47 Years of Thoughtful Cinema: A FACETS Anniversary Watchlist
Founded in 1975 by Milos Stehlik, FACETS is a Chicago institution, a destination for film enthusiasts everywhere to celebrate the art form with events, screenings, discussions, and even education. This year marks our 47th anniversary doing exciting non-profit work in the film landscape, so we’re excited to celebrate this milestone with the Chicago community whether they’ve just discovered what we offer or are longtime patrons.
In the month of May, we’re holding a number of events that run the gamut of what FACETS has to offer everyone. In addition to our screenings of films such as The Color of Pomegranates, Life Itself, and Minding the Gap, we’re holding a special sale that offers work reflecting on these specially selected works. The following is a watchlist of films we have helped distribute or restore over the years, ones we felt speak to the mission we have here at FACETS of connecting people to independent ideas through the power of transformative cinema.
Each film here was chosen to interact with our screening series happening this month: Kartemquin Films X Full Spectrum Features, FACETS Label Presents: Real Chicago, and, in honor of FACETS beloved founder, Milos’s Picks. The films on this watchlist are all currently available from FACETS on DVD and are currently 50% off for the whole month of May in our 47th Anniversary Celebration sale.
THE PEOPLE VS PAUL CRUMP
DIRECTED BY WILLIAM FRIEDKIN (1962, USA)
Featuring reenactments and archival footage to depict the deterioration of the self while imprisoned, The People Vs Paul Crump is a documentary about an inmate sentenced to the death penalty following a suspiciously obtained confession. In March 1953, a security guard was shot and killed when a robbery of a meatpacking plant in the Chicago stockyards went awry. Five Black men were charged with the crime, Paul Crump among them. However, the other four were sentenced and eventually paroled while Crump was placed on Death-row.
The directorial debut of William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection), the film was produced for television following Friedkin taking an interest in Crump’s story. After years of directing live television at Chicago’s WGN, Friedkin decided he would create a work that would convince Governor Otto Kerner Jr to release Crump. Even though Crump wasn’t released, Kerner was so moved by the film that he paroled the inmate from death row to a life sentence.
Though Crump himself would write the admired autobiographical novel Burn, Killer, Burn! the film depicting his story was never fully released and fell into obscurity as Friedkin headed to Hollywood. A later confession from Crump in 1970, given without duress, has now put a different dimension on the award-winning film and it remains a harrowing portrait of what incarceration can do to someone. Its method of using elements like reenactments deviated from the Cinema Verite and Direct Cinema movements that was popularized in films like 1960’s Primary. The result is a view into a different path for where documentary could have gone, one that was later embodied by filmmakers like Errol Morris with works like The Thin Blue Line.
FACETS helped restore The People Vs Paul Crump from its 16mm source material and released it in 2017; widely accessible for the first time in decades, many of Friedkin’s biggest fans were unaware of its existence. If you enjoyed the merits of the recent documentary Time (2020) The People Vs Paul Crump makes for a powerful and thoughtful companion piece as well as something worth experiencing as an artifact within the history of the documentary format.
You can experience The People Vs Paul Crump, and support FACETS in the process, by purchasing it here.
THE KARTEMQUIN FILMS COLLECTION: THE EARLY YEARS VOL. 1
Featuring:
PARENTS and THUMBS DOWN
DIRECTED BY GORDON QUINN (1968, USA)
Kartemquin films was founded in 1966 in Chicago and its three founding members Gordon Quinn, Jerry Temaner, and Stan Karter have helped spread a love for social and political inquiry in documentary film ever since. Parents, an early film directed by Quinn, depicts a discussion between members of a parish youth group in a lower middle class Chicago neighborhood. Speaking for themselves in a way not normally afforded to them, the group discusses parenting, independence, and what they feel growing up means.
Another film by Quinn, Thumbs Down is a cinema-verite style portrait of a Chicago youth group holding an anti-war mass at their normally conservative parish. Protesting the Vietnam War, the film helps demonstrate the generational gap that formed at the time in terms of what “taking action” means and it echoes our current moment of what forms “acceptable protest.” An earnest depiction of a communication gap between young activists and their parents, the film speaks even louder now that its original participants are within the generation guiding our world.
Both of these works are available here as part of The Kartemquin Films Collection: The Early Years Vol. 1.
THE KARTEMQUIN FILMS COLLECTION: THE EARLY YEARS VOL. 2
Featuring:
HUM 255, ANONYMOUS ARTISTS OF AMERICA, and WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE RED SQUARES?
DIRECTED BY JERRY BLUMENTHAL & GORDON QUINN (1970, USA)
“Hum 255” is a documentary short recording two women, expelled from the University of Chicago, interviewing their former classmates as part of a class project. Expelled from the college after a 1968 protest that occupied a campus building, the two women wonder where the limits of their peer’s convictions lie. A fascinating look into what it takes to stand for something at the expense of your well-being, “Hum 255” is brief, cutting, and always relevant.
“Anonymous Artists of America” is a short named for its subject, depicting the artistic music collective’s return to their alma mater at UChicago for a concert in 1970. Living up to their name, the underground group is well-known by era music enthusiasts but somehow stands just outside the popular perception despite opening for acts like The Grateful Dead. A rare look into one of the first bands to use a synthesizer as well as a lively depiction of an important group to Chicago history.
A group of protesting students, galvanized by the invasion of Cambodia as well as the shooting of students at Kent and Jackson State Universities, meet at the Art Institute of Chicago in the short subject “What the Fuck are these Red Squares?”. Discussing their relationship to protest as well as their roles as artists within a society fraught with debate, they question whether it’s possible to keep themselves from becoming co-opted by bigger interests that motivate the art world. A fascinating look into the minds of those hoping for change, the short asks questions we’re still trying to answer today.
These shorts, from a key time in Chicago independent filmmaking, are available here as part of The Kartemquin Films Collection: The Early Years Vol. 2.
THE KARTEMQUIN FILMS COLLECTION: THE EARLY YEARS VOL. 3
Featuring:
MARCO
DIRECTED BY GORDON QUINN & JERRY BLUMENTHAL (1970, USA)
When Barbara Temaner decides to forgo painkillers and use lamaze when giving birth to her child, she finds herself in conflict with established medical practice. Following Barbara and her husband Gordon as they educate themselves and speak with medical staff, Marco depicts a woman’s process of learning to trust herself and accept responsibility for her choices even when they create friction between herself and societal pressure.
The film is available here as part of The Kartemquin Films Collection: The Early Years Vol. 3.
GORILLA BATHES AT NOON
DIRECTED BY DUSAN MAKAVEJEV (Germany, 1993)
From the director of W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, Makavejev’s surreal and satirical film is of a stylistic piece with his prior work. Employing documentary style footage with segments taken from The Fall of Berlin, a pro-Stalin Soviet WWII film, it explores the confusion of the reunification of East and West Germany through the eyes of one remaining Soviet general (Svetozar Cvetkovic) left behind by his deserting unit. Free of any real responsibility, he wanders around Berlin getting into whatever trouble comes his way.
Vignette-based, Gorilla Bathes at Noon was a return to Makavejev to the form of filmmaking that made him famous with films like W.R. and Innocence Unprotected. The splicing of footage from The Fall of Berlin, featuring a heroic depiction of an excitedly welcomed Stalin flying into Berlin, makes for an ironic juxtaposition in a film where its soviet military protagonist starts his adventures by stealing food from a zoo.
As wry as ever, Makavejev’s political commentary is uniquely decadent, earnestly surreal, and utterly singular. As a companion piece to the Milos’ Picks series, Gorilla Bathes at Noon is a memorable work that returns the director to the looser narrative forms of the work he was making throughout the 1970’s. As a companion piece to W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, it’s a clever bookend to one of the most unique careers in filmmaking. Purchase Gorilla Bathes at Noon here.