The Chicago Film Society will present an evening of recent film preservations and reels from their collection, all on 16mm film. Selections will include:
– Theory of Achievement (1991), Hal Hartley’s loving and optimistic portrait of disillusioned New Yorkers, presented in a recently struck 16mm print.
– Two films by Chicago cartoonist and film collector Heather McAdams: the scratch animation masterpiece The Scratchman* (1980) and Meet … Bradley Harrison Pickelsimer** (1987), McAdams’s unforgettable documentary of a queer night club owner in Lexington, KY.
– Edward Owens’ stunning hangout film Remembrance: A Portrait Study*** (1967).
– Dreamworks** (Tatsu Aoki, 1983), a ribald parody of pompous Freudian psychoanalytic theory and stodgy structural filmmaking that skewers academic conventions to answer that most urgent question: what is my cat thinking?
Plus, a few surprises…
This event is free and open to the public.
*Preserved by Chicago Film Society with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
**Preserved by Chicago Film Society through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
***Restored by Chicago Film Society, The New American Cinema Group, Inc./The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and the John M. Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant Program and the Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
About Chicago Film Society: Founded by projectionists in 2011, the Chicago Film Society promotes the exhibition and preservation of film in context. CFS screenings provide access to the restoration efforts of archives, studios, and private collectors, the work of artists exploring the film medium today, and the experience of seeing film projected live in a theater, with an audience. As physical artifacts, the film prints we show hold the stories told by films — but also the stories of the industries that produced them, the labs that printed them, the places where they were exhibited, and the people who watched them. Through screenings, writing, film preservation projects, and workshops, CFS works to make all of this context visible and accessible to the public. www.chicagofilmsociety.org
Curated by the REDBIRD FILM FORUM
part of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Film
with the support of Milner Library
the Film Society at ISU and the School of Art and Design
The Harold K. Sage Foundation
and the
Illinois State University Foundation Fund
sponsor this event