Doc Films Announces Summer Schedule
By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 18, 2012 3:20PM
We've always liked wandering around the U of C campus in the summertime. With students largely absent, it's kind of like being in one of those dystopian sci fi movies where all the buildings are perfectly preserved but the people are gone. As much of a pain as it can be to get down to Hyde Park, there's nothing to compare to that feeling you get on a very hot summer afternoon of trudging through the Chicago light and heat and then retreating inside the dim coolness of Ida B. Noyes Hall to watch a movie. Doc Films' summer slate this year has even more variety than usual, and among the forty movies in the lineup is something for everyone.
There are a number of films from master filmmakers. You've got Chaplin (a program of Chaplin’s Essanay Films, June 20, and Monsieur Verdoux, August 11); Warhol (Camp, July 5); Capra (his rarely screened WWII propaganda films Divide and Conquer, July 11, and War Comes to America, July 18); Keaton (The General, July 12); Samuel Fuller (the amazingly kickass anti-war drama The Steel Helmet, July 26); and David Lean (Breaking the Sound Barrier, August 3), among others. And silent cinema is also well represented (The Man with a Movie Camera, The Fall of the House of Usher, John Ford's The Iron Horse, Grass, The Golem). But at the heart of the schedule is a cross-section of weird cult films. The Driller Killer, Disco Fever, Shriek of the Mutilated, If You Meet Sartana Pray For Your Death, The Devil's Rain, How to Succeed with Sex: the titles alone promise a fun time. Doc is also showing some of the newer additions to the cult canon, including Earth Girls Are Easy, Superbad, and the Lohan-o-rama remake of The Parent Trap (!) With a $5 admission for any film, it's a pretty sweet opportunity to see some fun movies while getting out of the heat.
All films screen at the Max Palevsky Cinema in Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St.