FACETS CINÉMATHÈQUE

October - November 2007

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.

The Chicago Humanities Festival and The Facets Cinémathèque present

CLIMATE OF CONCERN
The 2007 Humanities
Film Festival

October 29-November 8 Tip of the Week! "A terrifically spirited selection of dystopian fact and fiction"
-NewCity Chicago

Recommended!
-Chicago Reader

The 2007 Chicago Humanities Film Festival will examine the implications of perhaps the most important long-term issue facing civilization today: the specter of global environmental and ecological disruption.These forces emerge in part from our own cumulative choices and actions, and represent a challenge to artists and humanists as well as scientists and policymakers. The 17th Annual Chicago Humanities Festival (which will be shown at the Facets Cinémathèque and other selected venues) is set to take place October 27 through November 11, 2007. For further information, please check out the website at www.chfestival.org or call 312.661.1028. Please note: tickets for these films will only be sold through the Chicago Humanities Festival.

All films were selected by and accompanying text written by Facets Film Program Director, Charles Coleman.

NewCity Chicago Chicago Reader

THE OMEGA MAN

"An extremely literate science-fiction drama"
-Variety

Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) is the last man on Earth, surviving by scavenging the desiccated remains of a plague-wasted city. Before the Armageddon, which battered the biosphere with nuclear and biological weapons, Neville was a military research physician, a Renaissance man of the technological age. Now he is a post-holocaust hunter-gatherer; his lonely, three-year routine comprised of food-foraging over dusty shelves and shooting "The Family" (several hundred somewhat resistant albinos who have survived the plague.). The last man on Earth, yes -- but not alone.

Directed by Boris Sagal. U.S.A., 1971, 35mm, 98 mins.

YouTube trailer Variety

Showtime:
Mon., Oct. 29 at 6:30 pm

TRIPLE FEATURE (MORRISON + HERZOG)

HIGHWATER TRILOGY

Best known for his found-footage feature Decasia: The Art of Decay (2002) shown at least year's Festival, Morrison's films serve as meditations on materiality and memory in the cinema. His practice of taking pre-existing film footage - often partially or completely lost to nitrate deterioration - and reconstituting it produces entirely new works of art. The Highwater Trilogy is a timely examination of the ever-present threat of natural disaster, combining found footage of icebergs, hurricanes, and floods with a soundtrack by David Lang and Michael Gordon.

Directed by Bill Morrison, U.S.A., 2006; DVD, 31 mins.

Director interview

LA SOUFRIÈRE

WINNER
Outstanding Short Film
German Film Awards

"Werner Herzog's maddest project...a disturbing, even intimidating, meditation on the apocalypse and a frighteningly vivid display of man's love of death."
-Chicago Reader

In 1976, scientists predicted a volcano eruption that would destroy Guadeloupe. The island was evacuated; newspapers reported that one man refused to leave. Herzog immediately arrived with a small crew in order to be on hand for the end. This fascinating study of imminent disaster and the man who stays is one of the director's major works.

Directed by Werner Herzog, West Germany, 1977, 30 mins. English narration by Herzog.

Senses of Cinema

LESSONS OF DARKNESS

This film returns us to the fires of Kuwait, as director Werner Herzog's camera alternately joins fire fighters attacking wellhead flames or hovers above the devastation, like an alien floating above "a strange planet on which only bacteria, scorpions, and cockroaches can survive." Directed by Werner Herzog, France/UK/Germany, 1992, DVD, 50 mins. In German, English and Arabic with English subtitles.

Showtime:
Tuesday, October 30, 6:30 pm

THE CHARCOAL PEOPLE

½ -TV Guide

Academy Award-winning director Nigel Noble's devastating documentary about the peasant workers who make charcoal for Brazil's steel industry documents the injustices of economics in the world as well as any film in recent memory. Plagued by lung disease and poor nutrition, these workers still barely make a living from their backbreaking labor. The film addresses the dual exploitation of their occupation - the workers are cut down almost as severely as the rain forests their work destroys.

Directed by Nigel Noble, Brazil, 1999, 70 mins. In Portuguese with English subtitles.

TV Guide

Showtime:
Tues., Oct. 30 at 8:30 pm

STARSHIP TROOPERS

"A jaw-dropping experience"
-Los Angeles Times

"Two hours of good, nasty fun...The Us-vs.-Them aspect of the story could not have been more clearly stated, creating a context in which the fascistic underpinnings become rather interesting."
-Variety

Recommended! "Verhoeven blends the conflicting elements of intentional camp and perverse sincerity into a single tone -- and he doesn't resort to simple irony. Instead he revels in the contradictions and defies us to see fascist ideology in a story that allows us to identify with warmongering characters."
-Chicago Reader

Dutch director Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Robocop) mixes big budget bug-bashing with twisted satire of old Hollywood movies in this adaptation of Robert Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel. The time is the future, after the "decadence and collapse of the democracies of the 20th century." Young Johnny Rico joins the military to obtain citizenship and to win the love of his high school sweetheart. In the war against the bug aliens of Klendathu, the military proves a dangerous place to be. After working his way through several battles with the help of friends and comrades, Johnny turns the tide of the war and saves the human race.

Directed by Paul Verhoven, U.S.A., 1997, 35mm, 129 mins.

Los Angeles Times Variety

Showtime:
Wed., Oct. 31 at 6:30 pm

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?

"One of the more successful additions to the growing ranks of issue-oriented documentaries...it is a story as big as life, and just as urgent."
-New York Times

"Chris Paine's activist documentary might have been a shrill assault on the usual suspects. Instead he delivers a provocative exploration of competing interests -- each articulately voiced -- and of broad consumer indifference."
-Christian Science Monitor

Recommended! "Bound to reverberate with anyone who's fallen in love with a product only to see it irrevocably yanked from the market."
-Chicago Reader

"Incendiary"
-NewCity Chicago

"Fascinating"
-Chicago Tribune

This film addresses the title question in the style of a whodunit murder mystery. The set-up: In the early nineties, car manufacturers were forced by the government to start designing and manufacturing zero-emission vehicles. The case: After less than 10 years, the electric car was mysteriously taken off the market in conjunction with government policy change. The suspects: Car companies, oil companies, the government - even consumers - may be the culprits. The detective: Director Paine as he follows all leads in search of the truth about the seemingly willed demise of the electric car.

Directed by Chris Paine, U.S.A., 2006, 35mm, 90 mins.

Official site TIME New York Times Chicago Tribune

Showtime:
Wed., Oct. 31 at 9 pm

THE FUTURE OF FOOD

"Enlightening"
-New York Post

"Beneath its tasteful façade, Garcia's documentary is actually nothing short of a pure horror film"
-LA Weekly

"Frightening"
-NewCity Chicago

Recommended! "A chilling landscape of businesses that can afford to buy their own science and write their own laws"
-Chicago Reader

"Future Of Food's clear, intelligent journalism and rich cinematography help take the edges off the immense brick of data Garcia lobs through the window of America's biotech industry."
-The Onion

This unnerving documentary takes a hard look at the effect of biotechnology and U.S. patent laws on the livelihood of small farmers and on consumers' abilities to recognize accurately the most basic of crops -- corn, canola, soy, and wheat. Exposing the web of connections between major agricultural industrialists and the highest levels of the government, the film reveals how genetically-modified foods have slipped into the food supply without the knowledge or support of the public. This powerful film is cited as a major component in helping pass Measure H, which bans genetically-altered crops in Mendocino County, California; and it will make you think twice on your next trip to the supermarket.

Directed by Deborah Koons Garcia, U.S.A, 2004, 35mm, 88 mins.

Official site Chicago Reader The Onion

Showtime:
Thurs., Nov. 1 at 6:30 pm

OUR DAILY BREAD

"Precisely composed lensing and painstaking sound design create moments of sublime beauty"
-Variety

"Awe-inspiring"
-Senses of Cinema

"Our Daily Bread can be extremely difficult to watch, but the film's formal elegance, moral underpinning and intellectually stimulating point of view also make it essential"
-New York Times

½ "If Our Daily Bread is political, it's blessedly indirect and happily devoid of thesis points. The images recall Kubrick in their extreme, head-on formality and tight, obsessive control. This is Fast Food Nation envisioned, Koyaanisqatsi-like, on a grand scale: 'Fast Food Planet.'"
-Chicago Tribune

"It is hypnotic and magisterial, about moment and passage...Our Daily Bread is a strange look at one of the many worlds behind our accepted world."
-New City Chicago

This film exposes the brave new world of industrial food production and high-tech farming. As seemingly futuristic as any sci-fi mis-en-scène, the environment in which food is now produced for the developed world is one where people, animals, crops, and machines play mere supporting roles in a super-efficient system. While this remarkable documentary will likely engender fascination, awe, and even shock among viewers, it simply aims to show the industrial production of food as a reflection of our society's values: plenty of everything, made as quickly and as efficiently as modern technology permits.

Directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria, 2005, 35mm, 92 mins. In German with English subtitles.

Official site Variety New York Times New City Chicago Chicago Reader

The Onion

Showtime:
Thurs., Nov. 1 at 8:30 pm

HIMATSURI
(FIRE FESTIVAL)

"One of the more salient films from the by and large otherwise barren cinematic landscape of the 80s...a remarkable achievement"
-Midnight Eye

"Ecological and social issues resonate in the background, and the haunting sounds and images will leave most audiences shaken, stirred and awed"
-Time Out

Recommended! "A work of sensitivity, corrosive wit, and technical prowess, this established Yanagimachi as the leading Japanese filmmaker of his generation."
-Chicago Reader

Based on actual events, Himatsuri is the visually striking, sexually daring, and frighteningly violent tale of a secluded Japanese fishing village on the brink of modernization. When a visiting developer proposes a tourist park, the lumberjack Tatsuo becomes the sole embodiment of the spiritual link to nature that the community must sacrifice in order to prosper. During the Annual Fire Festival, its ceremonies virtually unchanged for two thousand years, the answer to the town's dilemma is revealed to Tatsuo, and he realizes that only through a purifying act of violence can his tormented spirit be placated.

Directed by Mitsuo Yanagimachi. Japan, 1984, 120 mins. In Japanese with English subtitles.

Midnight Eye New York Times Chicago Reader

Showtime:
Mon., Nov. 5 at 6:30 pm

THE DEVIL'S MINER

WINNER
Best Documentary
Chicago Intl Film Fest

WINNER
Humanitarian Award
Mexico City Film Fest

"Formally beautiful, a work of cinema."
-FIPRESCI

"The world so beautifully photographed in THE DEVIL'S MINER--with its festivals, folkloric dances and folk art devils--seems conjured from the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, except for the unbelievably harsh odds facing the boy miners who narrate the tale."
-Los Angeles Times

"A study in courage [and] an unforgettable journey through hell under the earth, where Satan is worshipped as king. Captures both the claustrophobic mine shafts and exceptionally beautiful images of mountains and sky, making [the film] a memorable visual experience."
-Variety

"A wrenching, well-shot documentary...Directors Davidson and Ladkani take us far into those mineshafts for some amazing footage, revealing a real-life hell."
-Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

"Heartwrenching"
-NewCity Chicago

Recommended! "A powerful indictment"
-Chicago Reader

"Compelling"
-The Onion

Welcome to hell: the silver mines of Cerro Rico, Bolivia, known to the local tribes as "the mountains that eat men." The Devil's Miner follows two young brothers who live in poverty with their mother in the mountains of Bolivia. Through their eyes, we witness the dismal conditions in this 16th century mine, where devout Catholics must sever their ties with God each time they enter because of an ancient belief that the devil determines the fate of all who work there. Raised without a father, the boys must work to afford the clothing and supplies vital to their education - without which they have no chance to escape their destiny in the mines.

Directed by Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani, U.S.A./Germany, 2005; 82 mins. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Official site FIPRESCI Variety Village Voice Chicago Reader The Onion

Showtime:
Mon., Nov. 5 at 8:45 pm

I LIVE IN FEAR

"Deeply felt and provocative...a compelling portrait of Japan in the nuclear age."
-Channel4

Recommended! "Memorable...eerie, troubling, and haunting"
-Chicago Reader

Made in the 1950s, with the Cold War at its height and the atom bomb's destruction still recent memories, Akira Kurosawa's film reflects his countrymen's mood of helpless terror in the face of seemingly inevitable nuclear war. His protagonist - a 70-year-old industrialist played by 35-year-old Toshiro Mifune - is resolved to take action and drag his whole family along with him. The film's images of Tokyo's intolerable heat symbolize the old man's sizzling emotions. But Kurosawa is also indicting the patriarchal despotism that long bedeviled Japanese society; when Mifune's family and work force dare to question his authority, it overturns his sanity.

Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1955, 103 mins. In Japanese with English subtitles.

Criterion: Mifune and Kurosawa Chicago Reader

Showtime:
Tues., Nov. 6 at 6:30 pm

DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE

NOMINATED
Best Documentary
Academy Awards

"For all its unapologetic passion, Darwin's Nightmare does not bang you over the head, choosing instead to let its story be discovered...Everywhere Darwin's Nightmare turns, it sees aspects of societal disintegration, aspects that connect to each other in a chilling chain of causality."
-Los Angeles Times

"Harrowing, indispensable...its reach extends far beyond questions of policy and political economy, and it turns the fugitive, mundane facts that are any documentary's raw materials into the stuff of tragedy and prophecy."
-New York Times

"Bitter ironies come thick and fast in Hubert Sauper's essential documentary...It illuminates the sinister logic of a new world order that depends on corrupt globalization to put an acceptable face on age-old colonialism."
-Village Voice

"Sauper adheres to the approach of many Euro documentaries that tend to lay out an arbitrary wealth of information, leaving the audience to draw its own conclusions with ostensibly minimal guidance. This fits with the sense that the director -- rather than having a carefully mapped-out path -- is tirelessly scratching the surface for new information and being led on tangents, subtly uncovering the bitter ironies of the situation along the way."
-Variety

In the 1960's, scientists introduced the Nile perch to Africa's Lake Victoria. The voracious predator multiplied so fast it almost extinguished the entire stock of native fish. Today, millions eat Lake Victoria Nile perch daily, while lakeside villagers who depend on the fishing industry cannot afford to eat it. Meanwhile, ex-Soviet planes carrying the fresh fish from Africa to the West import Kalashnikov rifles and ammunition for the uncounted wars in the continent's interior. Hubert Sauper's gripping documentary investigates the booming industry of fish and weapons that involves an unholy global alliance of local fishermen, World Bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes, and Russian pilots.

Directed by Hubert Sauper, Belgium/Austria/France/Canada/Finland/Sweden, 2004, 107 mins.

Official site Los Angeles Times New York Times Village Voice Variety

Showtime:
Tues., Nov. 6 at 8:30 pm

PUNISHMENT PARK

"Fascinating, gut-wrenching and thought-provoking filmmaking"
-Time Out

"The film feels just as shockingly relevant today...a vividly executed piece of political provocation"
-BBC

"It's less a narrative than a democracy-in-crisis street fight."
-Village Voice

"Watkin's paranoia is timeless, sad to say"
-NewCity Chicago

Recommended! "The results are both hysterical and unforgettable,
as well as creepily up to date in certain respects."
-Chicago Reader

Set at some unspecified point in the near future, this film was inspired by the 1950 McCarran Internal Security Act, which gives the President of the United States the right to deal with people believed to be "a risk to internal security." Punishment Park follows a group of left-wing dissidents who are offered a choice: they can either serve long prison sentence or spend 72 hours in Punishment Park, an uninhabitable section of the Southern California desert.

Directed by Peter Watkins. U.S.A., 1971, 88 mins.

Bonus featurettes: Two early short films by Peter Watkins - The Forgotten Faces and The Diary of an Unknown Soldier.

YouTube trailer Time Out BBC Village Voice Chicago Reader

Showtime:
Wed., Nov. 7 at 6:30 pm

CHILDREN OF MEN

WINNER
Best Cinematography
Chicago Film Critics Assoc. &
L.A. Film Critics Assoc.

"Superbly directed...Cuarón's speculative fiction is a gratifying sign that big studios are still occasionally in the business of making ambitious, intelligent work"
-New York Times

"Not to be missed"
-Village Voice

½ "Grim in its scenario, yet exhilarating in its technique"
-Chicago Tribune

"A gritty gem"
-Chicago Sun-Times

"Here's a masterpiece that will last: bold, iconic, suggestive, goofy, haunting, hopeful. It's this kind of artistic imagining of terrible things that inspire a better world to come."
-NewCity Chicago

"This is as real and as provocative as the future gets on screen"
-TimeOut Chicago

"The filmmaking is pungent throughout"
-Chicago Reader

Set in the chaotic world of 2027 when humans can no longer procreate, heroic 35mm individuals struggle to transport a miraculously pregnant woman to safety so that her child may help save mankind. Based on the novel by P.D. James, this is thought-provoking science fiction of the highest order.

Directed by Alfonso Cuaron. UK, 2006, 35mm, 114 mins.

Official site New York Times Village Voice Chicago Tribune TimeOut Chicago

Chicago Sun-Times

Showtime:
Wed., Nov. 7 at 8:15 pm

WILD BLUE YONDER

"Entrancing and often funny"
-Variety

"It seems clear that the title also refers to Mr. Herzog's imagination, which remains as richly inventive as it is, at times, bafflingly, wonderfully alien"
-New York Times

"Herzog's nature is a crushing force that tests and wears down both society and individuals alike -- a massive power too often underestimated by human hubris."
-Village Voice

"A scientific context is offered by interviews with researchers expounding modes of intergalactic travel, but the real pleasures are in the organic beauty of deep spaces and the ambiguous position of the humans suspended in them."
-TimeOut London

"This wacky "science fiction fantasy"... looks like it was made for a few thousand bucks, but it's held aloft by the filmmaker's inexhaustible curiosity and wonder"
-Chicago Reader

This "space oratorio," as director Werner Herzog originally subtitled it, features Brad Dourif as a space alien gone to seed in an abandoned southern Californian ghost town and stewing over CIA conspiracies, Roswell cover-ups, and eons-long interplanetary travel. His literally down-to-earth ravings are intercut with images from a secret interstellar NASA mission to his own home planet, the Wild Blue Yonder. Herzog appropriates previously unseen NASA footage for the "interstellar" mission and underwater images from the Arctic ice shelf for the alien world. Accompanying these visions is an hypnotic score - a blend of Handel opera, jazz cello, Senegalese vocals, and a five-man Sardinian shepherd's choir. Luminous, at times comic, the film questions humanity's wisdom while embracing the earth's incandescent beauty.

Directed by Werner Herzog, Germany, 2005, DVD, 78 mins.

Official site Variety New York Times TimeOut London

Showtime:
Thurs., Nov. 8 at 6:30 pm

WALKABOUT

"The movie is not the heartwarming story of how the girl and her brother are lost in the outback and survive because of the knowledge of the resourceful aborigine. It is about how all three are still lost at the end of the film--more lost than before, because now they are lost inside themselves instead of merely adrift in the world."
-Roger Ebert

"One of the great slabs of fear in a landscape"
-NewCity Chicago

Recommended! "Still one of [Roeg's] most satisfying achievements. The themes are large and abstract enough to support Roeg's large, abstract style"
-Chicago Reader

Director Nicolas Roeg's second film, a mystical masterpiece first released in 1971, centers on two British children, a teenage girl (Jenny Agutter) and her young brother (played by Roeg's son Lucien John). Stranded in the Australian desert when their father chillingly commits suicide (after first trying to kill them), they are led back to civilization by an Aboriginal male (David Gumpilil) who appears to be about the girl's age. The fascination of the movie comes from the cultural collision that also carries a sexually charged undercurrent.

Directed by Nicolas Roeg, UK, 1971, 35mm,100 mins.

Senses of Cinema: Roeg Roger Ebert ;

Showtime:
Thurs., Nov. 8 at 8:30 pm

Tickets: