Now tell me, why I didn’t know about this movie?! I dropped everything I was doing (and trust me, I had enough to do!) and started watching! (That was on Sunday, and I just finished it)
Tag: movies
RIFENSTAHL
I just exited the Siskel Center after watching “RIFENSTAHL.” I missed the first screening (with director-in-person) last week, because I hosted the Prairie Postgres User Group at the same time. Today was my only chance to see it, because I am leaving tomorrow and the last screening will be on September 26, before I return. Well, there will be more screenings later, but I will be travelling again, and also – I didn’t want to wait!
I just saw the movie. For the past several months, I was reading my friend’s blog about Riefenstahl’s memoirs, and I wanted to know more, so I queued a couple of books about her in my future reading list. But let me tell you that: it’s one thing to read what she says about herself, and a different thing to hear it, in her own words, with her facial expressions, with her intonations. To see the immense pleasure on her face when she watched the “Triumph of the Will,” conducting the screen music.
Starting with her cynical phrase: The movie was commissioned by Hitler. If Roosevelt were to commission a movie, I would also try my best. If Stalin were to ask me to make a movie for him, I would do my best as well. And all her screams: no, it’s a lie! What people disappear?! There were no such people around me! We didn’t know! No, I didn’t see! And: I would never make a movie about cripples! And isn’t it in all cultures that we admire beautiful bodies?
Oh, and there is footage of how she was making these pictures of Nuba! How she treated them like animals. I will never buy her albums.
Evil, evil, evil. No shades. No “buts”.
Reifenstahl – And I Can’t Make It
It’s just so not fair: Reifenstahl member-only preview is exactly at the time when I host my Postgres meetup! And the regular run is exactly when I will be out of the country!
I hope they will add more screenings later!
2000 meters to Andriivka
I just watched “2000 meters to Andriivka” at the Siskel Center. I started crying even before the documentary title appeared on the screen. Then I stopped crying because there were no tears left. And then I started to cry again when they showed footage of the funerals. And for all these almost two hours, I felt eternal hatred towards those who started this war and those who allowed it to happen.
Horror. Hopelessness. Sorrow for all these lives gone, especially since Mstyslav Chernov tells us which of the soldiers he filmed were injured and died later. And the way he runs the excerpts from the news coverage from the days of the counter-offense, mentioning that “it didn’t deliver to expectations” or whatever the language was.
To say this documentary is difficult to watch is to say nothing. The official trailer below does not give even a remote impression of it. I don’t know how to keep living life as usual when you know that this actually happened, and that the corpses I saw on the screen were not props, and the captured Russian officer was not an actor.
P.S. If you are in Chicago, there are two more screenings.
“Great Migrations: People on the Move”
I watched this four-part documentary a while ago and wanted to mention it. It was streaming on PBS, but now you need to subscribe to watch it. I spent a lot of time trying to embed at least some clips, but failed, so I can only share a link to the whole project.
It’s exceptionally interesting and informative, and as I keep saying, even though I know a lot about Black history, this documentary revealed many things I didn’t know or didn’t understand. Although I feel strongly about “no subscriptions,” I subscribed to PBS Passport to watch these series. It’s still a donation to a good cause, not a Netflix subscription!
“It’s Basic” Documentary
I am on my way home from this event. I was half an hour late, but it was just the right time, as it turned out. The programming started approximately ten minutes after I arrived, and the panel after the screening was only 30 minutes long. After the “official part” was over, half of the audience rushed to the podium to talk with panelists, and I decided I did not want to stand in their way.
I loved the documentary; I cried several times. I am a firm believer in basic income, and I do not need any convincing, but it was great to hear about true stories, scientific analysis of the results, and about what’s next.
One thing that concerns me about this initiative and others like it is the randomness and small size of the groups of people who can benefit. It feels like one extra piece in the boundless mosaic of human services, and when I think about how I would like it to evolve, I would say this program should be as universal as possible.
On another topic: the Green Line was delayed several times both inbound and outbound, but I was able to ignore the surroundings and do something productive on the train.
I am super tired of everything which is happening in my life (including work), but there are things I can’t drop, no matter what.
My main reason to attend was the panelists:
- Toni Preckwinkle, President, Cook County Board of Commissioners
- Mayor Michael Tubbs, Special Advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom for Economic Mobility; “It’s Basic” Film Executive Producer
- Margaret M.C. Thomas, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
Belarus’ Resistance
To add to my yesterday’s post, a couple of pictures from the Siskel Center foyer where Mara Tomkevich posed with one of the activists of the Chicago Belarusian community and audience members.
She is amazing, and I keep thinking about this movie and how powerful it is. During the Q&A, Tomkevich mentioned that all the scenes from the rallies and arrests were the actual footage and even the soundtrack to the scene by the prison gate was recorded by the prison.
It’s so sad and so unfair that so few people know about the events of 2020 in Belarus, about resistance, rallies, arrests, and prosecution. I hope this movie will spark some interest in these events and that the struggles of the Belarusian opposition will be more widely acknowledged.
Under The Grey Sky
That was the only film I watched during this year’s Chicago European Film Festival (this year hosted by Poland). The film director, Mara Tamkovich, was in the audience and held a Q&A session after the screening. She is brilliant, and the movie is brilliant, and I almost cried almost all the time while I watched it.
From the Siskel Center website:
In Mara Tamkovich’s eerily timely feature debut, journalist Lena is arrested for livestreaming the suppression of a protest against the 2020 Belarusian election, thrusting her husband Ilya into an untenable situation. With the grim possibility that Lena will spend years behind bars, Ilya must consider the sacrifices he may be forced to make to support her. Inspired by the true story of Katsyaryna Andreeva and Igor Ilyash, UNDER THE GREY SKY is a haunting portrait of political repression in the digital age which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and won the Best Debut Director prize at the 2024 Polish Film Festival.
The Room Next Door: Pedro Almodovar’s Movie
OMG, it’s just striking! I can’t really say “good”. It’s the wrong word for this movie. Powerful. Painful. Real. Beautiful. I thought it should be great, and I wanted to watch it, but all the showtimes didn’t work, even though Siskel had twenty screenings (literally). I thought I could skip a visit to my mom on Monday and come on Wednesday, and I purchased the ticket, but then I realized that I had previously promised to come to the ODS and finally decided to ask my mom whether she would be OK if I came later. In the end, things worked out. All this was just to say I truly wanted to see this movie, and I was not disappointed.
I almost never went to Siskel Center during the fall because I had too many subscription concerts and shows. Still, in late December/early January, I wanted to catch up and went a couple of times, and one of these times was a complete disappointment/wasted time (The Girl with the Needle). This new Almodovar’s movie, however, was magnificent
The Pawnbroker
In between the two operas, I watched The Pawnbroker, a 1964 film directed by Sidney Lumet. I learned about this movie from one of the kino-websites advertisements related to Lumet’s 100 anniversary. Then it was my usual movie story: I need to find time; the movie is so captivating that I can’t watch it as a background to anything, etc. Actually, after the first ten minutes of watching, I realized that I won’t be able to hit the stop button….
How many Holocaust movies did I watch? Many! How many books? How many photos? A lot, but still, this movie was unbearable to watch even though it shows very little of actual Nazi atrocities. We do not even know the whole story of Sol Nazerman. We only see flashbacks of past events triggered by something happening in the present. Still, it’s striking evidence of unmendable damage done to a human. When I was watching the movie, I physically felt Mr. Naserman’s suffering. I just do not have the right words to describe how I felt. A naked truth. Immense sorrow.
Hettie's Reflections 