Last Friday, in front of a small but appreciative audience, the University of Chicago’s Doc Films opened a time capsule of LGBT life in the 1970s. “Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives,” the first full-length documentary made about gay and lesbian identity, appeared across the country in theaters and on television after it was first released in 1977, but soon faded into obscurity. For the film’s thirtieth anniversary, the Film and Television Archives at the University of California-Los Angeles restored the original 16-millimeter print for theatrical and DVD release. Last weekend’s run was the film’s Chicago premiere. Read the rest of this entry »

Jack Mayer is nervous. Leaning on a metal desk in the one-room office of Fire Escape Films in the basement of the University of Chicago’s Ida Noyes Hall, surrounded by cameras, cables, and computers, the young film director and fourth-year college student holds the brim of a tropical print ball cap and stares at the floor, thinking very hard. Mayer and his cast and crew of fifteen have spent eighteen months and thirteen grand turning his screenplay “A Girl Named Clyde” into a feature-length film. The movie is supposed to premiere in about two hours, upstairs, in the theater of the UofC’s Doc Films. Shot in high-definition, the film’s digital file is so big that the Doc Films system may not be able to handle it, and there’s no time to write a DVD. The search is on for a small cord that might be able to connect the film to the Doc system, but Mayer wants a backup plan. In a slight Georgia accent he sighs, “We gotta find ourselves a projector…” Read the rest of this entry »

Be still my caffeine-addicted, jumpy heart. Spring might not be in the air quite yet, but this quarter brings a new Doc Films calendar to plaster dorm and apartment walls across Hyde Park. And who should be on this quarter’s sepia-toned, oversized broadsheet but Cary Grant, heartthrob? Though Doc calendars are usually relegated to the darkest corners of my own abode, perhaps this one can be hung prominently—too bad Mr. Grant is looking off to the side, instead of right into my tired eyes.

But perhaps I misspeak. After all, Cary is just the icing on the cake. The real treat is Doc’s ten weeks of programming. Let’s take a look. Read the rest of this entry »

College was supposed to be a land of both social and academic opportunity. To a large extent it is, even at a work-intensive school like the University of Chicago. But how exactly these opportunities present themselves, and how ardently we protect them and involve ourselves, is a more complicated tale. 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 »

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 »