1 World City In Its Teens: A Report on Chicago (Chicago Film Society at Music Box Theatre) Seldom-seen 1931 city symphony of Chicago (with live organ accompaniment by Dennis Scott) during “Music Box at 90” week. Writer-photographer Heinrich Hauser’s “Weltstadt in Flegeljahren: Ein bericht über Chicago,” captures lost Chicago low and high in fragments lost to memory. 35mm. August 24
2 Aquarela (Music Box) Documentary master Viktor Aleksandrovich Kossakovsky made a three-letter pitch for his submersion into the essence of life: “H. 2. 0.” Opens August 30
3 Brewster McCloud (Gene Siskel Film Center) Robert Altman’s bounty of sour whimsy about a boy who wants to fly like Icarus in the Houston Astrodome is chockfull of ideas, bad and good: as a major studio release in 1970, just after “M*A*S*H,” it wasn’t a career killer. 35mm. August 2 & 9
4 Threads (Gene Siskel Film Center) Bleak, bleak, bleak. Black, black, black. Unrelenting. Unforgiving. Restoring the end of the world: Mick Jackson’s scalding, necessary 1984 BBC feature dramatizes nuclear holocaust at street level in Sheffield. August 23-26
5 Our Time (Nuestro Tiempo) (Gene Siskel Film Center) Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas goes the semi-autobiographical autobahn in trying but expressive three-hour drama about a man (Reygadas) and the lover of his wife (played by Reygadas’ wife) in conflict, shot largely in the Reygadas family compound. Masculinity is on the surgeon’s table. August 2-8
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
