Talking Screens, June 9-15, 2023: David Lynch’s Wizard of Oz Obsession? | “Chile ’76” as Parable for America Now? | “The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future” is Folkloric and Dreamy
Talking Screens, A Week In Chicago Film, June 9-15, 2023
Sundance romance “Past Lives,” from Korean Canadian director-playwright-screenwriter Celine Song, opens Thursday, June 8 at River East, Drafthouse and Landmark Century. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” wreaks more metal from the franchise begun and set aside by mecha-Michael Bay. Reportedly, it’s not quite the child’s play of “Bumblebee” (2018) but not quite the crazed concatenation of Bay’s “Transformers: The Last Knight” (2017).
Sarah Vos’ art doc “White Balls On Walls” was sprung from the 2019 estimate that ninety-percent of the work at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art was made by white, male artists. “White Balls On Walls” opens Friday, June 9 at Siskel.
Also opening and reviewed below: “Lynch/Oz“; “Chile ’76” and “The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future.”
Also below, in Chicago Seen: Ruth Carter at Chicago Humanities, the twentieth Chicago African Diaspora International Film Festival, Nightingale Projects’ “Sports Mysticism” and the Chicago/Mexico City Filmmaker Exchange.
“Great Freedom” (Große Freiheit) is featured in Reeling’s June Pride Showcase, presented by MUBI at Chicago Filmmakers. In Sebastian Meise’s 2021 Austrian-German feature, Franz Rogowski plays a recidivist who breaks Paragraph 175, criminalizing homosexuality, again and again, and how he develops a tender alliance with his cellmate, a convicted murderer. “Great Freedom” opens with the 2006 short, “Jean Genet in Chicago,” directed by Frédéric Moffet [Newcity Film 50], the former chair of the School of the Art Institute’s Film, Video, New Media, and Animation Department. Moffet will be in person for a post-screening conversation. Chicago Filmmakers, Friday, June 16, 7pm
OPENERS
“Lynch/Oz”
As the “film essay” in the age of fair use of film clips goes, Alexandre O. Philippe has developed his own intent, recognizable style, best-known from the close study in “78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene” (2017). In “Lynch/Oz,” Philippe makes the case for a single artistic source of the work of David Lynch, from early shorts and artworks to films and “Twin Peaks: The Return.” Writes the filmmaker: “Joel Coen once quipped that ‘every movie ever made is an attempt to remake “The Wizard of Oz.”‘ And there’s little doubt that David Lynch, the most enigmatic of contemporary American auteur filmmakers, keeps tapping into themes, images, motifs, and ideas stemming from that… Coen’s statement might sound hyperbolic, but there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that every Lynch film is a retelling of ‘The Wizard of Oz’—sometimes overtly (‘Wild at Heart,’ ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’) and other times more cryptically (‘Lost Highway,’ ‘Mulholland Dr.’). The longstanding symbiosis between America’s primordial fairy tale and its greatest, most popular surrealist is not only a Hollywood phenomenon without precedent; it also stands as one of the most fascinating puzzles in the history of cinema.” One-hundred-eight minutes later…Among the witnesses: journalist Amy Nicholson and filmmakers Karyn Kusama, John Waters, Rodney Ascher and David Lowery. Opens Friday, June 9 at the Music Box.
“Chile ’76”
The growing ranks of stories drawn from authoritarian years in South American nations never fail to chill: the films almost always feel not years in the past, but moments into the future in North America. “Chile ’76” is Manuela Martelli’s peer into the early days of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (a monstrous figure highly esteemed by American fringe groups), her central figure a woman (the stellar Aline Küppenheim) whose inklings of political awareness could doom her and her family three years after the September 11, 1973 overthrow of the government and the murder of Salvador Allende. Simmering, suspicion-laden, “Chile ’76” is sleek in all the right ways, a political thriller that sounds themes and resounds psychologically. Much menace remains unspoken, the potential for damage and death left vague—presumed. Music Box, opens Friday, June 9.
“The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future”
Folkloric and dreamy after a fashion akin to the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Francisca Alegría’s “The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future” is a magical-realist parable of healing that finds hope after despair even amid a world of spoiled waters and animals poisoned by industrial neglect. Family trauma accompanies ecological disaster: which is the story, which is the metaphor? Alegría’s lyricism elevates any musings to poetry. Siskel, opens Friday, June 9.
REPERTORY & REVIVAL
“Good Guy With A Gun”
Chicago filmmaker John Mossman’s “Good Guy With A Gun” returns after its February Siskel debut. It’s traveled since then, but not everywhere he’d like, reports Mossman. “We’ve had great success in all corners of the globe in the past six months but domestically it’s a mixed bag. Outside of a few independent-minded bastions and universities like Wesleyan, which is featuring it in an upcoming gun studies symposium,” he tells me. “I was just informed a few days ago by my hometown Wisconsin theater, which has supported me in the past, that they will not screen it due to its controversial nature—seemingly representing a victory by the forces surrounding the second amendment crowd, in that it frightens venues into not having even a public discussion. So we are very grateful to the Siskel. The ironic part is that the film isn’t even especially political or controversial, apart from that it tries to deal with some nuance with the subject of putting a gun in your hand. It’s really just a coming-of-age story about a kid who finds out how hard it is to turn back once he’s headed down a path with some questionable people—a warning I received on a regular basis from my Republican father who then violated this rule with a party that would eventually reject him.” Siskel, June 9-10, 14.
“Ikiru”
Of Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” (1952), critic Manny Farber asserted approvingly that this steadfast, magnificent movie “sums up much of what a termite art aims at: buglike immersion in a small area without point or aim, and, over all, concentration on nailing down one moment without glamorizing it, but forgetting this accomplishment as soon as it has been passed; the feeling that all is expendable, that it can be chopped up and flung down in a different arrangement without ruin.” “Ikiru” will be followed by a presentation on the power of joy, from Judith T. Moskowitz, PhD, MPH Professor of Medical Social Sciences and Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. 35mm. Siskel, Tuesday, June 13, 6pm.
“The Magician”
Ingmar Bergman’s 1958 slightly cracked, kind-of-funny “The Magician” (35mm) features Max von Sydow as a traveling illusionist who’s doubted by the townspeople of Stockholm. Emotions clash! The movie will be followed by “a bit of abracadabra and magical demystification from Luis Carreon, magician and founding member of the Chicago Magic Lounge.” Siskel, Saturday, June 10, 6pm.
CHICAGO SEEN
Chicago Humanities presents art director par excellence Ruth Carter on Sunday: Chicago’s own Jacqueline Stewart (director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures) will guide the conversation about her forty features over the course of three decades as well as Oscars for Best Costume Design for her superlative work on “Black Panther” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” CHF at Music Box, Sunday, June 11, noon.
The Chicago African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF Chicago) celebrates its twentieth anniversary. “Since its inception, ADIFF Chicago has presented culturally significant films that explore the Black and Indigenous experience, giving a multidimensional voice to often misrepresented realities and peoples.” Facets and Siskel, June 15-18.
The Chicago/Mexico City Filmmaker Exchange debuts this week. It’s a three-part, cross-cultural program between filmmakers based in Chicago and in Mexico City, exploring displacement and its relationship to geography and the self. (An earlier exchange took place in 2020 in Mexico City.) Filmmakers from both cities will attend. The first half of the series was in Mexico City in March of 2022 with three screenings. The second half of the program will be in Chicago on June 12, 14, and 16. The program features four filmmakers from Mexico City and three from Chicago. The Exchange was initially a project of Full Spectrum Features based on an idea by programmer Raul Benitez. While under Full Spectrum, the program received a MacArthur International Connections grant in 2019, but due to COVID, the series was online entirely. In 2021 Benitez revived the program, and in March of 2022 the program had three screenings in Mexico City as part of Lit & Luz. Benitez was then awarded an esteemed artist grant by DCASE to fully fund the program and to have in-person screenings in Chicago. All filmmakers are scheduled to attend. The first screening is June 12 at Siskel, the second on June 14 at Facets, plus, on June 16, a community screening at the 18th street Casa De Cultura in Pilsen. More here.
Nightingale Projects presents Sports Mysticism, “an evening of meta-physical education. From childhood play to professional perfection, fans and athletes use sports as both an escape and a path to build community, not unlike making and looking at art. The short films in this program attempt to define the mystical and transcendent practice of playing and watching sports.” A discussion with Jesse Malmed, Paige Taul and Emily Eddy follows. Siskel, Monday, June 12, 6pm.
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
