The 19th annual Black Harvest Film Festival begins this weekend at the Gene Siskel Film Center and runs through the end of August. Committed to “celebrating the stories, images, and history of the black experience and the African diaspora,” the fest focuses on the work of independent filmmakers, many based in Chicago. The festival kicks off Friday evening with “A Black Harvest Feast,” a gala screening of four family-friendly shorts: Martine Jean’s The Silent Treatment, Steven Caple Jr.’s A Different Tree, Kibwe Tavares’s Jonah, and Ralph K. Scott’s Barbasol. Festival passes, good for admission to six screenings, are $50; a complete schedule can be found at siskelfilmcenter.org/blackharvest2013. —Ben Sachs
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For the Cause A successful lawyer agrees to defend her estranged father, a former Black Panther who fled to Canada three decades earlier after shooting a police officer. Katherine Nero’s debut feature, shot mainly on the south side of Chicago, uses this melodramatic premise to ruminate on the legacy of black radicalism and the contemporary state of the black middle class. It may be schematic in its organization (and somewhat plain in its visual style), but what it has to say isn’t at all simple, and much of the dialogue conveys the messiness of real life. One lengthy scene depicting the dissolution of the lawyer’s relationship with her longtime boyfriend is particularly effective, recasting the movie’s political themes on an intimate scale. —Ben Sachs 84 min. Sat /3, 8 PM; Thu 8/8, 8:30 PM.
In Our Heads About Our Hair Hemamset Angaza directed this documentary (2012) about the cultural stigmas surrounding black women’s hairstyles. The premise is exactly that of Jeff Stilson’s 2009 doc Good Hair (absent Chris Rock), as Angaza interviews women of myriad ages, lifestyles, backgrounds, and nationalities about the ways in which their hair has negatively or positively affected their lives. The film clearly means well, and it presents some worthwhile information, but each testimonial repeats the same basic sentiment, rendering much of the material redundant. To make matters worse, the production is amateurish—Angaza often struggles with such simple technical aspects as syncing sound with image and placing the microphone in the correct spot when recording interviews. —Drew Hunt 76 min. Sun 8/4, 5:15 PM; Wed 8/7, 8:30 PM.
Charles Lloyd: Arrows Into Infinity A music documentary that raises the bar for the genre, this portrait of jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd by his artist wife, Dorothy Darr, and her codirector, Jeffery Morse, enthralls as much as it edifies. From his early days as sideman to Cannonball Adderley to fronting his own acclaimed quartet with Keith Jarrett, Cecil McBee, and Jack DeJohnette to recording with the Grateful Dead, Lloyd remained open to diverse influences, musical and spiritual. He was cool enough to retreat from fame in the 70s, and savvy enough for a comeback a decade later. Jordan McCommons’s evocative graphics augment rare performance footage and interviews with Lloyd and notables like Herbie Hancock, Robbie Robertson, and critic Stanley Crouch. —Andrea Gronvall 114 min. Richard Steele of WBEZ will introduce Sunday’s screening. Sun 8/11, 5 PM, and Mon 8/12, 8 PM.
