Premieres and Special Events!
A great big month of premieres and special events is the Gene Siskel Film Center’s holiday gift to Chicago. Take a break from all the colored lights and the throngs of guys in red velvet suits out there and give yourself a well-deserved treat with a day or an evening in the dark in one of our comfortable seats.
Whatever holiday you celebrate, there couldn’t be a better way to usher in the season than Martin Doblmeier’s THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS (playing November 30-December 6). A new film by the director of the popular and highly acclaimed BONHOEFFER, this thought-provoking documentary transcends cultural and religious boundaries to explore the virtues of forgiveness. The director appears in person on Saturday, December 1.
French cinema, variously sexy, searching, and breezy, brightens the month through three new features playing in week-long runs. Popular ingénue Isild Le Besco stars in Benoit Jacquot’s THE UNTOUCHABLE (playing December 7-13), a colorful coming-of-age story set in Paris and Benares, where a young actress tracks a family secret. Comic asides to the audience and impromptu songs erupt unexpectedly in Christophe Honore’s DANS PARIS (playing December 21-27), a film featuring charismatic young male stars Louis Garrel and Romain Duris, and Paris locations galore. THE MAN OF MY LIFE by Zabou Breitman (playing December 28-January 3) introduces a snake into the paradise of a seemingly happy marriage when the husband becomes attracted to the man next door.
A larger-than-life performance by veteran stage and screen actor Christopher Plummer is the centerpiece of MAN IN THE CHAIR (playing December 21-January 3.) Anyone who loves the movies will find irresistible this story of an embittered geezer, the last living crew member from CITIZEN KANE, who gets a second chance at life by helping a young wannabe director make a movie. The film’s bittersweet finale is set during the Christmas season.
Three hits make return appearances throughout December. VANAJA (**** “Beautiful and heart-touching.”--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) screens November 30 through December 6. HELVETICA by Gary Hustwit, the biggest runaway hit in our history, returns December 14-20, for what may be your last chance to see it on the big screen. ANTONIO GAUDI by Hiroshi Teshigahara, a film that never grows old, screens December 14-20 as our perennial holiday tradition.
The entire staff of the Gene Siskel Film Center wishes you a happy holiday season, made all the brighter by the magic of the movies.
--Barbara Scharres
Back by popular demand!
VANAJA
2006, Rajnesh Domalpalli, India/USA, 111 min.
With Mamatha Bukhya, Urmila Dammannagari
“A compelling story. . . touching, believable, often funny.”--Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune
“VANAJA, a beautiful and heart-touching film from India, represents a miracle of casting. Every role, including the challenging central role of a low-caste 14-year-old girl, is cast perfectly and played flawlessly, so that it is a continuing pleasure to see these faces on the screen.”--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
A wealth of awe-inspiring dance numbers weaves through this colorful tale of a village girl’s ambition and a family’s perfidy. Lithe, wily, and lower-caste, 14-year-old Vanaja strikes a deal with the devil when she begs to become the servant of Mrs. Devi, a wealthy landowner and dance doyenne, in the hope of learning the demanding art of kuchipudi, the intricate traditional dance of the South Indian upper class. The haughty mistress and her capricious protege reach a truce to make Vanaja a rising star, but the lust of Devi’s son combines with a mother’s political ambition for her spoiled heir to choreograph fateful new steps in Vanaja’s story. In Telugu with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
November 30--December 6
Fri. and Mon. -Thu. at 6:00 pm and 8:15 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm, 5:30 pm, and 7:45 pm;
Sun. at 3:00 pm and 5:15 pm
Chicago premiere!
Martin Doblmeier in person!
THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS
2007, Martin Doblmeier, USA, 73 min.
From Martin Doblmeier, the director of our box-office record-breaker BONHOEFFER, comes another powerful examination of faith and conscience. “’Forgiveness’ may be the most provocative word in our culture today,” Doblmeier says, noting that over the last 20 years forgiveness has even become a growing field of academic study. This concise but wide-ranging documentary examines the varieties and challenges of forgiveness through compelling stories from around the globe, including the families of six young men killed by the British Army in Northern Ireland, an Amish community overcoming the mass murder of five of its schoolchildren, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel seeking an official apology from Germany for the Holocaust, and the relatives of 9/11 victims angered over the government’s callous treatment of their loved one’s remains. DigiBeta video. (MR)
Director Martin Doblmeier will be present for audience discussion at the Saturday screening.
November 30--December 6
Fri. at 8:00 pm;
Sat. at 7:30 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm and 4:45 pm;
Mon. at 6:15 pm;
Wed.-Thu. at 6:15 pm and 7:45 pm
Chicago premiere!
THE UNTOUCHABLE
(L’INTOUCHABLE)
2006, Benoit Jacquot, France, 82 min.
With Isild Le Besco
“Filled with a sense of wonder, chaos and color.”--Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival program
“If anybody could crack a holy city, it is Le Besco who moves like a dancer, lightly but with determined step. She is an exotic mix, willowy yet voluptuous, fair with an Asiatic cast to her features, a face like an archaic mask.”--Joan Dupont, International Herald Tribune
Struggling Parisian actress Jeanne (Le Besco) receives the stunning revelation that she is actually the product of her hippie mother’s fleeting liaison with an unknown Hindu man on the banks of the Ganges. The secret is the impetus for Jeanne’s naïvely impulsive flight into the heart of a seductive land. In sacred Benares, where the bodies of the faithful are relegated to flames on the very riverbank where she was conceived, she picks up the elusive trail of the past. In French, English and Hindu with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
December 7--13
Fri. and Mon, Tue., 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;
Wed. at 6:15 pm
Back by popular demand!
ANTONIO GAUDI
1985, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japan, 72 min.
Our holiday tradition, we bring back the ever-popular cult film by Hiroshi Teshigahara (WOMAN OF THE DUNES), inspired by the wild, undulating, joyously erupting forms of Barcelona architect Antonio Gaudi. Teshigahara’s eye for texture, shape and sensual detail meets Gaudi’s whimsy in the cinematic exploration of such masterpieces of visionary architecture as the cathedral of the Sagrada Familia. The contemporary of artists such as Picasso and Joan Miro, Gaudi drew on Barcelona’s medieval Romanesque architecture and ancient Arab culture for his inspiration. This film reveals the intricacy and hallucinatory richness of his concepts through camerawork alone. Forgoing narration, Teshigahara accompanies his images with a brilliantly eclectic selection of music, ranging from baroque harpsichord to glass orchestra. 35mm. (BS)
December 14--20
Fri., Mon.-Thu. at 6:00 pm and 7:45 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm, 4:45 pm, 6:15 pm, and 8:00 pm;
Sun. at 2:30 pm and 5:45 pm
Back by popular demand!
HELVETICA
2007, Gary Hustwit, Britain, 80 min.
“Fascinating. . . surprisingly passionate.”--J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader
“Wonderful. . . By rounding up a great group of eloquent obsessives eager to explain their feelings about a font, Hustwit has come up with 80 unexpectedly blissful minutes.”--Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
Who could have guessed that a film celebrating the 50th anniversary of a typeface would smash the Film Center’s all-time box-office record during its premiere run in June? Invented by a Swiss designer in 1957, the Helvetica font is now omnipresent in signage, ads, publications, labels, film titles, and e-mail. Director Hustwit turns to the international design community for an entertaining exploration of where the font came from and how it came to be virtually everywhere in our public and private spaces. Featured graphic designers include Massimo Vignelli, Matthew Carter, Eric Spiekermann, Wim Crouwel, and many more. Music includes Battles, Sam Prekop, and Chicago Underground Quartet. HD video. (BS)
December 14--20
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 4:00 pm and 5:30 pm;
Chicago premiere!
MAN IN THE CHAIR
2007, Michael Schroeder, USA, 107 min.
With Christopher Plummer, Michael Angarano, Robert Wagner
“Old and new Hollywood meet…inspired.”--Robert Koehler, Variety
Real Hollywood legends and some appealing fictional ones glow with a generous dusting of movie magic in this tale guaranteed to warm the heart of the film-lover of any age. Teenaged loner and would-be film director Cameron (Angarano), has a rude run-in with drunken Flash Madden (Plummer in an Oscar-worthy performance), a man who claims to be CITIZEN KANE’s last living crew member. Flash, now a self-destructive curmudgeon on a collision course with life, bonds warily with the green kid, and together they set out to make a movie guerilla-style with the help of washed-up Mickey (M. Emmet Walsh), allegedly GONE WITH THE WIND’s screenwriter, and a host of other behind-the-camera greats now languishing in a shamefully shabby old folks’ home. 35mm. (BS)
December 21--January 3
Fri., Wed. and Thu. at 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm;
Sat. at 3:00 pm, 5:15 pm, and 7:45 pm;
Sun.-Mon. at 3:00 pm and 5:15 pm
Chicago theatrical premiere!
DANS PARIS
(aka INSIDE PARIS)
2006, Christophe Honore, France, 92 min.
With Louis Garrel, Romain Duris
“A floppy, joyful tribute to the French New Wave and an inspired retelling of Franny and Zooey.”--Julia Wallace, Village Voice
“DANS PARIS picks up where the early Francois Truffaut and his comrades-in-cinema left off--with a playful, liberatory style, and a song (actually, a few) in his heart and on his actors’ lips.”--Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
With a conspiratorial air, Jonathan (Garrel, France’s hottest young heartthrob actor) takes the audience into his confidence to provide a few pointers on the story to come. Such lighthearted shenanigans continue to leaven Honore’s lively narrative of young love. Paul (Duris), in a deep funk, moves home after a rough breakup only to face his fuzzy-brained dad’s stifling concern and younger brother Jonathan’s tomcatting tomfoolery. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
December 21--27
Fri., Wed. and Thu. at 6:15 pm and 8:15 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm and 8:00 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm;
Mon. at 3:15 pm and 5:15 pm
Rural Route Film Festival
Founded in 2003, the Rural Route Film Festival was created to highlight works that deal with life beyond the urban-oriented focus of most mainstream movies. Festival director Alan Webber will appear in person to present two different programs of this year’s best RRFF submissions.
Alan Webber and Stashu Kybartas in person!
Rural Route Tour
1989-2007, Various directors and nations, 97 min.
This year’s Rural Route Tour program definitely leans towards the more artistic and documentary side. We’ve got fun and serious pieces from all around the world. Arctic owls in Montana, Canadian riding lawnmower races, films about light pollution, a Ukrainian poetic peasant masterpiece, dancers in the snowy Norwegian tundra, plastic lawn deer lost in Brooklyn, some good, ‘ol banjo playin’ at a Kentucky old folks home, and a man’s captivating search for his ancestors in Lithuania (COUSIN KASYTE by Chicagoan Stashu Kybartas). DigiBeta video. (Alan Webber)
Saturday, December 22, 5:15 pm
Alan Webber in person!
Go Organic!
2006, Various directors, USA/Canada, 110 min.
Our Go Organic! program is a new component to the Rural Route tour that we consider absolutely essential. These films provide a refreshing education on the current state of agriculture, and point out positive sustainable and organic practices that you can take part in. THE MEATRIX and FRANKENSTEER expose the ways of unethical farming, while other works provide us with role models through CSAs, Cuban community, sustainable lemon farms, organic choices, and a new wave of female farmers leading the way. Includes LADIES OF THE LAND, Academy Award Winner for Best Student Documentary. (Alan Webber)
Rural Route Film Festival director Alan Webber will be present for audience discussion at both screenings. Stashu Kybartas, director of COUSIN KASYTE, will be present for audience discussion at the Saturday screening.
Sunday, December 23, 5:15 pm
Chicago premiere!
THE MAN OF MY LIFE
(L’HOMME DE SA VIE)
2006, Zabou Breitman, France, 114 min.
With Bernard Campan, Charles Berling, Lea Drucker
“The gorgeous, sun-drenched countryside, a charming old summer house, an al fresco gathering of friends and family…evokes a little Rohmer, a little Malle, a little Bunuel.--David Rooney, Variety
A summer in Provence for the mirror-image couple Frederic (Campan) and Frederique (Drucker) makes for idyllic days of languorous lovemaking until the evening the intriguing new neighbor Hugo (Berling) comes to dinner. A frankly gay sophisticate committed to playing the field in love, cynical Hugo unexpectedly finds an intellectual soulmate in sentimental family man Frederic. What Frederic finds in his new friendship with Hugo becomes an open question when his wife’s sixth sense sounds the alarm and a palpable chill settles over their bedroom. 35mm. In French with English subtitles. (BS)