Weeklong Runs
Chicago premiere!
DEAR ZACHARY:
A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER
2008, Kurt Kuenne, USA, 95 min.
“A gut-wrenching true-crime story…a virtuoso feat.”—Peter Debruge, Variety
“One of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen…unfolds like a masterful thriller.”—Erik Childress, eFilmCritic.com
“Every last person who steps foot into a theater to see this will walk away changed.”—Alex Billington, FirstShowing.net
A tale of madness, murder, revenge, and thwarted justice plays out in escalating increments of horror in a documentary begun as the filmmaker’s tribute to a friend. The 2001 murder of personable 28-year-old Dr. Andrew Bagby by a 40-year-old former girlfriend prompted filmmaker Kuenne, his best friend since earliest childhood, to begin a documentary in the form of a letter to the dead man’s infant son. Fast-breaking events involving the ex-lover/accused murderer, the child, Bagby’s parents, and the law, take the film in an unanticipated new direction with Kuenne scrambling to keep pace with the unfolding of an emotionally powerful real-life drama of Shakespearean dimensions. Beta SP video. (BS)
November 7—13
Fri. and Mon.-Thu. at 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm, 5:15 pm, and 7:45 pm;
Sun. at 2:15 pm and 4:15
Chicago premiere!
ONE DAY YOU’LL UNDERSTAND
(PLUS TARD)
2008, Amos Gitai, France, 90 min.
With Jeanne Moreau, Hippolyte Girardot
“Subtle and emotionally powerful…this is perhaps the film Gitai was born to make, a masterpiece.”—Piers Handling, Toronto International Film Festival program
“Profound and deeply affecting…Gitai brilliantly uses the aging but still absolutely riveting Jeanne Moreau in a quiet but intense performance.”—Peter Brunette, The Hollywood Reporter
Set in 1987 as France is gripped by the public drama of the Klaus Barbie trial, Israeli director Gitai’s (DISENGAGEMENT, KADOSH) stunning story, based on an autobiographical novel by Jerome Clement, delves into the darker recesses of conscience to connect the dots of one family’s history across four generations. A Parisian husband and father, product of the WWII marriage of a Jew and a Catholic, stumbles into a moral quagmire when work on the family tree uncovers documents pointing to what appears to be a shocking secret concerning the fate of his maternal grandparents. Efforts to follow the trail of clues are impeded by the strange silence of his Jewish mother Rivka (Moreau in a masterfully crafty performance), the only living person who knows the whole truth. In French with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
November 14—20
Fri. and Mon.-Thu. at 6:00 pm and 7:45 pm;
Sat. at 3:00 pm, 4:45 pm, 6:30 pm, and 8:15 pm;
Sun. at 2:15 pm, 4:00 pm, and 5:45 pm
First Chicago run!
THE EXILES
1961, Kent Mackenzie, USA, 72 min.
With Tom Reynolds, Yvonne Williams
“Worthy of being placed alongside Cassavetes’s SHADOWS.”—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
“Miraculous...the night photography alone would make the film immortal. Few directors in the history of cinema have so skillfully and deeply joined a sense of place with the subtle flux of inner life.”—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
The recent restoration and re-release of THE EXILES has caused it to be hailed as a rediscovered masterpiece. Straddling the line between documentary and fiction, with dialogue largely improvised by nonprofessional actors, THE EXILES follows a group of uprooted Native Americans as they hit the bars, cruise the boulevards, go to the movies, and (in the case of the women) stay at home with the kids over the course of a Friday night, ending with a haunting ceremony on a hill overlooking Los Angeles. The film’s sensitivity to its characters is matched by its remarkable sense of place, vividly capturing the vital Bunker Hill neighborhood that was soon to be demolished. 35mm. (MR)
November 21—26
Fri. and Mon.-Wed. at 6:15 pm and 7:45 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm, 4:45 pm, 6:15 pm, and 7:45 pm;
Sun. at 2:15 pm, 3:45 pm, and 5:15
First Chicago run!
KINGS OF THE EVENING
2008, Andrew P. Jones, USA, 99 min.
With Tyson Beckford, Lynn Whitfield, Glynn Turman, Linara Washington
Winner of the Audience Award at the San Francisco Black Film Festival and Best Film at the San Diego Black Festival, KINGS OF THE EVENING uses superb ensemble acting and rich period atmosphere to tell a genuinely moving story from a difficult period of American history. Returning to his small Texas town during the depths of the Great Depression, recently released convict Homer Hobbs (Beckford) finds that life is scarcely less arduous outside of jail. The black community struggles not just to survive, but to maintain their pride and self-respect—an aspiration epitomized by a weekly contest (based on a South African custom) in which local men compete to be the snazziest of them all. 35mm. (MR)
View the trailer here.