Stranger Than Fiction: Documentary Premieres
Each January, the Gene Siskel Film Center celebrates the art of the documentary in a special way with a selection of dynamic, provocative, and unusual new work in the series Stranger than Fiction: Documentary Premieres. This series, running from January 2 through February 4, includes individual premieres and week-long runs, and kicks off the second year in our project The Documentary Challenge, a showcase for documentary filmmaking made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
From controversy surrounding lost pets in the wake of Katrina (MINE) to a tell-all look at the Disney animation factory (WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY) to Thalidomide victims boldly exercising control over their own body image with a nude photo project (NOBODY’S PERFECT), the series presents films made with sensitivity and probing intelligence. First-person stories or exceptional access illuminate films including PRODIGAL SONS and WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE. Some burning issues of our times are examined in BULLETPROOF SALESMAN (war profiteering), TAPPED (the bottled water industry), and DEFAMATION (anti-Semitism).
Chicago-made films have a strong presence this month, starting with James Allen Smith’s FLOORED, following the volatile careers of traders at Chicago’s Board of Trade. Former Academy Award nominee Steve James of Kartemquin Films premieres a new film. Also from Kartemquin, Justine Nagan premieres TYPEFACE.
TYPEFACE, focusing on the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, alternates in a week-long run with AMERICAN ARTIFACT: THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN ROCK POSTER. Each film takes a close look at a vibrant and evolving art form that draws on the past while engaging innovative contemporary artists. AN AMERICAN JOURNEY: IN ROBERT FRANK’S FOOTSTEPS takes the viewer on a journey through the actual locations of Frank’s iconic photographs.
Three very diverse music documentaries, GOGOL BORDELLO NON-STOP (gypsy-punk), UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US (heavy metal), and ASHES OF AMERICAN FLAGS: WILCO LIVE (alternative rock) will satisfy a variety of musical tastes.
Directors and additional guests appear in person for audience discussion at selected screenings of FLOORED, NO CROSSOVER, TYPEFACE, AMERICAN ARTIFACT, and WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY.
Stranger than Fiction: Documentary Premieres is made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.
—Barbara Scharres
Chicago premiere!
AN AMERICAN JOURNEY: IN ROBERT FRANK’S FOOTSTEPS
2009, Philippe Seclier, France/USA, 60 min.
“Frank’s work retains both its mystery and its majesty.”—Daniel Eagan, Hollywood Reporter
The National Gallery of Art has cited Swiss émigré photographer Robert Frank’s iconic book The Americans as “the book that changed the course of 20th-century photography.” More than half a century later, another European, filmmaker Seclier, traces Frank’s road trips across the continent, searching out the same small-town tableaus and vistas on vacant highways that inspired Frank’s intimate and moving images of isolation, loneliness, and division by race and class. Seclier aims not to replicate Frank’s vision, but to provide insight into the experiences and process that brought his powerful work into being. DigiBeta video. (BS)
- January 10th—2:45pm, 4:00pm
- January 14th—6:00pm
Chicago premiere!
BULLETPROOF SALESMAN
2008, Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein, USA, 70 min
“Incisive, sharply observed, and scrupulously nonjudgmental…shot through with darkly amusing ironies that often cause the laughter to catch in your throat.”—Joe Leydon, Variety
The award-winning filmmakers of THE PRISONER, OR: HOW I PLANNED TO KILL TONY BLAIR and GUNNER PALACE set their sights on a German luxury-car salesman who counts Iraq and Afghanistan as his exclusive beat. These aren’t just any old luxury cars, but the ne plus ultra of armored vehicles, as the charismatic huckster with a biting sense of humor assures his potential customers, sometimes by getting behind the wheel and taking a few rounds of machine-gun fire to prove his point. Wading through the escalating mayhem and the hip-deep murky ethics, the filmmakers make it increasingly clear that, where war profiteering is concerned, there are many easy questions but no easy answers. DigiBeta video. (BS)
- January 3rd—3:00pm
- January 6th—8:15pm
Chicago premiere!
DEFAMATION
(HASHMATSA)
2009, Yoav Shamir, Israel/Denmark/USA/Austria, 91 min.
“Disarming, surprisingly funny…essential viewing.”—David Edelstein, New York Magazine
With camera in hand and, more often than not, with tongue in cheek, Israeli filmmaker Shamir sets out to discover what anti-Semitism means in a world two generations past the Holocaust. His puckish attitude is frequently its own provocation as he gamely baits ADL executives in New York, tags along to Auschwitz with a fearful class of teenagers on their first trip outside of Israel, or interviews controversial historians including Norman Finkelstein, Stephen M. Walt, and John Mearsheimer. “Anti-Semitism is the ultimate ‘sacred cow’ for Jews,” says Shamir. “Even the most sacred of cows needs to be shaken up every once in a while.” In Hebrew and English with English subtitles. DigiBeta video. (BS)
- January 3rd—4:30pm
- January 5th—6:15pm
- January 7th—6:15pm
Chicago premiere!
MINE
2009, Geralyn Pezanoski, USA, 81 min.
“Absorbing...an ultimately inspirational story.”—Eddie Cockrell, Variety
Two pit bulls with jaws clenched on either end of a blanket couldn’t be more tenacious than animal lovers facing off in the disputed ownership of pets rescued in the wake of Katrina. Of all the accounts of post-hurricane New Orleans, the story of what happened to the dogs and cats their owners were forced to abandon to the rising flood waters is one seldom told. From the 85-year-old Creole man bereft over the loss of his sprightly little Maltie to the retired nurse mourning her black lab, MINE compassionately follows the convoluted stories of owners searching for their beloved pets, only to discover that they have new homes with owners who refuse to relinquish them. Winner of the SXSW Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature. DigiBeta video. (BS)
Director Geralyn Pezanoski will be present for audience discussion after Sunday's screening.
Click here to visit the film's blog
- January 17th—3:00pm
- January 20th—6:15pm
Sneak Preview!
Steve James in person!
A New Film by Steve James
2010, Steve James, USA, 80 min.
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Steve James (director of HOOP DREAMS), a native of Hampton, Virginia, returns to his hometown to discover the story behind a 1993 incident that threatened the career prospects of a promising young athlete and polarized his community along racial lines. On the night of Valentine’s Day, 1993, top-rated high school basketball star Allen Iverson is spending an evening with friends at a bowling alley when a confrontation between these young black men and a group of whites escalates into a brawl. On suspect evidence, Iverson is subsequently charged with a vicious assault on a woman, and his trial brings all of the city’s simmering racial tensions to the surface. HDCAM video. (BS)
Director Steve James will be present for audience discussion at both screenings.
- January 31st—5:00pm
- February 4th—8:15pm
Chicago premiere!
NOBODY’S PERFECT
2008, Niko von Glasow, Germany, 84 min.
“Alternately hilarious, insightful and sad, and entirely allergic to sentimentality or easy platitudes…as far from a downer as can be.”—Andrew Barker, Variety
Winner of Best Documentary at the 2009 German Film Awards, NOBODY’S PERFECT charts the director’s search for eleven other people like himself, prenatal victims of the devastatingly disfiguring drug Thalidomide, for a nude photo shoot that will result in a public art project and a book. This amazing film centering on body image is fundamentally about twelve highly accomplished people including a lawyer, an astrophysicist, a politician, and an actor, playing the hand they’ve been dealt in life, and doing it with extraordinary grace, humor, and courage. The photo-shoot sequence, in which each subject has a role in choosing the props and poses, represents the very funny triumph of self-confidence. In German and English with English subtitles. 35mm. (BS)
- January 17th—4:45pm
- January 18th—6:00pm
Special advance screening!
PRODIGAL SONS
2008, Kimberly Reed, USA, 86 min.
“Pretty amazing…takes you to some remarkable places.”—Todd McCarthy, Variety
When first-time filmmaker Reed decided to make a documentary about her return to her Montana home town after an absence of twenty years, the big story was meant to be the local reaction to her transformation from former captain of the football team to transgender lesbian woman. Fate steps in and the spotlight shifts when Reed’s volatile adopted brother Marc is discovered to be the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. This wildly contentious tale takes the maneuvers of malevolent sibling rivalry to hell and back. Special advance screening courtesy of First Run Features. HDCAM video. (BS)
- January 31st—3:15pm
Chicago premiere!
TAPPED
2009, Stephanie Soechtig, USA, 76 min.
“Treads similar ground as FLOW: FOR THE LOVE OF WATER, but digs deeper into the crises of water with much more insight.”—NYCmovieguru.com
TAPPED has a pipeline to the dirty secrets of an industry that purports to peddle a pure product, and the results are of concern to anyone who drinks water from a plastic bottle. Director Soechtig dives into the unregulated world of bottled water to examine the ethical, environmental, and health issues surrounding water as a commercial commodity. Among her revelations: 40% of bottled water is municipal tap water that major corporations suck up in small-town locations and sell back to the public under well-known brand names. DigiBeta video. (BS)
- January 24th—5:00pm
- January 25th—6:00pm
Chicago premiere!
Filmmakers in person!
WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY
2009, Don Hahn, USA, 86 min.
“Surprisingly hard-hitting and revealing.”—Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter
A Disney producer in his day job, director Hahn flings open the door of “the Mouse House,” as the company is often labeled in trade magazines, for an insider’s view of power struggles and rivalries over two decades. From the company’s low point, the expensive 1985 flop THE BLACK CAULDRON, to gradual recovery via a string of new animated hits including WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, THE LITTLE MERMAID, and THE LION KING, this behind-the-scenes tale of big cheeses, rats, and cat-and-mouse games provides an unprecedented peek down the mouse hole. HDCAM video. (BS)
Director Don Hahn and producer Peter Schneider will be present for audience discussion.
- February 3rd—8:00pm