Presented by the Chicago-based documentary production and distribution company Terra Nova Films, the ninth annual Silver Images Film Festival continues Friday, May 10, through Wednesday, May 29, at Advocate Health Center-Evergreen Park, 9435 S. Western, Evergreen Park; Bethany Hospital, 3435 W. Van Buren; Casa Central, 1335 N. California; Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington; Copernicus Center, 3160 N. Milwaukee; Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State; Holy Covenant MCC Church, 9145 Grant, Brookfield; and the Levy Center, 2019 W. Lawrence. Unless otherwise noted, admission is free and films will be shown on video; films marked with an * are highly recommended. For more information call 773-881-6940. Following is the schedule for May 10 through 16; a complete festival schedule is available on-line at www.chicagoreader.com.
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In Life Stories (60 min.), John Ankele and Anne Macksoud observe a handful of older adults as they take a writing course from creativity guru Thomas Coles, who mixes in a fair amount of group therapy. The students, most in their 60s and 70s, produce angry screeds about childhood slights or wax lyrical about marriages that went wrong decades earlier, moments that are often moving (one woman dissolves into tears as she reads a poem about her emotionally abusive husband). Yet the intimacy of this 2001 video flirts with voyeurism: one student, a proper southerner, hits the nail on the head when she complains, in a flash of postmodern self-reflexivity, that they’re all playing up their traumas for the camera. Walter Rosenblum: In Search of Pitt Street (60 min.) recounts the long and fascinating career of the noted New York photographer. The son of a poor fruit peddler on the Lower East Side, he studied under Paul Strand at the Photo League, witnessed the Normandy invasion and the liberation of Dachau as an army cameraman, and developed a documentary style that was warm but mostly free of sentimentality. In recounting his life story, daughter Nina Rosenblum allows Walter to rattle on like Polonius, sharing his sage observations, and by her estimate he seems never to have made a wrong move, said a harsh word, or taken a photo that wasn’t museum quality. When she sticks to the facts, this 1999 film provides a graceful portrait. (Jack Helbig) Also on the program: Martha Heine, Tapestry Weaver and My Father’s Hopes. (Chicago Cultural Center, 10:00 am)
Short films, program two
In 1948, Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society of Los Angeles, the first advocacy group for homosexual men in the U.S.–but, as he explains in Eric Slide’s documentary (2001, 57 min.), for the first two years he couldn’t find anyone else to join. Hay went on to join gay activists in the 1960s and found the Radical Faeries in the 1970s. As profiled by Slide, he seems like the genuine article, a man far ahead of his time who says his greatest compliment came from a young man who whispered, “Thank you for my life.” In Beauty Before Age (1997, 22 min.), Johnny Symons focuses on San Francisco’s Castro Street to explore attitudes toward aging in the “very ocularly focused” gay community. Younger men avoid seniors and people suffering from advanced AIDS, though one young man says he takes much older lovers for their wisdom and “calm.” (FC) Also on the program: Voicing the Legacy (35 min.). (Holy Covenant MCC Church, 7:30)
Short films, program five
Short films, program six
