Weeklong Runs & Special Events

Poised delicately between documentary and drama, ALAMAR is the almost wordless observation of life in a stunningly beautiful but demanding paradise that boasts one of the planet’s most intact ecosystems. Two people fall in love, have a son, and sorrowfully part, acknowledging that they forever exist in different worlds. Natan, the five-year-old child of this fleeting union, is sent from Rome to spend the summer with his father, a subsistence fisherman who lives in a hut on stilts in the Mexican Caribbean. The wonder of crocodiles and egrets, lobsters and barracuda, sunsets and storms unfolds before Natan’s eyes as he absorbs the lessons of a father’s love. In Spanish and Italian with English subtitles. HDCAM video. (BS)

Winner of a Silver Hugo at the 2009 Chicago International Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival, this is a comedy with a suitcase full of heart and a squirting flower in its lapel. Packing his life savings in cash, endearingly ambitious but woefully naïve Johnson (Kuehn) follows his dream of mass-producing “a novelty hygiene product” all the way to China, where he’s as defenseless as a rubber chicken when a local con-artist swoops in for the kill. Even the villains are likeable in this colorfully entertaining romp with an insider’s eye for Asia and an unshakeable love for the world of the wacky novelty. In English and Mandarin with English subtitles. DigiBeta video. (BS)

Suffering from L.A. burn-out, screenwriter (ST. ELMO'S FIRE, "Saved by the Bell") and Chicago native Kurlander decides to return to his once-mighty, now rusted-out hometown. Made in the first-person style of Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, and Bruce Weber, this witty and heartfelt documentary interweaves Kurlander's personal odyssey with an account of the rise-and-fall-and-rise-again of The Steel City, touching upon such touchstones as TV icon Mr. Rogers (who also went back to Pittsburgh), onetime local filmmaker George Romero ("Even the dead left Pittsburgh!"), football legend Franco Harris ("The Immaculate Reception"), Andy Warhol, and many more. DigiBeta video. (MR)

The fantastic story of how the alleged sighting of a bird, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, promised to reverse the fortunes of a tiny Arkansas town, and of how that good fortune suddenly took wing, is the subject of this documentary that spins out like a folk tale, and not just one for folks with birds on the brain. Alternating between giddy euphoria and melancholy, it’s a wild goose chase to be sure, as director Crocker delves into the search for the elusive bird, presumed to be long extinct, with townspeople, birders, and experts of every persuasion perching on both sides of the issue. DigiBeta video. (BS)

Clouzot's 1964 psychedelic psychothriller INFERNO (L'ENFER) ranks with Josef von Sternberg's I, CLAUDIUS, Orson Welles's THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, and Terry Gilliam's THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE among cinema's most tantalizing uncompleted films. Drawing upon 15 hours of unedited footage, noted film archivist/restorer Bromberg reconstructs INFERNO, a tale of a husband's obsessive jealousy utilizing eye-popping visual pyrotechnics to enhance the hero's lurid fantasies and star Romy Schneider's stunning sensuality. What makes this documentary especially fascinating is the way that INFERNO's onscreen drama was mirrored by the offscreen meltdown of an obsessive director who made life hell for his actors, his crew, and himself. In French and English with English subtitles. 35mm. (MR)

Vast and profound in its depth and vision, intricate and visually stunning in its realization, HITLER is an unforgettable experience on the big screen. Soaring to Wagnerian heights, plunging to operatic depths of despair, HITLER constructs and deconstructs the Thousand-year Reich’s castle in the air, a monstrous illusion evoked through the seductive strains of poetry, myth, and maniacal ambition cloaked in fairy-tale fantasy. Utilizing only a soundstage, a handful of the German cinema’s most charismatic actors, rear projection, minimal sets and props, and an unsettling array of puppets, Syberberg conjures up the ghosts of the past and the specters of the future, evoking Jesus, Nero, and King Ludwig II, Caligari, Chaplin, and Karl May, Einstein and Edison, Goebbels and Goering, for a dizzying, hallucinogenic journey through German history that leads straight to the dark core of the human psyche. In German, English, French, and Russian with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)

The film consists of four parts, and may be viewed in its entirety on September 25; over two evenings on September 27 and 29; or in any combination thereof. Program One consists of Parts 1 and 2; Program Two consists of Parts 3 and 4. Separate admission at our regular prices applies for each program.

Program One
Part 1: THE GRAIL
(DER GRAL)
Part 2: A GERMAN DREAM
(EIN DEUTSCHER TRAUM)
Total running time: 227 min.

Saturday, September 25, 2:00 pm
Monday, September 27, 6:30 pm

Program Two
Part 3: THE END OF A WINTER’S TALE
(DAS ENDE EINES WINTERMÄRCHENS)
Part 4: WE CHILDREN OF HELL
(WIR KINDER DER HÖLLE)
Total running time: 201 min.

Saturday, September 25, 7:15 pm
Wednesday, September 29, 6:30 pm

There will be a ten-minute intermission in each program.

Cambodian journalist Thet Sambath, whose own family met their deaths under the Khmer Rouge, risked his life for over ten years to create this graphic story of Cambodia’s genocide that has never before been told from the inside. From the highest commander to the lowliest rice farmer, the perpetrators of the acts that became the horrifying trademark of Pol Pot’s regime gradually respond to his quiet strategies and open up to his questions. Villagers, often bashful or shamefaced, demonstrate matter-of-factly how they slaughtered their neighbors and disposed of the bodies. Over time, Thet gains the trust of Brother Number Two, the man who brought Pol Pot to power. Living in comfortable retirement surrounded by his family, the old man finally tells all. In English and Khmer with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)

Now even more gorgeously garish in this newly restored print, Howard Hawks’s legendary musical updates Anita Loos’s gold-digging flappers into Fifties va-va-voom vixens launched into the soft underbelly of unsuspecting Europe. The colors are loud, the songs brassy, the choreography (by Jack Cole) audacious, the bodies bodacious (and not just the women!), and the men helpless in this tuneful tale of two "little" girls from Little Rock on an ocean cruise to Paris in search of love (Russell) and diamonds (their best friend Marilyn). 35mm. (MR)

Set in Chicago's labyrinth of alleys, SCRAPPERS is a revealing portrait of Oscar and Otis, two metal scavengers searching for a living with brains, brawn, and battered pickup trucks. Shot in vérité style, the film focuses on work: finding metals, raising children, understanding the city. A close examination of the men’s daily lives raises questions about popular notions of poverty, race-relations, personal self-sufficiency, and urban sustainability. SCRAPPERS tackles the geography of a still-segregated city, the hidden lives of undocumented people, and the far-reaching effects of the 2008 financial collapse. The story is propelled by Chicago musician Frank Rosaly's percussive score. HDCAM video. (Description courtesy of Chicago Underground Film Festival)

Jack Rebney, an obscure RV salesman, catapulted to YouTube stardom via a sequence of heated, profanity-laced outtakes from a promo video that became a viral comedy sensation. Mesmerized by the hilarity of the piece viewed and cherished by virtually everyone who haunts the Internet, filmmaker Steinbauer went in search of Winnebago Man aka “the angriest man in the world,” while exploring the phenomenon of Web-based fame. WINNEBAGO MAN has become a sensation in its own right, winning awards at festivals including Toronto’s HotDocs, CineVegas, and the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam. HDCAM video. (BS)

The Gene Siskel Film Center celebrates 25 years of prolific production by Chicago’s own Media Process Group, renowned for socially conscious documentaries. The program includes selected excerpts from seven critically acclaimed films from the MPG archives, including: RADICAL DISCIPLE: THE STORY OF FATHER PFLEGER (2009); SENATOR OBAMA GOES TO AFRICA (2007); FORGIVING DR. MENGELE (2006); THE DEMOCRATIC PROMISE: SAUL ALINSKY AND HIS LEGACY (1999); and BASEBALL’S HEIRLOOMS (1989). Clips from two brand new films, THE JOFFREY BALLET: MAVERICKS OF AMERICAN DANCE and A GOOD MAN, a portrait of choreographer Bill T. Jones, co-produced with Kartemquin Films, provide a sneak preview of work in progress. Various formats. (BS)

The battle over immigration reform has three very real faces in this documentary that began with one of Chicago’s most wrenching human-interest news stories of recent years. In October 2007, despite compromising technicalities and disputed interpretations of regulations, Janina Wasilewski was judged to be in this country illegally, and was separated from Tony, her husband of eighteen years and a U.S. citizen, and deported to Poland along with their U.S.-born six-year-old son Brian. Filmmaker Leitman traces the story of legal missteps and shifting political winds that caused a wife, mother, homeowner and business owner to be ripped from her productive life and exiled to the country of her childhood. Interviews with immigration reform advocates include Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez. In English and Polish with English subtitles. DigiBeta video. (BS)

Hugh Hefner's life has been so prolific that two hours hardly seem enough. This engaging, irresistibly watchable profile by Oscar-winning documentarian Berman concentrates on the Chicago-forged Hef's celebrity as standard-bearer for the sexual revolution, with many a vintage Playmate on display, and on his lesser-known career as a tireless social activist, fighting battles for free speech, civil rights, gay rights, and, yes, women's rights. HUGH HEFNER is neither a tell-all exposé nor a shallow puff piece. A dazzling collection of talking heads weigh in, both pro (Jesse Jackson, Bill Maher, Gene Simmons) and con (Pat Boone, Susan Brownmiller, Mike Wallace), along with war stories from co-workers and ex-partners, and a trove of priceless footage from Hefner's TV shows. This film may not convert you, but it will convince you that Hefner's influence on the past half-century of American life has been undeniable and enormous. 35mm. (MR)

This suspenseful WWII chronicle portrays its colorful hero with a grounded sense of reality, and grants the Nazis a rare psychological complexity. MAX MANUS is based on a true story that runs counter to the more usual tales of resistance exploits. Aksel Hennie, currently regarded as the best Norwegian actor of his generation, plays Max as a brash youth whose early cult fame owed to a daring escape following the bungling of an underground mission. A wiser but no less brash Max develops an intuitive talent for sabotage, wreaking havoc on the German fleet, but at a mounting personal price. In Norwegian, German, and English with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)