FACETS CINÉMATHÈQUE

February 2011

The Facets Cinémathèque is located at 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. in Chicago. For more information on films playing in the Cinémathèque, please call 773-281-4114. To order advance tickets online, visit the TicketWeb website by clicking here.

Chicago Premiere

ZENITH

"[Zenith] is both a movie and an experiment in world-building... It's an audacious, impressive feat of imagination"
-Onion AV Club

"[Director Vladan] Nikolic's lust for paranoid desperation is powerful, and his way with actors is stunningly graceful"
-Village Voice

"Smoothly incorporating influences as diverse as Philip K. Dick and Terry Gilliam, Zenith commands attention and builds suspense by taking inventive detours through familiar territory"
-Variety

Recommended! "On hardly a budget at all, this jam-packed conceptual agglomeration works on the knife-edge of what Ridley Scott and company were onto with Blade Runner.
-NewCity Chicago

"Nikolic's visually imposing feature is a tightly wound and often eerily suggestive science-fiction thriller that grafts Orwell, Philip K. Dick and parts of Godard’s Alphaville with Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days
-TimeOut Chicago

-Chicago Sun-Times

"Stimulating... crooked in a satisfying way"
-Chicago Tribune

Zenith is a retro-futuristic steam-punk thriller, about two men in two time periods, whose search for the same grand conspiracy leads them to question their own humanity. Alternately taking place in the year 2044 and the present day, Serbian-American filmmaker Vladan Nikolic imagines a bleak future in which science's attempt to genetically modify the human race and make everyone feel eternally happy instead turns people into alienated creatures in search of physical stimuli, mainly in the form of drugs. Ed (Jason Robards III), a young dealer, discovers a series of 10 tapes recorded by his missing father, Jack (Peter Scanavino). Seen as a crazed conspiracy theorist in his own time, Jack's ramblings about a vast scheme by unseen forces to unravel the foundations of society strike Ed as eerily prescient. Under constant scrutiny, he embarks on an ominous mission to unearth more of his father's research, but in the end, they are both confronted with the same Faustian bargain – but each one chooses a very different path.

Vladan Nikolic has credited himself as "experiment supervisor" for Zenith as it is also a transmedia experience, where the film is the centerpiece, since this dystopian futuristic narrative can extend beyond watching the film. In Zenith, the viewer watches a film, but then has to become an active participant in order to find the answers. Zenith is a paranoid sci-fi found object from the future that explores multifaceted dimensions of the human experience, where one person’s truth and another person's delusion.

Directed by Vladan Nikolic, U.S.A., 2010, 93 mins.

Start here: Crowley Locks Stop Zenith Z-Search

Official site Director interview Variety Village Voice Film Journal

NewCity Chicago TimeOut Chicago Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Tribune

Showtimes:
Fri., Feb. 18 at 7, 9 pm
Sat., Feb. 19 at 3, 5, 7 & 9 pm
Sun., Feb. 20 at 3, 5, 7 & 9 pm
Mon.-Thurs., Feb. 21-24 at 7 & 9 pm

Tickets:

$9 general admission
FREE for Facets Members!

For all Cinémathèque inquiries, contact Charles Coleman at 773.281.9075 or charles@facets.org

Artworks: National Endowment for the Arts