Events

This Radiant World: Recent and Retrospective Experimental Films is a four-program series of exceptional experimental films from the last few years, complemented by several newly restored and preserved retrospective works. Many of the films comment directly or indirectly on the anxieties and uncertainty of the past two years; others serve as joyful and playful counterpoints. Together, they demonstrate the continuing richness of experimental cinema, the history of which is exemplified by this selection of lesser-known works that are overdue for rediscovery and reappraisal. 

Small moments of dancing, sketching, kissing, goofing, and driving that are fleeting on screen but linger in the mind and build to a more complex whole. Set to the titular song by Frank Sinatra, Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács’s All or Nothing at All imagines a flooded dystopian netherworld in which dance is a futile act of resistance. Romanian provocateur Radu Jude realizes an unmade project of Sergei Eisenstein—a film using a series of lithographs by Honoré Daumier depicting fictional swindler Robert Macaire—but can’t help tweaking things with a surprising pop culture cameo. Kevin Jerome Everson & Kahlil I. Pedizisai’s Glenville presents a contemporary incarnation of the joyfully kissing Black couple in the recently rediscovered 1898 film Something Good—Negro Kiss, while a trio of tiny sketch films by Toney Merritt are playful yet thoughtful cultural and political repositionings of Black identity. Finally, Al Wong’s Twin Peaks features the filmmaker driving in circles around the San Francisco hills over the course of a year. A travel film without a destination; a structural film that doesn’t take itself too seriously; a durational meditation; a major rediscovery. Co-curated by Julia Gibbs and Patrick Friel. (digital and 16mm, 75 min.) 

Full Program

All or Nothing at All (Margit Lukács and Persijn Broersen, 2020, 8 min, digital video)
Glenville (Kevin Jerome Everson and Kahlil I. Pedizisai, 2020, 2 min, digital video)
Caricturana (Radu Jude, 2021, 9 min, digital video)
Lonesome Cowboy, Three Masked Pieces, and EF (Toney Merritt, 1979, digital video)
Twin Peaks (Al Wong, 1977, 50 min, 16mm)

Twin Peaks was preserved by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation. 

Masks and proof of vaccination are required for entry for this in-person event at the Logan Center. Learn more at arts.uchicago.edu/visitlogancenter.