Celebrities are consumer goods. Reading gossip in the press or on trashy blogs and fantasizing over new babies, new outfits, juicy breakups, and emotional breakdowns is a form of escapism. The allure is obvious: celebrities embody some of our culture’s dominant desires—for wealth, status, beauty, exposure, mobility, access, and glamorous lifestyles. Like all consumer goods, celebs are manufactured. An entire celebrity industry populated by advertisers, event planners, paparazzi swarms, and a slice of the media dutifully fabricates images of these people and of the worlds they inhabit, images framed to appease and reinforce these desires. But what happens to a person in the media spotlight? What happens to an inner life or a family life constantly bombarded by the glare of the cameras and the public? Read the rest of this entry »

The romantic comedy and the grandiose epic are genres familiar to most Americans, so much so that we may think of them as indigenous to Hollywood. But however practiced we may be in the fine art of the chick flick, we can hardly claim a monopoly on it, as the schedule for this year’s Polish Film Festival in America shows. Now in its twenty-eighth year, the festival is again bringing more than fifty features, documentaries, and short films from Poland and Eastern Europe to various venues around Chicago. Six of those films will play at the Beverly Arts Center over the course of the next two weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Homosexual culture has been all but completely omitted from history, and a contrived narrative won’t help in raising awareness. Barbara Hammer makes these messages clear in her film “Nitrate Kisses.” The 1992 film was screened as a part of the University of Chicago Film Studies Center’s Fifth Annual Graduate Cinema Conference, “Alternative Non-Fiction: Essay Films, Hybrids and Experimental Documentaries,” followed by a discussion led by Hammer herself. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time of the year again: the weather is getting warmer, the sun is staying out longer, and the classes are picking up and starting all over. So, what are you going to do? Go outside? Here are a few good reasons why you should be ditching April showers, May flowers, and all-nighters to check out Doc this spring. Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s a transmitter, D Radio for speaking to God.” Valois Restaurant. Strobe Light. At six o’clock in Cox Lounge this is the only direction in which our team’s film is going. This is the first hour of University of Chicago filmmaking society Fire Escape Films’ Second Annual 48 Hour Film Festival. The goal: One approximately eight-minute short film. The problem: It must be written, filmed, and edited between 6pm Friday and 6pm Sunday. I’m not really sure how successful this endeavor will be with a three-hour time slot on Saturday, and Sunday to edit, but hey… either way I scored a free T-shirt. As we were walking out, I could hear the collective creativity fizzing: “So…the whole film will basically be a metaphor for sex?” No doubt it will be interesting to see what the diverse group of UofC students in the room will come up with. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the time, people never notice the background music that accompanies their movies, focusing instead on the spectacle on the screen. But what happens when music and film are equal partners, the movie theater includes a stage, the movie is an experimental silent film and the soundtrack is improvised by a live performer instead of recorded and prepackaged with the movie? “Pictures and Sounds,” a screening of experimental films that goes hand in hand with live performances by local musicians, provides an answer to this question. This annual event is a unique collaboration between WHPK 88.5 FM Chicago and the Film Studies Center at the University of Chicago, which provides the venue for the concert and screening next Saturday evening. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1933, the Chicago Castle Theatre risked fines of $200 when it attempted to show the controversial film “This Nude World”. In that tradition, Doc Films risks inciting a storm of debate with their new Thursday night “Sexploitation” series that, according to Doc Films Programming Chair and Sexploitation series creator Kyle Westphal, “delivers the goods without the guilt.” Read the rest of this entry »

Now, Speak. “My hair is falling out, my hair is falling out, my hair is falling out, my hair is falling out. All over the place in little red armies of individual hairs looking at me these hair people I try to throw them out. Like a red atomic bomb that went off all over my pillow. I feel some sense of loss.” I think I want to watch her, like this—three inches from the screen—for hours. I can’t tell you her name or even what she’s talking about—herself? Cancer? I didn’t have time to find out because a moment later I got distracted by the guy next to her (with the dreds) who I heard saying “Spilling squids.” This strange alliterative sentence caught my ear and, bashfully, I shuffled over to stand before him. Read the rest of this entry »