[Imc-chicago] [Generallist] Chicago Filmmakers Fall 2007 Screenings - First show this Thursday!!

[programming]

Hello All,


Here is the Fall 2007 Screening Schedule for Chicago Filmmakers.

Our first show is this Thursday - a special co-presentation with the
Conversations at the Edge series at the Gene Siskel Film Center.  We're
pleased to be presenting seven newly preserved film prints of films by
Chicago film legend Tom Palazzolo.

Hope to see you there!


**************************************

 
CHICAGO FILMMAKERS FALL 2007 SCREENINGS
 
 
 
Thursday, September 13  -  6:00 pm  at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N.
State St.)
Tommy¹s Chicago: Newly Preserved Films by Tom Palazzolo  - 1967-1976
Co-Presented by the Conversations at the Edge Series
Filmmaker Tom Palazzolo in Person!
 
Chicago Filmmakers, in collaboration with the Dept. of Film, Video, and New
Media at SAIC, is extremely proud to present the premiere of seven newly
preserved prints of films by Chicago legend Tom Palazzolo. For over four
decades, Palazzolo ("Tommy Chicago") has documented the strange, seedy, and
unorthodox people, places, and rituals of the Windy City with an affection
and sense of genuine wonder rarely afforded to the often ignored and easily
forgotten. From a frantic, martinet deli owner to the unveiling of the
Picasso sculpture, Palazzolo focuses on those things that truly give a city
its unique character but never find their way into official history. These
films present an invaluable portrait of a time and place never to be seen
again and are often suffused with Palazzolo's mischievous dark humor, his
uncanny eye for finding the surreal in world around us, and his willingness
to take pokes at those in power and even at the everyman in the street.
Tonight¹s screening features: Love It/Leave It (1967); The Bride Stripped
Bare (1967); O (1967); Tattooed Lady (1967); Jerry¹s (1976); America¹s in
Real Trouble (1966); and He (1967). Prints preserved by Chicago Filmmakers
with funding from the Avant-Garde Masters program and the National Film
Preservation Foundation. 73 mins. total, 16mm. Admission for this program:
$9 general; $7 students; $5 Chicago Filmmakers and Film Center members.
Another newly preserved film, At Maxwell Street, will be shown on October 20
at Chicago Filmmakers, see below for details.
 
 
 
 
 
Six Consecutive Fridays, September 21 - October 26 -  8:30 pm at Chicago
Filmmakers
Split Pillow Showcase - Petersburg
Select Cast and Crew in Person at Each Screening!
 
Petersburg (2007, 75 mins., video) directed by Dave Belden, Tom Herman, Nick
Martin, and Jim Vendiola. A political suspense drama based on Andrei Bely's
classic novel opens Split Pillow's 6th season of new works by Chicago-based
filmmakers.  Nick Petersburg returns to an unfamiliar home in Chicago after
being away at college to find his parents separated and his father, Illinois
Senator Apollon Petersburg, preparing to run for higher office.  When Nick's
childhood friends re-insert themselves into his life, he finds himself torn
between the counter-culture leanings of peer Alex and the serve and protect
beliefs of older-brother figure Sergei.  When Alex gives Nick a package from
the mysterious Lipo for safekeeping, Nick begins to believe he may be the
not-so-unwitting pawn in a potentially revolutionary plot. Featuring Peter
Calandra, Tony DiGanci, Jason Frederick, Nina Fultz, Ross Heran, Adam Ruben,
and Rachel Slavick.
 
 
 
 
Saturday, September 22  -  8:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Chicago's Own: The Best of RookieTV
Rookie and the RookieTV Crew in Person!
 
If you have been to our Open Screenings the last couple of years, you
already know RookieTV, and those who don't are in for a treat!  The South
Side shows us how community access television should be done (no boring
public affairs programs here!) when Rookie and his collaborators come to
share the best of the irreverent, extremely funny, and smart as a tack
skits, spoofs, and other assorted mayhem that is RookieTV.  Tonight's
program will feature some of RookieTV's best work from the past couple of
years.
 
 
 
 
 
Saturday, September 29  -  7:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Deshantori (The Migrant)
Co-Presented by Drishtipat Chicagoand 3rd I South Asian Independent Film
Filmmaker Mridul Chowdhury in Person!

Deshantori (The Migrant, 2007, 70 mins., directed by Mridul Chowdhury and
Sujan Mahmud) centers on the ill-fated journey of 26 Bangladeshis as they
attempt to migrate to Spain through the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean
Sea in 2005. The harsh conditions and difficulty of their travels force them
to resort to cannibalism to survive. This episode provides a lens through
which the filmmakers explore the contradictory attitudes of young people in
Bangladesh today: their deep frustrations with the situation there and their
deep sense of national pride and, in spite of everything, optimism.
 
 
 
 
 
Saturday, October 6  -  8:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Animating Life: A Tribute to Helen Hill (1970-2007)
Brand New Preserved Prints!
 
The experimental film community lost one of its most vital, inspirational,
and generous members this past January, with the tragic murder of animator
Helen Hill in her New Orleans home. Helen was someone we wish we had known.
Apart from her award-winning films (which we are very pleased to be
presenting in brand new preserved prints), Helen was also known for her
activist work; her devotion to community development and grassroots arts
organizations; "Recipes for Disaster" - her much admired booklet on
hand-made film techniques; her love of teas, pot-bellied pigs, and New
Orleans; and her infectious and buoyant spirit. Tonight's program includes
beautiful new prints of ten of her films (which had been damaged in
Hurricane Katrina): Vessel, The World's Smallest Fair, Scratch and Crow,
Tunnel of Love, Your New Pig Is Down the Road, Mouseholes, Madame Winger
Makes a Film: A Survival Guide to the 21st Century, Bohemian Town, Film for
Rosie, and Raindance (1990-2004, approximately 50 mins. total, 16mm). Films
provided by Harvard Film Archive.



 
 
Sunday, October 14  -  6:30 pm  at Chicago Filmmakers
Chicago's Own: Found in China
Filmmaker Carolyn Stanek in Person!
 
Since 1990, more than 62,000 Chinese babies have been adopted by Americans.
Found in China (2007, 82 mins., dir. Carolyn Stanek) follows six Midwestern
families who take their 9 to 13-year-olds back to the homeland to climb the
Wall, taste the tea, bond with each other, and face the comforts as well as
discomforts of trying to fit together the puzzle pieces of their pasts. This
heartfelt and touching documentary brings up issues that many adopted
families face - pursuing a birth parent search, discussing adoption with
their children, keeping the girls connected to each other. The film also
demonstrates how adoptive parents today are generally more conscious of
their children's birth cultures and encourage them to acknowledge and
embrace their Asian identities.
 
 
 
 
 
Saturday, October 20  -  8:00 pm  at Chicago Filmmakers
Tom Palazzolo's At Maxwell Street
Newly Preserved 16mm Print!
Filmmaker Tom Palazzolo in Person!
Special Introduction by Blues Author David Whiteis!
 
At Maxwell Street (1984, 40 mins.) by Chicago's own Tom Palazzolo is a
loving look at a Chicago institution. "Maxwell Street since the late 1800s
has been the city's best site for free enterprise, flea market, black
market, blues bands on the corner, watch bands up to the elbow, fresh fruit
and greasy sausage, hawking and gawking. There is a steady parade of
picture-takers passing stands, booths stalls, and heaps and merchandise.
They wear Nikons as jewelry. They seek icons of poverty. [...] Palazzolo's
film is stamped with his characteristic humanism, relish of oddballs, and
instinct for mysterious detail. His editing harmonizes a phenomenological
grab-bag of disparate footage without homogenizing its true roughness. The
music Paul Gartski created for the film is entrancing, and is an essential
ingredient. The discipline Palazzolo exercises over his many sources is
subtle and winning" (Bill Stamets). Also showing is Tattooed Lady (1968, 14
mins.), a portrait of one of the performers from Chicago's beloved Riverview
Park. Prints preserved by Chicago Filmmakers with funding from the
Avant-Garde Masters program and the National Film Preservation Foundation.
David Whiteis is a longtime music writer and critic who has been published
extensively in local, national, and international outlets. He is the author
of Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories, which was published in 2006 by
University of Illinois Press.
 
 
 

 
Saturday, October 27  -  8:00 pm  at Chicago Filmmakers
"You've Been Warned" - A Tribute to Sid Davis (1916-2006)
Curated and Introduced by Filmmaker Jim Trainor
 
"You've been warned," might be the motto of the late Sid Davis, the American
post-war classroom film's greatest auteur.  The smug teenagers, unwary
babysitters, delinquent dabblers in drugs and alcohol who inhabit Davis'
moral universe can expect swift punishment for all infractions. Chicago-born
Davis began in Hollywood as John Wayne's body-double, but soon embarked on a
series of mental-hygiene films as striking for their sincerity as for their
Old Testament pitilessness.  Beyond their campy thrills - in which they
abound - Davis's films present a stunningly consistent and troubling
world-view, a concrete jungle of California sprawl with a drunk behind every
wheel and a child molester in every alley.  From his oeuvre of hundreds of
films (made between 1950-1978), we've selected the bleakest (and funniest)
examples, to pay tribute to an artist rivaled only by Edward Hopper in his
ability to make sunshine depressing. Likely titles include: Alcohol Is
Dynamite, The Bottle and the Throttle, Boys Beware, The Dangerous Stranger,
Keep off the Grass, Live and Learn, Name Unknown, Skipper Learns a Lesson,
The Strange Ones, Strangers, and What Made Sammy Speed.  Films courtesy of
Oddball Film+Video, A/V Geeks, and Prelinger Archives.
 
 
 
 
 
November 8-18
Reeling 2007: The 26th Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival
A Production of Chicago Filmmakers
 
Reeling is back with eleven days of the best in lesbian and gay cinema from
across the U.S. and around the world!  Visit www.reelingfilmfestival.org in
October for the complete schedule.
 
 
 
 
Saturday, December 1  -  8:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Experimental New Zealand - Free Radical: The Films of Len Lye
New Prints from the New Zealand Film Archive!
 
One of the earliest experimental filmmakers, New Zealand-born Len Lye
(1901-1980) was a pioneer and innovator of direct-to-film animation. First
in England and later in New York, Lye combined his dynamic abstract imagery
with jazz and Pacific-inspired scores. Lye scratched directly on the film
emulsion, painted the film, batiked it, and always strove to develop his
camera-less techniques in new ways. But Lye's work was not just about
technique. He created a body of work that is visually rich, stunning in the
use of color and texture, and inspired in the pairing of image and sound.
Tonight's program features Tusalava (1929), A Colour Box (1935),
Kaleidoscope (1935), The Birth of a Robot (1936), Rainbow Dance (1936),
Trade Tattoo (1937), N. or N.W. (1937), Colour Flight (1938), Swinging the
Lambeth Walk (1939), Musical Poster #1 (1940), Color Cry (1952-3), Tal
Farlow (1950s, revised 1980), Rhythm (1957), Free Radicals (1958, revised
1979), and Particles in Space (1957, revised 1979). 67 minutes total, all
16mm. Program provided by the New Zealand Film Archive and curated by Roger
Horrocks for the New Zealand Film Archive and The Len Lye Foundation.
Special thanks to Anthology Film Archives.
 
 
 
 
 
Saturday, December 8  -  8:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Experimental New Zealand - Films in Real Time 1970-79
 
The 1970's in New Zealand saw a blossoming of experimentation in the arts
and the development of new movements, a focus on conceptual and
performance-based works, and the introduction of early video technologies
for creation and documentation. This program of extremely rare films and
videos from the period provides a look at the artistic vitality and energy
of the time. Works include A Film of Real Time by Leon Narby; Earthworks.
Temporary Instant in the Continuum of Universal Ebb and Flow. by Philip
Dadson; Duck Calling by Gray Nicol; Ruatoria (excerpt) by Darcy Lange;
Ngauranga St. 20 Directions in an enclosure by Andrew Drummond; and [New
Directions in NZ Music October-November 1979. From Scratch - Drumwheel] by
>From Scratch. On video. Program provided by the New Zealand Film Archive.
Special thanks to Anthology Film Archives.
 
 
 
 
 
Saturday, December 15  -  7:00 pm at Chicago Filmmakers
Open Screening
 
It's that time again!  Our popular Open Screenings feature whatever walks in
the door - it could be anything: insane comedies, touching dramas,
high-energy music videos, odd animation, hot topic documentaries,
neighborhood portraits, or who knows what!  So, come to show or just come to
watch. Suggested maximum length per person is 15 minutes, but we will try to
accommodate everything (works will be show from shortest to longest total
length per artist). No work accepted after the program has started!
Accepted formats: 16mm, BetaSP, Mini-DV, DVD, and VHS. Nothing x-rated -
sorry! Admission is free. 

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