Pickup trucks that weave through alleys and whose beds are filled with old piping, appliances whose days are behind them, any other metals for the taking can be seen throughout Chicago. Filmmakers Ben Kolak, Brian Ashby and Courtney Prokopas immersed themselves in this culture of metal scavenging, and from their time amidst the scraps and the people who search for it, salvaged a distinctly Chicago story.

“Scrappers” will make its world premiere at the Gene Siskel Film Center on June 27 at 4:45pm as part of the seventeenth annual Chicago Underground Film Festival. “Since this was a longitudinal study and we knew we needed to gain a lot of information, we spent six months in the scrap yard talking to people,” says Kolak. The filmmakers, whose first inclination to make a film about scrappers came from seeing the trucks in Hyde Park alleys while at the U of C, then spent another two years filming scavengers, their finds and the sales they made.

The film focuses on two Chicago scrappers—Oscar, an undocmented immigrant from Honduras, and Otis, a South Side native who’s been selling scrap metal for decades. “Our subjects are both family men,” says Ashby, “and what we encountered were not thieves as they’re often portrayed, but honest guys who couldn’t find work or didn’t have papers.” The filmmakers find that the business is as diverse as any, from a scrapper collecting cans in a shopping cart to an operator with dozens of employees who buys scrap from large industrial companies and resells it in large amounts. Oscar and Otis reside somewhere in the middle, clearly good at what they do but dealing with an array of economic, political and family issues. Read the rest of this entry »

Three summers ago, Buffalo, New York native Addison Henderson went to Ghana with one question: what is identity? He brought with a film crew, his father and three friends to approach topics of identity, belonging and heritage in the West African nation where centuries before the Transatlantic Slave Trade had thrived. Their journey is inspiration for “The Experience,” which will make its Chicago premiere at the Portage Theater on June 23. Henderson, who wrote, directed and edited the film, says he had wanted to make a film about cultural heritage for years. “The project evolved to a film about a journey to Africa to one about identity because I realized that identity is what the journey was really all about,” he says.  Along with his father who is a bishop in Buffalo, Henderson brought fellow filmmaker Corey Green, Alex Gyambrah, who immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana, and Kush Bhardwaj, a professor at Buffalo State.  “I tried to bring together people that represented the entire cultural spectrum of Buffalo,” Henderson says, “which is a mirror of the culture of the entire country.”  The film shows each man’s journey individually, but it also shows a shared human journey about identity and love, a journey that Henderson believes everyone should experience.  Henderson, an actor, filmmaker and science fiction screenwriter, sees the search for identity as an ongoing process that is arduous at times but immensely rewarding. “I wanted to tell a story about people’s lives because we all go through similar things, and when people watch documentary films, they can relate to the stories being told,” he says. The screening at 8pm will be preceded by the chance to meet Henderson and Corey Green at 7pm and followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers as part of the “Know Your Identity Tour.” (Andrew Rhoades)

Portage Theater

Last Thursday, Rosa Rio died in Florida at the age of 107, one of the last living theater organists from the silent film era. The theater organist provides the live score to silent films, giving characters depth, giving action life and giving a voice to the filmmakers who first brought us to the cinema. “The best compliment a theater organist can get is for someone to say I didn’t even notice it playing,” says Jay Warren, photoplay organist at the Portage Theater. When the accompaniment is one with the film, Warren says, he’s done his job like Rosa Rio and Gaylord Carter before him.

The organ at the Portage Theater is red and crescent-shaped,  encased in a white wall three feet high with an opening for its player to the right. The 1927 Kimball Pipe Organ recently rescued by the Silent Film Society of Chicago from five years of silent storage is completely functional but still in the process of renovation. Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Andreotti and Bill Schopf/Photo: Alyssa Miserendino

By Tom Lynch

You’re probably sick of hearing it by now, but “The Hurt Locker” is the least-seen of all Best Picture Oscar winners in history. In an age when funding for modest pictures is scarce, and studios are less interested in taking risks with films lacking marquee names, an art-house action drama (of considerable caliber, of course) bested the highest-grossing movie of all time. This was no small upset: On a Wednesday a full month after its release, “Avatar” took in more money than “The Hurt Locker” did during its entire theatrical run.

With cash tight all over, movie studios have been limiting their independent-film divisions. In 2008, despite co-producing high-quality pictures like “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood,” most of Paramount Vantage was consolidated into its parent studio. (Paramount retained the brand name, however.) But when most film studios were sprinting as fast as they could away from art-house fare, Music Box Theatre owner Bill Schopf saw an opportunity.

The Music Box Theatre, on Southport Avenue in the Lakeview neighborhood, has maintained a solid reputation as both a high-class art-film exhibitor and midnight-movie cult-film destination. Built in 1929 and barely changed since, the theater’s overwhelming old-time movie-house atmosphere is as much a part of the experience as the actual film you’re there to see—whether it be a midnight screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a weekend matinee of some Hitchcock, or the new Terry Gilliam film. And, of course, there’s the live organist.

In 2007, Schopf, a high-profile attorney and real estate developer, who took control of the Music Box in 2003, began considering an expansion, first horizontally. His team began searching for other theater possibilities in Chicago, but the realities of actually finding a good venue set in quickly, and distribution entered the conversation. The vertical leap of a movie theater venturing into film distribution is a substantial move, and a risky one at that, given the financial climate. At first, everyone tried to talk Schopf out of it. Read the rest of this entry »

A fey young man storms across Cleo’s to the back room and taps a tall woman on the shoulder. “Kate Winslet called. She wants her face back,” he says before sashaying over to another woman, delivering more bizarrely aggressive compliments as he mingles. The booths are filled with groups of friends dishing amiable celebrity gossip and sipping beer, eyes glancing up at one of the many televisions as this year’s Oscars begin. The ubiquitous sight of heads bent over cellphones indicates the tweeting has also started. It continues all night.

Clooney is universally loved, even if he looks cagey every time the camera pans to his face. The guy from “Short Circuit” elicits multiple cries of “Johnny Five!” when he wins an Oscar for “The Cove.” Nobody has thought of that guy in years. Molly Ringwald, looking terrified in a grape-colored toga and questionable jewelry, inspires one gentleman to mutter, “Pretty in pink, not so much purple,” while passing around a tray of cupcakes. It’s a friendly, low-key affair, though fiery debates erupt over nominees. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Ray Pride

Monday night, Cobra Lounge is ground zero for a six-city experiment, launching the DVD and video-on-demand of the Sundance award-winning documentary, “We Live in Public.” Now situated in Chicago, the so-called “Warhol of Internet TV,” Josh Harris, accompanied by director Ondi Timoner, will take questions before and after a showing of the film.

On a large screen over the bar, a quadrant of feeds from Los Angeles, New York, Denver, Vancouver and Atlanta alternate with images from the Cobra’s own surveillance cameras inside and outside the building. The phone booth has its own flat-screens and cameras. Harris’ ideas were early: he got millions from investors for Internet TV years before broadband made it feasible. Bored, Harris built a bunker in downtown New York, dubbed “Quiet,” where a hundred or so people lived, ate, frolicked and fired off handguns and automatic weapons for free. The only condition? Cameras captured everything and Harris owned the images.

Read the rest of this entry »

At Northwestern’s University Hall there is a small room, perfectly square, with walls lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that are all but empty. A large flatscreen TV hangs on the front wall, next to two chairs facing the audience at different angles.

As part of a discussion titled “Where the Arts Meet,” writer Alex Kotlowitz and filmmaker Steve James are seated in these chairs, prepared to discuss a currently filming collaborative project titled “The Interrupters” and the intersection between film and nonfiction prose.

On storytelling in general, Kotlowitz mentions “a constant state of astonishment of being knocked off-balance.”

James, donning a navy blue fleece sweater, explains the premise of his 2002 film “Stevie,” a documentary about a man he met ten years ago in rural Southern Illinois who was once an “at-risk youth” in a Big Brothers Big Sisters program, now awaiting trial for a molestation charge. “Instead of this tidy little first-person portrait of a half-hour long,” James says, “it ended up being this two-and-a-half-hour documentary.” He then shows a clip featuring Stevie and his friend Tim, who is later dubbed “the existential fisherman.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Tom Lynch

Roscoe Village’s Hungry Brain becomes modestly packed as it nears 10pm. On the bar’s small stage, a projection screen has been set up for tonight’s screening, a romance-themed evening from local video blog Everything is Terrible! in acknowledgement of Valentine’s Day. When an emcee introduces the work, the silent, candlelit room, stocked with twentysomethings and endless PBR, gazes in anticipation.

The video mash-up begins. Clips and scenes from direct-to-video movies, infomercials and instructional tapes, all edited down and slammed together to form one film. An eighties tape that teaches the various styles of kissing; a quick look at Alaska Men magazine, the place to find single Alaskan masculinity; a god-awful horror show that features Fabio dressed as some sort of knight.

The crowd loves it. Laughs at every turn, often riotous. (“Alaska Men” really does them in.) When it’s finished, the emcee—who says the Everything is Terrible folks are out of town at the moment—gives away some DVDs as prizes and takes a vote on how the rest of the evening should play out, a mock choose-your-own-adventure. The crowd votes to watch the entire Fabio film.

Of course, as it turns out, two of the seven members of the Everything is Terrible! coalition are in the audience. They’re just apprehensive about appearing in public without their monster costumes. Read the rest of this entry »

Vampires will come and go, but zombies have staying power. As part of the Facets Night School, Facets Cinematheque will show George Romero’s classic “Day of the Dead” at midnight this Saturday, February 20. Facets’ Patrick Ogle, who will lead a pre-screening lecture, says, “George Romero created the ‘movie zombie’ as we know it in ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ Before that—and there are some exceptions to what I am about to say—zombies were ‘voodoo zombies’ or an adaptation of ‘voodoo zombies.’” “Day of the Dead” is the third installment in Romero’s “Dead” trilogy, and as Ogle puts it, “Is the poor stepchild amongst the first three Romero zombie films. It is the grimiest of the movies.” Tickets for the night’s event are five dollars, and include an educational packet with notes, essays and a bibliography for further reading. There will also be raffles for movies, posters and books. And if the movie and discussion isn’t enough for your undead palate, Ogle jokes, “I usually kill an audience member and eat their brains.” (Peter Cavanaugh)

On Friday, Chicago Filmmakers will host the work of local filmmaker Adele Friedman, who will show nine films that span from her 1983 portrait of her grandmother and father (“Sarah and Norman”) to a couple working in a kitchen in Paris in 2008 (“Pauline and Patrick, Le Marais, Paris”). Friedman’s work revolves around the use of portraiture, focusing on friends. “My work is often about cultural people, and how their lives are informed by their cultural interiors and artistic tastes,” Friedman says. “They surround themselves with what moves them.” It is a decided break from the celebrity-centric media we are usually saturated with, and Friedman aims to show how her subjects (oftentimes, those in the art world) cannot just stop being who they are when they are away from it all. “People don’t leave their culture at the museum or the office; they bring it home and live with it,” the filmmaker says. “It’s part and parcel of the daily fabric of their lives.” (Peter Cavanaugh)