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The Chicago Reader

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Blogs, Bleader Jun 4, 2018
Chicago Underground Film Festival at 25: A look back

As the 25th Chicago Underground Film Festival approaches, here are ten stand-out features from festivals past.
- By Patrick Friel
- Tags: Film, Comedy, LGBTQ+, Music, On Video, Chicago Underground Film Festival, CUFF, underground, Half-Cocked, Suki Hawley, Michael Galinsky, Horns and Halos, Freakwater, Sleepyhead, Grifters, J.R. Jones, The Delicate Art of the Rifle, D.W. Harper, Charles Whitman, Stephen Grant, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Straightman, Ben Berkowitz, Benjamin Redgrave, John Cassavetes, Shadows, The Target Shoots First, Christopher Wilcha, Columbia Record and Tape Club, 60 Minutes, Migrating Forms, James Fotopoulos, Fred Camper, Benjamin Smoke, Jem Cohen, Peter Sillen, Robert Dickerson, Smoke, AIDS, Patti Smith, Nice Bombs, Usama Alshaibi, Baghdad, Iraq, Putty Hill, Hamilton, Matthew Porterfield, David Gordon Green, George Washington, Your Highness, The Color Wheel, Alex Ross Perry, Ronald Bronstein, Frownland, Carlen Altman, Two Years at Sea, Ben Rivers, Jake Williams, This Is My Land, Ben Sachs

Blogs, Bleader Jun 7, 2017
You can now see Mimosas, the subject of a great making-of documentary

Oliver Laxe’s Islamic western plays at Facets Multimedia for two more nights.
- By Ben Sachs
- Tags: Film, Foreign, Piety, Mimosas, Oliver Laxe, Facets Multimedia, Ben Rivers, The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, westerns, John Ford, Wagon Master, Anthony Mann, The Naked Spur, The Far Country, Grasshopper Film

Arts & Culture, Art Review Oct 19, 2016
Recommended
Ben Rivers’s dystopian films light up the Renaissance Society

The British artist’s first U.S. solo exhibition imagines a postapocalyptic future through the lens of a disturbing present.
- By Sara Cohen
- Tags: Art Review, Ben Rivers, Urth, Renaissance Society, Biosphere 2, Slow Action, Mark von Schlegell, Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Somerset England, Mary Shelley, Janice Kerbel, Recommended

Arts & Culture, Fall Preview Sep 2, 2016
The ten best bets for fall visual arts

Expo Chicago, "Tattoo" at the Field Museum, and more
- By Tal Rosenberg and Sara Cohen
- Tags: Fall Preview, Blow Up: Inflatable Contemporary Art, Elmhurst Art Museum, Ben Rivers, Urth, Renaissance Society, Every Building in Baghdad: The Rifat Chadirji Archives at the Arab Image Foundation, Graham Foundation, Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera, Northwestern University Block Museum of Art, Expo Chicago, Navy Pier, Dateline: Bronzeville, Dorchester Art and Housing Collaborative Center, Heavy Sketches, Theaster Gates, Richard Gray Gallery, Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, László Moholy-Nagy, Art Institute of Chicago, Tattoo, Field Museum, Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination, Museum of Contemporary Art

Film, Movie Feature Jun 2, 2016
What to see at the Chicago Underground Film Festival

More than 100 new films screen through Sunday at the Logan Theatre.
- Tags: Movie Feature, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Logan Theater Chicago, The Alchemist Cookbook, Ty Hickson, Amari Cheatom, Joel Potrykus, Buzzard film, Booger Red, Texas Monthly, Mineola Seven, Berndt Mader, Director's Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein, Clu Gallagher, Zack Norman, Leon Vitali, Jay Kirk, Tim Kirk, The Love Witch, Samantha Robinson, Anna Biller, Robert Frost, Luther Price: The Hermit, Pastor Paul, Jules David Bartkowski, The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, Ben Rivers, Pere Portabella, Cuadecuc-Vampir, Oliver Laxe, Paul Bowles, Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present

Film, Movie Feature May 13, 2015
Our guide to the Chicago Underground Film Festival 2015

More than a hundred shorts and features screen through Sunday at the Logan Theatre.
- By Drew Hunt, J.R. Jones, and Ben Sachs
- Tags: Movie Feature, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Logan Theatre, Ben Russell, Ben Rivers, L for Leisure, Brunt in Memort, Sailing a Sinking Sea, Speculation Nation, En Plein Air, Non-Stop Beautiful Girls, Blue Loop, July, Alee Peoples, Mike Gibbiser, Gabriel Abrantes, Ennui Ennui, Atlantis, Immune! The Origin of Ryan Scammell, Superhero (Approximately 72% Non-fiction), Ryan Scammel, Robert Stockwell, Max Gold, Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn, Privilege and Obsession, Stephen Graves, Olivia Wyatt, Sabine Gruffat, Bill Brown, Hacked Circuit, Joanna Arnow, Bad at Dancing, Scott Treleaven, The Salvation, experimental film, underground film, independent film

Film, Movie Sidebar Mar 5, 2014
Video
Our guide to the European Union Film Festival at Gene Siskel Film Center

More than 60 new features make their Chicago premieres through March.
- Tags: Movie Sidebar, Child's Pose, Luminita Gheorghiu, Bogdan Dumitrache, Razvan Radulescu, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Tuesday, After Christmas, Calin Peter Netzer, Ida, Pawel Pawlikowski, My Summer of Love, Robert Bresson, Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza, Run & Jump, Edward MacLia, Maxine Peake, Will Forte, Steph Green, A Spell to Ward Off Darkness, Ben Rivers, Ben Russell, Two Years at Sea, Let Each One Go Where He May, Robert Lowe, The Strange Little Cat, Ramon Zürcher, What Now? Remind Me, Joaquim Pinto, Chris Marker, Sans Soleil, Jean-Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Miville, Soft and Hard, Video

Film, Movie Review Sep 4, 2013
At the 25th annual Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, every picture tells a story

From multilayered mysteries to a Warholian take on Grand Theft Auto IV, narrative cinema and the avant-garde overlap.
- By Ben Sachs
- Tags: Movie Review, Sergei Eisenstein, Encounters I May or May Not Have Had With Peter Berlin, Buffalo Death Mask, Andy Warhol, Grand Theft Auto IV, JB Mabe, To the Change Assigned, Lewis Klahr, Kiss the Rain, David Fincher, Matt Wolf, I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard, Ron Padgett, I Am Micro, Seven, Vincent Grenier, Watercolor (Fall Creek), Jake Barningham, Pták básně I a II, Phil Solomon, Empire, Gus Van Sant, Aula Magna, Manuel Barenboim, Ant Hill, Gerry, Andres Denegri, Elephant, Last Days, Joseph Cornell, George Kuchar, Onion City Festival of Experimental Film and Video, Morning of Saint Anthony's Day, As the Flames Rose, João Pedro Rodrigues, Columbia College, Ferguson Theater, O Fantasma, Two Drifters, To Die Like a Man, The Last Time I Saw Macao, João Rui Guerra da Mata, Saint Anthony's Day, Jean Cocteau, The Human Voice, Ben Rivers, Phantoms of a Libertine, Mike Leigh, Terence Davies, Slow Action, Two Years at Sea, Ben Russell, Let Each One Go Where He May, Sabine Gruffat, I Have Always Been a Dreamer, Stephen Graves, A Body Without Organs, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel, Leviathan, I Am Micro, Kamal Swaroop, Double Play, Richard Linklater, James Benning

Blogs, Bleader Dec 27, 2012
My favorite films of 2012

Top Ten Films of 2012
- By Drew Hunt
- Tags: Things I Love, Film, The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson, Two Years at Sea, Ben Rivers, Haywire, Steven Soderbergh, Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson, The Comedy, Rick Alverson, Goodbye First Love, Mia Hanson-Love, Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino, The Day He Arrives, Hong Sang-soo, The Deep Blue Sea, Terrence Davies, A Burning Hot Summer, Philippe Garrel, Bernie, Richard Linklater, Killer Joe, William Friedkin, Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold, Tchoupitoulas, Bill Ross, Turner Ross, The Color Wheel, Alex Ross Perry, Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh, Alps, Yorgos Lanthimos, Let the Bullets Fly, Wen Jiang, Wanderlust, David Wain, Keyhole, Guy Maddin, Attenberg, Athina Rachel Tsangari, This is Not a Film, Jafar Panahi, The Innkeepers, Ti West, In Another Country, Hong Sang-soo, 2012), 21 Jump Street, Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Beyond the Hills, Christian Mungiu, Leviathan, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel, Mekong Hotel, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Post Tenebras Lux, Carlos Reygadas, Hors Satan, Bruno Dumont, Aita, José María de Orbe, Memories of a Morning, Jose Luis Guerin, Palaces of Pity, Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt

Blogs, Bleader Jun 21, 2012
This week in tactile cinema: Miyazaki, Gitlin, Rivers

Looking at two exceptionally well-photographed shorts in this year's Onion City Film Festival
- By Ben Sachs
- Tags: Arts, Film, Onion City Film Festival, Sack Barrow, Ben Rivers, Chicago Filmmakers, Dust Studies, Michael Gitlin, My Neighbor Totoro, Hayao Miyazaki, early childhood, 16-millimeter photography, HD video

Film, Movie Sidebar Jun 20, 2012
Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival

Rediscovering history is a recurrent theme of Chicago Filmmakers' 24th annual avant-garde celebration
- By Ben Sachs
- Tags: Movie Sidebar, Patrick Friel, Onion City Experimental FIlm and Video Festival, Seeking the Monkey King, Ken Jacobs, J.G. Thirwell, Ben Rivers, Sack Barrow, Matt McCormick, Future So Bright, Lewis Klahr, The Pettifogger, collage animation, Bobby Abate, A Party Record Packed With Sex and Sadness, Shana Moulton, Decorations of the Mind, Joshua Thorson, Horizon, John Torres, Mapang-Akit, Across & Down, Lori Felker, Jake Barningham, JB Mabe, The Colors That Combine to Make White Are Important, Barry Doupé

Film, Movie Sidebar May 30, 2012
Our guide to the Chicago Underground Film Festival

The 19th annual fest opens Thursday night at Gene Siskel Film Center
- Tags: Movie Sidebar, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Andrew Bird, Xan Aranda, Harmony Korine, Aleksei Fedorchenko, Jan Kwiecinski, David Redmon, A. Sabin, Axel Ranisch, Sabine Gruffat, Robert Todd, Daniel Martinico, Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt, Ben Rivers, Lindsay Denniberg, Michal Kosakowski

Blogs, Bleader May 29, 2012
Thoughts on Cinema Scope's "Best 50 Filmmakers Under 50" list

I finally had a chance to sit down with Cinema Scope magazine's 50th issue
- By Drew Hunt
- Tags: Film, Cinema Scope magazine, The Best 50 Filmmakers Under 50, Wes Anderson, Ben Rivers, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Johan Grimonperez, Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow, Lena Dunham, James Gray, Mia Hansen-Love

Blogs, Bleader Jun 7, 2011
CUFF announces prize winners

The judges of the Chicago Underground Film Festival have spoken.
- By J.R. Jones
- Tags: Film, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Adele Horne, Ryan Garrett, John Price, Ben Rivers, Alex Ross Perry, The Color Wheel, Damon Russell, Snow on tha Bluff, Gene Siskel Film Center, film festivals, underground film, movies

Film, Movie Sidebar Jun 17, 2010
Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival

Selected works from the festival's nine programs
- By Fred Camper
- Tags: Movie Sidebar, Chicago Filmmakers, Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, Gene Siskel Film Center, Janie Geiser, Ghost Algebra, Beauty Plus Pity, Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby, The World, Richard Tuohy, Flyscreen, Alexander Stewart, Iceland Spar, Mary Helena Clark, Sound Over Water, Stephanie Barber, To the Horse Dream of Arms, Gregg Biermann, Traffic Patterns, Ben Rivers, May Tomorrow Shine the Brightest of All Your Many Days As It Will Be Your Last, Kyle Canterbury, Yoel Meranda, Bsorb, Eytan Ipeker, Jake Barningham, Concering Flight, Nightingale

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