come to associate with cowboys and their horses. Meanwhile, Carter Burwell's minimal score, in conjunction with great sound design, suggests a place that is altogether quiet, unsettling, and familiar. If the world itself hasn’t changed, then what has? Bell is a cowboy stuck in the void of an old world with new rules: no longer are disputes settled “mano a mano” but rather through proxy bloodshed. As a result, the law doesn’t come close to finding the real ring leader, and for that the average American will pay the price. The game has changed and the cowboys no longer show up to resolve conflicts but rather put red tape up afterwards. Perhaps at that point it’s just best for someone like Bell to give up the myth and wake up. Screening as part of 50/50, the Siskel’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (2007, 122 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]

Tsai Ming-liang's GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (Taiwan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 8pm

Tsai Ming-liang's GOODBYE, DRAGON INN is a gorgeous, heartbreaking, and strangely exhilarating film. Set in a condemned Taipei movie palace, on the occasion of its sparsely attended, last-ever film screening, GOODBYE is a bizarre drama of fleeting passions and empty spaces, which meditates on the slow death of the traditional moviegoing experience even as it formulates audacious cinematic poetry that relies on its viewers' participation in that same moribund ritual. Along with contemporaries like Bela Tarr, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Gus Van Sant, Tsai makes profound use not only of silence, but also slowness and extreme long takes, reinventing the concept of Bazinian realism with topical potency. It is cinema that, when experienced in the proper setting, engulfs completely, proving that there are tricks other than CGI and accelerated montage that filmmakers can use to dazzle modern audiences. The proper setting is, of course, a movie theater. Though nothing can take away from the richness (and strangeness) of Tsai's characters or the beauty of his mise-en-scène, the pure magic of his tone and pacing is largely dispelled by small screens and remote controls. Screening as part of the Tsai Ming-Liang series. (2003, 82 min, DCP Digital) [Darnell Witt]

Dziga Vertov's THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (USSR)

Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7:30pm

Wanna watch a conference of film scholars descend into fisticuffs? Raise your hand, and politely ask whether early film audiences really found the illusion of cinema so convincing that they ran away in terror at the image of an oncoming train on the screen. The siren song of the stupefied bumpkin—the useful and profound myth that cannot be disproved or killed—is on my mind again, having just seen Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA for the seventh or eighth time. I finally recognized that this monumental documentary is almost designed for that bewildered spectator—it's a completely idiomatic explication of cinema theory, as readily understood by an illiterate kolkhoz dweller as a Westernized urban sophisticate. (Or, for that matter, a moderately socialized chimpanzee or an alien race from points beyond.) This is not just another way of saying that MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA disavows intertitles—an esthete conceit shared with other silent films like F.W. Murnau's THE LAST LAUGH and Arthur Robison's WARNING SHADOWS. No, THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA patiently, painstakingly demonstrates cinema from bottom to top—analogizing the camera lens with the eye, comparing an editing bench to a sewing machine, rhyming a vial of film cement with a bottle of nail polish, motion slowed down, motion stopped. We see the cameraman shooting a scene, then his footage in the raw, then the footage cut together to form a sequence—albeit not necessarily in that order and not without a few digressions. And yes, more than a few locomotives hurtle towards us—and with mounting, seizure-inducing rhythm as the movie concludes in an orgy of rapid cuts, flash frames, and call-backs. But by then, we're no longer the audience running away, but the train racing toward it. We've been absorbed into the machine, its logic naturalized, its violence merged with our own. THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA teaches us to think like a camera, to understand our own lives with greater exactitude and objectivity as we watch them projected back at us. Featuring a live score performed by Austin-based chamber indie music ensemble Montopolis. (1929, 68 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]

Jonathan Lynn's CLUE (US)

Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:45pm

The term “cult classic” has become somewhat tired over the years as new releases aggressively—and without a trace of irony—market themselves as “future cult classics.” But the term does have an authentic place in film history, one that recognizes the importance that organic fandom culture has on a film’s lasting legacy. Few films embody a “cult” status quite like Jonathan Lynn’s CLUE, which was largely panned upon release and was just shy of its $15 million budget at the box office, but has remained a cultural touchstone for many viewers more than 30 years later. Loosely based on the board game with the same name, CLUE begins with a mysterious dinner party that quickly devolves into a game of whodunit, as blackmail, murder, and criminality bond the guests, all strangers, together. While CLUE features a strong ensemble cast, it’s Tim Curry as the wily butler Wadsworth who steals every scene—effortlessly guiding a plethora of personalities, as well as the audience, through the film’s outlandish twists and turns. It’s a bit all over the place and nonsensical, sure, but it’s a helluva good time regardless. With a seemingly endless arsenal of quotable one-liners, deductions developed at a breakneck pace, alternate endings, and even camp-like sensibilities, CLUE has evaded obscurity because of the passionate fans, old and new, who can’t help but adore its zany appeal. Presented by Ramona Slick and Rated Q - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema. Enjoy pre-show drinks and a DJ set in the Music Box Lounge at 9pm. (1985, 104 min, 35mm) [Cody Corrall]

Claire Denis' BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE (France)

Facets Cinema – Saturday and Sunday; See Venue website for showtimes

BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE is lots of things at once, many of them contradictory: it's a quintessential Claire Denis film that doesn't look much like her previous work, a romantic melodrama that unfolds like a thriller, and a singularly upsetting experience that stands as one of the finest movies of 2022. It's also a potent examination of the theme of "the past coming back," which makes it a kissing cousin of such otherwise disparate films as Jacques Tourneur's OUT OF THE PAST (1947) and David Cronenberg's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005). In all three movies, the protagonists' lives are turned upside down by the unexpected re-appearance of someone they used to know, whose return forces them not just to deal with unresolved issues but to regress into the people they used to be, whether they like it or not. In Denis's film, Sara (Juliette Binoche) is a radio host in a seemingly idyllic nine-year relationship with her live-in boyfriend, Jean (Vincent Lindon), an unemployed ex-rugby player and ex-con. A wordless six-minute introductory scene shows the lovers frolicking at the beach before returning home and making love, a bravura sequence that recalls the wordless montage that begins Eric Rohmer's A TALE OF WINTER (1992). This picturesque depiction of blissful couplehood, however, is undercut by the ominous rumble of low strings on the soundtrack, which give way to the haunting sound of minor chords being plucked on an acoustic guitar (the superb score is, of course, by the Tindersticks). Shortly afterwards, Sara spies her ex-lover—and Jean's old friend—Francois (Gregoire Colin), in the street for the first time in years, and the very sight of him causes her to convulse with emotion. As Sara and Francois resume their affair, Denis and co-screenwriter Christine Angot (on whose novel the film is based) gradually, masterfully dole out information that fleshes out the backstories of the three main characters while some narrative details remain tantalizingly vague (e.g. the reason Jean went to prison is never explained). For long stretches, the cinematic language of BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE feels more conventional than in Denis's other films, probably so she can put the focus squarely on the anguished emotions—especially in two extended verbal arguments between Sara and Jean, the Cassavettesian emotional rawness of which gives two of the world's greatest actors some of their most indelible onscreen moments. This makes all the more effective the few "poetic" touches more typical of Denis that are shrewdly sprinkled throughout the movie: the first reunion scene between Sara and Francois, for instance, is full of dreamy close-ups and sensual camera moves reminiscent of FRIDAY NIGHT (2002), although here they are fittingly played in a more sinister register. The earlier film celebrates a guilt-free one-night stand between two strangers who come together by chance; the newer one shows how desire, when intertwined with guilt and lies, can tear apart two people who ostensibly know each other well. BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE is a searing portrait of middle-aged intimacy made by a woman old and wise enough to know that love can sometimes be a motherfucker. (2022, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]

Phil Tippett's MAD GOD (US/Animation)

Facets Cinema – Friday, 7pm

There are passion projects and then there’s MAD GOD. Shot by Phil Tippett over a 33-year period, the film takes place in an enormously detailed apocalyptic dystopia that reflects his background as a special effects artist. Tippett cites Hieronymous Bosch’s paintings as his major influence, and this comes through in images like a diorama of bloodied bodies seen through a building. But cinematically, his vision suggests Alexei German’s HARD TO BE A GOD combined with the avant-garde animation of Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay. Sans dialogue, MAD GOD stays just shy of becoming a narrative film, although the closing credits introduce us to characters like “Last Human,” “The Surgeon” and “The Assassin.” It’s possible to piece together fragments of a story, as the film’s key scene depicts a brutally bloody C-section that destroys the mother’s body and sprays the surroundings with gelatinous gore but retrieves an insectile baby. The world of MAD GOD is populated by humans alongside other creatures both real and imagined. The credits include “newt wrangler,” while jellyfish float past poisonous chartreuse mushrooms. But MAD GOD devotes most of its energy to building a brutal, oft-ugly world one step away from utter collapse. Its cities are made of buildings that are toppling over and turning into flakes of grey dust; the powerful don’t hesitate to crush humanoid figures under their wheels; and a pustule-faced creature watches film of a mushroom cloud exploding. Tippett, now 70, was the subject of a 2019 documentary and has benefited from a lengthy career specializing in stop-motion animation, working on the original STAR WARS trilogy, JURASSIC PARK and STARSHIP TROOPERS. However, MAD GOD has little to do with such mainstream films, even Verhoeven’s. It feels like a strange, impeccably crafted piece of outsider art inspired by disgust with war and environmental destruction, carrying the weight of obsession but made with enough resources to bring its homemade world to life. Even as a brief feature, it’s too grim and unpleasant to be reduced to eye candy. Its imagery transcends the literal tendency of film violence, describing a hellish devaluation of life that alludes to the Holocaust and other historical horrors without directly depicting them. (2021, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS – ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Asian Pop-Up Cinema
The extensive Asian Pop-Up Cinema starts their fifteenth season on Saturday. Their in-person and virtual offerings are too many to list here. (A  good problem to have!) Visit here for more information.

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
Michael Finney’s 2020 documentary 1983 CHICAGO’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION (47 min, Digital Projection) screens on Saturday at 5pm, followed by an augmented reality demonstration for attendees. More info here.

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
debbie tucker green’s 2021 film EAR FOR EYE (86 min, Digital Projection) screens on Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.). Free admission with online registration. More info here.

⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Philip J. Cook’s 2003 film DESPISER (105 min, Digital Projection) screens on Wednesday at 8pm. Guest programmed by zinester Ed Blair. Screening will be out on the Comfort Station lawn, weather permitting. Free admission. More info here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
François Ozon’s 2022 Fassbinder homage PETER VON KANT (85 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes. Another encore screening of the National Theatre Live production of Suzie Miller’s play PRIMA FACIE (2022, 120 min, DCP Digital) takes place on Sunday at 2pm.

Abby Ginzberg’s 2022 documentary BARBARA LEE: SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER (82 min, Digital Projection) screens on Sunday at 6pm. Director and subject, Congresswoman Lee, will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫MdW
MdW, an artist-run assembly that was dormant for a decade, returns with a renewed mission to convene alternative artist platforms in Chicago. The three-day event begins Friday and ends Sunday. There are a variety of film and video screenings, including one from the Nightingale Cinema on Saturday at 7:40pm. The screening includes works by Lilli Carré, Emily Drummer, Nellie Kluz, Amy Lockhart, Paige Taul, Sofia Theodore-Pierce, and a collaborative piece by Lia Kohl, Jasmine Lupe Mendoza, Corey Smith and Kioto Aoki.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
The Music Box Garden Movies continue. See Venue website for films and showtimes.

Mark Cousins’ 2022 documentary THE STORY OF FILM: A NEW GENERATION (160 min, DCP Digital) and Jean Luc Herbulot’s 2021 Senegalese horror film SALOUM (84 min, DCP Digital) both open this week; Dean Fleischer-Camp’s 2022 animated feature MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (89 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.

Atsuko Ishizuka’s 2022 animated Japanese film GOODBYE, DON GLEES! (94 min, DCP Digital) screens on Wednesday at 9:15pm. 

Ti West’s 2022 follow up to X, PEARL (102 min, DCP Digital) screens on Thursday at 7pm in advance of a full run starting next week. More info on all screenings here.

CINE-LIST: September 9 - September 15, 2022

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Cody Corrall, Kyle Cubr, Steve Erickson, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Doug McLaren, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael Glover Smith, Drew Van Weelden, Brian Welesko, K.A. Westphal, Darnell Witt