The tenth annual Chicago Underground Film Festival runs Wednesday, August 27, through Tuesday, September 2, at Landmark’s Century Centre. Tickets are $9, a $30 pass admits you to five films, and a full festival pass, good for all screenings, is $100. For more information call 866-468-3401. Following is the schedule for August 27 and 28; a complete festival schedule is available online at www.chicagoreader.com. Films marked with an * are highly recommended.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 28
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The longest of these nine films, I’m Bobby (32 min.), is a wildly postmodern parody of Raj Kapoor’s 1973 Bobby, about two lovers whose parents try to keep them apart. Xav Leplae, a Milwaukee filmmaker, casts very young children as adults and teenagers, interweaving cutout animation of the characters and dubbing in the vocals for the musical numbers; the film was shot in 35-millimeter, but its fakery purposely illuminates the theatricality of Bollywood cinema. Also noteworthy are several experimental 16-millimeter films: the waterfall in Robert Todd’s Trauma Victim (2002) has the power of thunder; the abstracted images of a falling cat in Devon Demonte’s Catcycle avoid the customary cuteness of cat imagery; and the stylish celebration of farting and pooping in Yuri A’s U (2002) recalls the nonjudgmental playfulness of children as young as its star. 74 min. (FC) (5:00)
- (Un)natural Order
Rise Above: The Tribe 8 Documentary
A middling program of aggressively self-indulgent videos that focus on the sleazy side of life. In Nick Zedd and Saint Reverend Jen’s I Was a Quality of Life Violation an old lady combs the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in search of her pooch, encountering a menagerie of local denizens with attitude in a series of skits that go nowhere. Gym Jones’s Why Would Anyone Do Anything? is a puzzling send-up of Rosemary’s Baby with a cameo by NewCity movie critic Ray Pride. In Great Balls of Fire (2002), Leon Grodski inelegantly weaves together footage of the burning World Trade Center with shots of a raging panhandler, and Matthew Silver’s video Overmodulated Marriage, a grotesque portrayal of a battling couple, suggests a cable-access show with its excess of sincerity and lack of expertise. Shorts by Eric Dyer and Andrew Gurland complete the program. 82 min. (TS) (10:30)
