Event Details
Date & Time:
Thu January 18, 2018 - Thu February 15, 2018
Location:
The Block Museum of Art
40 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Audience:
Open to the public
Details:
A film series surveying the contemporary field of professional documentary with filmmakers present for Q&A.
Co-presented by Northwestern’s MFA in Documentary Media program.
The Other Kids
Thursday, January 18, 2018 7:00 PM FREE
(Chris Brown, 2016, USA, DCP, 95 min.)
Award winning director and editor Chris Brown’s The Other Kids combines documentary and fiction (he calls it a “fictumentary”) to explore the lives of a group of high school students in Sonora, California. Brown worked with the students to shape fictional situations based on their real lives and experiences, allowing for an intimacy and authenticity that avoids the clichés of many teenage dramas. Through the film’s improvisatory process and documentary-style shooting, Brown and his young collaborators capture “small, revelatory, human moments” that pierce the fiction and connect the characters’ lives, worries, and simple joys to our own. "Honest and compelling."—San Francisco Chronicle
In Person: director Chris Brown
Nuts
Friday, February 2, 2018 7:00 PM FREE
(Penny Lane, 2016, USA, DCP, 79 min.)
Filmmaker Penny Lane describes her documentary on the early 20th century huckster and self-promotion wiz Dr. John Romulus Brinkley as “mostly true.” Fittingly, the film is both the story of Brinkley, who rose to prominence by selling goat-testicle transplants as a cure for impotence, and a playful deconstruction of the unreliability of the documentary form. Lane uses animated re-enactments, interviews, and archival footage to document Brinkley’s exploits, and then reveals where and how she’s not been telling the whole truth. It’s a show-and-tell of how media can be used to influence the public, or outright lie, but done so through the tale of a captivating eccentric, a charlatan who promised miracles and built an unrivaled marketing machine for himself. “As illuminating as it is immensely entertaining.”—Rolling Stone
In Person: director Penny Lane
Shorts program
Thursday, February 15, 2018 7:00 PM FREE
This program of recent documentary shorts is focused on the work of Austin, Texas-based couple Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas, who have been receiving extensive praise on the film festival circuit for their semi-ethnographic films shot in Florida. Their three films here take as their subjects the elaborate prom preparations by students and parents in the small rural town of Pahokee (The Send-Off); a weekly rabbit hunt in the Everglades by one of those students and his family (The Rabbit Hunt); and the recent phenomenon of gawkers staking out the Palm Beach International Airport, trying to catch a glimpse of Donald Trump on his frequent visits to Mar-A-Lago (Roadside Attraction). Bresnan and Lucas’ verité style treats their quirky subjects respectfully, letting their humanity show through. The program is rounded out by two local films: Milad Mozari’s Standing Nymph and Man is a haunting visual and aural exploration of the landmark Fine Arts building in downtown Chicago; and Rachel Pikelny’s Grace is a powerful and moving portrait a breast cancer survivor who counters her mastectomy through an elaborate tattoo.
The Send-Off (Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas, 2016, USA, DCP, 12 min.)
The Rabbit Hunt (Patrick Bresnan, 2017, USA, DCP, 12 min.)
Roadside Attraction (Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas, 2017, USA, DCP, 10 min.)
Standing Nymph and Man (Milad Mozari, 2017, USA, digital, 17 min.)
Grace (Rachel Pikelny, 2017, USA, digital, 16 min.)
In Person: directors Patrick Bresnan, Ivete Lucas, Milad Mozari, and Rachel Pikelny
Contact The Block Museum of Art for more information: (847) 491-4000 or email us at block-museum@northwestern.edu