Thursday, April 8, 2004, 8pm Babette Mangolte in person! Austere, wrenching and inimitable, the films of Robert Bresson are a touchstone for world cinephiles, and many regard Pickpocket (1959) as his greatest work. Babette Mangolte’s fascinating documentary offers startling insight into the guarded director’s creative process by tracking down the 1959 film’s principals, including Martin […]
Thursday, April 1, 2004, 8pm Alfred Guzzetti in person! From Shanghai to Calcutta to his own backyard, the cinema of Alfred Guzzetti finds the exotic in the commonplace and a meditative beauty in the ever-changing modern landscape. Well known as a co-director of feature length documentaries, including Pictures From a Revolution and Family Portrait Sittings, […]
Read More… from The Subjective Landscape: Works by Alfred Guzzetti
Thursday, March 18, 2004, 8pm | Paul Chan in person! A wry political sensibility informs the work of Paul Chan, a New York-based video and installation artist who returns to Chicago to present three recent works. These include an astonishing new piece shot in Iraq, made while Chan was a member of the Chicago-based, Nobel […]
Thursday, March 11, 2004, 8:15pm This screening of shorts from the Video Data Bank investigates the thick blanket of experiences and social dynamics that share the rubric of depression – from invisible and privatized feelings to the collapse of the social safety net. In an era where drugs promise to manage all psychological ills and […]
Thursday, March 4, 2004, 8pm Ancient and contemporary arts of India are at the center of three startling video works by Indian makers, which blur reality and fiction with their experimental approach toward narrative. Presented by Monica Bhasin, graduate student in Film and Video at the School of the Art Institute. Oracles of Kerala state […]
Read More… from O Lover of Life: Experimental Narrative from India
Thursday, February 26, 2004, 8pm The road movie, home movie, and personal diary are combined spectacularly in this captivating, subtle work by leading independent filmmaker James Benning (11 X 14; Landscape Suicide; The California Trilogy). Benning took a meandering, cross-country motorcycle trip and kept a diary; he then revisited, a year later, the sites and […]
Thursday, February 18, 2004, 8pm Paul Sharits, T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G (1968). From the School of the Art Institute’s collection of landmark structuralist and materialist films, student Zachary Hall has selected six gems to tickle the eye and the imagination: In Passage a l’acte (1993), Martin Arnold transforms a clip from To Kill a Mockingbird into a museum of […]
Thursday, February 12, 2004, 8pm A magician dismembers a woman and tries to put her back together. Such is the plot of this unique feature-length animation, created with 19th-century engravings and compulsive single-mindedness by Harry Smith (1923-1991), beatnik musicologist and one of cinema’s greatest outsiders. As its cutout protagonists undertake mystical journeys of uncertain purpose, […]
Thursday, February 5, 2004, 8pm Jennifer Montgomery in person! Doctors and their schizophrenic patients live together at Layton House, the therapeutic community at the center of Jennifer Montgomery’s startling study of suffering and idealism. Based on the anti-psychiatry movement and the writings of R.D. Laing, Threads of Belonging is shot in a documentary style but […]
Thursday, December 11, 2003, 8pm Kathy High in person! Animal Attraction is a documentary about the relationship between people and animals, the way we project our hopes and desires onto our pets and ascribe human qualities and attributes to their gestures. Frustrated by the obnoxious behavior of her cat, Ernie, the video maker contacts Spring […]