On the underground
by Kat Sachs
September 18, 2024
https://chicagoreader.com/film/the-moviegoer/chicago-underground-film-festival-harper-theater/
This past weekend was the Chicago Underground Film Festival, which I look forward to every year. Partly, of course, for the appropriately motley programming, and partly because I always know a lot of people whose work is in the festival, so I get to see them and other mutual friends over the span of a few days at the place I love most: a movie theater.
This year and last, the festival took place at the Harper Theater in Hyde Park. I hadn’t been there in a while, so the reclining chairs—complete with self-controlled heating!—were a welcome surprise. (Looks like it’s recently been renovated.) Such features at a soulless multiplex trying to re-create the comforts of home at a movie theater? Bad. But at a small arthouse theater kept just cool enough for the heated seats to feel like a kiss on the forehead? Perfection.
Anyway, my husband and I had a festival guest staying with us this year, friend and brilliant filmmaker Lynne Sachs. (No relation.) On Saturday, we caught a few shorts programs. At the first, I especially liked films by Kelly Sears, Saif Alsaegh, and Usama Alshaibi. Sears, whose collage-based animation accounts for some of my favorite experimental work ever, explores the dystopian effects of climate change in The Lost Season (2024). Her conceit is a world experiencing its last winter, which filmmakers are hired to document so that these now-fleeting moments can be streamed. It’s a simple but evocative premise. Alsaegh’s film, The Mother-fucker’s Birthday (2024), explores a similar kind of inanity but in the not-so-distant past as opposed to the disconcertingly not-so-distant future. In showing footage of Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush dancing, he reflects the humanity of evil—it’s terrifying that such people can even still hear music amid the roar of their atrocities.
Alshaibi’s short, Testimony (2023), is an ethereal take on the idea of AI becoming sentient and wanting the full human range of physical and emotional dynamism. Specifically, Alshaibi’s use of footage of ballerinas from the early 1900s creates a dreamlike effect that to my mind seems like something a sensitive robot might have stored in its subconscious.
My friend Lynne’s film screened in the second program. Contractions (2024), featured earlier this year as a New York Times Op-Docs selection, beautifully—and woefully—considers the discontinuation of abortion services at a women’s health clinic in Memphis two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned. There’s a certain tempo to her work that makes still the subjects she explores; in this stillness, they become ripe for contemplation, in the purest sense of the word. Time spent with her work is time spent deep in thought on some of life’s most pressing subjects.
Before seeing Lori Felker’s Patient (2023), I had no idea what standardized patients were. They’re people specifically trained in acting as patients so that med students can practice patient care. Felker’s short does a lot with this concept, shedding new light on questions of veracity, performance, and even health care itself.
So that was great. I also made it out to Roy Ward Baker’s Inferno (1953), playing as part of Noir City at the Music Box Theatre. It was in 3D, so I got to experience not only the newly renovated Theatre 1 but also its incredible, recently installed 3D capabilities. It was a great night back at one of my favorite places to be—now with cup holders!
Until next time, moviegoers.