1 Tsai Ming-liang Season (Siskel, October 3) Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang will lecture and take questions.
2 TÁR (Opens Friday, October 14) Writer-director Todd Field returns with a third feature after sixteen years of unmade work; a stringent filmmaker after Kubrick and Kieslowski’s own hearts. Cate Blanchett is an orchestra conductor consumed by artistry and hubris and living her life her way.
3 My Imaginary Country (Siskel; opens Friday, October 7) Eighty-one-year-old career documentarian Patricio Guzmán (“The Battle Of Chile”) witnesses the 2019 Santiago protests, a million-and-a-half Chileans strong, demanding democracy and a fresh constitution in this 2022 missive; the progressive constitution was voted down in September.
4 Descendant (Netflix, streaming from October 21) American Southern ethnographic master Margaret Brown’s exploration with the descendants of the survivors from the Clotilda, the last ship that carried enslaved Africans, was bought at Sundance 2022 by Netflix by the Obamas’ Higher Ground label (its first purchase was 2020’s Oscar-winning “American Factory”).
5 Chicago International Film Festival (River East, Siskel and other locations, October 12-23) North America’s longest-running film festival turns fifty-eight, still bringing movies to Chicago and Chicago to the movies, including its now-essential Industry Days focus on keeping local filmmakers in the trade.
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.
Film Top 5: October 2020 Chicago International, "Chicago 7" and "Candyman"'s Chicago; plus "WW1984" braces for social distancing and Kenneth Branagh again tunes up the tonsorial folderol as Hercule Poirot.
