Runs & Limited Engagements

The long acting career of Leonard Nimoy, ranging from TV’s "Gunsmoke" to "Fiddler on the Roof," was destined to become a footnote to one blazingly iconic role on the fateful day in 1964 when writer Gene Roddenberry plucked the relatively unknown character actor out of obscurity and cast him in the role of Spock, alien crewmate on the daringly original sci-fi TV series "Star Trek." This heartfelt chronicle, begun by Nimoy with his son Adam prior to his death, is a comprehensive and surprisingly moving profile of the man behind the legend. Packed with a marvelous array of "Star Trek" clips and cast commentary, and including a look at Nimoy’s directing career and varied non-"Star Trek" roles, this film is a sure delight for anyone who ever fell under the spell of the charismatic pointy-eared Vulcan. DCP digital. (BS)

THE ASHES OF PASOLINI pays tribute to the poet-filmmaker in the totality of his engagement as a political activist and an artist. Artist, architect, and filmmaker Jaar brings a keen awareness of the leftist political philosophy that informed Pasolini’s work in this moving account of his life and death, inspired by Pasolini’s own poem, "The Ashes of Gramsci."

Preceded by the world premiere of artist Luca Trevisani’s SUDAN, an intimate portrait of the last known Northern White Rhino, kept in captivity under armed guard in a Nairobi wildlife park. Trevisani organized efforts by a group of artists to document the endangered animal whose species has long been hunted for its horn, prized in some cultures for claimed curative and magical properties. Program presented in cooperation with Expo Chicago and the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago. Both in Italian with English subtitles. (BS)

Girls go wild and wilder in the course of the reckless summer of two slumming college girls who flaunt privilege even as they tempt the Queens gangbangers they cozy up to for sex and drugs. In one of the most daringly transgressive films of the year, likened by critics to Larry Clark’s KIDS, Leah (Saylor in physically and emotionally naked performance) is a blithe party-girl vixen who trades sex for coke, starting with her boss at a hip magazine, and including Blue (Marc), the Latino drug dealer on her block. The balance of power in Leah’s developing relationship with Blue shifts and shifts again in a crisis, as first-time director Wood plays a bold game of bait-and-switch with concepts of class, exploitation, and gender. Note: Contains explicit sex and nudity. DCP digital widescreen. (BS)

Two roommates, Rob and Dylan, are shooting a film in Colorado when Dylan comes upon Rob’s diaries and secretly begins reading them, leading to discoveries that shed new light on their relationship and intermingle with the film that is being made. Chicago-based author and film critic Christopher completed shooting of this, his first film, in 1996 but abandoned it at the editing stage when the money ran out. Twenty years later, he used crowd-funding to finish the project and found that the passage of time had brought a new perspective to the original material, creating a dialogue between past and present that added another dimension to a multilayered, thoroughly unpredictable meta-narrative that had already been blurring the lines between autobiography and fiction, dreams and waking life, melodrama and cinéma-vérité. DCP digital. (MR)

No fictional disaster movie could equal the real-life shivers evoked by this stunning exposé of nuclear near-annihilation based on a little-known 1980 accident and its coverup at a missile silo in rural Arkansas. As first chronicled in Eric Schlosser’s book, director Kenner (FOOD, INC.) relates how the entire central U.S. came within a hair’s breadth of complete obliteration on September 19, 1980, not from attack by a foreign enemy, but as the direct result of a dropped wrench detonating one of our most powerful nuclear warheads. With slow-building horror, this documentary thriller details the timeline, the muddled response of authorities, and the accident’s aftermath, as it becomes evident that legions of military guards, secret codes, and the concrete bunkers meant to safeguard America’s vast nuclear arsenal from outside threats are all for nought in the face of the equipment’s most basic vulnerability. DCP digital. (BS)

A charismatic hero, a hissable villain, and a suspenseful underdog battle would seem to be the stuff of fiction, but it’s all true in this compelling documentary account of the 2009 clash between indigenous Peruvian people fighting to protect their ancestral lands and government officials eager to exploit them. The political elite of Peru, led by arrogant President Alan García, consider the Amazonian natives to be savages, their rain-forest homeland a waste of resources, and their dignified leader Alberto Pizango a thug. Evading U.N. and constitutional safeguards, the government opens up the Amazon to foreign logging and oil interests, leading to a tense standoff between protesters and police at an oil pipeline station. The filmmakers are at ground zero when the hammer drops, obtaining extraordinarily immediate footage of snipers firing from rooftops, police dragging casualties out of an ambulance, and Pizango narrowly escaping out a window. The struggle goes on, as the uproar escalates, the government seems to make concessions, and Pizango returns from Nicaraguan exile to face trial for sedition and murder. In Spanish with English subtitles. DCP digital. (MR)

Filmmaker Brown takes us way behind the scenes historically in this revealing profile of the revolutionary dance-party funk band Parliament Funkadelic, including a hard look at its controversial and autocratic leader George Clinton. From doo-wop roots to the Mothership Connection tour and the eventual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, the music and the over-the-top costumes put the fun in funk. The stories of high life and wild ways are de rigueur for the rock scene, but the meat of this tale is an unraveling saga of Clinton’s ruthless manipulation and exploitation of band members, leaving some of his original collaborators bewildered and betrayed. DCP digital. (BS)

The remarkable rise and self-made fall of Ukrainian ballet prodigy Sergei Polunin is chronicled in this intimate profile featuring some of the most brilliant ballet sequences ever put on film. A precociously talented child whose working class family sacrificed everything for his dance training, Polunin was often hailed as the heir to Rudolf Nureyev. Rocketing to international fame at nineteen as the Royal Ballet’s youngest-ever principal dancer, his legendary performances were sold out two years in advance. Stunning success, partying, and drugs take their toll as “the bad boy of ballet” launches a full-scale rebellion. Director Cantor follows the erratic trail of Polunin’s career from the Ukraine to London, and back to the Ukraine and Russia, where he makes the startling decision to stop dancing at the age of twenty-five. In English, Russian, and Ukrainian with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)

The bustling, colorful setting of 1814 Edo (later Tokyo) is seen from the perspective of a famous artist's daughter in this animated gem from the revered anime studio Production I.G (GHOST IN THE SHELL, A LETTER TO MOMO). Based on the cult manga "Sarusuberi" by Hinako Sugiura, the film follows 23-year-old O-Ei as she lives and works alongside her father — the great artist Hokusai, best known for the iconic "Great Wave Off Kanagawa." Assisting her unkempt, neglectful parent and producing accomplished, unattributed works of her own, the prickly O-Ei struggles to mature as an artist and as a woman. The film’s episodic structure leaves room to immerse us in the sights and sounds of Edo's "floating world" of prostitutes, artists, and merchants. Highlights include the experience-hungry O-Ei's visit to a brothel; a boat trip under the city's main bridge; a house call to a woman tormented by evil spirits; and a piercingly beautiful scene in a snowy park with O-Ei and her blind kid sister. In Japanese with English subtitles at indicated times. In English at indicated times. DCP digital. (MR)

JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES:
Fri., 10/21 at 6 pm — Sun., 10/23 at 5 pm — Mon., 10/24 at 7:45 pm — Wed., 10/26 at 6 pm — Thu., 10/27 at 8:15 pm — Fri., 10/28 at 2 pm — Sat., 10/29 at 3 pm — Tue., 11/1 at 8:15 pm — Wed., 11/2 at 6 pm — Thu., 11/3 at 8:15 pm

ENGLISH-LANGUAGE:
Sat., 10/22 at 2:45 pm — Tue., 10/25 at 6 pm — Fri., 10/28 at 6 pm — Sun., 10/30 at 2 pm — Mon., 10/31 at 6 pm

A charismatic powerhouse performance by rising international star Schoenaerts (FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, RUST AND BONE) anchors this smart thriller in which sexual innuendo, the shadow of terrorism, and illicit arms sales come into play when Vincent (Schoenaerts), a PTSD-affected veteran of Afghanistan, is hired to protect the trophy wife (Kruger) and child of a Lebanese millionaire on their opulent Riviera estate. With a tantalizing barrage of overheard quasi-political snatches of intelligence, cryptic threats, and startling bursts of violence, director Winocour (AUGUSTINE) keeps the story simmering with an edge-of-the-seat undercurrent of menace, as it becomes increasing unclear whether brain-fogged Vincent is a hero or a liability. In French with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)