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With fears our winter travel will need a, let’s say, reconsideration, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming could hardly come at a better moment. High on list of highlights is Louis Feuillade’s delightful Les Vampires, which I suggest soundtracking to Coil, instrumental Nine Inch Nails, and Jóhann Jóhannson’s Mandy score. Notable too is a Sundance ’92 retrospective running the gamut from Paul Schrader to Derek Jarman to Jean-Pierre Gorin, and I’m especially excited for their look at one of America’s greatest actors, Sterling Hayden.

Special notice to Criterion editions of The Killing, The Last Days of Disco, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle, and programming of Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load, among the better debuts in recent years.

See the full list of January titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

-Ship: A Visual Poem, Terrance Day, 2020

5 Fingers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1952

After Migration: Calabria,...

The second annual Chicago Underground Film Festival was held in 1995, at multiple locations in the city, from Thursday, July 20 to Sunday, July 23.

The festival opened on July 20th at the International Cinema Museum with the film What About Me?, directed by Rachel Amodeo. Other highlights included a retrospective of the work of Kenneth Anger, who attended the fest and screened Fireworks (1947), Scorpio Rising (1963) and Kkk (Kustom Kar Kommandos) (1965) at the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan, on Friday, July 21. Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin also attended and screened films on July 23; while the Reverend Ivan Stang of the Church of Subgenius screened films on July 22.

Also, Charles Pinion screened the world premiere of his feature film Red Spirit Lake, which was preceded by the short film The Operation, directed by Jacob Pander and Marne Lucas. Other short films that screened were Desktop and a preview of Monday 9:02 am, both directed by Tyler Hubby.

Committed to a preservation-minded, grassroots-activism agenda, the second annual MoRUS Film Festival (August 1 through 9, at various East Village venues, presented by the Museum of the Reclaimed Urban Space) focuses on "Women of the Lower East Side."

The series opens at Anthology Film Archives with 1993's What About Me, writer-director Rachel Amodeo's broke-ass tragicomedy of desperation, now an essential, seedily romantic snapshot of Tompkins Square Park's pre-gentrified, tent-city wilderness.

New York doll Lisa (Amodeo) is suddenly homeless and helpless after her aunt drops dead, as tastelessly informed by a landlord (cult staple Rockets Redglare) who then rapes and evicts her. Wandering the claustrophobically shot, 16mm black-and-white streets, Lisa is alter...