Weeklong Runs
Chicago theatrical premiere!
VIVA
2007, Anna Biller, USA, 120 min.
With Anna Biller, Bridget Brno, Jared Sanford
“Startlingly pitch-perfect.”--Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
“A lovingly re-created, almost fetishistically spot-on tribute to the candy-colored soft-core sexploitation films that sprouted up like weeds in the late 60s and early 70s.”--Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
Not too hard, not too soft, VIVA is a faithful but tongue-in-cheek facsimile of the brand of adult entertainment that used to make for a good 70s date movie. Barbi (Biller), a bored wife, and her best friend and frisky co-swinger Sheila (Brno) set out to find erotic adventure in colorful locations including a hair salon, a nudist camp, and a bordello, after their husbands prove to be as action-oriented as pair of Ken dolls. Director/star Biller has the era of the sexual revolution nailed, and flaunts the hilariously accurate details of episodic plot, scanty costuming, and garishly faux décor with gleeful élan. Musical numbers too! 35mm. (BS)
Friday, September 5, 8:00 pm
Saturday, September 6, 8:00 pm
Tuesday, September 9, 8:00 pm
Thursday, September 11, 8:15 pm
Chicago premiere!
Peter Galison in person!
SECRECY
2008, Robb Moss and Peter Galison, USA, 81 min.
“Priceless…makes a gung-ho stand for accountability in government, if not for moral and ethical reasons then at least for practical ones.”--Matt Prigge, Philadelphia Weekly
“A balanced, nuanced approach that eschews polemics or grandstanding.”--Mel Valentin, efilmcritic.com
How much government control of information can a democracy tolerate? SECRECY provides no definitive answers but presents questions aplenty. Persuasive arguments pro and con by experts including former CIA executive Melissa Boyle Mahle and Washington Post journalist Barton Gellman illustrate the failure of either the strategy of information lockdown or of total transparency to protect the nation from tragedies like 9/11. A compelling history of the U.S. government’s management and manipulation of classified information from Pearl Harbor to the Bush administration, and from the Manhattan Project to WMDs and Guantanamo Bay, graphically illustrates secrecy’s two-edged sword. DigiBeta video. (BS)
Co-director Peter Galison will be present for audience discussion at 8:00 pm on Friday.
September 5--11
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
New 35mm print!
KAGEMUSHA
(aka THE SHADOW WARRIOR)
1980, Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 162 min.
With Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki
**** (Four stars)--Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“The director’s most physically elaborate, most awesome film…a magnificence that seems to foreshadow the end of the world.”--Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Against the outsize action of a 16th-century epic clan-war replete with clashing armies in battles of astounding scope, the great Kurosawa, in one of his most supremely assured films, poses the eerily solitary struggle of a man forced to forfeit his identity for the greater good. A humble thief is saved from execution when his resemblance to the Takeda clan’s fatally wounded warlord makes him indispensable as a double. The survival of the clan and the lives and loyalties of thousands hinge on his becoming one with the illusion. In Japanese with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
September 12--18
Fri. at 6:30 pm;
Sat. at 3:15 pm and 7:30 pm;
Sun. at 3:15 pm;
Mon. -Thu. at 6:30 pm
Chicago premiere!
Aaron Rose in person!
BEAUTIFUL LOSERS
2008, Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard, USA, 90 min.
How the subcultures of skateboarding, graffiti, punk, and hip hop stealthily invaded the worlds of advertising, fashion, music, and film is chronicled in this engaging documentary through in-depth encounters with DIY movers and shakers and their underground art. Just as the psychedelic art of the 60’s cast a spell over the American mainstream, the 90s youth-culture art of posters and album covers today sports the look and feel sought by corporations including Nike, Pepsi, Apple, and Mastercard to hawk their wares to an ever younger public. White-hot tastemakers and design gurus interviewed include Barry McGee, Mike Mills, Margaret Kilgallan, Shepard Fairey, Ed Templeton, filmmaker Harmony Korine, and many more. 35mm. (BS)
Co-director Aaron Rose will be present for audience discussion at 8:00 pm on Friday and 8:15 pm on Saturday.
September 19--25
Fri. and Mon.-Wed. 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;
Thu. at 6:00 and 8:15 pm
North American premiere!
Filmmakers in person!
MILKING THE RHINO
2008, David E. Simpson, USA, 85 min.
Dispelling the prevailing Western myth of Africa as a sort of wilderness theme park inconveniently populated by peoples who despoil the land and slaughter endangered species, MILKING THE RHINO searches out the inside story of Africa’s environmental revolution, community-based conservation. Director Simpson follows members of two tribes, the Masai of Kenya and the Himba of Namibia, through fledgling plans to balance their ancient cattle-based economies with new initiatives to create a lucrative eco-tourism industry. The triumphs and the perils of the risky endeavor play out in some of the most revealing and sumptuously beautiful footage of Africa ever put on film. HD video. (BS)
September 26--30
Fri., Sat. and Tue. at 8:00 pm;
Sun. at 5:00 pm;
Mon. at 6:00 pm
Chicago premiere!
DEREK
2007, Isaac Julien, UK, 76 min.
“A cinematic scrapbook of the life and times of an iconoclast, aesthete, and provocateur…a defiant manifesto.”--Stephen Holden, The New York Times
“The dead hand of good taste” is the specter most feared by Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton (MICHAEL CLAYTON) in this very intimate search for avant-garde director Derek Jarman’s ghost amid the engagingly tumbled-together celluloid fragments of their creative collaboration. Jarman’s 1994 death from AIDS terminated a career marked by bold bohemian nose-thumbing and by inspired, playful, pan-sexually transgressive films including CARAVAGGIO, EDWARD II, and SEBASTIANE. Swinton’s passionate talking-heads-free tribute to her mentor and partner in hi-jinks includes a cornucopia of clips and revealing home movie footage. DigiBeta video. (BS)
Special discount: buy a ticket for DEREK and get a second ticket for any screening of BLUE, CARAVAGGIO, or WITTGENSTEIN at this discount rate (tickets must be purchased at the same time): General Admission $7; Students $5; Members $4.