Entries associated with the tag "Doc Films":

Yes, Virginia, there is an Edgar G. Ulmer, and he is no longer one of the private jokes shared by auteur critics, but one of the minor glories of the cinema. —Andrew Sarris in The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968

Already I've sat through Edgar Ulmer's Strange Illusion (screening at Doc Films Sunday at 7) twice and still can't remember anything about it. Or hardly anything: one very odd-looking actor (presumably Jimmy Lydon, from review summaries I've read), an elaborately gated estate entrance, and some of the most ludicrously awful back-screen projection I've ever been witness to ... except I adore that out-of-sync matting, as antidote to our official (as in "oppressive") realist paradigm, arguably one of the "minor glories" that Sarris would call our attention to.

But a lot of Ulmer just goes by me—like Detour (October 26), his alleged poverty row "masterpiece." Yes, yes, the surreality and hothouse delirium, the expressionist accents on loan from 20s Weimar, the absurdity of the winding telephone cord—and of course Ann Savage (but why "of course"? what's supposed to be so outlandish?: another of those privileged insights I can't get a handle on). But inspired?—I'd take Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster any day. Or Ruthless (not in the Doc series), the Citizen Kane of the bargain bins and, pace The Black Cat, still probably my favorite Ulmer of all. Rich if not exactly strange—which is defeating the whole idea, right? Since respectable Ulmer is arguably less consequential than no Ulmer at all.

I'm also a bit of a contrarian—or maybe just out of it—on the Texas state fairgrounds twins of 1960, The Amazing Transparent Man (November 23) and Beyond the Time Barrier (November 30—and why isn't Doc screening them back-to-back?). Beyond usually gets the critical thumbs-up, for its putatively "imaginative" dollar-store sets, while Transparent is more often dissed for being too straightforward, too doggedly matter-of-fact. Like anyone else's movie about a guy who's supposed to be invisible, the camera stalking a vacancy as if somebody or something were actually there. Pure, elemental Dada—gotta love the damn stuff.

Still to come in the series: The Strange Woman (November 9) and The Naked Dawn (November 16), plus a trio of Ulmers from a concurrently running Doc series of Yiddish-language films: Green Fields (October 30), The Light Ahead (November 13), and The Singing Blacksmith (aka Yankl der Shmid, December 4). None of which is a missable one-night stand, whatever the reservations and kvetches. But I probably won't remember anything in the morning.

Doc Films is at Ida Noyes Hall, University of Chicago, 1212 E. 59th St; call 773-702-8575 or go here for more info. 

Schlepped out to the U. of C. last Thursday for the opening-night screening in Doc Films' new "Golden Age of Mexican Cinema" series. Not that there's anything remotely new about it, since the films are all venerable antiques, dating from the 1930s through early '40s—also, based on a handful of viewings (and leaving Emilio Fernandez "poetically" aside), relatively unwatchable, at least in the narrowly modern sense of narratives that cohere, of cinematography, blocking, performances, etc, that conform to fussbudgety notions of cinematic excellence. But who cares, it's all marvelously seductive, a raw celluloid rush ...

Also terra incognita for at least one viewer, since I'm hardly familiar with this period ethnicity at all. Like an archaeological dig in a forgotten corner of the planet, where even the lowliest potsherd becomes a vehicle for transcendence, the rapt "illumination" of the gods, exploring cross-cultural mind-sets and ad hoc vizualizations that may never see the light of day again. So when a crowd scene swallows its own visual cues and actors declaim with their backs to the camera—as happened a couple of times in the first-night's program—it's almost like reconnecting with the Lumieres: cinema language in its baby-steps phase, which more often than not leads to an evolutionary dead end. When Hou Hsiao-hsien does it, of course, it's genius. But in 30s Mexico it's just filmmaking on the verge ...

But opening night did yield a fascinating relic—not the film originally scheduled (La Llorona, a pioneering entry in the indigenous "crying woman" genre, which never showed at all) but Adolfo Best Maugard's La Mancha de Sangre (1937), an exotic combination of professional Hollywood savvy (multiple camera setups, haphazard bursts of soft-focus expressionism, etc), vanished reels, and pure howling ineptitude. Its claim to notoriety, both then and now, is a full-frontal nude striptease that aroused the Mexican censors' ire (try imagining that even in precode Hollywood!), though a later scene with Estela Inda (the mother in Buñuel's Los Olvidados) dusting her apartment in a negligee is, if anything, even more inspirational. Or maybe I should say mystifying—shot apparently for the cleavage (except the camera's set back too far for that), it's a time-and-motion study of domesticity run rampant, filmed in literal duration without significant breaks or edits. Like Jeanne Dielman before the fact, you could argue—or maybe it's just a bizarre "film grammar" experiment gone horribly/deliciously wrong.

Among series highlights to come: El Fantasma del Convento (April 10) and Dos Monjes (April 17), both exploring the perennial Mexican theme of haunted clergymen on the loose, and a trio of groundbreaking westerns cum rancheras—Vamonos con Pancho Villa (May 1), Alla en el Rancho Grande (May 8), La Zandunga (May 22)—by Fernando de Fuentes, aka the "Mexican John Ford" (an opinion I don't share, but what the hell, it's what he's sometimes called). Also, more or less inevitably, Emilio Fernandez's Maria Candelaria (May 29), our southern neighbor's gift to American art-house tastes, plus an encore screening of La Mancha de Sangre (tentatively May 15) and a selection of titles/filmmakers I barely recognize that seems pretty inviting anyway (for complete schedule with times, click here).

And maybe La Llorona will show up yet. When I asked Doc Films about it last week, they promised they'd give it a try ...

Doc Films, the University of Chicago's venerable film society, kicks off its winter 2008 schedule tonight at 7 with Samuel Fuller's incomparable Pickup on South Street (1953), the first in a Monday-night series on the Hollywood maverick. Tuesday nights will be split between Jacques Demy and Jacques Tati, beginning tomorrow with Lola (1961). Wednesdays belong to Pedro Almodovar, whose All About My Mother (1999) will be screened this week. Doc offers two movies on Thursday nights; this term the early shows will focus on film noir (starting with Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place), the late shows on classic sexploitation (Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls).

The most tantalizing series may be the Sunday-night retrospective of silent films by Ernst Lubitsch, with live piano accompaniment by Daniel Sefik. It begins with Lady Windermere's Fan (1/13) and continues with such titles as The Oyster Princess (1/20), Madame DuBarry (2/3), One Arabian Night (2/10), Rosita (2/17), The Marriage Circle (2/24), and The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (3/9).

Mark your calendars for two special events: On Monday, February 25, the symposium "Rediscovering American Cinema" will feature U. of C. professor Tom Gunning, New York Times DVD columnist (and Reader/Doc Films alum) Dave Kehr, and Mike Mashon of the Library of Congress as well as a screening of Cecil B. De Mille's The Golden Bed (1925). Beginning Friday, February 8, Doc and the Japan Foundation Midwest will present a free weekend series of five recent dramas that focus on "the changing scenery of Japan."

Now who can give me a lift to Hyde Park?

To celebrate its 75th anniversary, the University of Chicago's Documentary Film Group (that's Doc Films to you) will be displaying some of its coolest possessions from July 16 to August 31 at the Joseph Regenstein Library, 1110 E. 57th. Along with old programs, posters, and programming calendars, you'll find correspondence from Samuel Fuller and Jean Renoir, rare personal-appearance photos of John Ford and Howard Hawks—even Fritz Lang's martini recipe.

Curator Kyle Westphal just completed a bachelor's degree in Cinema and Media Studies at UC, and his thesis documents the history of America's "longest continuously running student film society." About half the items were culled from alumni association materials donated to the library's special collections; Westphal, Doc's current programming chair, dug the rest of the stuff out of the group's archives. Among the artifacts on display:

•  A cartoon by Fritz Lang, drawn in 1970 for a Doc staffer living in Los Angeles. Lang had recently visited the Hyde Park campus for a screening of Hangmen Also Die (1943); mostly blind by then, he had to be led around on both arms, but according to Westphal he insisted on attending the screening and shouted from the back of the theater that the print was out of focus.

•  Silk-screened posters for Psycho and To Catch a Thief, autographed by Alfred Hitchcock during his 1967 visit, as well as excerpts from an unpublished interview.

•  Letters from Jean Renoir in 1969 and Sam Fuller in 1970 regarding their campus appearances.

•  Correspondence from Pauline Kael, Josef von Sternberg, and Stanley Kubrick, collected during the 1962-64 run of the Midwest Film Festival (a precursor to the Chicago International Film Festival).

•  Photos of John Ford (sample above), taken during a 1968 visit to screen The Long Voyage Home, and of Howard Hawks in 1971.

•  Publicity materials for Maya Deren's 1951 lecture at the university.

In addition to these items, says Westphal, the group's calendars also allowed him to track programming trends and critical ideas that influenced Doc's offerings to students over the years. "Doc Films at 75" is free and open to the public weekdays from 8:30 AM to 4:45 PM and Saturday from 9 AM to 12:45 PM. Westphal will give a guided tour of the exhibit during the opening reception on Monday, July 16, 3 to 4:30 PM. For more information contact the university's Special Collections Research Center at 773-702-8705 or specialcollections@lib.uchicago.edu.