![]() ![]() FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO-the title an homage to Yvonne Rainer's FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO.-is comprised of footage recorded between 19 and shot on 8mm, 16mm, VHS, Hi8, Mini DV, and digital the fusion of all this material (by editor Rebecca Shapass) ranks among the most astounding use of personal archives that I’ve ever seen. “There’s just one part that’s very tangly.” The irony is faint and benevolent, but present even so.) Sachs considers the enveloping imbroglio from her own perspective, but also takes into account the viewpoints of her eight siblings, her father’s ex-wives (including her own mother) and girlfriends, plus Ira’s mother, a gracefully cantankerous old woman in a certain amount of denial over her son’s wanton predilections and the role she played in his dysfunction. (The film opens with Sachs brushing her elderly father’s hair, working out a particularly unpleasant snarl. Sachs’ knotty chronicle reveals that her father has a total of nine children with several different women, two of whom the other siblings found out about only a few years back. (whose own 2005 film FORTY SHADES OF BLUE was inspired by the same so-called “Hugh Hefner of Park City”), plus others, documenting not just the sybaritic “hippie-businessman” patriarch, but also his numerous descendants. Something of a longstanding work-in-progress, the film draws from decades of footage shot by Sachs, her father, and her filmmaker brother, Ira Sachs Jr. In Horace’s Odes, one among many texts where this sentiment endures, the Roman poet wrote, "For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer." It’s hardly an esoteric dictum, but nevertheless it’s duly reflected in experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs’ wholehearted documentary portrait of her father, Ira Sachs Sr. Lynne Sachs’ FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO (US/Documentary) Gene Siskel Film Center – Showtimes listed below Preceded by Chuck Jones' 1950 cartoon THE HYPO-CHONDRI-CAT (35mm). Karloff and Lugosi's intense hatred for each other adds such a powerful undercurrent of unease to the film that one wonders if they were cast in opposing roles for just that reason. If nothing else, THE BLACK CAT is a masterpiece of lighting, with many scenes cloaked half in darkness, allowing only fragments of the "truth" to be seen. Full of clear visual allusions to both Murnau and Lang, Ulmer presents a dark portrait of post-war trauma set in a world that only looks modern, but is actually still fighting decades-old moral demons. ![]() Soon Karloff begins to psychologically torment the doctor with dark secrets from each of their pasts. A young American couple, traveling in Eastern Europe, gets stranded at the mysterious villa of a world-famous architect (Karloff) and his visiting friend, Dr. Ulmer's virtually in-name-only adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's classic story is an incredibly stylish and haunting study of the power struggle between two friends, which, accidentally or intentionally, mirrors the vicious jealousy between the film's two stars, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. ![]() The biggest budgeted film of his career, Edgar G. Ulmer's THE BLACK CAT (US)Ĭhicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. ![]()
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