European Union Film Festival

The annual European Union Film Festival is set to kickoff in a few days at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago. First off, if you've never been to the Gene Siskel Film Center, you're missing out on one of the finest resources of film viewing in the country - bar none. While they are only a two-screen house, they'll often show up to four different films in one evening - with an emphasis on different. Where else within a 1,000 square miles can you see an animated French film, a Swedish vampire flick and a documentary about the Blood and Crips street gang all in one night? And they have a coffee/tea bar! 

Over the course (and ides) of March, the Gene Siskel will be showcasing 59 films from all 27 European Union Nations - which is quite the feat in itself (sadly, Turkey has yet to join the EU!). Romania, who have been knocking out some of the better films of the last few years (see California Dreamin', The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, and Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days) will have three films featured. The  great contemporary French director Olivier Assayas will have a new film screening. Finland! Lithuania! Malta! The list goes on - more importantly is the fact that all of these films are brought together for a month long celebration. Here's the lowdown - www.siskelfilmcenter.org

The Weather Underground

On the evening of October 8, 1969, 200 protesters stood milling about Lincoln Park in Chicago. October 8th was to be the first of three "Days of Rage," and while the protesters were close to 24,000 people short of the expected number, those present kicked things off proper by storming through the Gold Coast neighborhood, breaking windows, assaulting cars. The police soon counterattacked, and after two days of simmer down and wound mending, the protesters reformed in the Loop. More than half of the protesters were jailed that day, many of them part of a collective known as the Weatherman. The excellent documentary The Weather Underground chronicles in a meditative, and electrifying manner the Weatherman's short lived, yet defining calls to action in the late 60s and early 70s. Come see where the "palling with terrorists" biz all started - hear Bill Ayers set the record straight. Come see the real reason  why that guy in the picture is wearing a football helmet. And like at our inaugural film Cooley High, there will be free popcorn. 

Thanks, by the way, for all of those who came out last Wednesday in the rainy weather for Cooley High. Everyone left with new information about life in 1960s Chicago, the R&B group Boys II Men, and why you should never go joy riding in a stolen car with unscrupulous friends.  

Swallow Your Cinema Premiere: COOLEY HIGH

We're officially kicking off the SWALLOW YOUR CINEMA film night with an ode to Chicago, a city that has served as the Joker's playground, overtime for Eliot Ness, and risky business for Tom Cruise. Harrison Ford's Dr. Richard Kimble really made trouble for himself in Chicago, and Goldie Hawn coached an inner-city high school football team here (check Wildcats). Somewhere along the way Hollywood got the idea to have Gary Coleman live in a Chicago railway station locker (check On the Right Track), and even weirder, have Judge Reinhold, and a still very young Fred Savage (i.e. Kevin from The Wonder Years) switch bodies in Vice Versa. It took Arnold Schwarzenegger, while playing a ridiculously wooden Russian narc in the 1988 film Red Heat, to finally proclaim that "this Chicago is a very strange city." In essence, when Hollywood, and those who work outside of that system, want tough, unforgiving, and weird, they look to no other city. 

It's a city that loves to laugh at itself, and at those who inhabit it, but you rarely see a film made in Chicago where the characters are in love with themselves or Chicago - the characters and the city are in a constant struggle to find love (check John Hughes), to learn, and many times, just get by (check Hoop Dreams). As the writer Nelson Algren once said, "Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose." 

Culling from a list of 1700 films that were either filmed entirely or partly in Chicago, we surfaced with three films that we thought not only represented Chicago as a celluloid wonderland (at least in warmer weather), but three films that speak tenfold about a particular time in the city.

Swallow Your Cinema's inaugural film is Cooley High, a 1975 gem that is Chicago to the bone. Exploring the world of Chicago's housing projects in the 1960s, Cooley High is just as much a high school comedy as it is a comment on inner-city life. Turner Classic Movies did an exceptional re-cap of Cooley High's history that can be found here. 

Rounding out our cinematic ode to the city of Chicago is the 2002 documentary The Weather Underground, and Jeff Garlin's 2006 film I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With. 

We hope to see you in our front room for the above three films and all those in the future --- we have some great themes already planned for 2009, including:

• Australia 
  
• Brother's Keeper (think Baldwin, Marx...)
  
• Healthy Cinema (think organic characters...)
  
• Monkey See, Monkey Do (think Clint Eastwood/apes....)
  
• Old Men Stuck On Mad Horses
  
• Texas 
  
• Gus Van Sant
  

Come summertime, we hope to take our projector outside...until then, come for the free popcorn. And in case you're wondering, that Judge Reinhold/Fred Savage body switcheroo was actually a serious contender for our kickoff film. 

Prepare to get S.Y.C.

Swallow Your Cinema

starts

very

soon.

Wednesday, February 11th, in fact.  Details soon.  Balki for now.