Curated by Patrick Friel and presented by Chicago Filmmakers, the 24th Onion City festival begins Thursday, June 21, with an opening-night program at Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, and continues Friday and Saturday, June 22 and 23, in two screening rooms at Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash, fifth floor. For more information and a complete schedule see chicagofilmmakers.org.
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The rediscovery of history is a recurring theme of this year’s selections, and no work expresses it more potently than Seeking the Monkey King (Sat 6/23, 6 PM), a digital video by legendary director Ken Jacobs (Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son). A meditation on how financial and military elites have shaped U.S. history, the video alternates angry texts with strobing images of a craggy, golden surface that suggest both concentrated wealth and a postapocalyptic landscape. J.G. Thirwell’s terrifying score adds to the visceral impact.
In several shorts the artists deliberately walk a fine line between nostalgia and kitsch. Bobby Abate’s A Party Record Packed With Sex and Sadness and Shana Moulton’s Decorations of the Mind II (both Fri 6/22, 8:45 PM) repurpose old videocassette recordings, tacky 80s pop songs, and images of ugly old fabrics. Joshua Thorson’s Horizon (Sat 6/23, 7:45 PM) constructs a sci-fi story from home movies of a discontinued Epcot Center exhibit. And in three short videos Canadian artist Clint Enns manipulates to psychedelic effect images that appear to have been shot on a camcorder (Sat 6/23, 6 PM).
