Kathryn Bigelow's NEAR DARK & POINT BREAK (Contemp. Revival)

Portage Theater - Thursday, 7:30pm (Dark) and 9:30pm (Break)
As a director Kathryn Bigelow exists in that strange place where she is respected by her peers and critics, enjoys a cult following of movie buffs, but has yet to gain mainstream name recognition. A woman who is best known for her work in the traditionally masculine genres of Action, Sci-Fi, and Horror, she consistently makes good films that don't earn quite enough at the box office. Her 2009 feature, THE HURT LOCKER, a story about the members of a US army bomb squad in Iraq that has won numerous awards at film festivals worldwide, has sparked a renewed interest in her earlier work and a chance to reassess her importance as a contemporary auteur. In NEAR DARK (1987, 94 min, 35mm), which Bigelow also co-scripted, tropes of the Western genre are combined with a Vampire story, set on the late 1980s Great Plains. From the opening scene of Caleb, our Oklahoma farm boy protagonist, driving to town in his beat-up truck for a night of beer and girls, to the final battle between humans and the undead, there is rarely a plot twist. Instead, Bigelow sets a scene and lets our expectations of the genre do the rest. Outside of Caleb and the Vamp who turns him, there is a minimum of character development and explanation. The word "Vampire" is never used in the film, and when our hero gets up on his horse for the first time, we know the good guys will win. At the core, Caleb's human family is pitted against the outcast Vampire family that takes him in, and Bigelow continues this theme in her 1991 studio debut, POINT BREAK (1991, 120 min, 35mm). Southern California has suffered a string of bank robberies, and a rookie FBI agent (Keanu Reeves) follows his veteran partner's hunch that the criminals are also surfers. Reeves goes undercover to infiltrate the gang, led by Patrick Swayze, and falls in love with their thrill-seeking lifestyle and Swayze's live for the moment philosophy. Reeves is finally accepted as one of the boys, and when his cover is blown he is forced to make a choice between the lost-boys family of surfers and his responsibility as a lawman. Featuring extended sequences of surfing and skydiving, POINT BREAK uses these narrative asides to increase the suspense of its crime genre core. Again, extended explanations of the two worlds are never provided, giving the story the economy of convention to explore itself. JH - Cine-File.info

Films by Robert Todd (Documentary/Experimental)

The Nightingale - Friday, 10pm
Boston based filmmaker Robert Todd is one of the most prolific and precise celluloid artists working today. Many of his films begin as documents and, through careful manipulation of lens, light, and editorial timing, transcend their subject matter to become existential metaphors. Two such black and white films, ROSE (2008, 9 min, 16mm) and QUIVER (2008, 10 min, 16mm), utilize film grain to translate the physical texture of objects to the eyes. The camera's eye is more akin to a finger as extreme close-ups combine with rack-focus, gently brushing the surface to reveal the internal. Similar in approach is QUALITIES OF STONE (2006, 11 min, 16mm), a color film that combines imagery of the organic and inorganic to contemplate life and death, artificial and natural. Tactile poetry for the eyes. Also screening are FLOWERGIRLS (2004, 14 min, 16mm), HAPPY PEPPY SPARKY DOG (2002, 3 min, 16mm), BLISS (2006, 5 min, 16mm), and others TBA. JH - Cine-File.info

Owen Land's DIALOGUES (Experimental)

Chicago Filmmakers - Saturday, 8pm
Overarching and overreaching, DIALOGUES is autobiographic lying at its most sincere. Vignettes in various shapes and sizes populated by various japes and friars make the flimsiest of narrative plausibility possible. Legendary Structuralist filmmaker Owen Land's tongue is not much in check as he pretends to tell the story of his 1985 return to LA after a year spent living in Japan. Representing two halves of his persona--the Trickster-Literary Land and the Pure Fool-Visual--by using two different actors, Land take turns re-enacting significant encounters with the director's past. Seemingly every tale ends with a woman removing her clothing for reasons that would make a porno screenwriter blush and, for the first portion of the film, this misogyny and self-indulgence takes us hostage. Soon, however, the stories become less the embellished tales of an aging icon and more a lighthearted attempt to contemplate religion, language, audience's expectations of narrative structure, and hero-worship in the art world. Transforming itself from pathetic to introspective to reflective and then to sorrowful, Land's newest work makes you work for the reward, and then rewards you with mental work. (2008, 133 min, video) JH - Cine-File.info

NO IMPACT MAN (Documentary)

Music Box - Check Reader Movies for showtimes
Although it can easily be dismissed as AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH meets SUPER SIZE ME, the documentary about NYC based author Colin Beavan's year of "living simply" separates itself from the pack. Unlike many of the eco-disaster films that will be part of a 2009 bumper crop, NO IMPACT MAN has a distinctly human element at its core. Beaven is the one who initiated the project to have his family reduce their consumption for an entire year but his wife, Michelle Conlin, is the real star of the film. A senior writer for Business Week who is a self-described caffeine junkie and shopaholic, Conlin struggles with the abrupt lifestyle change. She gets plenty of screen time and serves as a glass-is-half-empty counter to her husband. This film may be preaching to the converted at times, such as when Beavan watches garbage trucks converging on a Bronx neighborhood, but it is at its best in the moments when longtime activists ask Beavan if his project is only a publicity stunt. This lends an introspective and humble element to the journey, one which doesn't scold the audience, buts lets them choose their own path. (2009, 93 min, BlueRay Video) JH - Cine-File.info

Chick Strand: Soft Fiction (Experimental)

Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center - Thursday, 6pm
When Chick Strand passed away in July she left behind a body of work that places here firmly in the upper echelon of Experimental Cinema. One of the founders of the San Francisco Cinematheque and Canyon Cinema, she also was one of the first artists to explore the line between documentary and poetic filmmaking. In her most ambitious work, SOFT FICTION (1979, 54 min, 16mm), Strand allows five women to share very personal stories about their sexual experiences. Each of the women speaks directly to the camera, usually in Strand's home, and the intimacy forged between filmmaker and subject is an achievement that has rarely been matched. Minimalist in approach, the film continually adds to the complexity of the idea of female sexuality while also calling into question the reliability of memory. Conscious of her control over the meaning of the film, Strand uses the subjects' tales as a stand-in for her own, creating a sort of allegorical autobiography. The truth may be plastic, but honesty is concrete. Also screening is the short KRISTALLNACHT (1979, 7 min, 16mm) JH - Cine-File.info

John Cassavetes’ A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (Classic Revival)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 7:30pm (repeats next week)
For the uninitiated, the films of John Cassavetes are at best unknown and at worst unappreciated. Marked by intimacy, chaos, and frequent awkwardness, they are populated by characters who are not from the same town as Jake LaMotta or even Harry Caul. The experience of a Cassavetes film can often hit too close to home—as when someone's mood suddenly shifts from jolly to angry, or when someone else blurts out an unprovoked insult, followed by an extended uncomfortable silence. He has a knack for allowing an actor to so fully inhabit the skin of their character that even Peter Falk somehow ceases to be Columbo. One of his finest achievements is A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE. Utilizing a crew of both professionals and students from AFI—where he was serving as "filmmaker in residence"—Cassavetes draws us into the marriage of blue collar Nick Longhetti (Peter Falk) and his wife Mabel (Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes’ real-life spouse) as she struggles with an unnamed mental illness and raising their three children. If Mabel is unstable, Nick is insecure and prone to violent outbursts. Neither of them is wired quite right, but what makes Cassavetes' approach to the story remarkable is his compassion for each of these deeply flawed, but not broken, people. Moments of real love emerge from a caress or exchanged glance; Mabel's social faux-pas are seen as simply quirks of her condition; and Nick's violence towards a co-worker is dismissed as part of a bad day. These actions are not justified; they are simply accepted by the filmmaker as part of the human condition. The main setting is a small home in Los Angeles, and the camera is often a silent child in the room, watching as the parents overreact. Close-ups dominate the mise-en-scene, with skillful hand-held shots sometimes approaching a documentary look—where the focus struggles to keep up with the action. WOMAN is a film of raw emotion laid bare; perhaps it is this intensity that continues to limit a wider appreciation of his work. (1974, 155 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Zummer Tapez: Kent Lambert (Experimental)

Roots & Culture Gallery (1034 N. Milwaukee Ave.) – Sunday, 8pm
Roots and Culture gallery continues its Zummer Tapez series with local videomaker Kent Lambert presenting a collection of his own video work intermixed with pieces from his favorite kindred contemporaries. Perhaps better known as the lead songwriter and singer of the band Roommate, Lambert has also produced a number of often-hilarious found-footage videos over the years. Mining mainly VHS era clips, his work has roasted such stalwarts as Ken Burns (KEN BURNS GIVE YOU SOMETHING), John Ashcroft (SECURITY ANTHEM), and Philip Michael Thomas of Miami Vice fame (WHACK). Graced with a keen sense of editorial timing, Lambert uses his subject's own words to twist their egos into knots without going straight for the cheap laugh. But beyond humor, Lambert can turn his source material into sonic landscapes with a beat—à la EBN—and juxtapose images to unlock the cultural bias contained within. He will also present two new pieces, WHSVHS #1 and FANTASY SUITE, along with work by Animal Charm, Shana Moulton, Emily Kuehn, Michael Robinson, and more. (1999-2009, approx. 75 min, Video) JH - Cine-File.info

SOUTH MAIN (Documentary)

Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 8pm
When a public housing project in South Central Los Angeles is shuttered due to gang violence, the law-abiding residents find themselves displaced. Director Kelly Parker shows the story of three such families and their struggles with the transition to life in Section 8 housing in 2005. A fiancé who is killed in a drive-by-shooting the night before the move and increased bills that leave the family closer to poverty are the content of the stories told here, but the style is what makes this film original. In a departure from cinéma vérité, the camera remains mostly static—save for the handheld shots taken by the family members—and the filmmaker is content to let the matriarch of each family directly address the camera for extended monologues. Although this strategy is not always successful, sometimes drawing more attention to the presence of the camera than is necessary, Parker ultimately benefits from her minimal production scale and the familiarity with her subjects that it allows. Additionally, the intentional stylistic choice of allowing the camera to be a presence rather than an extension of the filmmaker works to keep the film from becoming a sweeping statement about poverty, and privileges the individual stories that it tells. (2008, 77 min, DVD) JH - Cine-File.info

Alfred Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES (Classic Revival)

Music Box - Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
Although film schools all teach a semester-long course on Alfred Hitchcock, they might as well just show 1938's THE LADY VANISHES on the first day of freshman year and tell the students he never got it quite as right again. In the director's penultimate UK feature, the plot is tight and the action is full of suspense, but it is the characters that keep us entertained throughout. Margaret Atwood's heroine and Michael Redgrave's unlikely academic hero lead the cast in this tale of international espionage (on a train, of course), but the supporting duo of Caldicott & Charters (Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford) steal their scenes as a pair of dry humored Brits only interested in a cricket match back home. With an overt critique of Britain's pre-war non-intervention policy woven in, the sometimes slapstick, sometimes understated humor of Hitchcock charms us throughout the film in a way that only resurfaced occasionally in his US work. Francois Truffaut, who claimed to have seen the film twice a week at some points, told Hitchcock "Since I know it by heart, I tell myself each time that I’m going to ignore the plot (and study the technique and effect). But each time, I become so absorbed by the characters and the story that I’ve yet to figure out the mechanics of the film.” (1938, 97 min, 35mm) JH - Cine-File.info

Psycho-Sexual Animation (Animation/Experimental)

Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 8pm
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase "Psycho-Sexual?" If you think "Norman Bates loves his mama," then you're accidentally on the right track for this show. From 1970 to 1974 Victor Faccinto created a series of nightmarish and grotesque cut-out films starring his alter ego, Video Vic, a voyeuristic, neurotic figure dressed in a black leather jacket and executioner’s mask who is compelled by his own feelings of sexual inadequacy and perversion. Almost forty years after their creation, the films are still subversive and uncomfortable to sit through and their deliberately crude style are partly responsible. Perhaps the strangest of the series, the silent WHERE DID IT ALL COME FROM? WHERE IS IT GOING?, establishes the themes of a sadistic God, an overt masculinity that is essentially impotent, a fusion of predators and genitalia and characters who gain pleasure from watching others suffer. In THE SECRETE OF LIFE the mumbled speech of the protagonist Chico and the sound effects are heavy on the reverb as he spies on and engages in often-violent sexual encounters. FILET OF SOUL expands the character base to include Vic and his counterculture companions. The sophistication of the production increases to include shots that collage animation with still images, mood music made with whistling and kazoos, and dialogue from multiple characters. In the final film, SHAMELESS, Faccinto's techniques become more complex and include manipulated found footage, stop-motion sequences with actors, and shots that feature both cut-out characters and real humans. Faccinto's films are honest and intensely personal, like a drunken secret that a new acquaintance has whispered in your ear: you didn't ask to hear it, but the outburst explains their personality in a way that only years of intimacy could. This show is billed as Adult Animation, and may not be suitable for all audiences. Also showing are three recent animated video works: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD (Joe Tucker, UK), A LETTER TO COLLEEN (Andy London and Carolyn London, US), CHAINSAW (Dennis Tupicoff, Australia). (1970-2008, 97 min total, 16mm and Video) JH - Cine-File.info