With the more difficult foreign-language and domestic films all but banished from mainstream theaters and art houses alike, the Chicago area`s non-commercial movie venues become more valuable with each passing year. Without the Film Center, Facets, Chicago Filmmakers, the Chicago International Film Festival and the city`s other earnestly not-for-profit institutions, one would almost have the feeling of an art form frozen in time. Here are some of the films they showed that suggested movies continue to move:
1. ”A City of Sadness,” Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Film Center). The modern history of Taiwan is explored through the fate of a single family in this sublime work by Asia`s leading filmmaker.
2. ”Non, or The Vain Glory of Command,” Manoel de Oliveira (Chicago International Film Festival). Portugual`s 86-year-old avant gardist gets to realize his dream project, a history of his country told through its military defeats.
3. ”The Killer,” John Woo (Film Center). Delirious and ultra-violent, a gangster story told as a fever dream by the most personal filmmaker figure in the Hong Kong commercial cinema.
4. ”Water and Power,” Pat O`Neill (Film Center). An experimental feature that uses optical printing and brilliant colors to describe man`s effect of the environment.
5. ”The Gang of Four,” Jacques Rivette (Film Center). The knottiest personality of France`s New Wave veterans, Rivette here rings some intriguing changes on the theatrical metaphors he has held dear.
6. ”Archangel,” Guy Maddin (Film Festival). From Winnepeg, a dumbfounding new comic sensibility grounded in a scrupulous pastiche of the early talkie style.
7. ”Three Seats for the 26th,” Jacques Demy (Film Center). The last musical from the late Jacques Demy, whose provocative combination of drama and sung dialogue (”The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”) anticipated ”Cop Rock” by 25 years.
8. ”An Imaginary Tale,” Marc-Andre Forcier (Film Center). A romantic fantasy from Montreal`s cinematic poet laureate, told in the district`s inimitable dialect.
9. ”The Asthenic Syndrome,” Kira Miratova (Film Festival). The decline and fall of the Soviet empire, described in a lengthy, highly perverse film by Russia`s most fiercely independent filmmaker.
10. ”Monsieur,” Jean-Philippe Toussaint (Film Festival). A stripped-down absurdist comedy, directed with amazing assurance by a Belgian novelist making his movie debut.
