Alternative Visions

3/2/11 to 4/20/11

This eclectic series of experimental films features a program of Canadian works that simultaneously depict nature and explore the nature of the cinematic image; three films by Chicago-based avant-garde filmmaker Thomas Comerford, who will join us in person; an intimate glimpse of Andy Warhol's Factory; and a musical comedy set in Depression-era Winnipeg starring Isabella Rossellini as a bewitching beer baroness.

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  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • The Saddest Music in the World

    • Wednesday, April 20 7:30 PM

    Guy Maddin (Canada, 2003). A comedy, “but also an eerie fantasy that suggests a silent film like Metropolis crossed with a musical starring Nelson Eddy and Jeannette McDonald, and then left to marinate for long forgotten years in an enchanted vault. . . . It plays like satirical nostalgia for a past that never existed” (Roger Ebert). (99 mins)

  • A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory

    • Wednesday, April 13 7:30 PM

    Esther Robinson (U.S., 2007). Robinson's exploration of the short life of her uncle, Danny Williams, a filmmaker and habitué of Warhol's Factory, yields an enigmatic and contradictory portrait. “A marvelous oral history of a time and place rarely explored with such unromantic honesty”(New York Sun). (75 mins)

  • The Chicago Survey Trilogy

    • Wednesday, April 6 7:30 PM

    Thomas Comerford (U.S., 2002–2010). Thomas Comerford in Person. Three films from the Chicago-based avant-garde filmmaker and punk rocker, Figures in the Landscape, Land Marked/Marquette, and The Indian Boundary, that explore the geographical history of Chicago and the Midwest. (77 mins)

  • Images of Nature, or The Nature of the Image: Canadian Artists at Work

    • Wednesday, March 9 7:30 PM

    Introduced by Lauren Howes. Spanning four decades of Canadian experimental cinema, this program comprises work that is visually and viscerally engaged with the natural world. Featuring the work of David Rimmer, Ellie Epp, Richard Kerr, John Price, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, Daichi Saito, and Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby. (80 mins)