The Docks of New York

Our screenings are held at multiple venues around Chicago. This season you can find us at: • The Music Box Theatre 3733 N Southport Ave — Directions • Parking Tickets: $13 – $15 • The Siskel Film Center 164 N State St — Directions • Parking Tickets: $14 • Constellation 3111 N Western Ave — Directions • Parking Tickets: $15 • Block Cinema (Northwestern University) 40 Arts Circle Drive — Directions • Parking Tickets: Free • The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (Film Studies Center Screening Room) 915 E. 60th St. — Directions • Parking Tickets: Free Want to attend our screenings but having financial hardships? Contact [email protected] Monday 8/31 at 7:00 PM ……….. Music Box William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet Thursday 9/10 at 8:00 PM ………. Constellation Caligari’s Cure Sunday, 9/13 at 11:30 AM ……….. Music Box Sparrows Saturday 9/26 at 11:30 AM ……….. Music Box Chris + Heather’s 16mm Big Screen Blow-Out #3 Thursday 10/8 at 7:00 PM ………. Music Box Peeping Tom Wednesday 10/21 at 8:00 PM ……….. Constellation An Evening with Jim Trainor Sunday 11/1 at 11:30 AM ………. Music Box The Docks of New York Saturday 11/7 from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM ……… Chicago History Museum Home Movie Day Thursday 11/12 at 7:00 PM ……….. Music Box Boom! Friday 11/13 at 7:00 PM ………. Block Cinema Dreams that Money Can Buy Wednesday 11/18 at 6:00 PM …….. Film Center Rachel Getting Married Friday 11/20 at 7:00 PM …….. Logan Center Suicide Note Monday 11/30 at 7:00 PM ……….. Music Box Gangs of New York Wednesday 12/9 at 6:00 PM ……….. Film Center Alice in the Cities Wednesday 12/16 at 8:00 PM ………. Constellation CFS Annual Holiday Party ☆ Sign up for our newsletter for screening reminders! ☆ Add the schedule to your google calendar! Thursday, September 10 @ 8:00 PM Constellation / Tickets: $15 CALIGARI’S CURE Directed by Tom Palazzolo • 1982 Since the 1960s, Tom Palazzolo has pursued a relentless and idiosyncratic career, earning the honorific “Chicago’s filmmaker laureate” from no less than Roger Ebert. Best known for the string of hilarious and keenly observed short documentaries he made throughout the 1970s, Palazzolo’s most famous works shine a light on the diverse range of strange customs, personalities, cranks, and eccentrics endemic to Chicagoland. Palazzolo’s first feature looks, at least on the surface, like a break from his earlier, cinéma vérité-leaning films: a semi-autobiographical account of his own St. Louis childhood staged inside of a spoof of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and inspired by the new wave of performance artists working in Chicago at the start of the 1980s. But while the thrift-store expressionist art direction and Midwestern-Weimar trappings may be a novelty, there’s no mistaking Caligari’s Cure for anything but pure Palazzolo, an affectionately prankish send-up of the very idea of filmmaking starring a number of familiar faces from across Chicago’s art and film scenes, including performance artist Carmela Rago, filmmaker Heather McAdams, and Visionary Film author P. Adams Sitney. CFS is thrilled to partner with our friends at Chicago Film Archives to present the world premiere of their brand-new 16mm preservation of Caligari’s Cure, here to confuse and delight a new generation of Chicago cinephiles. Preserved by Chicago Film Archives through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. (CW) 66 min • 16mm from Chicago Film Archives Preceded by: “Venus and Adonis” (Tom Palazzolo, 1966) – 19 min – 16mm from Chicago Film Archives Filmmaker Tom Palazzolo in person! Sunday, September 13 @ 11:30 AM Music Box / Tickets: $14 SPARROWS Directed by William Beaudine • 1926 At age 33, Mary Pickford had reigned for a decade as Hollywood’s most popular and powerful actress, enjoying unprecedented control over her productions. Often portraying children or teens, Pickford’s “sweetheart” persona proved adaptable to innumerable scenarios; Sparrows, her penultimate silent starrer, found her cuteness anchoring a dark Southern Gothic tale. Here, in a scenario to rival Dickens at his most cartoonish, Mary plays Molly, the mother figure at a “baby farm” in the deep South, where the demented Mr. Grimes keeps as prisoners a gaggle of plucky tots. To keep their spirits up, Molly teaches them half-remembered Bible stories and sends out an occasional kite-string SOS to the world beyond the high fence. The film’s tone is operatic and moralizing (at one point Jesus himself makes an appearance!), yet it’s also a breathtaking monument of popular entertainment and a marvel of “total” art direction — a live oak swamp, infested with alligators and bubbling quicksand, was constructed from scratch on the West Hollywood backlot of Pickford-Fairbanks Studios. A contemporary review in Picture Play captured the joy of surrendering to the film: “So heavily does the hand of melodrama smite ‘Sparrows’ that the picture passes beyond t