Runs
Chicago premiere!
STRIKE
(STRAJK--DIE HELDIN VON DANZIG)
2006, Volker Schlöndorff, Germany/Poland, 104 min.
With Katharina Thalbach, Dominique Horwitz
“An inspiring tale of a small woman who stands tall in the face of injustice.”--Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times
“I’m sort of in love with Agnieszka, the heroine of STRIKE. . . Thalbach’s Agnieszka is irresistible.”--Julia Wallace, Village Voice
Like such previous Volker Schlöndorff classics as THE TIN DRUM and THE LEGEND OF RITA, STRIKE is a compelling drama of individual conscience against a backdrop of historical crisis. The central character, inspired by a real person, is Agnieszka, a diminutive, doughty laborer who operates a gigantic crane in the Gdansk shipyards. We follow her remarkable life from 1961, when she is an acquiescent “worker-hero” for the communist management, to 1980, when her firing sets off protests that lead to the birth of the Solidarity movement. With Lech Walesa relegated to the sidelines as an opportunistic middle-of-the-roader, STRIKE gives us a gritty, ground-level vision of history, based not on great men directing events from above, but on ordinary people responding heroically in the midst of chaos. In Polish with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
August 3--9
Fri. at 6:00 pm only;
Sat. at 3:15 pm, 5:15 pm, and 8:00 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm and 5:15 pm;
Mon.-Thu at 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
CASTING ABOUT
2004, Barry J. Hershey, USA, 86 min.
“Pays uplifting tribute to acting traditions and female spirit in equal measure.”--Richard Kuipers, Variety
“An unnerving inquiry into power relationships: between filmmakers and performers and, more pointedly, between men and women.”--Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times
A director seeking actresses for three dramatic roles for his independent movie, a nun, a dancer, and an artist’s model, holds auditions in Berlin, London, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In the end he shelves the movie and keeps the tryouts. Beauty, spunk, fear, ambition, and hope take form before director Hershey through the filmed auditions of 184 actresses, some represented by as little as a hand gesture, others by candid interviews and monologues from the works of contemporary playwrights including David Hare, Eric Bogosian, Susan Miller, Nina Shengold, and Alfred Uhry. The cumulative effect is a mesmerizing narrative of tenacity, wiliness, and supplication. 35mm. (BS)
August 10--16
Fri. at 8:15 pm;
Sat. at 3:00 pm and 6:45 pm;
Sun. at 5:15 pm;
Tue. and Thu. at 8:00 pm;
Wed. at 6:15 pm
First Chicago run!
DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT
2006, Julia Loktev, USA, 94 min.
With Luisa Williams
“Pure sensation. . . its ‘You Are There’ allure is potent.”--David Edelstein, New York Magazine
“The most obvious question--why?--ultimately becomes the film’s least important one.”--Wesley Morris, Boston Globe
A girl’s face, as pure, timeless, resigned and determined as the heroine of Dreyer’s JOAN OF ARC, dominates the screen hauntingly in DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT. She is a young American suicide bomber of unknown ethnic background, utterly dedicated to detonating a bomb in Times Square for a cause the film never reveals. Anonymous men in ski masks prepare the timid volunteer and load her school-girlish backpack with explosives and 50 lbs of nails. Trudging along the streets meant to be the new Ground Zero, she faces the raucous, sensual, impersonal bombardment of New York in the hour of decision. 35mm. (BS)
August 10--16
Fri. at 6:15 pm;
Sat. at 4:45 pm and 8:30 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm;
Tue. and Thu. at 6:00 pm;
Wed. at 8:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
FLANDERS
(FLANDRES)
2006, Bruno Dumont, France, 91 min.
With Adelaïde Leroux, Samuel Boidon
“Profoundly truthful. . . Dumont brilliantly syncs the sounds and images of nature with his character’s lives to provide as intense an experience of the natural world as a film can provide.”--Stephen Holden, The New York Times
“It’s as though Dumont decided to distill everything that’s good about his work into one potent and satisfying feature.”--Ken Fox, TVGuide.com
Like earlier films (LIFE OF JESUS, HUMANITÉ) by philosopher-turned-filmmaker Bruno Dumont, FLANDERS is an unvarnished picture of the human condition, splashed with blood, mud, and semen, but tighter, more trenchant, and (in its own Dumontesque way) more touching than ever before. The first part of the film traces the relationships among three cloddish farm boys and the girl who loves one and sleeps with another; then the lads are shipped off to a brutal war in an unnamed desert country, while the girl remains behind to deal with pregnancy, madness, and visions. In French with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (MR)
August 17--23
Fri. and Mon.-Thu at 6:15 pm and 8:00 pm;
Sat. at 3:00 pm, 4:45 pm, 6:30 pm, and 8:15 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm and 5:00 pm
First Chicago run!
BELLE TOUJOURS
2006, Manoel de Oliveira, France/Portugal, 70 min.
With Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier
“Breezy. . . beautifully affecting.”--Aaron Hillis, Premiere.
“Delightful. . . a tremendously economical film, with not a shot or a second wasted, yet rich with ambiguity, comedy, longing and sadness.”--Andrew O’Hehir, salon.com.
Continuing nonagenarian Oliveira’s triumphant late-late-late period, this unique homage revisits two characters from Luis Buñuel’s 1967 classic BELLE DE JOUR. Nearly forty years after catching his best friend’s wife Séverine in her secret life as a daytime prostitute, Henri Husson (still played by Michel Piccoli) spots her at a concert. A cat-and-mouse pursuit through never-lovelier Paris results in Husson luring the still desirable Séverine (played this time by Bulle Ogier) to a seductive hotel-room supper, but the old rake gets an unexpected helping of egg-on-face. Although it provides a fascinating gloss on Buñuel’s masterpiece, this BELLE is as closely related to Oliveira’s 2001 gem I’M GOING HOME, and it can stand on its own as a droll, elegant comedy of mortality and immorality. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
August 24--30
Fri., Mon., and Wed. at 6:15 pm;
Sat. at 5:00 pm and 8:30 pm;
Sun. at 3:00 pm;
Tue. and Thu. at 8:15 pm
BELLE DE JOUR
1967, Luis Buñuel, France, 101 min.
With Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli
“Possibly the best-known erotic film of modern times, perhaps the best.”--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Sexy, sardonic, and ultimately haunting, Buñuel’s erotic masterpiece stars Deneuve as Séverine, an outwardly frigid Parisian wife who finds an outlet for her wild masochistic fantasies by working afternoons at a smalltime brothel. In the role he would reprise four decades later in BELLE TOUJOURS, Michel Piccoli plays Henri Husson, the rakish family friend who discovers Séverine’s extracurricular activities. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)
August 24--30
Fri., Mon., and Wed. at 8:00 pm;
Sat. at 3:00 pm and 6:30 pm;
Sun. at 4:30 pm;
Tue. and Thu. at 6:15 pm
Reduced Admission! Buy a ticket for BELLE TOUJOURS or BELLE DE JOUR and get a ticket to any screening of the other film at this discount rate (tickets must be purchased at the same time): General Admission $7; Students $5; Members $4.
First Chicago run!
Sarah Price and JoLynn Garnes in Person!
SUMMERCAMP!
2006, Sarah Price and Bradley Beesley, USA, 85 min.
“Pure and heartbreaking. . . if you don’t relate to this film you were never a kid.”--Chicago Tribune
“Hilarious, touching, and a hell of a lot of fun.”--Time Out Chicago
Summer camp: does that term conjure up a flood of happy memories or a torrent of homesick tears? This film captures it all, including the bonding, the bullying, the bunkroom secrets, the spooky campfires, and the epiphanies by 12-year-olds on a glassy lake. Ninety north-shore suburban Chicago kids at a nature camp in northern Wisconsin might have been the ingredients for a bad reality series, but filmmakers Price and Beesley, who remain remarkably invisible behind the camera, bring the three-week camp stint to the screen with all the magical, messy, funny-after-the-fact innocence of childhood intact. Music by The Flaming Lips and Noisola. HD video. (BS)
Co-director Sarah Price and editor JoLynn Garnes will be present for audience discussion at 3:30 pm on Saturday.
August 25 --29
Sat. at 3:30 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm;
Mon. -Wed. at 6:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
MANUFACTURING DISSENT
2007, Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine, Canada, 96 min.
“An intelligent, provocative and, arguably, even necessary examination of the phenomenon of Michael Moore--the man, his movies and his methods.”--Joe Leydon, Variety
You’ve seen FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and SICKO; now check out the movie that takes a hard but fair look at Moore himself as a master manipulator in the name of justice. Two Canadian fans in sync with Moore’s politics set out to make a biopic and end up delving deep into the question of whether the spotlight-loving, Oscar-winning director, who’s been called “the holy-roller of journalism,” helps or hurts causes through his questionable methods, sleight-of-hand, and grandstanding stunts. The film’s running irony is that the star-styled Moore, surrounded by handlers and bodyguards, proves every bit as adept at evading an interview by the directors as his quarry in ROGER & ME. DigiBeta video. (BS)
August 31--September 6
Fri. at 6:15 pm;
Sat. at 4:15 pm and 8:15 pm;
Sun. at 3:00 pm;
Mon. at 6:00 pm;
Tue. and Thu. at 8:00 pm;
Chicago premiere!
TRAPPED ASHES
2007, Joe Dante, Ken Russell, Sean S. Cunningham, Monte Hellman, John Gaeta, USA, 105 min.
With John Saxon, Henry Gibson, Rachel Veltri
“Monte Hellman’s superlative, evocative and genuinely moving ‘Stanley’s Girlfriend’ is the standout contribution.”--Patrick McGavin, ScreenDaily.com
“Unites masters of the genre for a joyride of ghoulish delights.”--Colin Geddes, Toronto International Film Festival program
In the tradition of classic anthology horror films like DEAD OF NIGHT, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, and CREEPSHOW, TRAPPED ASHES brings together legendary directors, sophisticated in-jokes, and low-budget savvy to tell four tales of the macabre and the bizarre. The wrap-around, directed by Joe Dante, traps a group of cooling L.A. hotshots in a movie-lot haunted house presided over by sinister tour guide Henry Gibson. Critics have divided over which is the best episode, some choosing Ken Russell’s wonderfully cheesy “The Girl with the Golden Breasts,” in which a starlet’s unorthodox boob job leaves her with “vampire tits.” Others prefer longtime-MIA cult director Monte Hellman’s elegant, 1950s-set episode about a B-movie director who befriends a filmmaking prodigy named Stanley (wink wink) with a most unusual girlfriend. 35mm. (MR)
August 31--September 6
Fri. at 8:15 pm;
Sat. at 2:15 pm and 6:15 pm;
Sun. at 5:00 pm;
Mon. at 8:00 pm;
Tue. at 6:00 pm;
Thu. at 8:15 pm
Back by popular demand!
WAR AND PEACE
(VOYNA I MIR)
1967, Sergei Bondarchuk, USSR, 415 min. total
With Lyudmila Savelyeva, Sergei Bondarchuk, Vyacheslav Tikhonov
“The definitive epic of all time. . . You are never, ever going to see anything to equal it.”--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
In collaboration with Seagull Films and Mosfilm, we present a return engagement of a newly restored 35mm print of WAR AND PEACE. Winner of the 1968 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, this mammoth production employed over 100,000 extras. Its cost in today’s dollars has been estimated at $1 billion. Adapting Tolstoy’s novel faithfully but dynamically, Bondarchuk balances the epic and the intimate. Bondarchuk himself plays the insecure intellectual Pierre, and Vyacheslav Tikhonov is a brooding Prince Andrei. As Natasha, the enchanting woman they both love against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, Lyudmila Savelyeva is not only a beautiful and talented actress but a trained ballerina whose exquisite grace contributes to the show-stopping ball sequence (Part 2). The staggering Battle of Borodino sequence (Part 3), utilizing a good chunk of the Red Army, has to be seen to be believed. In Russian with English subtitles. 35mm widescreen. (MR)
August 31--September 6
Part 1* (147 min.): Fri. at 6:00 pm; Sat. at 2:00 pm; Mon. at 6:30 pm
Part 2 (86 min.): Fri. at 8:45 pm; Sat. at 4:45 pm; Tue. at 6:15 pm
Part 3 (83 min.): Sat. at 7:15 pm; Sun. at 2:30 pm; Tue. at 8:00 pm; Wed. at 6:15 pm
Part 4 (98 min.): Sat. at 9:00 pm; Sun. at 4:15 pm; Wed. at 8:00 pm; Thu. at 6:15 pm
*Note: Part 1 contains Parts 1 and 2 of the Russian release version. End and opening credits will appear in the middle the screening.
Reduced admission for all four parts (must be purchased by August 30): $30 General Admission; $24 Students; $16 Members. Tickets purchased after August 30 available at our regular prices.