Weeklong Runs & Special Events

Enjoy exclusive previews of four upcoming projects from documentary powerhouse Kartemquin Films (HOOP DREAMS, THE INTERRUPTERS), and give your feedback directly to the filmmakers in the theater and in a post-screening reception. Serving as both a window into their process and an opportunity to impact the future of these works-in-progress, this annual event embodies the Kartemquin spirit of collaborative creation and meaningful audience engagement. Featured films: COOKED by Judith Helfand; MORMON MOVIE by Xan Aranda; THE HOMESTRETCH by Kirsten Kelly and Anne de Mare; and AMERICAN ARAB by Usama Alshaibi. Various video formats.

Directors Judith Helfand, Xan Aranda, Kirsten Kelly, Anne de Mare and Usama Alshaibi will be present for audience discussion. A reception for ticket-holders follows.

UPDATE 5/16
The Kartemquin Spring Showcase is now SOLD OUT.

Winner of Best Director at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Reygadas (JAPÓN, SILENT LIGHT) creates a highly unconventional narrative set in a landscape haunted by a startling personification of evil. Imagery both sumptuous and sinister sets up a mythic duel with the devil for Juan, a bullying well-to-do contractor who lives in rural seclusion with his wife and young children. The title translates as “light after darkness,” but moral gray areas dominate the distance between the spiritual and the carnal as Juan’s world unfurls threat in every human impulse and in every manifestation of nature. In Spanish, English, and French with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)

PARADISE: LOVE takes mutual exploitation to the limit as Teresa (Tiesel), a matronly woman of a certain age, seeks love and pleasure at a Kenyan resort for sex tourism. There are no innocents in this provocative tale, as blowsy European “sugar mamas” court handsome predatory beachcombers, who gamely caress ample, aging flesh with an eye to milking plus-sized wallets. Graphic but not gratuitous, PARADISE: LOVE deals with the debasement that follows human failing, yet offers a glimpse of an essential kernel of humanity at the core of this imperfect world. In German, English and Swahili with English subtitles. DCP video. (BS)

Note: Explicit sexual content may offend some viewers.

Seidl turns the conventional meaning of a virtue on its head once again in this final film of his PARADISE trilogy, offering up hope as a skewed form of erotic attraction. Sent to a fat farm for kids while her mother indulges in a Kenyan vacation, zaftig 13-year-old Melanie adds a new regimen to her string of coming-of-age experiences by targeting a doctor forty years her senior for seduction. In German with English subtitles. Special advance screening courtesy of Strand Releasing. HDCAM video. (BS)

Like THE RULES OF THE GAME, VERTIGO, and THE SHINING, JOURNEY TO ITALY is a prime example of a film whose reputation has undergone a radical transformation. It was initially dismissed by critics, except for the French auteurists who would use it as an inspiration for their upcoming New Wave. It is now seen as a beacon of modernist cinema and perhaps Rossellini’s greatest work. Reflecting the director’s own relationship with his wife and muse Ingrid Bergman, it depicts a British couple whose marriage is disintegrating as they visit Naples on family business. The film’s use of touristic settings charged with symbolic and subjective force is justly celebrated, as is its audacious ending. The Cineteca di Bologna’s new DCP restoration provides an excellent opportunity to discover or revisit this intensely personal, enormously influential masterpiece. In English. (MR)

ROSSELLINI DISCOUNT!

Buy a ticket to JOURNEY TO ITALY or STROMBOLI, and get a ticket for any show of the other film at this discount rate (tickets must be purchased at the same time): General Admission $7; Students $6; Members $4. (This discount rate applies to the second film only. Discount rate available only at the Film Center box office.)

Twenty-something photographer Jack (Ross), a Brit resettled in New York, leads the carefree life of an openly gay bachelor until an accident leaves his brother’s pregnant wife widowed. The unresolved dilemma of marriage equality and the arcane intricacies of immigration law create a logistical minefield for this about-to-be-deported “gay uncle” with a newfound passion for family. Jack and lesbian bff Ali (Sigler of “The Sopranos”) get hitched in an amicable green card marriage that threatens to hit the rocks when he falls in love with a handsome Spanish architect. DCP video. (BS)

The untold history of a Chicago blues evolution unfolds as BORN IN CHICAGO chronicles how blues greats including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Otis Rush, Hubert Sumlin, Junior Wells, and Sam Lay became mentors to the coterie of white middle-class aspiring musicians who became regulars at South and West Side blues clubs in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Chess Records scion Marshall Chess narrates, and recording artists including Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite, Nick Gravenites, Harvey Mandel, and Barry Goldberg tell the inside story of admiration, emulation, and ultimately, collaboration with their heroes. Archival footage features Paul Butterfield and Michael Bloomfield, the young Rolling Stones playing with Muddy Waters, and more. DCP video. (BS)

Musicians Nick Gravenites, Barry Goldberg, Harvey Mandel, and Corky Siegal are tentatively scheduled to be present for audience discussion on Friday.

TO THE WONDER is notable as the first Malick film set in contemporary times, and as the last film reviewed (***1/2) by Roger Ebert. The first half of the film is a swooningly lyrical romance in which an American environmental inspector (Affleck) meets a Ukrainian single mother in Paris, journeys with her to Mont St. Michel (the “wonder” of the title), and impulsively brings her and her 10-year-daughter back to Oklahoma with him. There, amid strip malls and suburban sprawl, their paradise begins to unravel, as her visa expires and he is tempted by a divorcée rancher (Rachel McAdams). As in THE TREE OF LIFE, luminous cinematography, eclectic music, and fleeting epiphanies cast a spell that soars beyond the confines of the plot. 35mm. (MR)

A gripping post-WWII coming-of-age story told from a different perspective, LORE is based on the novel “The Dark Room” by Rachel Seiffert. When 14-year-old Hannelore’s parents, affluent, high-ranking Nazis, are arrested by the Americans, she’s left to trek across occupied zones of war-torn Germany with three young siblings and a newborn in tow. Starving and made wily by desperation, she stands firm in her Nazi brainwashing until the brutal facts of the ravaged landscape and an encounter with a survival-savvy victim of the camps plant seeds of the shocking truth. In German and English with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)

Two young women, Alina and Voichita, raised in an orphanage where they were family and perhaps more to each other, are reunited after a long absence. Voichita is now a novice in a strict convent, where human love and loyalty are seen as impediments to love for the divine and her increasingly distraught friend is regarded as possessed by the devil. Director Mungiu (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS) brings stark visual beauty and an even-handed distance to the developing horror as dogmatism comes into conflict with passion and Alina is prepared for an exorcism. In Romanian with English subtitles. DCP video. (BS)

A surprise hit and an abiding cult classic, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE is just what the title says: nearly two hours of indeterminately fictionalized dinner conversation between Andre Gregory and his friend, playwright-actor Wallace Shawn, as Gregory recounts the far-flung spiritual quests that have caused him to drop out of sight during the previous decade. At the heart of this funny, fascinating film is the perfect counterpoint between its two main characters: the elegant, quixotic visionary Andre, and the lumpy, obtuse rationalist Wally. 35mm. (MR)

ANDRE GREGORY DISCOUNT!

Buy a ticket to ANDRE GREGORY: BEFORE AND AFTER DINNER or MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, and get a ticket for any show of the other film at this discount rate (tickets must be purchased at the same time): General Admission $7; Students $6; Members $4. (This discount rate applies to the second film only. Discount rate available only at the Film Center box office.)