The Chicago International Documentary Festival (which debuted last year as the Chicago International Doc Film Festival) continues Friday through Thursday, April 9 through 15. Screenings are at Facets Cinematheque; Northwestern Univ. Thorne Auditorium, 375 E. Chicago; and the Society for Arts, 1112 N. Milwaukee. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $8.50, $7 for seniors and students, and $6.50 for shows before noon or after 10:00 PM. Passes are available for $125 (20 screenings), and $70 (10 screenings), but only the first includes admission to the closing-night gala; for more information call 773-486-9612. Films marked with an * are highly recommended.

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  • The Cartel and Tlatelolco: Keys to the Massacre

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A German TV documentary by Helmut Grosse, The Cartel (2002, in English and subtitled German) offers a concise and lucid account of the multiple ties between the second Bush administration and the oil and energy industries, many of which date back to the president’s membership in the secret Skull and Bones Society at Yale. Some of the material is familiar and obvious, but Grosse makes a strong case for the disproportionate influence of Texas on the national agenda, and defuses likely charges of Eurocentric bias by limiting his interviews to American experts. Carlos Mendoza’s Tlatelolco: Keys to the Massacre (2002, in Spanish with subtitles) is an investigative report on the October 1968 shooting of well over 150 student demonstrators, and the wounding or arrest of hundreds more, by soldiers in Mexico City. Aptly described as Mexico’s Tiananmen Square, the massacre may have been the worst human catastrophe to befall the international student left during that era, and Mendoza walks us through the known facts, drawing on archival footage, eyewitness reports, and recently declassified documents from the U.S. Defense Department that suggest possible CIA involvement. The subtitling’s occasionally awkward, but the story is chilling nonetheless. 143 min. (JR) (Society for Arts, 1:00)

Jane Gray spent nine months eavesdropping on a seventh-and-eighth-grade dormitory at the tony Fay School in Southborough, Massachusetts, and comes away with shocking evidence that wealthy 12-year-old girls gossip, cry, squeal, and indulge in silly dramatics. Over the academic year a catty conflict develops between Amanda, a large, sharp-tongued child from Saint Paul, and Joanna, a cheerful little goody-goody from Florida. Gray, an alumna of the school and an associate at the Film Study Center at Harvard, has positioned her 2003 video as a study in gender psychology, but the fact that she considers this a story worth telling indicates that she might want to get out of the house a little herself. 75 min. (JJ) Gray will attend the screening. (Facets Cinematheque, 3:00)

  • Trip to Paradise and Mother/Country

These two 1997 documentaries by Angus Macqueen offer sardonic analyses of the impact of the free market on Russian art. The Bolshoi in Vegas examines the quixotic efforts of a likable American entrepreneur, Ed Martin, to present the brilliant Bolshoi Ballet to philistine Las Vegas audiences. The irony is undermined by Macqueen’s withering condescension toward Martin’s unlikely “angels,” a group of Christian investors from Oklahoma. The Kirov in Petersburg contains some beautiful archival footage of the Kirov Ballet, but its account of the company’s history and troubled finances is poorly structured. Both films in English and subtitled Russian. 110 min. (Patrick Z. McGavin) (Society for Arts, 9:00)