film descriptions
Animé Duo
Buy a ticket for either MY BEAUTIFUL GIRL, MARI or A TREE OF PALME and get a ticket for any showing of the other film at these reduced rates (both tickets must be purchased at the same time): General admission $7; Students $5; GSFC members $4.
MY BEAUTIFUL GIRL, MARI
(MARI IYAGI)
2002, Lee Seong-kang, South Korea, 80 min./em>
“Softly sensuous.” -- Derek Elley, Variety
“Lee’s dreamy ode to ocean sounds, cumulus clouds, blooming jungles, late afternoon light, and fading memories hums with an observant poetry that should make most American animators red with shame.” -- Michael Atkinson, Village Voice
A Grand Prix winner for Best Feature at the renowned Annecy International Animation Festival in France, MY BEAUTIFUL GIRL, MARI spins back in time when Nam-woo rediscovers a prized marble that held special powers one magical summer of his childhood. Buffeted by a painful family situation, the boy Nam-woo and his faithful cat find solace in an abandoned lighthouse, where the spirit-girl Mari invites him into her enchanted world. In Korean with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
September 2 -- 8
Fri. and Wed. at 6:15 pm;
Sat. and Mon. at 5:45 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm and 7:30 pm;
Tues. and Thurs. at 8:30 pm
A TREE OF PALME
(PALUMU NO KI)
2002, Takashi Nakamura, Japan, 130 min.
“With its deeply humanistic take on the Pinocchio story, filtered through the prism of cyberpunk anim�, Nakamura’s A TREE OF PALME is a heady, dense metaphor for everything from the struggle for self-knowledge and personal growth to the aging process.” -- Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
The wooden android-boy Palme is propelled from life to death and back again, as the foliage of his kooloop-tree ancestry seems imminently ready to reclaim him. A ghostly mother, a fairy mentor, a mysterious egg, a glowing crystal pendant, and a host of greedy and dangerous forces become part of a story that invents its own complex mythology along a fantastic and darkly violent journey that promises to make Palme human. In Japanese with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
September 2 -- 8
Fri. and Wed. at 8:00 pm; Sat. at 3:15 pm and 7:30 pm;
Sunday at 5:00 pm;
Mon. at 3:15 pm;
Tues. and Thurs. at 6:00 pm
Chicago theatrical premiere!
WALL
(MUR)
2004, Simone Bitton, France/Israel, 100 min.
“An eye-opener about the true dimensions--both physical and mental -- of the barrier being built to divide Palestinian territories from Israel. . . WALL is a think-for-yourself journey along both sides of the titular monument to human stubbornness.” -- Lisa Nesselson, Variety
A provocative selection of the Directors Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2004, WALL is a chilling, thought-provoking documentary laced with irony and humor. Director Bitton lets those who now live in the shadow of the obtrusive wall speak their minds as she charts the progress of the construction of the barrier snaking across the ancient landscape to provide a concrete symbol of political impasse. In Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
September 9 -- 15
Friday and Mon.-Fri. at 6:15 pm and 8:15 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm and 7:45 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm and 5:15 pm
WINTER SOLDIER
1972, Winterfilm Collective, USA, 96 min.
“It was the single most affecting film about the war that I saw during that period, and though I’ve never forgotten its passion or its painful honesty, it’s rarely been shown since.” -- Jonathan Rosenbaum, Reader
Nearly unseen for over 30 years, WINTER SOLDIER is an extraordinary “lost” documentary of the Winter Soldier Investigation conducted in Detroit by Vietnam Veterans Against the War during the winter of 1971. Over the course of four days, more than a hundred veterans (including a young John Kerry) gave testimony of atrocities they had witnessed or committed. Their harrowing chronicle of rape, torture, infanticide, killing for sport, and other horrors makes the case that My Lai was not an aberrant episode but part of a daily, officially sanctioned program of genocide. Made by a collective of top documentary filmmakers -- including Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A.), Robert Fiore (PUMPING IRON), and Nancy Baker (BORN INTO BROTHELS) -- WINTER SOLDIER is not an artless assemblage of raw footage. Edited for maximum dramatic and political impact, but wide-ranging enough to incorporate critiques of masculinity and the antiwar movement’s own white bias, it is an example of activist cinema at its most effective. 35mm. (MR)
This presentation is part of Commit to Memory, a citywide exploration of the Vietnam War.
Vietnam War veteran and WINTER SOLDIER participant Barry Romo and historian Richard Stacewicz, author of< Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, will be present for audience discussion on Friday at 8:15 and Saturday at 8:00.Vietnam War veterans are tentatively scheduled to appear at other screenings; phone 312-846-2600 for information.
September 16 -- 22
Fri. and Mon-Wed. at 6:15 pm and 8:15 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm, 5:15 pm, and 8:00 pm;
Sunday at 3:15 pm and 5:15 pm;
Thursday at 8:15 pm only
Chicago Premiere!
SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG-EYED JESUS
2005, Andrew Douglas, USA, 84 min.
With Jim White, Tom Dowd, Harry Crews, David Johansen
“Richly lyrical.” -- Stephen Holden, The New York Times.
“**** Utterly fascinating . . . A travelogue unlike any other.” -- David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor.
“Delightfully demented . . . a fascinating glimpse into a startling subculture of angels and demons.” -- Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times.
With a rented 1970 Chevy, musician/folklorist Jim White takes off in search of the “real” South -- guiding us down a lost highway filled with weathered churches, jailhouses, junkyards, singers, sinners, snake-handlers, and storytellers. Andrew Douglas’s spellbinding exercise in American Gothic unfolds like a fairytale rewritten by Flannery O’Connor and David Lynch: rusted cars and roadside crosses become revelations, and musical interludes conjure heaven and hellfire. The bluegrass, gospel, rockabilly, alt-country, juke-joint soundtrack is the tastiest since O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?; a scene of the Handsome Family playing on the front porch of a floating house is transcendent. SEARCHING FOR WRONG-EYED JESUS is everything the American South is, isn’t, and should be. DigiBeta video. (Jim Dempsey)
September 23 -- October 6
