The 17th Chicago Underground Film Festival runs Thursday, June 24, through Thursday, July 1, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800. Tickets are $10, $7 for students, and $5 for Film Center members. Following are selected programs; for a full schedule see siskelfilmcenter.org.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Life Is Unpredictable: Films by Jonas Mekas Seven short works from the guiding light of the American avant-garde. The playful Award Presentation to Andy Warhol (1964) shows the pop-art genius and his Factory coterie eating fruit and vegetables while posing formally as the Supremes blare on the soundtrack. Notes on the Circus (1966) uses fast motion, double exposures, and the skiffle song “Storybook Ball” to create an elegy for the vanishing performance art. The most personal are Cassis (1966), a time-lapse experiment Mekas filmed while visiting the Provencal bay where Seurat lived, and the video essay Letter to Penny Arcade (2001), in which the octogenarian bon vivant drinks and dances while extolling New York. Cup/Saucer/Two Dancers/Radio (1983) is a buzz-kill, a strident dance film that hasn’t held up over time. 90 min. Mekas has canceled his previously announced personal appearance. Sat 6/26, 4:45 PM. —Andrea Gronvall
Scrappers This superior verite doc opens a wide window onto the world of scrap-metal scavengers, thousands of whom comb Chicago’s back alleys in battered pickups looking for recyclable metals. Theirs was a hard buck to earn even before metal prices plummeted in 2008 from $230 to $60 a ton, and directors Ben Kolak, Brian Ashby, and Courtney Prokopas make the most of their subjects’ humble heroism while resisting the temptation to sentimentalize them. Along the way they painlessly impart a whole lot of insight into the travails of undocumented immigrants, the persistence of segregation, and the workings of the globalized economy. Miraculously, the whole thing plays more like a gritty valentine to the City in a Garden than an earnest left-wing guilt trip. 92 min. The directors will attend the Sunday screening. Sun 6/27, 4:45 PM, and Thu 7/1, 8 PM. —Cliff Doerksen
The Wild Hunt The phenomenon of live-action medieval role-playing games has already generated two documentaries—Darkon (2006) and Monster Camp (2007)—which definitely blunts the sword-edge of this Canadian drama. The hero lives in a crappy high-rise where he tends to his alcoholic, Icelandic father; his numbskull older brother larks about with a Viking-themed game, and when the hero’s disgruntled girlfriend ditches him to join in the fun, our man ventures into the forest to reclaim her. Like the documentaries, this is supposed to be striking a blow for reality, though director Alexandre Franchi has cast relatively thin and sinewy guys as the costumed gamers, as opposed to the couch potatos who usually take part. 98 min. Franchi will attend the screening. Thu 6/24, 8 PM. —J.R. Jones
