Newcity Chicago October 2018

OCTOBER 2018FIL5M0 Bing Liu

IncenseSweaters&Ice MartineSymsSeptember 26, 2018–January 12, 2019 Image: “Martine Syms, Incense Sweaters & Ice (still), 2017.”Graham FoundationMadlener House, 4 W Burton Place, Chicagowww.grahamfoundation.org

October 2018 Arts & CultureContents Art Strong women persist as ARC GalleryA Hungry World turns forty-fiveChicago restaurants face 53the food-insecure9 Dance Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre embodiesThe Monster Roster immersive alchemyHans Ulrich Obrist and 58Dominick di Meo onpersonal Chicago art history Design13 A community weaving mill wafts to West Town 60Filmmaker of the MomentBing Liu documents legacy Dining & Drinkingthrough skateboarding Could a sixty-year-old neighborhood joint21 boast the best Chicago pizza? 62Film 50Who are this year’s Filminfluential filmmakers Celluloid sensation lights up film-onlyand new faces of film? Chicago Film Society23 65 Lit OCTOBER 2018 Newcity Jeremy T. Wilson knows rogues and rascals in the stories of “Adult Teeth” 68 Music Spektral Quartet looks skyward 70 Stage Nate Herman’s “Films for the Ear” fuses radio, Hollywood classics and seat-of-the-pants improv 72 Life is Beautiful Teen Dream on an Insane Clown outing 74 3

EDITOR’S The day before I wrote this, Jan’s great aunt Connie Muzzarelli was laid to LETTER rest in Coal City, Illinois, at the age of one hundred. Connie, a sharp-wit- ted spitfire, loved to trade barbs with the various younger men of her family, a verbal counterpoint to her soft-spoken husband Bruno, who’d only made it to ninety-seven years. I’d forgotten, though, her habit of reading poems she’d written at family gatherings, especially birthdays, when the person of honor would be her subject. The poems were of the vernacular variety, anchored by rhyming verses, a far remove from the type you’d read in Poetry magazine these days. Her poems were infused, though, with wit and wordplay from the mind of a woman who likely never aspired to an audi- ence beyond her family. I was reminded of this in the eulogy delivered by her niece Lynn, when she read from “Memories,” a poem Connie had written back in 1985. “Come back with me to the Farm and our childhood there together—” it starts, and for four typed pages recounts the story of her upbringing and the seasons shared with her family. The ending struck me as especially beautiful and poignant for the occasion of her funeral: What would we give to once again that kitchen table share— With all our loved ones who have gone, there’s naught that could compare— So close your eyes and dream with me—there’s lilacs in the air, Once more we’ll all be home again and LOVE will keep us there. Poetry figures large in the movie we’re producing this month, writer-director Hugh Schulze’s “Dreaming Grand Avenue.” The character, Walt Whitman, recites from “Leaves of Grass” after showing up at a Chicago poetry slam, and his words make communion with our Aunt Connie’s evocation of dream and memory, when he speaks, in “There Was a Child Went Forth,” of similar childhood memories, even down to the flowers: “The early lilacs became part of this child.” “Dreaming Grand Avenue” strives for poetry in much broader strokes as well, in the very essence of dreams themselves, which do to the subconscious what poetry does to the waking mind: it unlocks parts of our souls that we might not otherwise know about. And because we’re continuing our active role as movie producers, we’ve pulled back our role in the Film 50 more than we do in the other lists, deferring the list makeup and ranking pretty much entirely to film editor Ray Pride. It does not suffer our absence, as you’ll see when you start reading.Newcity OCTOBER 20184

ART WEATORNovember 1-4, 2018 Booth B10 Navy Pier 600 E Grand Ave, Chicago [email protected] yvel.com

Contributors Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator, critic, artistic ON THE COVER director at the Serpentine Galleries, Cover Photo: Sally Blood RAY PRIDE (“Filmmaker of the Moment” London, and the art world’s keenest Cover Design: Fletcher Martin and “Film 50”), Newcity’s film editor, public interviewer, catches up with wrote this year’s “Film 50” feature Monster Roster member Dominick di Vol. 33, No. 1384 and interviewed the Filmmaker of the Meo. Obrist brings “Creative Chicago: Moment. Ray has been Newcity’s film An Interview Marathon” to the Chicago PUBLISHERS critic for twenty-five years. He’s also a Humanities Festival kickoff on Navy Pier Brian & Jan Hieggelke photographer: his forthcoming book on on September 29, in partnership with Associate Publisher Mike Hartnett Chicago “ghost signs” will feature a batch EXPO CHICAGO. of recently revealed walls brought to EDITORIAL light by this year’s wave of demolition. DAVID HAMMOND (“A Hungry World”) Editor Brian Hieggelke is Newcity’s dining & drinking editor. Managing Editor Jan Hieggelke SALLY BLOOD (Photographer, cover, As he continues to scout unsung eateries Art Editor Elliot Reichert “Filmmaker of the Moment” and “Film 50”) around the city, he takes a look behind Dance Editor Sharon Hoyer is a Chicago photographer who last shot the scenes at leading-edge restaurants, Design Editor Vasia Rigou “Music 45,” featuring the top musicians exploring sustainability and the role Dining and Drinking Editor in Chicago, in the August issue. She of sharing with the disadvantaged David Hammond says her specialty is “using her Native of Chicago. Film Editor Ray Pride American roots to bring the soul into the Lit Editor Toni Nealie eyes of her subjects.” She exhibited her TONI NEALIE (“Surviving the Shitshow”), Music Editor Robert Rodi “Red Dress Series” at the Flatiron Arts edits Newcity’s Lit section. An acclaimed Theater Editor Kevin Greene building in September. essayist, her collection “The Miles Contributing Writers Isa Giallorenzo, Between Me” is available. She continues Aaron Hunt, Alex Huntsberger, Hugh Iglarsh, HANS ULRICH OBRIST (“Dominick her ongoing series of conversations with Chris Miller, Dennis Polkow, Loy Webb, di Meo and The Monster Roster”) local authors with Jeremy T. Wilson, on a Michael Workman quest for the meaning of his quirky sense of humor. ART & DESIGN Senior Designers MJ Hieggelke, Chicago Studio City Fletcher Martin, Dan Streeting Designers Jim Maciukenas,Newcity OCTOBER 2018 THINK FILM, THINK CHICAGO, THINK CSC Stephanie Plenner, Billy Werch Full service motion picture studio, sound stages and office space. MARKETING Grip and electric equipment, generators, shops and trucks. Established in 1979. Marketing Manager Todd Hieggelke 773.261.3400 5660 W. Taylor St, Chicago, IL 60614 [email protected] OPERATIONS 6 General Manager Jan Hieggelke Distribution Nick Bachmann, Adam Desantis, Preston Klik, Quinn Nicholson, Matt Russell One copy of current issue free at select locations. Additional copies, including back issues up to one year, may be ordered at Newcity.com/subscribe. Copyright 2018, New City Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Newcity assumes no responsibility to return unsolicited editorial or graphic material. All rights in letters and unsolicited editorial or graphic material will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and subject to comment editorially. Nothing may be reprinted in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. Newcity is published by Newcity Communications, Inc. 47 West Polk, Suite 100-223, Chicago, IL 60605 Visit NewcityNetwork.com for advertising and editorial information.

18/19Opera Atelier Photo by Bruce Zinger.Charpentier ActéonRameau PygmalionNovember 15, 2018 / 7:30PMNovember 16, 2018 / 7:30PMColin Ainsworth    Actéon/PygmalionMireille Asselin     Diana/AmourAllyson McHardy  Juno/CéphiseTafelmusik Baroque Orchestra conducted by David Falliswith Artists of Atelier BalletCHICAGO DEBUT312.334.7777 | harristheaterchicago.org | 205 East Randolph DriveHarris Theater Presents Mainstage Alexandra C. and John D. Nichols Airline Presenting Sponsor Patricia A. Kenney and Additional Support Music Presenting Sponsor Engagement Presenting Sponsor Gregory J. O’Leary Lead Engagement Sponsor

Fall Danceat the LoganCenterMandalaSouth AsianPerforming ArtsMasks & Myths:Devils & DancersSat, Oct 6, 7:30pmSun, Oct 7, 3pmCerqua RiveraDance TheatreMy Past / Our PresentSat, Oct 27, 7:30pmDeeply Rooted The Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago isDance Theater a multidisciplinary home for artistic practice. Join us this FallAn Inspired Past. for Mandala’s journey to the 1893 Columbian Exposition as theyA Jubilant Future. look toward the future of Sri Lankan dance; CRDT’s eclecticSat, Dec 15, 7:30pm program featuring contemporary dancers and jazz musiciansSun, Dec 16, 2pm in an exploration of identity, immigration, dislocation, and assimilation; and Deeply Rooted’s 21st anniversary performance.arts.uchicago.edu Logan Center773.702.ARTS for the Arts 915 E 60th St uchicagoarts LoganUChicago Masks & Myths promotional image. Photo: Tom Rossiter

A HUNGRY WORLDChicagoRestaurantsFeedtheFoodInsecure Photo: Chavez PhotographyAt a Starbucks in the This seemed a righteous initiative. FoodShare partners with other OCTOBER 2018 Newcity Starbucks’ FoodShare program began organizations, such as Food Lifeline inViagra Triangle, I was with suggestions from some of their Seattle and City Harvest in New York, tothrowing an empty coffee employees who were themselves once leverage their scale of operations tocup into the trash when I “food insecure” and who felt deliver fresher food, faster, to those insaw a sign over a display of uncomfortable throwing out so much need.sandwiches, salads and edible food. (“Food insecurity” is definedother takeaway items that by the USDA as having a “lack of FoodShare, the Greater Chicago Foodsaid that all unsold food consistent access to enough food for an Depository, Food Lifeline and Citywould be given away at the active, healthy life.”) Harvest are just a few of theend of the day to those in intermediaries between those whoneed. Starbucks in Chicago, Seattle, New York prepare food and those who need it. and a few other cities is testing their There are many more.BY DAVID HAMMOND FoodShare program, built on a simple, efficiently designed after-market supply Although restaurants and grocery stores chain. At the end of the day, unsold food frequently deposit uneaten, often edible is placed in yellow plastic bags which are food in dumpsters, diving into a garbage picked up and carried by refrigerated van container is in a legal grey area. In most to a location where the food can be states, it’s not illegal to rummage through distributed. In Chicago, that location is garbage looking for food, although there the Greater Chicago Food Depository, may be penalties for trespassing. Legal or which has systems in place to accept illegal, swatting your way through flies to food from restaurants and uses those beat insects to a common prize— contributions to deliver close to 170,000 discarded food—is not the most meals every day to those in need. appetizing or healthy option for the food 9

insecure. The case could be made that amrIoteru’asestntnpuayornueotsrpfeaoatanlhdrsteesyfdiortfoootiodtrhe,oamarnsdsder. fermentation techniques. Frillman’s edible food should not be thrown in the re-use strategies include using leftover dumpster in the first place. There are Executive chef Marcos Campos of whey from ricotta production to make better places to put, and many people Beatnik says, “Bonhomme Hospitality cream soda that is then used in house- who need it. [the organization behind Beatnik, Black made sodas and cocktails. Mick Klug Bull and Celeste] partners with, and Farm had 200 gallons of apple cider For individual chefs and restaurants, participates in, local philanthropic events made with apples that were too warm unlike international operations like that help alleviate poverty and hunger on when they were pressed and had begun Starbucks, it may be more difficult to get both a local and national scale.” Campos to ferment; instead of dumping the batch, food to those who need it. It’s not easy and Bonhomme Hospitality work with Klug sold the cider to Daisies, which will for restaurants to hand out unsold food, Culinary Care, which he says “delivers use fermented apple juice in sipping as many of their items are prepared to meals to cancer patients who often face vinegars. And any fruit that is considered order. Unlike Starbucks, they don’t have  hunger and eating disorders.” too ugly to sell to other restaurants is ready-to-eat or prepackaged food to sold to Daisies for use in kombucha. contribute. There are also liability issues; Ensuring enough food for a hungry world some of the needy might have allergies also connects with the movement to Finding ways to use food that might that could be aggravated. If you have a reduce food waste, and Chicago chefs otherwise go to waste is one way Daisies gluten allergy, and you’re starving, it may are coming up with novel ways to make and other restaurants maximize be challenging to avoid biting into that food go further. At Daisies, owner and profitability while minimizing food waste. sandwich. And, of course, restaurants executive chef Joe Frillman and his As is so often the case, doing good is undoubtedly would prefer not to have kitchen recently obtained a HACCP- also good business. When restaurants groups of the needy at the back door, license from the city of Chicago. Daisies contribute uneaten food to food banks, waiting for food. can now take on bumper crops and they may gain some tax advantages and unsold or unusual produce from trusted they reduce waste-management costs. If If individual chefs, restaurants, and producers and then develop menu items you’re not filling up your dumpster, you’re restaurant groups want to help feed the using time-intensive preservation and not paying as much for trash collection. needy, it’s best to partner with each other or with larger organizations to retrieve, As an individual citizen, you, too, can store and distribute the food. Groups like purchase slightly unsightly produce Fight2Feed work with larger through Imperfect Produce, which organizations like Aramark and Smithfield delivers to your door less-sightly fruits to rescue food that would otherwise go and vegetables for thirty to fifty percent into the trash. off retail. Taste of the Nation for No Kid HungryNewcity OCTOBPEhRot2o:01T8one Stockenström Photo, Inc10

fIiimmgrnmoeooeonptnaudseuintceiwlhnsatdsaethl.losoaytto,tftehttlrhehemeesodissguefhcoteodPhoto: Rachel Brown Kulp Josh Kulp, chef and co-owner, Honey Butter Fried ChickenEven without purchasing slightly bruised Aibcsausassilesisn,soedosgoosoin.fotgdegnotohde committed to helping the food insecure OCTOBER 2018 Newcityor unsightly produce, restaurants are find daily nutrition. Taste of the Nation forstretching ingredients, a solid strategy for Ironically, the impulse to reduce food No Kid Hungry took place at Revel Fultonreducing food waste while increasing waste might mean that less food gets Market. This “walkaround tasting event”profitability. “At Honey Butter Fried into the mouths of those in need. “As featured food and drink from over fortyChicken,” says Josh Kulp, chef and chefs have been held more accountable Chicago chefs, sommeliers, mixologistsco-owner with Christine Cikowski, “we for food costs, they carry a tighter and brewers—including places likefilter our oil multiple times per day, which inventory with less waste, so there’s less Margeaux Brasserie, The Heritage andstretches its life and prevents it from to contribute to food banks,” says The Signature Room—with one-hundredbeing wasted. Once we’ve used it to its Anthony Iannone, founder and chef percent of proceeds going to help kidsfull potential, we sell it back for biodiesel instructor of North American Pizza & eat right. Since the campaign launched,fuel. We also butcher everything in house, Culinary Academy. 775 million meals have helped feed needyso we use every part of the chicken. The kids.breasts, drums and thighs become our Multiple charitable events take placefried chicken, and the tenders and thigh throughout the year that give chefs an Perhaps the surest way to provide foodstrips go on our sandwiches.  The wings opportunity to support organizations to the needy is to hand them the food,get a separate preparation and are fried person-to-person, and that’s exactlycrispy then glazed or seasoned, and the what’s being done by executive chefbackbone gets roasted and turned into Angelo Chavez of Pink Taco. “Atstock for gravy that goes on our mashed Thanksgiving,” says Chavez, “we closepotatoes. The excess fat gets rendered our doors to the public and partner withand becomes schmaltz that we whip into shelters to feed as many needy familiesour smashed potatoes.” as possible. We also activate our taco trucks. Every person deserves a Thanksgiving meal.” 11



DOMINICKand the OCTOBER 2018 Newcity MonsterDI MEORosterA CREATIVE CHICAGO INTERVIEW WITH HANS ULRICH OBRISTGREAT HEAD / Dominick Di Meo / 1973 / synthetic on canvas / 50 x 58 inchesCourtesy the Artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago 13

y friends Nancy Spero and Leon Golub told me about Monster Roster and Chicago when I met them in the early nineties. It’s through Spero and Golub that I discovered the work of Dominick di Meo. When we started working on an Interview Marathon for Chicago my first idea was to interview di Meo on his pioneering work and the Monster Roster movement. As di Meo cannot travel and attend the marathon, I interviewed him in New York. I am grateful to Jasmin Tsou from JTT and John Corbett and Jim Dempsey who made this interview possible. How did you initially come to art? Was there an epiphany? What brought you to art? Well, I guess in part it was that I was UNTITLED (BLUE AND ORANGE WITH BLACK FIGURES) limited physically. Because I have a Dominick Di Meo / 1965 / acrylic and synthetic polymer on canvas / 74 x 60 inches crippled arm and leg, I couldn’t Courtesy the Artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago indulge in sports like other people. I don’t know if this is apocryphal or painter. But in Chicago there was a big curator named Katharine Kuh acquired not, but I went into the Crippled movement… those brothers who did the that for the Art Institute. That was a big, Children’s Guild with polio. We were famous paintings of corroded flesh and powerful thing. bound in plaster casts. I’m lying down, all… Ivan Albright and his brother Malvin. and there’s a Christmas party, and they They were a big influence, especially Ivan, You are one of the protagonists of the gave out free toys, right? And I was given being an internationally known artist in Monster Roster. How was that name a set of Tinkertoys. But I was having a lot Chicago. found, and how did it begin? of trouble, because this arm was in a castNewcity OCTOBER 2018 and I couldn’t put things together. One of Ivan Albright was an influence? Well, Chicago culturally was kind of a the nurses or aides saw that and she dead city. You know, it wasn’t a very immediately picked it all up and took it I think on everyone in Chicago, because exciting city. It had one really good away. And that broke my heart. It was a he was a big star, and was still alive, and gallery at one time under Katharine Kuh challenge that I was working at, and by had a studio. This was like in the who then became a curator at the Art her taking it away, it did something to me. mid-forties. And I think that’s what was Institute, before or after, I don’t remember behind the Monster School, in part. And which now. So it was kind of dead So something happened there. then while we were in school, The Arts creatively, except for the Albrights and a Club of Chicago put on a big [Jean] few others. Right. And later, in school, you know, one Dubuffet show. We were all really of the few things I could do was art impressed with that stuff, and the Art So Leon Golub and some of the older classes, so I was encouraged by the art Institute acquired one of the big heads; a artists formed an organization called teachers. I wasn’t good academically, you know. And curiously enough, one of my fixations as a student was to do heads [chuckling]. And then to come to Chicago, my ambition was to become a landscape painter; naive idea [to be a] landscape14

Institute of Technology, they had a big show in the lobby in one of the Mies van der Rohe buildings. But the reason the artists had to form these shows was that it was culturally dead there. We brought in people to judge the show. Yves Klein was one. We brought in curators from the Whitney, famous people from New York who juried the shows, but then through Phalanx we didn’t have juried shows. The artists, the younger artists and I chose the artists from Chicago. We picked the show and put everyone that we thought was important in the Chicago scene into those shows.PREDATORY BIRD, GENOVESE / Dominick Di Meo / 1962 How do you connect to the historicplastic and water-based pigment on hemp / 14 x 20 inches avant garde? Because looking at yourCourtesy the Artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago early work, there are collages, which one can somehow link maybe to Dada, second generation of people, but the or Hannah Höch. heart of it was those people I just mentioned. Those were important factors, you know, because it was on everybody’s lips, who How did he find that name; why are were pretending to be creative, visual you Monster Roster? artists. Like I used to look at Paul Klee a lot, you know, I was heavily into all that.DOMINICK DI MEO & HANS ULRICH OBRIST Well, you have to ask Franz Schulz that, if And they were big influences on me, and OCTOBER 2018 Newcity he’s still alive. Mainly because it wasn’t I would assume on the others, a lot of theExhibition Momentum, and we put on big aesthetic, it wasn’t like the New York others.shows, mainly by the more mature men abstraction schools. There was a MoMAwho had just returned from the Second exhibition by Peter Selz called “New But what glued you together? WhatWorld War. And that created a lot of Images of Man,” in which a few did you have in common? There wasexcitement. And then within that Chicagoans were in, including Leon no manifesto; you didn’t have aorganization was kind of a nucleus that Golub and Cosmo Campoli. In the review manifesto.were doing similar work, like Fred Berger, of that show the critic referred to theLeon, George Cohen, Cosmo Campoli as “monsters from Chicago.” I think Franz No, no, no. It wasn’t a movement wherefar as I know—that was a tight group, saw that, and came up with the “Monster we all together decided this is areally—and Franz Schulz at some point. Roster” moniker. Franz liked the idea that movement, it wasn’t like—it was looser. If[Schulz] was a critic, he had been an “monsters” sounded tough and gritty, and there was any manifesto, it had to beartist, and he knew everyone. He’s the that reminded him of Chicago, so there’s between Leon Golub and George Cohen,one who coined the term Monster Roster, a lot of stuff going on in there. because they were intellectuals, theyin one of his articles. talked about it all the time. But, then Don And how would you describe Chicago Baum was putting on these shows at theSo he found it, he coined it. at that time? Because obviously, Hyde Park Art Center, again because retrospectively we have the feeling Chicago was such a deadly art scene,Yeah, he coined it. But it was a loose that something happened there, it was you know. And, I remember Jim Nutt wasthing, like, I supposedly am part of the a very feverish moment, what are your a student and lived in my neighborhood,Monster, [and] you know there was a memories of Chicago? and he saw me as a serious artist who was spending his whole life making art. Well, outside of institutions like the Arts So he became a little influenced by me, Club and the Art Institute, and the he wanted to work in my studio, help me Institute of Design, it was kind of out, as an assistant. I didn’t like that idea culturally dead, as far as the physical, the because I liked to be private. But we used visual arts. So the artists formed their to play chess together. And he, he would own organization to put on shows. And get angry when he lost, he would throw then later I was involved with the younger the chair, and I said, this guy is gonna artists, putting on shows called Phalanx. make it big [laughs]. He was so serious, At the Institute of Design, at Illinois even about chess, he had to be a winner. That’s hilarious… So I had to put that in, it was very funny… 15

Looking at your books, there is a recurrent theme of the sea. There are seasides, there is liquid, there are, you know, humid landscapes… what’s the connection to water, to the liquid? Well, I can tell you when I was in Italy, I was impressed by the fact that I saw constructions of a highway up in the hills, about 2,000 kilometers above sea level, and they’re excavating the hills to make this road and there were seashells way up there, 2,000 kilometers above sea level. Stuff like that would make a big impression on me. And then, because my folks were immigrants, you know, their stories about how they came over on the ship. But I don’t know why, what the connection with water and the sea was. I can’t answer that. What’s the role of drawing in your UNTITLED (MOON WATCH) / Dominick Di Meo / 1972 practice? Because when we did the acrylic and synthetic polymer on canvas / 28 x 22 inches Hairy Who interviews, a lot of these Courtesy the Artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago artists are doodlers. What’s the role of drawing in your practice? Did music play a role in your work? by Irving Petlin. It was my studio that Dan Graham always says we can only collected the work to ship out there. We Teachers like Kathleen Blackshear would understand an artist if we know what made banners for demonstrations. And take us to the Field Museum. All the kind of music he or she is listening to. we did silkscreens for anti-war groups, artists: Golub, me, you name it, we all you know, for nothing. went to the Field Museum. We spent as I was heavily into early jazz. I played much time at the Field Museum, drawing, trumpet for a while, and I gave it up So in a way, some of the Monster looking at artifacts from the past, you because I couldn’t devote enough time to Roster artists like Leon Golub, Nancy know, Paleolithic, whatever, animals, blah, it. If I was going to do visual art, I had to Spero, you had that political aspect. blah, blah. We were there all the time, it choose one, so I did the visual art, and Politics are a common ground, is that wasn’t far from the Art Institute when we gave up the trumpet. And partly because correct? were students. of the Field Museum experiences, I was interested in all kinds of ethnic music, like Right. Leon, yeah, was heavily into stuff I wanted to ask you that. Because the Cajun music, African music of all kinds, that I was, too. As were other Chicago other day I saw Betye Saar and David you name it. And classical music, too. artists, you know. Hammons. And they came to ChicagoNewcity OCTOBER 2018 I think in the sixties or seventies at Do you know Studs Terkel? Of course Leon did these napalm some point, and the Field Museum paintings. Did these political aspects was a really important museum for I met him a few times. Yeah, I used to also enter your painting? them. And Leon Golub also always listen to his program on the air. Once we mentioned the Field Museum. Can you were in a record store, and I was looking Well, no, I didn’t put it in my painting. tell me a little bit about your memories at some stuff, this was the LP days, the and what was so important about the shellac days of the old 78s, and he So you kept it separate. Chicago Field Museum? started talking to me, and he suggested something or other. I’d see him at Yeah, it might have crept in, you know, It’s just that it was one of the learning demonstrations, too. Because a lot of us because I don’t think so much about it. I tools, or the experiences with past were politically active, too. Like I was very tended to work when I was prolific, I tend cultures, like Mayan, there’d be, you know, important in the anti-Vietnam war activity, to work instinctively. I didn’t think about it like Aztec, African sculptures were there, and was one of the instigators in Chicago too much. That’s why all my pieces tend and earlier periods, all of this intermixed where we collected work to send to the to have the images of some of the other with artifacts from all these cultures, like Peace Tower in L.A.—you know, that works. so-called primitive and earlier cultures. famous, anti-war thing, partially started We were all turned on by it, it was a big learning experience, it was an exciting thing to go there all the time.16

THEThrough December 30, 2018 Logan Center Gallery • Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts • 915 E 60th St Chicago IL 60637 Candice Lin September 14 TIME — ART WORLDS of A HARDTHE TIME is NOW! CHICAGO’s SOUTH SIDE WHITE BODY1960-1980 arts.uchicago.edu/logan/gallery September 13–December 30 ART WORLDS of A POROUS SLIP smartmuseum.uchicago.edu CHICAGO’s SOUTH SIDE 1960-1980 October 28 Block Building October 12 – December 8 Organized in partnership with My Block, My Hood, My City, with contributions by the Design Apprenticeship Program of the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life and the South Side Home Movie Project. Opening Reception Friday, October 12, 5 – 8 PM Family Day: Won’t You Be a Neighbor? Saturday, October 20, 1 – 4 PM Weinberg/Newton Gallery 300 W Superior Street, Suite 203 Chicago, IL 60654 312 529 5090 weinbergnewtongallery.com Hours Weinberg/Newton Gallery Mon – Sat 10 AM – 5 PM is free and open to the public.

Newcity OCTOBER 2018COMMEMORATIVE TABLET / Dominick Di Meo / 1960-1961 So is it like a stream-of- papier-maché and bones on wooden door / 80 x 36 inches consciousness? Is it like an Courtesy the Artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago automatism?18 I figure each piece is a piece of the one work. You know, just one stage of the work I’m trying to express. So it’s almost like biologically evolving. Yeah, an organic thing that just keeps on going, you know. And where is it now? What’s the last piece you’ve done, the most recent work, what are you working on right now? I’m not doing much work now because I have to do everything with this arm. And I’ve gotten very weak, so I can’t even stretch a little canvas. I’m just finishing a very few things now. And I can’t even stand up, actually, I can’t bend too long because of my back. I’ve got all of these physical problems. And then I’ve got macular degeneration—I can’t see too well, especially out of this eye. So… How old are you now? I’m ninety. I’ll be ninety-one in February [2018. This interview was conducted in 2017]. A few last questions. I wanted to ask you, I’m always interested in unrealized projects, because we know a lot about architects’ unrealized projects. But we don’t know much about artists’ unrealized projects. What are your unrealized projects? Yeah, I wanted to make a monument here in New York of renting, when the rentals were cheaper, renting a lot here in SoHo, and build a monument with arches of heads, you know, like a little park, uh, pyramid of heads. Beautiful. Did you make drawings for that? No, but the things are running around in my head all of the time, which I never, you know, every now and then I’m laying back, oh boy, it would have been nice. I even had the lot picked out. I didn’t ask them how much, but it was between two loft buildings, you know. When things were very cheap here. I have images in my head, now. But you never drew it.

before, you know, I saw a guy who legitimized my, my whole life of making heads. So there was a necessity to do it, you had to do it. Right, I was driven to do it. Mainly because it was something I could do and I got encouragement, and respect for it. I just want you to describe for me again, this unrealized project, for me to understand better. It’s the most exciting thing for me of the whole interview, your unrealized project. Yeah, well they would be life size, my gaping heads, you know, that are in a lot of my work… Not quite skulls, and not quite heads, in between. With open mouths and socket eyes. And so what would you have done with these gaping heads? They would be turned into architectural elements, like arches that you could walk through, or pyramids of piles of these heads, or, uhhhhhh, benches that you could sit on, made of heads, but just a garden of sort of a… what you call that art of so-called primitive people… Outsider. Like an outsider art thing. Just…STARTLED PERSONAGE / Dominick Di Meo / c. 1968 Beautiful.acrylic, spray paint, and transfer on canvas / 48 x 36 inchesCourtesy the Artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago Just an environment of my heads in architectural forms, like a garden.No, I never drew it, or made the studies been a made artist, if I promoted myself, This was an amazing interview, thank OCTOBER 2018 Newcityfor it, no. Because I knew it would never and had gone to openings, you know, did you very, very much.be realized, I didn’t have the funds, or… all of the stuff you’re supposed to do. But I didn’t do any of that. -------How do you see Chicago, now? Haveyou been there recently? So Gerhard Richter says art is the Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, highest form of hope. What is art for Switzerland) is Artistic Director of theI have no idea what’s going on there. And you? Do you have a definition for art? Serpentine Galleries, London. Prior toI’m not in touch, most of my friends have this, he was the Curator of the Muséedied, my peers have died. I don’t think in those terms. I’m not d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since anti-intellectual, I just don’t intellectualize his first show World Soup (The KitchenNow, what would be your advice to a about most of these things, you know. All Show) in 1991, he has curated more thanyoung artist? I can say is, you know, I had to be an 300 shows. artist. I don’t know what drove me there,Don’t do it, man [laughter]. Unless you what pushed me in that direction, except -------have income, don’t do it. It’s too rough. for that incident I told you about, and theNo, I’m making a joke. I don’t know what encouragement in public schools, for my Creative Chicago: An InterviewI’d say to a young artist. You see, I’ve drawings, you know, paintings of heads Marathon with Hans Ulrich Obrist takesbeen so disconnected from the art world, and all that. Which is, in a way, one of the place Saturday, September 29 fromespecially here in New York. I felt once I reasons I became so interested in 1-6PM in the Aon Grand Ballroom ondo the work, the work has to speak for Dubuffet—not that my heads were gross, Navy Pier as part of the Chicagoitself. Of course, in this commercial world, like his, but here I was doing them as a Humanities Festival’s kickoff to their fallit doesn’t work that way. I would have young high-school kid, or even younger, festival Graphic! in partnership with EXPO CHICAGO. This event is free and open to the public.  19

Music Box Theatre and Music Box Films are proud to be an integral part of Chicago’s thriving film scene Become a Music Box Distributing award-winning Theatre Member today cinema nationwideIndividual and Dual Memberships Restaurant discounts Discounted tickets Deals on Music Box Films DVD’s Bottomless popcorn Free Monthly Screenings Discounted house wines Advance purchase for special screenings ENJOY A COCKTAIL TRANSIT SEE OUR IN OUR LOUNGE UPCOMING FILMS AT THE 54TH CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IN THE AISLESNewcity OCTOBER 2018 BECOMING ASTRID OWN THE CAPTAIN ON BLU-RAY, DVD AND ON DEMAND NOVEMBER 27TH www.musicboxtheatre.com @musicboxchicago www.musicboxfilms.com @musicboxfilms @musicboxtheatre20

FILMMAKER OF THE MOMENTBING LIUBY RAY PRIDE PHOTO BY SALLY BLOOD OCTOBER 2018 Newcity 21

“ Can you contrast the Rockford I was completely in thrall to the premiere and the Chicago premiere? movie only moments in, when the BING The Chicago premiere was great, in that I’ve credits roll over the agile skate lived in Chicago for ten years and feel a con- through near-deserted downtown LIU’S nection to the community. Rockford was sur- Rockford. And the music makes the real because so many people who came out jazzy understated elegance of the masterful, knew people in the film, were tangentially in- skating pierce the heart. momentous debut volved or knew me and my family. In Rockford, I feel like skateboarding is meditation in mo- a couple of my former neighbors came and tion, a chance to chase an enlightened state documentary said they were surprised at what was going of mindless being. I also wanted to elevate ‘Minding the Gap’ on behind closed doors next to them. It was that feeling on a cinematic level, to have one of many moments that premiere week- skateboarding taken seriously, to make it is a diamond: end that pierced through my filmmaker’s more difficult to write off as an expression of shocking, sharp, shield and reminded me the reality of what adolescent angst. In reality, a skateboard is slicing, gorgeous, the film has unveiled. more like a saxophone than a punching bag— glinting, cutting deep, you can express a whole range of emotions deeper” was only the start What date would you mark as depending on what kind of music you want of good things to say when when you shot the first footage? to make on your four wheels. One of skate- I reviewed it in September. It was sometime in late 2012 that I began in- boarding’s secrets is that it allows young peo- Liu, who moved to Rockford terviewing people with the thought in my ple who’ve been taught to repress their emo- when he was eight, head that I’d do a project about skateboard- tions to feel something. chronicles two of his ers’ relationships with their families, so I was skateboarding friends and twenty-three at the time. What was your philosophy toward himself across a dozen years music, both score and songs? to arrive at his ninety-four- “Is this where I pretend you’re not Two documentaries spring to mind that deep- minute gem, which then here or where we talk the whole ly affected me for their music alone: “October took the U.S. Documentary time?” one of your friends jokes. Was Country” and “In a Dream.” Also the score to Special Jury Award for there always that little bit of meta? “The Assassination of Jesse James” [by Nick Breakthrough Filmmaking Naturally so. It was sometimes a way for Zack Cave and Warren Ellis]. and Keire to dismantle any nervousness they when it premiered had of me filming them so much off the board. For “Minding the Gap,” I used quite a few at Sundance. These meta moments tend to happen in most tracks from the film “Mustang” as temp music. documentary filmmaking, it just so happens I would also scour Bandcamp for atmospher-Newcity OCTOBER 2018 that these ended up being useful in telling ic, melodic and subtly emotional instrumental the story of “Minding the Gap.” tracks. When I started working with [editor] Josh Altman on a different project last spring, You asked the same questions I was amazed at how long he’d look for the of people several times over the right temp track for certain scenes. By the extended course of shooting. time he came on to work on “Minding the One thing that Gordon Quinn talks about is, Gap” with me, we had discovered we had in an interview, if someone isn’t keen about similar taste in music, so it helped to be on answering a certain question, you can always the same page for scenes we were cutting move on and return to that topic later in the and showing each other. Josh discovered that interview. I took that to an extreme by asking “Video Life” song one day on his Discover Keire and Zack, year after year, about their Weekly on Spotify—I remember him coming parents. Sometimes it’d yield a repetitive an- into the Airbnb where we were editing from swer, but more often there was something and being excited about trying it out. After his new to be learned for both of us. I’m not sure first pass, it was clear he was right. if Keire would’ve remembered as much of his dad’s advice, for example, had I not pressed I tried quite a few different songs for the last him to keep talking about him. The process credits montage over the years, with the idea made me realize how difficult it can be to un- that it’d be the sort of song I’d use for a more derstand our past, especially when it’s buried straightforward skate montage. “Tobacco beneath trauma. Road” by Common Market was one. Neil Young’s “Old Man” was another. It was the How old were you with the goofy end of last summer when I landed on the “Are you ready for some fucking action” Mountain Goats’ “This Year,” a song that I lis- moment where you mime clapsticks tened to a lot when the album first came out. to start a take? Who was that grinning At first, I was worried it’d be too on-the-nose kid? Do you know him still? or too optimistic, but in hindsight I couldn’t That was [shot] with my first camera, yes. be happier with it. The whole point of making I was either fourteen or fifteen. In many ways skate videos when I was a kid was that it I’m still that goofy, fun-seeking kid, but I keep helped me redefine my reality, despite how him guarded and only let him come out when difficult real life actually was, and it felt right it feels safe—oftentimes that safe space is to end on that same note. when I’m skateboarding with friends who are also unapologetically in touch with their lit- What influences would we not expect tle-kid selves. to hear from you?22

As a teenager, the intro to Transworld Skate- ending on their own and he said “it’d be great if I kept tweaking things. Every time we had to re- OCTOBER 2018 Newcity boarding’s skate video “First Love.” Zak Arctand- you could have all these planes landing at once,” deliver a DCP, I saw it as another opportunity to er’s skate video, “Middlewestern.” Richard Lin- which eventually prompted us to try that inter- fix this one thing here or that one thing there. klater’s “Waking Life.” Harmony Korine’s cut climactic montage. At our last Kartemquin“Gummo.” “Little Miss Sunshine.” rough-cut screening late in 2017, Ingrid Roettgen, Gordon Quinn always emphasizes who does print traffic at Kartemquin, said that that elemental vérité will inescapably You use the phrase “artsy subculture” Nina’s story doesn’t get the same resolution as reflect social issues without obvious, to describe where you came from. Keire or Zack’s. That’s what prompted me to go terrible heavy lifting.The artsy subculture that I identified with grow- back and interview her one last time, where she Well put. That’s just it. He didn’t have to explain ing up was about being different, being authen- says those great lines about not ever having much. I’d never seen Kartemquin’s films before tic, expressing difficult emotions. There was a lived for herself. Finally, at just about every I did the Diverse Voices in Doc fellowship with lot of direct and indirect rebelling against mas- screening I ever had over the years, someone has them in 2014. There are two films that really culine norms: we painted our nails, listened to suggested taking race out of the film because it spoke to me: “Stevie” and “Now We Live on Clif- Cat Power, hugged one another, let ourselves takes away from the other themes. In late Novem- ton.” These are prime examples of the power of be emotional. By the time I came back to Rock- ber 2017, the last shoot I did before our Sundance vérité. On practical terms, Gordon talked about ford to do “Minding the Gap,” I realized that not premiere, I went back and got Keire talking not letting the sound roll and just hanging out with all boys had grown up in this sort of subculture about race as a stilted subject but as something a camera and waiting for something interesting and in many ways I was lucky to have found the his father taught him, which finally made that to happen. When I started trying this out, it slow- type of family I had. theme feel earned and pertinent to his story. Fi- ly dawned on me that this is a lot like what I was nally, I wouldn’t have met [producer] Diane Quon doing when I first picked up a camera, hanging In your mind, are there any discrete if not for a rough-cut screening at Kartemquin out with skateboarders and waiting for them to versions that exist, that seemed, “Oh, that she attended. She has seen the film prob- do something interesting. this is the film?” I can imagine this film ably more times than she’s wanted to and has was a terribly bratty child to raise and always added invaluable insights on everything What did you learn from working jobs bring into society. from new storylines to the loss of a few frames. on the Chicago productions on your I’m glad you use that analogy—I very much saw resume? Were there sharp, small the film as a child that grew from an embryonic How much did the approach lessons you took from other members of stage into something that is speaking full sen- change once Diane and KTQ came the crew or the producers or directors? tences. I’d made dozens, if not hundreds of on board? Were there really only Learning how to light and how to shoot for good rough cuts over the years, and I always tell peo- thirty feedback screenings? lighting even when you’re not using artificial ple that if we hadn’t gotten into Sundance, I I count screenings I did with a couple friends in sources was invaluable. Picking up tips from would’ve kept shooting. This is one of those proj- my living room and sending private links to peo- Steadicam operators helped me develop the ects that can never be truly finished, just walked ple as feedback screenings as well, not just for- skateboarding cinematography in the film. away from. And I’m happy with where I left off. mal screening-room screenings with survey Working on those Dick Wolf shows especially, sheets filled out afterwards, which I didn’t start which are mostly handheld, taught me that How many hours of footage will you doing until working with Kartemquin. But yes, handheld shooting has its own discipline and own up to? How much was digitized there were definitely over thirty times when I got intent. I remember doing a lot of handheld and put into play? feedback on cuts. Certainly the decision to fol- zooms on the lens probably because I workedThis gets at the sleight-of-hand of the film. Ar- low fewer characters for longer in a vérité-style so much on “Chicago P.D.”! [laughs] Being able chival-wise, I only had maybe five or ten minutes fashion came out of working with Kartemquin. to pull focus intuitively. It’s difficult to parse every of Zack. We only knew each other for a couple Shortly after Diane came on board, we got our little detail, but a lot of the work on those Chica- years before I moved to Chicago. And then for first major funding source from POV and then a go productions just comes down to how can you Keire, I only had one clip of him getting into a few months later what would become our main make something work without the facade of glitz fight. He’s seven years younger than me and I source of funding from ITVS. Without having and glamour that capital-H Hollywood connotes. went to the filmer of his generation, Dylan, to get Diane on the team to help manage the cash flow It’s amazing the ingenuity that goes into those the other pieces of archival to work with. I’ve and expenditure and legal, I wouldn’t have been shows behind the scenes, as well as the long never calculated the bulk of filming from 2012- able to make the film. Not to mention that her hours and efficiency of it all. I could probably talk 2017, but what I had amounted to roughly under background is in marketing and she was think- for days about the indirect lessons gleaned from eight terabytes of footage. ing way ahead about things like key art and post- working on the crew side. er design. What did you learn through the Part of your film’s beauty is how it faces successive edits? Is perfection the enemy of the good? male emotions, weaknesses, things weThis is nearly impossible to answer, but I’ll cite a Yes. One of the most exciting aspects of crafting hide and the legacy of rage and abuse. few things. At one of my first Kartemquin rough- this film was embracing the imperfect, the parts It comes down to respecting experiences and cut screenings, in 2015, I heard from David Simp- of the film that people would typically edit out emotions. One of my favorite films this year is son that I was cutting for both theme and story or sound mixers clean up. “Eighth Grade,” because it validates and re- and that for this project there’s a strong reason spects an eighth grade girl’s emotions, which to cut more for story. When sitting with Gordon Did you say to yourself, “Oh, okay, is something we don’t even realize we’re dis- Quinn in the edit suite, watching cuts, which I this is it? This is this film,” and then, missing as much as we are until we’ve seen a did several times throughout the years, he “Maybe just this one more thing…” story like this. It’s one thing to step into a trau- brought up the importance of characterizing After we found out we got into Sundance and ma survivor’s heart or a violence perpetrator’s Rockford as a unique setting for this story. Steve had a month left to finish color correction, music heart or a mother’s heart or a son’s heart, but James told me to cut out a father-son storyline score, sound mix and motion graphics, it be- what if you stepped into all of them all at once? that I finally relented to when I started working came a process of acceptance that this is how That’s a more truthful and experiential look at with Josh Altman, who challenged me to get the film is going to enter the world. But Steve the cycle of trauma that takes into consider- each character’s story working on its own before James told me he usually changes things after ation emotions first and foremost. In order to weaving them together. At a screening at Davis Sundance, so it made me feel better. We did end move forward on complex issues, we have to Guggenheim’s studio, we had everyone’s story up cutting five minutes out, post-Sundance and consider emotions. 23



Chicago’s Screen Gems OCTOBER 2018 Newcity 25

Newcity OCTOBER 2018 hispers in chorus: the sixth annual As we asked variations of the “Why Chicago/ How Chicago” question, most responses came W Film 50 assembles the wise words as representative of a complex of edifices rath- of fifty individuals or collabora- er than the century-long edifice complex that tors or collectives who shape the Chicago fashioned our skyline. When you find head- film scene as filmmakers of one kind quarters, when you find home, you can shelter or another. Does two years constitute a gen- and fashion the world that will take you down eration in accelerated media time? Twen- the path to the rest of your life. ty-six entries recur from 2016’s filmmaker roster; twenty-four entries embrace new Sally Blood photographed the Film 50 at the faces. A total of sixty-five individuals. Nine- headquarters of Kartemquin Films, the Ros- teen represent partnerships or collectives. coe Village fount of creativity and progres- (We’ll give you your Chicago fire.) Freshmen sive impulse the group acquired in 1975. The alongside the experienced, industry cheek- modest site is an emblematic location to meet by-jowl with art: the young, thine experi- these makers. Its decades-long communal enced, each finding their moment, this mo- vibe matches what these individuals share ment. Filmmakers are under the radar, with us: a sensation of urgency and of neces- sounding the sonar, nearly surfacing, not yet sity, that change and transformation is not surfacing, then breaking onto the scene. Re- only necessary, but imminent. Each and ev- member, overnight success requires at least ery person suggests that collaboration and ten years of preparation: Chicago is a succes- community, love of work and love of each sion of bushels, with light kept under them other will sustain. None of the filmmakers until suddenly, as with our cover subject, why are as blunt as Auden, who wrote in his poem had more of us not heard of Bing Liu? “September 1, 1939,” “We must love one an- other or die,” but let’s look around the corner Many of the figures in these entries find in- and listen, shall we? spiration and nourishment from family and friends, grants and groups, collectives and Film 50 is written by Ray Pride. collaborations, academic employment or con- All photos by Sally Blood nections, but all have a home-away-from- home (along with mostly modest homes). with photo assistance from Marisa Adame. Shot on location at Kartemquin Films.26

1 Steve James — 1Steve James Stephen Cone — 3“When ‘America to Me’ began, we were planning pher and producer as well as co-director of still proudly teaching as a lecturer in the de- a total of six episodes and hoped to submit to 2014’s bittersweet doc, “Almost There.” Wicken- partment of Radio/Television/Film at North- the Toronto Film Festival in 2017,” documentar- den edited the three films back-to-back. “I came western University,” Cone says. “Chicago has ian Steve James (“Hoop Dreams,” “The Inter- back to Chicago thinking I would take the sum- been my personal and creative home base for rupters”) says of his longest film ever, a madly mer off but realized that for me editing is like over fourteen years. As ever, it provides me with ambitious, wildly successful chronicle of a year being a musician, and I can’t imagine it would a supportive and nurturing environment in at Oak Park River Forest High School. “But be fun for someone like, say, Mr. Rogers’ pal which I can make the work I want to make when knowing my history of, um, expanded works, few Yo-Yo Ma, to take a summer away from his in- I want to make it, aided by hundreds of folks on the team believed either of those possible. As strument.” Wickenden’s slate of new work in- ready to jump in and lend their talents, enthu- we dove into editing, it quickly became clear that cludes producing and co-editing an animated siasm and expertise at the drop of a hat. Chi- we would need eight hours, then ten hours. We documentary, “Feels Good Man,” “about the bi- cago is an artist’s wonderland, and I don’t see still managed to convince our co-producers Par- zarre journey of Pepe the Frog from laid-back that changing anytime soon.” ticipant Media and Starz that a ninety-minute stoner to hate symbol and back again.” 4 finale was a good idea. We premiered the first five episodes at Sundance 2018, and then Joe Swanberg worked like crazy to finish the whole series in time for the late August premiere. Editorially, it Thirty-seven-year-old Joe Swanberg, with at was a massive undertaking: the equivalent of least eighteen features behind him, has turned trying to keep more than a dozen plates—the his hand to the Netflix series, “Easy.” “That has kids’ stories—spinning narratively as we go been the big project for the last three years, and along. This was personally the hardest, most de- will take me through the end of this year,” Swan- manding thing I’ve ever done, despite having had the most stellar team of editors ever in Les- lie Simmer, David Simpson, Alanna Schmelter, and Rubin Daniels, Jr..” James had specific needs for his crew that would infiltrate the 3,200-strong student body. “We would be following stories of kids, and it would be not only practical to have serious help, but have a younger, diverse team of segment directors and producers who could more easily connect with the kids and relate more personally to their experience.” 2Aaron WickendenAaron Wickenden’s essential work as an editor 3and co-editor speaks for itself—“The Interrupt-Stephen Coneers,” “Finding Vivian Maier,” “Best of Enemies:Buckley vs. Vidal”—and in 2018 alone, “Gener- Vigilant, diligent Chicago filmmaker Stephenation Wealth,” “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” Cone rose to national attention—finally—withand the $22.5 million-grossing “Won’t You Be the international release of his 2017 “PrincessMy Neighbor?” Wickenden, newly inducted into Cyd,” the latest in his warm, attentive dramas,the Motion Picture Academy, is a cinematogra- after a run at over forty festivals around the world, and which made best-of lists in multiple Aaron Wickenden — 2 national publications, and prompted career features in the Los Angeles Times, IndieWire and Out. Cone had an early career retro- spective of his features at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image, and a partial retrospective at Unknown Pleasures Ber- OCTOBER 2018 Newcity lin. Newly represented by ICM Partners, Cone plans to shoot his largest-scale film to date, “Nudes,” a Southern family drama, in the fall or winter. He’s also directing two epi- sodes of Sundance Now series “This Close.” “I’m 27

cago-set doc, “‘63 Boycott” in 2017, and has another in the works with Leslie Simmer, “Left-Handed Pianist.” “I spend significant time in the edit room with the filmmakers,” Quinn says of the recent Kartemquin crop, which also includes: “America to Me,” “Minding the Gap,” “Edith+Eddie,” “All The Queen’s Horses,” “Aba- cus: Small Enough to Jail,” “Stranded by the State” and “Raising Bertie.”The social-change veteran remains an optimist after more than fifty years as a filmmaker. “What makes me optimis- tic in these times is seeing local emerging doc- umentary filmmakers get involved and take lead- ership in the organizations that represent our field like the International Documentary Asso- ciation, and other organizations that are playing a role in opening up the field to minorities and women. New organizations and production en- tities are doing exciting work and venerable in- stitutions like Kartemquin and Chicago Film- makers are thriving.” 7 — Gordon Quinn 8 berg says. “I love making the show, but I’m ex- one of four segment directors. Liu describes his Joshua Abrams hausted, emotionally worn out from the process, ready for some space to have a life for a while path in the Film 50 Artist of the Moment feature While the secret weapon of documentaries pro- before I make anything else. But I’ve said and felt that before and ended up diving right into in this issue. duced by Chicago’s Kartemquin Films is intense something, so who knows?” Swanberg crafted six features in 2011, so the production of eight collaboration, its secret secret weapon is the half-hour episodes per season in the last three years could be a comfortable cruising speed for 6 scores provided by Joshua Abrams. From “The the easygoing director. The format of “Easy”— standalone episodes of comedic-to-weary ro- Deborah Stratman Trials of Muhammad Ali” (2013) and “Almost mantic revelations of disappointments, with There” (2014) to 2016’s “Abacus: Small Enough changing cast—makes for a visual mini-history of Chicago of this moment. Swanberg’s gun- Innovative film and video artist Deborah Strat- to Jail” and “Unbroken Glass” and this fall, the and-run production efficiency, even with expo- nentially larger crews since his 2005 debut, man finished the highly regarded “The Illinois epic series, “America To Me,” Abrams brings nu- “Kissing on the Mouth,” allows for an expansive, even kaleidoscopic chronicle of the public (and Parables” since her 2016 inclusion in Film 50, ance and grace to the smallest human moments intimate) spaces in neighborhoods across the city. “Chicago provides the opportunity for a and has since made a four-channel, six- in hs bristling marvel of a score for “America to normal life that isn’t dominated by the film in- dustry,” he adds, “I’m sensing less brain-drain. teen-monitor video piece called “Siege,” which Me.” Abrams watches the moment; he antici- A lot of young people who are moving here say it’s because they want to live in Chicago, not was installed at New York because it’s a cheap stopover on their way to somewhere else.” City’s Columbus Circle MTA 5 station as part of the Museum 4 — Joe Swanberg Bing Liu of Arts and Design’s “Shaping Twenty-nine-year-old filmmaker Bing Liu is hav- Space with Sound” exhibition. ing one of the best years in Chicago film, at least in terms of visibility. While Liu worked as a cam- Comprised of optical illusions era assistant on Chicago-made productions like “Easy,” “Sense8,” “Empire,” “The Girlfriend Expe- used for hypnosis, meditation rience” and “Chi-Raq,” he was refining his debut feature, the personal essay, “Minding the Gap,” and hallucination, the piece for about a decade since he began offhandedly chronicling his best friends as they skateboard- was intended “as a hack of ed around Rockford. After producer Diane Quon took up the project at Kartemquin Films, Liu the public screens, normally joined the collaborators on Steve James’ ten- and-a-half-hour epic assay of a year at Oak Park used for advertising.” Other River Forest High School, “America to Me” as shorts getting festival play in- clude “Optimism” and “Teach- ing an Alphabet the Plants.” Larger projects including a film collaboration with pio- neer filmmaker Barbara Ham- mer, using material she shot in Guatemala in the 1970s. “And I continue slugging away at ‘Hello Ladies,’ a hybrid doc I’m working on in Ethiopia. I’llNewcity OCTOBER 2018 be there shooting this No- vember and December.” 7 Gordon Quinn Kartemquin artistic director and co-founder, producer-di- rector Gordon Quinn, com- pleted a long-long-term Chi-28

BRING YOUR FILMS TO THE PARKSACCEPTING LOCALLY-PRODUCED &CHICAGO-FOCUSED FILM SUBMISSIONSOCTOBER 15 - DECEMBER 7For five years, the Chicago Park District has brought local films to local parks withthe Chicago Onscreen Local Film Showcase. We shown more than 75 films in morethan 30 parks across the city, and yours could be next.Submit your film at bit.ly/ChicagoOnscreen THE OF F I CIA L REWARDS This program is presented as part of the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in P R OGR A M OF THE CHICAGO the Parks with the support of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Arts programming in PARK DISTRICT neighborhoods across the city advances the goals of the Chicago Park www.ChiParkPoints.com District and the Chicago Cultural Plan. Learn more at:City of Chicago | Rahm Emanuel, Mayor www.nightoutintheparks.comChicago Park District | Board of Commissioners | Michael P. Kelly, General Superintendent & CEO For more information about your Chicago Park District, visit www.chicagoparkdistrict.com or call 312.742.7529 or 312.747.2001 (TTY).



final, 151-minute episode of “Sense8,” the time- and-space-fracturing, globe-hopping science fiction epic that had come to an abrupt and un- seemly end after two seasons on the streaming service. Showing the film at Music Box in May as a benefit for Emily’s List, Lana Wachowski wrote in advance that the public event would demonstrate the “open-hearted connectedness that is so prevalent in the people who love this show.” Lana also made an open, winning ap- pearance at the theater in June during the an- nual Cinepocalypse fest to talk about “Bound” before its Blu-ray release. “I was trying to think of a film set in a genre world where an LGBTQ character won and got a happily ever after,” she said at the event. “So, I said ‘I’m gonna make it!’”pates the future, the possibility of change, the Joshua Abrams — 8 11possibility of tragedy, and so many grades ofemotion. His score is stealth: patient, suggestive, 10 Jennifer Reedereager to surprise. Abrams’ imagination is alwaysfiercely applied to filmmakers’ ambitions.En- Lana Wachowski Jennifer Reeder, living and making films in Chi-trenched in Chicago’s jazz and improvised and Lilly Wachowski cago for over twenty-five years, has forty-sevenmusic communities for over twenty years, work- shorts to her name. “I have built a reputationing as a sideman, in collaborative improvisation- While the feats of speculation and imagination which has meaningful impact on my creativeal groups and touring internationally with his in the works from Lana Wachowski and Lilly process,” she says. “Last year I shot a film inown band, Natural Information Society. Wachowski are, as ever, remain undisclosed at Germany and two films in L.A., but I happily re- their Ravenswood studio, Netflix did finance a turned home to Chicago after.” Her first feature, the poppy multiculti lesbian romantic comedy, “Signature Move” was released in 2017 and shown at over a hundred festivals worldwide. She is in post production on her second feature, a haunted midwestern teen tragedy, “Knives and Skin,” which is closer in tone and mood to her prize-winning body of work. [Newcity’s Chicago Film Project produced “Signature Move” and “Knives and Skin”]. Reeder remains ambitious, finishing revisions on the script for “All The Small9 Jennifer Reeder — 11Steve Conrad OCTOBER 2018 NewcityWith season two of his globe-girdling Amazonspy series “Patriot” in the can, Chicago’s mostambitious episodic auteur, writer-direc-tor-showrunner Steve Conrad is set to conjurea limited-series modern film noir, “Our Lady,LTD,” for MGM television. “Patriot” took at leastseven years from conception to reality; the roadis less bumpy for Conrad now. His new seriesstars Jimmi Simpson (“Westworld”) as a dis-graced firefighter-turned-grifter who meets hismatch in the form of a pastor played by BenKingsley. Contests of male ego are sure to fol-low once more. Conrad plans to direct six ofthe ten episodes in Santa Fe. Although Conradis a  plainspoken proponent of telling Chica-go-set stories, scheduling of crews (outside ofDick Wolf’s “Chicago” series bubble) canchange those plans: much of the second sea-son of “Patriot” was shot in other cities, includ-ing Paris. Still, there’s Chicago flavor, not limit-ed to the presence of Conrad perennial TonyFitzpatrick. “The opportunity is fleeting,” Con-rad told the Tribune as the first season wasshooting, “Trying not to coast creatively is thething that gets into all the corners and all thedown time.” 31

David E. Simpson — 13 14 — Sam Bailey Bodies,” which she co-wrote and is directing. 13 cancer, with an upcoming stint cutting the Kin- She describes it as “a dystopian speculative fic- dling Group’s upcoming documentary, “The Last tion story in the distant future at the ruins of the David E. Simpson Strike,” showing the 1981 events around Ronald U.S.-Mexico border wall, following two young Reagan firing 13,000 striking air traffic controllers refugee girls as they come of age alone in the Of his recent creative life, editor David Simpson “and how that moment led to today’s working Mexican desert.” This past summer, “I had no says, “I’ve been slaving over a hot Avid as one of world.” Spring brings Steve James’ documentary other life than making ‘Knives and Skin,’” she two lead editors, with Leslie Simmer on ‘America on the upcoming Chicago mayoral election to the says. “But I am also a professor at UIC, teaching to Me,’ which debuted in August on Starz.” Simp- edit suite. film writing and production, and I am a single son is rightly proud of the substantial achieve- mother of three young boys.” ment. “The labor of crafting it kept us locked in 14 the edit room for nearly two-and-a-half years. The 12 project even ran out of post money at the end of Sam Bailey April, but I kept showing up at audio mix into July— Leslie Simmer joking with Steve that paid or not, I couldn’t allow “Chicago is my soul,” says filmmaker Sam Bailey. him to fuck it up alone.” Simpson made his first “Over the last year, I realized that not having my “One of the hallmarks of working on a Kartem- trip to the Oscars this year, for James’ “Abacus: roots in Chicago hinders my creative process so quin film is being able to edit for long periods of Small Enough To Jail,” which he edited with John I’m splitting my time between two cities. I con- time on a single documentary,” “America to Me” Farbrother. He also made his fourth Sundance sider L.A. my office and Chicago my incubator. co-editor Leslie Simmer says, “in order to allow trip  with a film: the first half of “America to Me” I talk about how Chicago has a blue-collar ap- for complexity and to bring an organic flow to premiered in the festival’s inaugural episodic pro- proach to its art and that’s still true. So many intercutting multiple stories from many hours, gramming section. While recovering from the ten- people here are committed to making the work— even many years of production.” Simmer com- and-half-hour series, Simpson has edited the first not just talking about making the work.” The pleted work on “Raising Bertie,” and in the two- phase of a film about young-adult survivors of “Brown Girls” HBO series is in development, as and-a-half years since, she’s worked on the ten episodes of “America to Me.” “Working from Leslie Simmer — 12 around 1,500 hours of footage, it took a team ofNewcity OCTOBER 2018 five editors [Steve James, David E. Simpson, Rubin Daniels, Jr., Alanna Schmelter] to sculpt it into an inquiry into how a well-funded and well-intentioned high school is failing to provide an equitable education and high-school experi- ence for its students of color. We laughed, we cried, we sweated and problem-solved. I’m not completely emotionally over that experience, having fallen in love with the families and teach- ers whose stories I came to know so well.” Sim- mer is co-directing, with Gordon Quinn, “Left-Handed Pianist,” a portrait of a retired Chi- cago music teacher who was paralyzed on his right side and who played piano through a body of music composed for the left hand. “We’re hop- ing this film will transcend traditional ‘inspira- tional’ films.” Simmer says.32

Scrappers Film Group — 15 well as a film about Houston Texas’ DeAndre 15 kel in September. Directed by David Schalliol, Hopkins’ mother, Sabrina Greenlee. Bailey is di- the vibrant doc dives into displacement, public recting a digital series, “East of La Brea,” for Paul Scrappers Film Group housing and structural disadvantage. Members Feig’s new production company, as well as of the group have become go-to shooters for“Masculine/Masculine,” a short that debuted at Brian Ashby, Peter Galassi, out-of-town documentary directors; Ben Kolak the L.A. Film Fest. Bailey she sees more work Colette Ghunim, Giorgia Harvey, was cinematographer for six episodes of Mor- by more hands in the offing: “With the accep- David Jacobson, Ben Kolak, Yana Kunichoff, gan Neville and David Chang’s Netflix series, tance of web series as a calling card, a lot more Amber Love, Luis Perez, David Schalliol “Ugly Delicious,” while Brian Ashby shot on the voices are being invited to the table. Or, better Scrappers Film Group, one of multitple produc- presidential campaign trail for AJ Schnack’s Van- yet, they’re making their own tables.” tive Chicago documentary groups, premiered ity Fair series “NomiNation.” A documentary their six-years-in-the-making “The Area” at Sis- about the crisis and hoped-for comeback of Chi- cago State University is in the works, and Diane Quon — 16 post-production is wrapping on “Stateville Call- Harvey Moshman — 48 ing,” about the incarceration of the elderly. A doc about the roots and legacy of David Foster Wal- lace in central Illinois and a project in collabo- ration with a dozen high schoolers from Chica- go and Beijing about education, democracy and John Dewey are current projects. 16 OCTOBER 2018 Newcity Diane Quon Diane Quon’s career includes a stretch in the studio system in Los Angeles, where she was VP of marketing at Paramount. She worked on marketing and outreach for several Kartemquin films in 2015, and those projects gave her insight into what it takes to get a social justice docu- mentary into the world. “My first years at Kar- temquin, I was learning and being mentored my- self! But my marketer’s skills translated well to producing, so it was a fast learning curve. Unlike working at Paramount where we would auto- matically release a film into hundreds of theaters, I had to scrap for every screening. On the other hand, every screening became meaningful.” Quon came on as producer of Bing Liu’s “Mind- 33

Bea Cordelia and Daniel Kyri — 18 ing the Gap” in 2016, and is co-producing up- With that change, my hope was to start produc- azoo, Michigan in 1978. Hercules is also directing and co-producing (with Greg Kinczewski and coming Kartemquin Films “Left-Handed Pianist” ing in Chicago, but as they say, life happens. I Sanford Horwitt) a documentary for early 2020 delivery about liberal icon Abner Mikva, one of and “The Dilemma of Desire.” Quon was born lost my son almost nine years ago and it devas- the few people to have served in all three branch- es of government. He is executive producing two and raised in Chicago and her parents and sib- tated me. I struggled to even leave the house. additional docs: “Flannery,” about Southern writ- er Flannery O’Connor, directed by Elizabeth Coff- lings are here, so she considers this her home. One of my best friends in L.A.  invited me to at- man and Mark Bosco; and “Punch 9: Harold Washington for Chicago,” by Joe Winston. “I loved marketing, but always wanted to produce tend Sundance. I fell in love with documentaries 18 my own films. When my husband had a great and realized what a difference film could make. Bea Cordelia job opportunity in Chicago, we made the deci- How better to honor my son—and also to make and Daniel Kyri sion to move back here with my four children. an impact on young people including my three Bea Cordelia and Daniel Kyri co-wrote, directed, produced and starred in “The T,” a web series daughters? So I went back home featuring Jo and Carter, a trans woman and queer black man, former lovers and best friends, with a desire to produce documen- searching for love, sex and friendship in Chicago. “Is ‘The T’ the Queer TV Show We’ve All Been Bob Hercules — 17 taries and luckily I discovered Kar- Waiting For?” the Daily Beast asked of its July premiere, reporting that it “shows queer and temquin right in my backyard.” transgender people dealing with real human problems, yes, but still just living.” “I practice artNewcity OCTOBER 2018 17 as activism,” Cordelia says, “and weaponize vul- nerability to yield empathy, and so change peo- Bob Hercules ple’s hearts about marginalized communities. This has been true of my solo work, and has only Bob Hercules and Keith Walker’s grown more multifaceted in my collaboration Media Process Group turned thir- with Daniel: we make intersectional work that ty-three this year, and Walker, the uplifts the voices of many communities at once.” “go-to” D.P. for Oprah Winfrey, shot Cordelia’s career has been largely as a solo per- frequently for “60 Minutes.” But a formance artist, in scores of performances, in- high note for Hercules this year was the Peabody Award for his film, “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise,” which has accrued nineteen festival awards on three continents across two years, as well as broadcast on PBS’ American Masters. He’s work- ing on his first narrative feature film toward a 2019 start, a comedy he co-wrote with Second City alum Jeff Rogers, “Waiting for the Clash,” a comedy based loosely on his days as a college radio deejay in Kalam-34

ROCKE FE LLE R CHAPE L AT The Chapel’s signature mix of arts + spirit in the magnificent setting of its resonant space SPEKTRAL QUARTET WITH MARY PAN PLAIN,  AIR FRIDAY OCTOBE R 5 | 7:30 PM The acclaimed Spektral Quartet plays Plain, Air by Tonia Ko, a musical illustration of Lake Michigan’s shoreline; and Gloria Coates’ String Quartet No. 7, Angels, conjured with colossal chords played by Mary Pan on the organ and serpentine slides in the strings. Free. ANNA VON HAUSSWOLFF THE MIRACULOUS TUESDAY OCTOBE R 16 | 7:30 PM Making vast use of the dreamy soundscapes of Rockefeller’s famed Skinner organ, Anna von Hausswolff performs The Miraculous, a work steeped in her childhood stories about a place of natural beauty that became the backdrop for a momentous uprising. Tickets at emptybottle.com, $15–18. SILENT FILMS WITH JAY WARREN, ORGAN FRANKENSTEIN + METROPOLIS SATURDAY OCTOBE R 20 | 7 PM For the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Rockefeller Chapel screens the rarely shown Thomas Edison adaptation (1910, 16 min), with science fiction drama Metropolis (1927, 156 min): a beautiful utopia above a bleak underworld populated by mistreated workers. Tickets at the door, $10. ROCKEFELLER CHAPEL AT NINETY A GALA PERFORMANCE FRIDAY OCTOBE R 26 | 7:30 PM A celebratory concert featuring the Chapel Choir singing a world première by Shawn Kirchner, with brass quintet; the South Asian Music Ensemble with classical Indian dancer Shohini Kundu; and the Hyde Park Youth Symphony celebrating the Chapel’s longstanding cultural legacy in the community. Reception after. Free. Full details at rockefeller.uchicago.edu Rockefeller Memorial Chapel | 5850 S. Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago IL 60637Elizabeth J.L. Davenport DEAN | Jigna Shah ASSISTANT DEAN | James Kallembach DIRECTOR OF CHAPEL MUSIC

20 — Ruth Leitman 44 — Shayna Connelly 19 — Ines Sommer 39 — Molly Hewitt 24 — Melika BassNewcity OCTOBER 2018 cluding “Chasing Blue” at Steppenwolf in 2017. 20 to tell these stories with empathy and ethical Cordelia is working on a full-length book, a responsibility.” “Lady Parts Justice” will premiere memoir titled “D: a great american romance,” Ruth Leitman soon at an undisclosed festival, with a broadcast about experiences as a trans woman in the or streaming home to follow. “I am so excited,” Trump years, as well a book of poetry as well. “I remember for so many years that documen- Leitman says. “It has challenged me as a film- taries were unpopular among cineastes. They maker, following the tireless Winstead and a 19 were thought of as a stepping-stone to fiction lovely, passionate erratic group of subjects in an filmmaking,” Ruth Leitman says. “For me, it has insane political landscape. Why are we allowing Ines Sommer always been the pursuit to tell the stories of our government to take away healthcare and those who have been underrepresented.” “Lady bodily autonomy for half of the population? Documentary mainstay Ines Sommer complet- Parts Justice in the New World Order,” a docu- Where is the outrage?” ed her doc feature “Seasons of Change On Hen- mentary series on reproductive rights, made ry’s Farm” this year, which looks toward climate with Kartemquin and “The Daily Show” co-cre- 21 change through a bio-diverse family farm in cen- ator Lizz Winstead, which “barnstorms our coun- tral Illinois where over 650 varieties of organic try with boots on the ground,” came up as she Lori Felker vegetables are raised. “We hosted feedback was adapting her female wrestling documenta- screenings when we got close to the editing fin- ry, “Lipstick & Dynamite” to other formats. “Then Lori Felker’s uniquely blithe comic short films ish line and audience members were taken by the election of Trump changed everything for are always strange small delights, and in 2018, the quiet beauty of the farm and farmer Henry’s me. I woke up the next day knowing I needed to she debuted her feature-length doc, or “distort- personality and philosophy.” “Seasons” begins put that script aside to work on something more ed portrait,” as she calls it, “FUTURE LAN- as an idyllic farm-to-table story, “while the cli- urgent,” she says. “Where we are right now? GUAGE: The Dimensions of VON LMO,” about mate-change aspect of the story slowly sneaks There is no shortage of things to make work an eccentric American singer-songwriter. Fall up on viewers.” Sommer began a new doc this about right now. I have found myself at the cen- screenings after its June debut at Chicago Un- summer, talking to community members on Chi- ter of many political football issues as a filmmak- derground Film Festival are slated across the cago’s Southeast Side to explore ongoing envi- er, from immigration to income inequality and world, including Winnipeg and Barcelona.  “I’m ronmental justice issues in their neighborhood.” now with reproductive rights and bodily auton- editing a short that’s more in the vein of 2016’s Sommer also directs and produces commissioned omy. As documentary filmmakers, we make a ‘Discontinuity,’ a simple narrative about a moth- projects through her own company and works full- tremendous commitment to the work that we er and child, featuring my daughter and I, that is time at Northwestern, where she is the associate do to help inform, but it’s also about inviting peo- expressed through choppy and interruptive ed- director of the MFA in Documentary Media as well ple into a conversation about things that are dif- iting. Motherhood is my big pursuit right now. as teaching in the Radio/TV/Film department. ficult to talk about. We have a tremendous duty Watching a child develop, and frankly, just36

25 — Gabe Klinger46 — Michael Glover Smith30 — Emily Esperanza watching someone all the time provides me with sixteen-year-old Chicago documentary produc- tributor, making the unusual tack of opening at so many ideas and images. I take a lot of pic- tures.” She teaches at the University of Wiscon- tion mainstay. Siskel but also Chicago Filmmakers, the New sin-Milwaukee as an assistant professor, but Chicago remains home to Felker and her family. 400 and the Beverly Arts Center. “The city of 22 23 neighborhoods deserved to have a film that’sDanny Alpert Kyle Henry set in an iconic neighborhood like Rogers Park go on a mini-tour of the city,” Henry says. “It re- Kindling Group, headed by producer-director Danny Alpert, has pitched their recent efforts For his third feature, “Rogers Park,” which tracks flects my facility and background as both a pub- toward three projects, all rolling out this fall and in early 2019. “No Small Matter” is a feature doc four characters’ relationships across four Chi- licist and film programmer. I don’t take no for an with a community-impact campaign that rede- fines our understanding of what’s happening cago seasons, Kyle Henry acted as his own dis- answer from gatekeepers, and I will find a way, inside children’s brains and minds from birth to the age of five (a co-production with Siskel/Ja- if necessary, to build my own cobs Productions); “Pulling The Thread,” a dig- ital documentary series and engagement cam- bridges to audiences and critics. paign that unravels some of America’s most popular conspiracy theories (co-produced with Danny Alpert — 22 I did it before with my feature Independent Television Service); and a second season of “Veterans Coming Home,” a doc ‘University Inc.’ [co-edited cross-platform public media campaign that bridges America’s military-civilian divide (fund- by Spencer Parsons]. When fes- ed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and partnering with fourteen PBS stations). tivals didn’t bite, I toured to over“Kindling Group has always designed innovative engagement campaigns to maximize the im- seventy-five colleges and media pact of our documentaries,” Alpert says of the arts centers in the early aughts, partially sponsored by filmmak- ers Michael Moore and Richard Linklater. Without these skills, ‘Rogers Park’ would never have OCTOBER 2018 Newcity gotten out into the world and been both a hit with audiences and critics alike. We’re 100% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes! This also reflects the DIY/punk scene I emerged from in the early 1990s. Slam dancing psychically prepares you for the rough-and- tumble of our broken distribution 37

torical fiction in her shorter work, the southern native is now creating stories “firmly planted in contemporary America. ‘The Latest Sun’ cele- brates the American Midwest with a distinct kind of art-filmmaking that shifts genres, tones, performance styles, and points of view, weaving personal histories into fiction. My rock-turning sensibility—what’s underneath?—has links, too, to southern literature in Faulkner and O’Connor and McCullers, and folks like [photographer] Sally Mann.” 23 — Kyle Henry 25 systems.” Henry is working with “Rogers Park” long film project,” she says of her current fea- Gabe Klinger screenwriter Carlos Treviño again, on a thriller ture-length works, “Creature Companion” and to be shot around the Apostle Islands in Lake the six-years-in-the-making-so-far “The Latest Gabe Klinger has two feature projects with Superior. Following the “devised” method of col- Sun is Sinking Fast” (due in 2020). “I’m focused completed scripts, some casting in place, fi- laboration with actors that he used on “Rogers on regionalism, and fabulism that’s specific to nancing in progress, “the usual,” he says. His Park,” Henry is a year into development on an- America. Often that feels like a layer of dark his- feature debut, starring the late Anton Yelchin, other partially devised project, inspired by the tory underneath something everyday,” says the played at over a hundred festivals and in Amer- process used by Mike Leigh. “Tentatively entitled assistant professor in the School of the Art In- ican theaters in 2017. “’Porto’ seems light years ‘Eldercare,’ and co-written by Chicago-based stitute’s Department of Film, Video, New Media away from what I’m trying to do now, which is Kenyan American playwright Philister Sidigu, it and Animation. Atop her spectral takes on his- grounded in the social justice realm. Making a explores class, race and gender at the heart small, time-addled film out of an encounter be- of the mounting elder care crisis,” he relates, 26 — Jack C. Newell tween two lost souls in Portugal helped me tracking “an African-American South Side learn the tools of narrative filmmaking in a way care worker’s relationship to a North Shore that was relatively low-risk. It was my attempt white family whose elderly mother, suffering at a European art-house movie from the 1960s, from dementia, she cares for.” Henry’s posi- a tribute to all those movies that I grew up tion as acting director of the MFA in Docu- watching. We played at the Music Box in 35mm mentary Media Program at Northwestern while ‘Phantom Thread’ was screening in the “reflects my background also as an award-win- big theater in 70mm. That was so thrilling. But ning feature documentary film editor, but now that I made one of those, I can say good- also my deep desire to make authentic fic- bye to them and look to the future, happily.” That tional works with deep and strong connec- future includes his first one-hundred-percent tion to the actual world. Fantasy has its nec- Chicago film, a fiction feature about “the case essary place in storytelling, but I’m drawn of a girl who was accused of murder at age six- to directing as witnessing, where the actors, teen. I co-wrote the script with the young writers and I collaborate to create works that woman, who’s now twenty. It’ll be done on a feel like the most heightened stories from fairly large scale: sixty speaking parts, as many the lives of ordinary people.” locations, lots of action.” Klinger has other ac- tion planned in the wake of that untitled project:Newcity OCTOBER 2018 24 Melika Bass “I have always been scrappy in my filmmak- ing,” Melika Bass says. “I have been making medium-length and short films for fifteen years, and wanted to sink my teeth into a38

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“With the help of several people, I’ve been laying the foundation for a program to teach filmmaking to at- risk youth. The starting point is sim- ple: steer kids away from violence. The program would extend to young people in their late teens and twenties with felony records. If I can help to create high-profile fea- ture and streaming projects in Chi- cago that employ dozens or even hundreds over time, why not offer training programs to felons and then employ them on film shoots, in post-production or as writers?” 26 Jack C. Newell While tackling multiple projects as an independent director, Jack New- ell is also program director of the Harold Ramis Film School at Sec- ond City. A new partnership with DePaul begins as the school starts “offering an MFA in comedic story- telling, a BFA in comedic filmmak- ing as well as a minor.” The restau- rant doc Newell began in 2013, “42 Grams,” was seen in theaters and is on Netflix. “Hope Springs Eternal,” 28 — Maria Finitzo which he directed was seen this fall in theaters and on video-on-de- mand. Newell is close to completing his doc se- not only in production but also in distribution, part of an ensemble. To be a member of the en- semble makes every part of that group stronger— ries “How to Build a School in Haiti,” a sev- and you have a perfect storm of making Chica- it’s not about everyone becoming the same, but it encourages you to define yourself more clearly. en-year effort, and will shoot his next fiction go incredibly exciting. But I’m not entirely con- By nature, ensembles are better with more diver- gent voices. If we view ourselves in Chicago, or project, “Monuments,” later this year. Of im- vinced we have a film community. Yes, we have even in the world of film as a giant ensemble, di- versity and inclusion isn’t something to do be- provements on the Chicago film scene, he notes people who are making films here, but do we cause it sounds or feels good: it’s mandatory.” “film investment is becoming demystified, allow- consider ourselves a community? There probably ing independent voices to make their films as are cliques of film communities but the overlap they want. Compound that with the liberalization between cliques, I would wager,  is small. At Sec- of the art form through technological advances, ond City/HRFS, we talk about the power of being J.P. Sniadecki — 27 27Newcity OCTOBER 2018 J.P. Sniadecki Filmmaker-anthropologist J.P. Sniadecki direct- ed one of 2015’s most highly regarded documen- tary theatrical releases, the clamorously atmo- spheric “The Iron Ministry,” and his 2017 “El Mar La Mar” (co-directed with Joshua Bonnetta), an account of the Sonoran Desert, site of many treacherous border crossings, further dazzled documentary followers, with rave reviews in the New York Times and Guardian during its theat- rical release at MoMA in New York and the ICA in London, where a multi-channel iteration was exhibited. (Its non-theatrical run continues.) Sniadecki is collaborating on an untitled project in southern Illinois, which combines the total solar eclipse above Cairo, and the figurative eclipse of the city through post-industrialism. Local residents work on vignettes with the film- makers. “Despite economic hardship and a deep-seeded history of racial injustice, this film celebrates a vibrant community and its path to- ward resurgence,” Sniadecki says. He has other projects in progress in mainland China, where40

Story,’ residents of an artsy black co-op tell wild stories to a drag queen, Gia, as she does their hair,” Christian relates. “These stories are represented as music videos or ‘Drunk History’-style narrated scenes.” Christian assembled a writers room of eleven to contrib- ute characters to his pilot from shows they were developing. “The result is a series that, if pro- duced, could lead to at least seven spin-offs, each totally dif- ferent from the last. As a schol- ar-artist I view production as site for experimentation. ‘Hair Story’ is an experiment in queer series development, how to use one se- ries to exponentially increase the number of black, queer and inter- sectional writers, characters and stories that bigger studios can develop.” In addition, sixteen proj- ects have been released on OTV in 2018. “Chicago is a great place for emerging artists to find their voice and some institutional sup- port, and I view web series, or indie TV, as a space for develop- ing emerging talent in Holly- Aymar Jean Christian — 29 wood,” Christian says. “There’s a clear sense of experimentation and sincerity in series written in he maintains “ a close connection to the inde- 29 Chicago, which gives the city an edge in the in- pendent film community, despite the unfortu- nate hardships it has faced under Xi Jinping. My Aymar Jean Christian creasingly global marketplace for original stories. colleague Zhu Rikun (curator and filmmaker) is working on an annual small gauge—16mm and Our 2017 Film 50 cover subject Aymar Jean 30 Super 8mm—film workshop that will operate Christian, noted for his pioneering analysis and completely independently of any government productivity in the arena of web series via Open Emily Esperanza institution. We are planning to launch a pilot pro- Television, suits this year’s roster, with a return gram this autumn and continue with a second to directing, his first pilot since 2015. “In ‘Hair “Chicago and I are in a long-term long-distance iteration in summer 2019.” relationship,” filmmaker Emily Esperanza says 28 31 — Alex ThompsonMaria Finitzo OCTOBER 2018 Newcity Maria Finitzo, whose documentary subjects range from stem-cell research to Chicago girls’ high-school sports to strong young women, says “The Dilemma of Desire,” is her most chal- lenging feature-length film, “both a vérité and essay film about female sexual desire and wom- en’s equality.” The tagline is ‘There Is No Equal- ity Without Equality of Pleasure.’” After traveling since 2016 from Chicago to Berlin to Mexico to Brooklyn to Georgia, to San Francisco to Salt Lake City, Finitzo began editing in August, for fall 2019 completion and a 2020 festival release.“If my team (Diane Quon and Cynthia Kane pro- ducing, Liz Kaar editing) and I do it right, the film will initiate a conversation about female sexual desire that will empower women to embrace and own their sexuality by giving them language to talk about their desire without shame and embarrassment. What’s allowed for men, must be allowed for women. I believe that’s where equality starts and is at the heart of the film.” 41

litical thriller, produced by his partner (and wife) Col- leen Griffen. “An Accept- able Loss,” with Tika Sumpter and Jamie Lee Curtis. Chappelle then turned to a new series for ABC and Epix, “Godfather of Harlem,” starring Forest Whitaker. “Working on a television series full time, while it can be rewarding, requires a sacrifice in terms of time spent with your partner and children. When not working, I do my best to make up for that deficit.” Of Chicago, Chappelle says, “For all its faults, there is an energy here that I thrive on. Chicago is my home and I want to work here as much as I can. The architecture is stunning and the people are the best. My years working in the city on the Dick Wolf ‘Chicago’ shows was a dream come true, Kera Mackenzie and Drew Mausert-Mooney — 33 and I specifically wrote ‘An Acceptable Loss’ with Evanston, where I live, in of her past year working here, in Los Angeles most of my idols weren’t grappling with, but it’s mind. While I’m excited to shoot ‘Godfather of and Marfa. “This city introduced me to some of my closest friends and collaborators and those challenges that drive me and excite me. Harlem’ in New York, I look forward to working grounded me in the importance of community. Chicago is the crux of the development of my My productivity comes from a desire to grow in Chicago once more. art.” She continues to make shorts, including “Maiden,” “Hail Mary” and “The Love Story” as with every project, and to be ready when oppor- well as expanding her ongoing “Wretched Woman” series. Esperanza debuted her fresh, tunities arise.” Thompson has produced a pilot, 33 bawdy, brightly stylized mid-length “Make Out Party” in March at a two-night immersive event “Drive Slow,” as well as a feature, “Our Father,” via Full Spectrum Features and Chicago Under- ground. “I am really interested in using screen- Kera Mackenzie andand his first two shorts, “Calumet” and “Irene & ings as events to facilitate community,” she says. “I’m the founder and co-curator of Wretched No- Marie,” are on Amazon Instant. This summer he Drew Mausert-Mooney bles, an underground screening series that of- fers a platform for rebellious voices in cinema. directed the feature “Saint Frances.” There is inherent kinetic energy to watching a film in a room full of people and in the age of Collaborators Kera Mackenzie and Drew Maus- digital, and potentially self-isolating, cinema. The experience of watching a film and sharing space 32 ert-Mooney make films and videos, but also with other people is kind of radical.” Joe Chappelle supply a platform, ACRE TV, for filmmakers. They split their practice, which they describe Joe Chappelle left “Chicago Fire” in 2017 after as having “an affinity for riffing with cinematic six years, turning to write and direct an indie po- forms,” between the films and videos they 35 — Liz KaarNewcity OCTOBER 2018 31 Alex Thompson “My productivity is directly related to my reliance on collaboration; that’s where I find the why and the how,” says prolific young director-producer Alex Thompson. “My ambition is to be a part of a new wave of filmmakers who are emulating Hal Ashby, Alan Pakula and Sidney Lumet. The difference is I’m not currently a studio-backed auteur. I’m constantly coming up against bud- getary limitations, and finding solutions to them is a part of my job too, in addition to directing. The job and the art today come with challenges42

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37 — Jim Vendiola make and live televisual work, typically broad- tic work,” Mackenzie says. “For the last six 34 cast on ACRE TV, the artist-made livestreaming years, Andrew helped run the production side network they co-direct and co-founded. A two- of a livestream video company he started with Austin Vesely month live show, “The Set Speaks,” saw seven a friend, directing and switching livestreams for groups of Chicago-based artists in a studio at organizations in the Midwest. Live shows entail Twenty-eight-year-old director Austin Vesely Mana Contemporary—each produce a the coordination of many people around a sin- jumps from music videos, including Chance the four-camera, live-switched weeklong, 168-hour gle moment in time. When you’ve done it Rapper’s “Everybody’s Something” and “Juice,” piece. Their experimental 16mm documentary, enough with the same people, the coordination to his first feature, “Slice.”  Shown at a handful “Path of Ghosts,” shot in Tennessee “threatens takes less time, the collaboration is more ele- of theaters on the evening September 10 and to be” about expertise, vision, botany and “ev- gant, and the productions are better.” Kera is a dropped on iTunes only a few hours later, “Slice” eryday life in the imperial U.S.A.” “Our day jobs teacher, “and the same thing is true in the class- benefited from innovative distribution by pow- have, like it or not, a big influence on our artis- room,” she relates. erhouse boutique distributor A24, known for “Moonlight” and “Lady Bird.” The Joliet-set mil- Nellie Kluz — 36 lion-dollar-plus pizza-themed horror also has its star going for it: Vesely’s friend and collaborator since 2011, Chance. “You know this is a crazy scenario, right? This is madness!” Vesely told the Tribune before “Slice” debuted. At 4:02am after “Slice” made its way into the digital realm, Vesely tweeted, “I don’t know how it’s possible that life is this cool.”Newcity OCTOBER 2018 35 Liz Kaar Liz Kaar’s “Stranded by the State,” a web series about the Illinois budget crisis, was turned into a miniseries while she continued editing for Kar- temquin Films, including Gordon Quinn’s “’63 Boycott” and Maria Finitzo’s “Dilemma of Desire,” about the equality of female pleasure. “I’m deep- ly in love with documentary,” Kaar says, “but I’ve jumped across the stream to narrative, and am in the midst of directing my first feature.” The genesis of “The Turkey,” she says, “was my re-44

cent engagement and our plan to have a kid inthe near future—which I found to be exciting andterrifying. So I did the natural thing with my ballof anxieties and wrote a weirdo comedy abouta young couple who are pretty kind-of sure theywant a baby and plan a ‘last hurrah’ friendsgiv-ing before getting knocked up, but her overbear-ing Midwestern family shows up unexpectedly,making them question if they want to start thatfamily after all. It’s weird. It’s fun. It’s a good signthat I’m still laughing in the edit room. Thescreenwriting and documentary editing processis similar, the same technique of building scenesand structure... and failing and then trying again.Same highs and lows. Same amount of coffeeand potato chips.”36 37 McKenzie Chinn — 40Nellie Kluz Jim Vendiola films.” Vendiola’s work is both highly stylized and casually transgressive. “As a feminist and maleNellie Kluz is a keen watcher. In Filmmaker’s “I’m not the most prolific creator,” filmmaker Jim ally, one reason I gravitate toward female char-2017 “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” Vendiola says. “My mind has always been a rest- acters is an interest in subverting genre conven-Vadim Rizov wrote astutely that “her handheld less place, so I have this unwieldy mental, digital tions that have been historically defined by men,”camera gains benignly curious, non-prying ac- and handwritten vault of conceptual fragments, he says. “My CUFF Audience Award-winner, ‘Vi-cess to events happening largely in public false starts and minutiae. Rarely do things fit into olets,’ was a psychological horror film about twospace.” Her recent films include “Must See,” ob- a three-act structure and rarely do I want them creepy, murderous, and probably incestuous sis-serving religious and tourist pilgrimages and to. So I spend a lot of time figuring out how best ters.” Vendiola says viewers sometimes criti-the haunting “Serpents and Doves,” a highlight to deliver a given story, while incorporating cized the need for the sisters to kill a man, “as ifof Chicago Underground 2018, witnessing a weird little flourishes that I don’t see a lot in other it weren’t intrinsic to the genre.”Christian passion play in Arkansas. Chicagoreal estate industry workers are the subjects of James Choi — 38 38a work-in-progress. “As a transplant from theEast Coast, the Midwest still feels slightly ex- James Choiotic and strange, which is good for my senseof possibility,” the Boston University graduate “I left Chicago when I was eighteen and spentsays. “My approach is to look for visual clues seventeen years in Los Angeles before comingabout belief systems or cultural fantasies that back,” says James Choi, director, producer andare hard to see. A lot of my recent work has the engine behind DePaul’s microbudget featuredealt with religion and tourism, places where track. “I don’t know what the film communitypeople try to transcend the everyday, but I’m was like in 1993, but opportunities have changedlooking at mechanisms and behind-the-scenes for film workers due to the advancement of tech-work that goes into those escape systems. My nology and of course, the formation of Cine-interest in making videos is so much about the space.” Besides filmmaking, Choi teaches filmopportunity to be a firsthand observer, going full-time at DePaul University’s School of Cine-into spaces and situations where I’m an out- matic Arts. “I worked as a manager of writerssider and see what happens.” and directors for a time while I was in L.A. and teaching young filmmakers feels similar to man- aging writer-directors, but without all the bag- OCTOBER 2018 Newcity gage!” Since moving back to Chicago, Choi has produced six feature films in eight years, two of which he directed, as well as shorts. His most recent directorial micro-feature, the under- $10,000 “Empty Space,” made with a crew of 45

three, played around the world, including theat- Chicago hip-hop artist Mykele Frédéric Moffet — 41 rically in South Korea. Choi produced the latest Deville, and is currently developing feature directed by Alex Thompson, and has a Chicago-based inspired-by-fact Moffet’s two recent shorts, “Fever Freaks” and completed a doc on Brazilian artist Denise Mi- feature with author Kevin Coval, “The Magic Hedge” have shown in over fifty in- lan’s work and her moving arts education pro- set in the city’s recent past. “As a ternational film festivals and special screenings gram in in Sao Paulo’s Heliopolis. multi-disciplinary artist, working as in galleries, museums. (“The Magic Hedge” ex- an actor and a poet, each of my ar- plores a Montrose Harbor bird sanctuary that 39 tistic mediums influences the other. was once a lakefront missile site, but now a I work consistently as an actor cruising area.) “My work is intensely experimen- Molly Hewitt both on stage and on camera.” tal, queer and difficult so it’s always a nice sur- Chinn co-stars in the short “Mas- prise when the work connects. It is important Molly Hewitt is in post-production on her direc- culine/Masculine,” directed by for me that my work can exist in multiple venues, torial debut, the stylized comedy “Holy Trinity,” “Brown Girls” co-creator Sam Bai- that it can cross borders and reach different au- after years of writing and planning, with the help ley, which also made its premiere diences.” A recent event struck the native Mon- of a Kickstarter campaign, Full Spectrum Fea- at the LA Film Festival. “I’m most trealer: “At the premiere of ‘Chicagoland Shorts tures and Forager Film. “It’s about a dominatrix interested in telling the stories that Vol. 4’ at the MCA, it was wonderful to stand on who huffs an aerosol can and develops the abil- feature and matter to the commu- stage with the other directors because four of ity to speak to the dead. It’s a highly stylized nities and identities that I’m a part them were former students from different peri- dramatic comedy that explores how magic, sex- of,” Chinn says. “That means POC ods of my teaching life. It is important to under- uality and spirituality are intrinsically inter- stories, women’s stories, millennial stand that by teaching and sharing your experi- twined.” Hewitt plays Trinity, and “most of the stories and Chicago stories. Chica- ence, you can help shape the community that characters are playing themselves and are go is the place that has made the you want to be a part of.” based on healers, performers and other Chica- artist that I am. It’s vibrant, innova- goans I have had the pleasure of meeting during tive, hardworking, generous and my time living here.” Hewitt continues work most importantly it’s real—as trou- under the alias “Glamhag.” “The work is a con- bled and ugly as it is glorious and glomeration of many elements such as drag, per- beautiful. I want to be as audacious formance, prop making and video work. I get a an artist as the city I rep.” lot of inspiration from pop culture, I like to be gross and messy, covering myself with goo or 41 food, and I use it as an opportunity to explore my desires.” Frédéric Moffet 40 Frédéric Moffet, chair of the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation McKenzie Chinn department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, also pro- Chicago bristles with filmmakers who are vides fresh visions as a filmmaker. “I love SAIC, multi-hyphenates as much by necessity as the main reason why I live in Chicago. My stu- choice, but actor-writer-producer-educator-po- dents are my main source of energy, they are et McKenzie Chinn is a standout. “Olympia,” a brilliant. They come from all over the world and feature she wrote, produced and starred in had they all have such different approaches to media its world premiere in September at the LA Film making. Because we are an art school, we teach Festival, and debuts locally at Chicago Interna- cinema differently; our focus is more on singular tional Film Festival. Chinn also produced and voices than on hierarchical ways of working.” directed her first music video this summer, for Laura Ann Harrison — 42Newcity OCTOBER 2018 42 Laura Ann Harrison Laura Ann Harrison’s intricate animations about difficult matters are shown at fests around the world, including a 2015 New York Film Festival slot for “The Lingerie Show,” a few months after winning the Chicago Underground Film Festi- val’s Best Made In Chicago Award. A more re- cent award: a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship. Harrison has worked as an experimental anima-46

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through on his interests, not limited to “lan- guage, time, comedy, poetry, diffuse sourcing, politics, history, conversations between sub-, counter- and popular culture, with a particular fascination with the spaces between and with- in seeing, looking and reading.” 44 Shayna Connelly Shayna Connelly has shepherded five more of her dreamy, haunting (and haunted) short films into the world in the past two years. “Three of them are part of the collection, ‘A Memory Pal- ace for Ghosts,’ about the ways hauntings plague us. This summer I completed the final two and will screen them individually while gear- ing up to tour all eight shorts as a group.” The collection is thematically related, but the films also work against categorization, she says. “It’s been interesting to see the reception to my work over the past two years, depending on whether a film is labeled experimental, documentary, nar- rative or a ‘poem film.’ Hauntings and horror cin- ema are about transgressing boundaries, which runs contrary to siloing through labels. That fas- cinates and bothers me.” She’s embarked on what she dubs a “palette cleanser.” The film is “about the boundary between home movies and documentary and the intersection of my person- al and professional identities. If nothing else, it’ll be my first comedy because the subject—my daughter—is bonkers and hilarious.” Jesse Malmed — 43 45Newcity OCTOBER 2018 tor for only seven or so years, with twenty-five 43 Christopher Rejano years of work as a painter behind her. “Her eclec- tic, propulsive story telling style—derived in part Jesse Malmed A new generation of cinematographer is rising from her painterly hand and narratives dealing in Chicago, and one of the busiest, and most with difficult subjects—was novel in its tactility “A poem that’s a joke that’s a joke that’s a poem accomplished, is Christopher Rejano. ”So much and forcefulness, offering entirely original con- that’s a protest sign with citations and then it’s has happened since 2016,” he says. “When we tent,” the Guggenheim Foundation cited. As an really loud and then it’s really quiet and some- filmed ‘Signature Move’ I had no idea how great example, CUFF described Harrison’s 2016 “Lit- times I’m in it and sometimes you are too. of a festival run it would have. After premiering tle Red Giant, The Monster That I Was” as “A They’re texty and talky with lots of ideas but also at South by Southwest in 2017, it took a life of its story about transformation through trauma an attention to the bodily and sensorial experi- own. I’ve worked on Chicago network and [when] Anna, an unhinged artist, goes berserk ence of cinema” is how Jesse Malmed describes streaming shows as a camera operator and sec- at an academic’s barbecue. Her German Stud- his brainy, funny work in film. “A number of my ond unit DP, and have also shot commercials, ies boyfriend, Klaus, mansplains to her about most recent film works have been much more another independent feature and a few short what her art should look like, Clair, a back stab- paracinematic: ‘Excerpts from Alfabet City’—at films as well as the great, new web series, ‘The bing comp lit chick, talks smack behind her Spertus this summer—was a speculative recon- T.’ And I work with Jennifer Reeder a lot. Our back to Katrina, the science writer from MIT, struction of elements from the archive of the most recent works are the short film ‘Shuvit’ and and no one wants to hear about her art. Anna apocryphal late-1960s radical children’s show. a music video for the Chicago hometown heroes winds up in jail where she is finally given a sym- Think Bert and Ernie, but Brecht and Kovacs.” Joan of Arc. We also spent the better part of the pathetic audience to the story about her ‘For- While teaching at UIC and in Chicago Public summer prepping and shooting Jennifer’s sec- ever Wolves’ art.” Schools through CAPE, Malmed is preparing ond feature, ‘Knives and Skin.’ I’m very proud of a new film called “Sighght,” which carries this film. Every cast and crew member poured their hearts into it, and it shows. I can’t wait for the world to see it. I’m in pre-production for [Hugh Schulze’s “Dreaming Grand Avenue,”] another feature that begins this fall, and anoth- er short film to follow right after. Keeping busy is best for me.” (Newcity’s Chicago Film Project is the producer of “Signature Move,” “Knives and Skin” and “Dreaming Grand Avenue.”) Of cine- matography, Rejano says, “This is it. I try to be the best that I can at what I do. There are thou- sands of cinematographers out there and I strive to stand apart from the crowd. Whether it’s try-48

ing to watch movies on my day offor trying to keep abreast of new techand new equipment, it’s all relevant.46MichaelGlover SmithA full-time film studies instructor atOakton Community College in DesPlaines and Harper College in Pala-tine and a sometimes film journalistwith extensive filmmaker interviewsin Time Out, Michael Glover Smithalso is in post-production on his thirdlow-low-budget feature. His first,2015’s so-Chicago morsel “CoolApocalypse,” was noted as having“hopeful investment in conversation-al cul-de-sacs, the tension-filledbanter of classical local improv” inNewcity. His 2017 sophomore fea-ture, “Mercury in Retrograde,” a 45 — Christopher Rejanomore ambitious, dialogue-rich vehi-cle, took top award at Tallahasseethis year, had a run at Siskel and willplay out the year in other cities. He finished mix- 47 other’s work.” Since 2016, Zhu and Yang haveing the sound for his latest, “Rendezvous in Chi- completed two feature documentaries, one ex- perimental short and one fiction short. Their im-Shengze Zhu,cago,” at the end of August. Smith is also pro-ducing Rob Christopher’s documentary “Roy’s Zhengfan Yang maculately observed body of work is branching out from Asian subjects, but their internationalWorld: Barry Gifford’s Chicago,” consisting al-most entirely of archival footage and narrated “We focus on filmmaking,” Shengze Zhu says of outreach starts in Chicago. “I have lived in Co-by the “Wild at Heart” novelist himself, Willem collaborations with her partner, Zhengfan Yang, lumbia, Missouri, where I attended the Missou-Dafoe, Matt Dillon and Lili Taylor. (Lilli Carré is under the Burn the Film banner, “not only just ri School of Journalism at UMC for more thancreating three animated sequences to get the making films, but also producing. Zhengfan and two years,” Zhu says. “Almost every time I trav-project to fine cut.) I never co-direct, but serve as producer for each eled abroad and then returned to the United States, I’d stop in transit at Chica- go. I loved the Art Institute and the Shengze Zhu and Zhengfan Yang — 47 architecture of Chicago, and I feel somehow emotionally connected to this city. As for Zhengfan, he has been a big fan of the Chicago Bulls, back in the 1990s when he was a teenager in China.” When they decided to leave China three years ago, “it was not difficult for us to choose Chicago as our next new home, especially given that both of us were admitted to the School of the Art Institute of Chi- cago, and we both received the merit scholarship.” Their 2016 ex- perimental doc “Where Are You Going” examines Hong Kong through a taxi driver’s windshield with thirteen different encounters, and premiered at Rotterdam. The structuralist film “Another Year” OCTOBER 2018 Newcity captures thirteen dinners of a Chi- nese migrant worker’s family over the course of fourteen months. Beginning and ending around the Chinese New Year, the meals un- fold in real-time through static, long takes and shows the rhythm of a family’s life on the margins of urban society. 49

lerina, Emily Sarkissian, creating the Em- my-award winning dance film, “Emergence.” “That validated us getting out of our comfort zone,” she says. A first feature, “Static,” to be shot on mixed film formats and accompa- nied by a transmedia element, is on its way as they take the next steps in securing fund- ing and strategic partnerships. “Our many years of working together has resulted in a creative shorthand that we hope will serve us well on this next endeavor.” Potenza Pro- ductions is also a sponsor of the Midwest Independent Film Festival, whose monthly event is produced by Cook. “We are Mid- westerners, and Chicago has a singular work ethic and sense of community that is unique, versus the coasts. It’s the city that works.” Still, she adds, “a robust long-term system to develop and fiscally support homegrown creatives would be ideal.” 49 — Potenza Productions 49 50 48 Potenza Productions Spencer Parsons Harvey Moshman Rocco Cataldo, Mary Kay Cook, Northwestern associate professor Spencer Mike Kwielford Parsons made the black-on-black su- “As an independent producer in Chicago, I work Potenza Productions creates branded content per-Chicago horror comedy “Bite Radius” in with a small and nimble group of collaborators,” for clients in their day-to-day business, “but 2015, and two shorts since then, the precise Harvey Moshman relates, “rarely shooting with we’re filmmakers at heart, and are always look- slices of perversity “Alpha Waved” and a crew larger than three or four.” He learned this ing for opportunities to stretch,” Mary Kay Cook “Commodity/Fetish,” while working at lon- technique on his first professional film job on says for the group. They collaborated with a bal- ger-form projects. “I’m skeptical of features the “Candid Camera” show, working as film as a workable form,” Parsons relates, “and I loader, PA, grip, walk-on actor and guy who runs remain unconvinced by the golden or plati- after people to sign the release form. “In those num age of TV or whatever it is. I have stuff I days, Alan Funt, Mr. Candid Camera himself, did care about in the works, but honestly? I’m pret- not go out on field shoots. Nameless producers ty gun-shy after the last couple years, and I hes- and crews shot those pieces. When I ap- itate to speak of any project that isn’t in the can proached an unsuspecting participant who had for fear of jinxing it. I’ll say that I’m working on been the butt of one of our hidden camera gags an ongoing true-crime thing that’s kind of in- to sign the release, their first question was al- spired by Buñuel and Pasolini, and hopefully ways, ‘Where’s Alan Funt?’ I pointed to any van that’s just specific and just vague enough to in the immediate area and explained: ‘He’s in the credibly apply to whatever projects I complete van.’ They always believed me. Four decades in the coming year.” later, I’m still chasing people with release forms, persuading them to sign!” His current projects, Spencer Parsons — 50 slated for distribution through PBS stations, areNewcity OCTOBER 2018 wildly dissimilar: “The Eastland Disaster,” a his- torical documentary about the deadliest day in Chicago history, and the series “Wild Travels,” seeking quirk in offbeat and unusual places across America. “I can keep the projects straight in my head, but occasionally I’ll mix up the shots in Avid with unintentionally amusing results.” Local talent is key to his work: “The talent pool for crews and voice-over actors in Chicago is deep. I can’t imagine a better place for an inde- pendent filmmaker than Chicago, for the cama- raderie, support and pride in the work.”50