Weeklong Runs
Chicago premiere!
NANKING
2007, Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, USA, 90 min.
With Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Jürgen Prochnow, Stephen Dorff
“NANKING suggests that in a world grown jaded by images of violence, written testimony read aloud still carries a weight that the most horrifying images cannot exert.”--Stephen Holden, The New York Times
“NANKING honors the highest calling of documentary filmmaking.”--James Greenberg, Hollywood Reporter
“An important contribution to a historical record that, tragically, is still far from complete.”--Ken Fox, TV Guide
Short-listed for an Oscar nomination in the feature documentary category, NANKING began creating critical ripples with its powerful debut in the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. This account of the Japanese army’s 1937-38 genocidal rampage through China’s former capital centers on the heroic efforts of a disparate group of conscience-driven Westerners, including American missionaries, teachers, and even a Nazi businessman, to save a significant portion of the populace from rape and slaughter. The letters and diaries of these figures voiced by actors including Harrelson and Hemingway bring to vibrant life a horrific story further illuminated by archival film footage and the moving narratives of survivors. In English, Japanese, and Mandarin with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
February 1--7
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
Chicago premiere!
BLACK WHITE + GRAY: A PORTRAIT OF SAM WAGSTAFF AND ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE
2007, James Crump, USA, 72 min.
“A potent exercise in art-world mythography that might be nicknamed ‘The Prince and the Punk’…Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe were a diabolical power couple who lived and died in a mad pursuit of aesthetic perfection and erotic sensation.”--Stephen Holden, The New York Times
The life story and provocative life’s work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe have long since eclipsed the story of his life-altering partnership with longtime mentor and lover Sam Wagstaff. Director Crump aims to redress the balance, unreeling a flamboyant tale of the gradual reinvention of both men after Wagstaff, a curator, former ad exec, and high society scion, begins to guide the career of the young working-class photographer almost half his age. Central to the narrative is Wagstaff’s groundbreaking, taste-making work as a collector of photography and champion of artists including Warhol, Agnes Martin, Tony Smith, Richard Tuttle, and Michael Heizer. Recollections by rock star Patti Smith, Mapplethorpe’s former roommate, add a touchingly fond dimension to the collective testimonies of art world experts including Philippe Garner, Eugenia Parry, and many others. DigiBeta video. (BS)
February 8--14
Fri. and Mon.-Thu. at 6:00 pm and 7:45 pm;
Sat. at 3:30 pm and 7:45 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm and 5:00 pm
New print!
LA CHINOISE
1967, Jean-Luc Godard, France, 96 min.
With Anne Wiazemsky, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto
“A molotov mixture of comedy and commentary!”--Time Out New York
“May be Godard’s funniest work... Still amazing 40 years later, LA CHINOISE seems prophetic.”--Armond White, New York Press
Coming near the end of Godard’s 1960s Golden Period (between TWO OR THREE THINGS and WEEKEND) and just before his dive into the deep end of political cinema, LA CHINOISE is a resonantly contradictory work, combining boldly composed, vividly colored images with a deep ambivalence toward the effectiveness of student radicalism. A group of young middle-class leftists turn an apartment into a Maoist cell, painting, playing, debating, dressing up, and listening to revolutionary pop songs (“Mao, Mao!”) as they drift toward the brink of violent action. The film’s palette of red-dominated primary colors dazzles in a new, beautifully restored 35mm print. In French with English subtitles. (MR)
February 15--21
Fri. and Mon.-Thu. at 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm;
Sat. at 3:00 pm and 7:45 pm;
Sun. at 3:00 pm and 5:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
Jay Jonroy in person!
DAVID & LAYLA
2007, Jay Jonroy, USA, 106 min.
With David Moscow, Shiva Rose
“Boasts a brand of immigrant chutzpah that highlights the ‘anything is possible’ side of the American dream with energy to burn.”--Lisa Nesselson, Variety
“Iraqi Kurd filmmaker Jay Jonroy comes from the school that believes that there’s no geopolitical problem so great it can’t be salved by a romantic comedy.”--Sam Adams, Philadelphia City Paper
“Let’s call for a ceasefire in the hostilities in the Middle East, require all combatants to take a break and watch this movie.”--Keith D. Cohen, Kansas City Jewish Chronicle
David (Moscow), the proverbial nice Jewish boy, is doing man-on-the-street interviews for his sex-themed cable access show in Brooklyn. Layla (Rose) is the sensuous, scarfed Kurdish Muslim stunner walking by with her nose in the air. Naturally they fall in love, Layla’s urgent need for a green card having a little something to do with the speed of Cupid’s arrow. Each family is assured that religious conversion is in the works, but the question is, which religion? DAVID AND LAYLA dives into the explosive subject of cross-cultural romance with good-hearted goofiness that suggests that laughter is one hell of a remedy for a lot of ills. Director Jonroy serves up the Jewish mother from hell, the brother from another planet, a wacky take on most things holy, and a disarmingly innocent air of goodwill to all. 35mm. (BS)
Director Jay Jonroy will be present for audience discussion at all Friday and Saturday screenings.
February 22--28
Fri. at 6:00 pm and 8:15 pm;
Sat. at 3:00 pm and 8:00 pm;
Sun. at 3:00 pm only;
Mon.-Thu. at 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm
Back by popular demand!
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 subject 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 7:45 pm screening on Saturday.
February 29-March 6
Fri. at 6:00 pm and 7:30 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm, 4:45 pm, 6:15 pm, and 7450 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm;
Mon. and Wed. at 7:45 pm;
Tue. and Thu. at 6:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
Filmmakers in person!
OUT OF FAITH
2006, Lisa Leeman, USA, 82 min.
The thorny issue of interfaith marriage is treated with sensitivity and compassion in OUT OF FAITH. The film started out as a straightforward documentary of Skokie resident Leah Welbel’s memories of Auschwitz, but the filmmakers widened their scope when they discerned Leah’s anguish over her grandchildren’s marriages to non-Jews, which she saw as a betrayal of the faith for which she and millions of other Jews had sacrificed so much. The film became a portrait of three generations of a family torn by conflicts over interfaith marriage. With 50% of non-Orthodox American Jews marrying out of faith, will intermarriage (as one participant says) “finish the job Hitler started”? This heart-wrenching film offers no easy answers to questions of assimilation and conflicting loyalties that resonate deeply with members of all minority cultures. DigiBeta video. (MR)
Director Lisa Leeman and producer L. Mark DeAngelis will be present for audience discussion at the Sunday screening.