Stranger than Fiction: Documentary Premieres
Throughout January the Gene Siskel Film Center celebrates the art of the documentary in a special way through a wide-ranging selection of premieres, including new documentary releases in weeklong runs, and guest appearances.
Films with Chicago connections top our list of special screenings. The timely ELECTION DAY, partly set in Chicago, screens with director Katy Chevigny (DEADLINE) and producer Maggie Bowman in person on January 25. Director Linda Booker and other guests appear on January 12 with LOVE LIVED ON DEATH ROW, an affecting story with roots in the Chicago area.
Revealing inside stories from the art world, including two with Warhol connections, premiere in THE COOL SCHOOL, A WALK INTO THE SEA, and TIERNEY GEARON: THE MOTHER PROJECT. Other adventures in the arts include HAVANA: THE NEW ART OF MAKING RUINS, and the lively THE SOUND OF RIO. Award-winning BILLY THE KID, a hit at many festivals, styles the profile of its young subject much like a fantasy drama.
Weeklong runs from January 4 through 31 feature exciting and provocative new films: THE PRICE OF SUGAR (January 4-10); THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR: BOB DYLAN LIVE AT THE NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL, 1963-1965 (January 11-17); NOTE BY NOTE: THE MAKING OF STEINWAY L1037 (January 18-24); and FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO (January 25-31).
We couldn’t resist adding the mockumentary AMERICAN ZOMBIE to the mix, especially because it’s by documentary director Grace Lee. A satirical analysis of documentary method is Lee’s by-product in this cinema verité comedy, making it a perfect adjunct to Stranger than Fiction.
-- Barbara Scharres
Chicago premiere!
BILLY THE KID
2007, Jennifer Venditti, USA, 85 min.
“The first twenty minutes is worth the price of admission.”--Michael Lerman, INDIEwire
Billy is in fact a kid, a 15-year-old living in a trailer in rural Maine with his mother, a toddler sibling, and an unseen stepfather. Bright, aggressively outspoken, and seemingly fearless, Billy also suffers from an unnamed behavior disorder, which may or may not be at the root of both his best and his worst qualities. Director Venditti often makes cinema verité play like drama as Billy shows off his world, traversing the territory between plucky misfit and holy fool with aplomb as he gets in trouble at school, awkwardly courts a reluctant girl, and styles himself as a super-hero. HD video. Winner of festival awards including Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Edinburgh Film Festival. (BS)
Friday, January 11, 7:45 pm
Wednesday, January 16, 7:45 pm
Chicago premiere!
THE COOL SCHOOL
2007, Morgan Neville, USA, 86 min.
Narrated by Jeff Bridges
The inside story of personalities, friendships, and rivalries comes to the fore in a jazzy saga exploring the role of the Ferus Gallery and its adventurous curator Walter Hopps in L.A.’s transition from the beat-era underdog of the art world to a cutting-edge Pop paradise where Warhol’s fame was launched, and artists including Ed Kienholz, Larry Bell, John Altoon, and Wallace Berman became culture heroes. Artists Ed Ruscha, Frank Gehry, Billy Al Bengston, curators Hopps and Irving Blum, critic Ivan C. Karp, and astute cigar-flaunting collectors Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell, tell it like it was. DigiBeta video. (BS)
Saturday, January 26, 8:00 pm
Thursday, January 31, 8:15 pm
Chicago premiere!
Filmmakers in person!
ELECTION DAY
2007, Katy Chevigny, USA, 82 min.
The meeting between a wary Republican poll-watcher and his cohorts in pre-dawn Chicago gets the blood pumping for the November 2, 2004, election day. By the time we witness a disputed vote count late that night in Quincy, Florida, ELECTION DAY will have mobilized more than a dozen film crews to cover scores of polling sites around the nation where, whether smooth or dysfunctional, the process of democracy is seen to be in the hands of its citizens, including harried moms, small-town officials, muddled first-timers, and ex-offenders, not to mention stoic volunteers and party hacks. HD video. (BS)
Director Katy Chevigny and producer Maggie Bowman will be present for audience discussion at the Friday screening; Bowman will be present on Monday.
Friday, January 25, 8:00 pm
Monday, January 28, 6:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
HAVANA: THE NEW ART OF MAKING RUINS
(HABANA: ARTE NUEVO DE HACER RUINAS)
2006, Florian Borchmeyer and Matthias Hentschler, Germany, 85 min.
Once legendary for its decadent splendor, then charmingly shabby post-Revolution, Havana has fallen on the hardest of hard times architecturally speaking. From the elegant facades of the colonial era to the streamlined apartment blocks that sprang from socialist dreams, the city is caught in the act of disintegrating before the camera. With entranced appreciation for the seriously endangered Cuban architectural legacy, the filmmakers find the stories behind the facades for a lively mix of insightful history and street-level analysis, including by a man who has burrowed a home in the ruins of a lavish theater where Caruso once sang. Beta SP video. (BS)
>Sunday, January 13, 5:30 pm
Thursday, January 17, 6:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
Filmmakers in person!
LOVE LIVED ON DEATH ROW
2007, Linda Booker, USA, 83 min.
“Leaves the viewer both teary-eyed and joyfully hopeful about the human potential to do good.”--Patrick O’Neill, Independent Weekly
In 1990, Elias Syriani, a hard-working immigrant, popular entertainer in his ethnic community, and father of four, stabbed his wife to death in the presence of their young son and was subsequently sentenced to die for the crime. Fourteen years later the grown siblings seek closure by visiting their father for the first time, and embark on an uncharted path to reconciliation and forgiveness mediated by Meg, a complete stranger inspired by Sister Helen Prejean to become his prison pen-pal and spiritual advisor. Director Booker movingly captures the emotional highs and lows of a story that culminates in the family petitioning North Carolina’s governor for clemency. DV-CAM video. (BS)
Director Linda Booker and all four Syriani siblings will be present for discussion at the Saturday screening.
Saturday, January 12, 8:00 pm
Monday, January 14, 6:00 pm
CANCELLED
SENATOR OBAMA GOES TO AFRICA
2007, Bob Hercules, USA, 52 min.
Saturday, January 19, CANCELLED
Tuesday, January 22, CANCELLED
THE SOUND OF RIO
(BRASILEIRINHO: GRANDES ENCONTROS DO CHORO)
2005, Mika Kaurismäki, Brazil/Finland/Switzerland, 90 min.
“Top-level artists performing with bravura and intensity…exquisitely sharp and richly colored.”--Leslie Felperin, Variety
Acclaimed Finnish director Mika Kaurismaki fashions a rousing tribute to Choro, often likened to jazz, an urban free-spirited musical form blending African, European, and native Brazilian rhythms and considered the granddaddy of the samba and the bossa nova. Brazil is a magnet to the filmmaker, who now makes his second home there, and his deep connection with the musicians and the culture is evident in the conveyed vibrancy of jam sessions and performances by artists including Trio Madeira Brasil, Zé Paulo Becker, Ronaldo do Bandolim, Yamandú, and many more. In Portuguese and English with English subtitles. DigiBeta video. (BS)
Friday, January 4, 8:00 pm
Wednesday, January 9, 8:15 pm
Chicago premiere!
TIERNEY GEARON: THE MOTHER PROJECT
2006, Jack Youngelson and Peter Sutherland, USA, 70 min.
“One of the most remarkable and layered explorations of family relationships, insanity and the motivations of memoristic artists ever to have been made.”--Tamara Straus, San Francisco Chronicle
Tierney Gearon, the photographer whose startlingly intimate photographs of her children have resulted in fame, notoriety, and claims of child pornography, is documented in the creation of a three-year cycle of photographs in which her mentally unstable mother is blended into the family group including Gearon’s son and daughter and, later, a new baby. The directors of THE MOTHER PROJECT walk the line between observation and exploitation in the manner of Gearon’s own work, exposing her life and psyche with poignancy and daring. Beta SP video. (BS)
Monday, January 7, 6:00 pm
Thursday, January 10, 7:45 pm
Chicago premiere!
A WALK INTO THE SEA
2007, Esther Robinson, USA, 77 min.
The unknown fate of Danny Williams, Andy Warhol’s lover and roommate, the brilliant lighting designer behind the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and a filmmaker whose strobing experimental shorts featured Factory denizens like Edie Sedgwick, is the mystery at the center of this intriguing inquiry. As director Robinson tracks cold clues in the wake of Williams’ 1966 disappearance and presumed death, she exposes the brutal, Warhol-sanctioned dog-eat-dog ethos of the Factory and the vein of hot jealousy that runs through some survivors to this day. Interviews include Callie Angell, Brigid Berlin, John Cale, Gerard Malanga, Paul Morrissey, Ron Nameth, and others. DigiBeta video. (BS)
Saturday, January 5, 8:00 pm
Tuesday, January 8, 6:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
AMERICAN ZOMBIE
2007, Grace Lee, USA, 90 min.
With Grace Lee, Al Vicente
Zombies aren’t real, a fact you’d never guess from the investigative gusto acclaimed documentary filmmaker Grace Lee (THE GRACE LEE PROJECT) brings to her subject of L.A.’s disrespected “zombie community.” Lee and filmmaker John Solomon play themselves as a pair of mismatched directors at odds over their cinema verité documentary on Zombie Americans. The film’s subjects, who prefer to be called “revenants,” seem open about all aspects of their undercover lives except when the subject of eating human flesh is broached. Lee’s deadpan and often-hilarious satire suggests that zombies might stand in for any number of marginalized communities. DigiBeta video. (BS)