Presented by Cinema/Chicago, this series of international films screens Friday, May 5, through Friday, May 12, at Landmark’s Century Centre. Tickets are $9, $6 for Cinema/Chicago members; a $30 festival pass is good for four admissions, or six admissions for members. For passes or more information visit www.chicagofilmfestival.com.
Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures
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Marcelo Gomes, who cowrote Madame Sata, makes his feature directing debut with this rambling, low-key Brazilian drama (2004). A young German avoids serving in World War II by touring the bleached Brazilian outback as a traveling salesman, and after he picks up a hitchhiker bound for Rio de Janeiro the two men gradually become friends. The salesman peddles aspirin to the natives, and as he shows them 16-millimeter films about its curative power, cinema becomes a metaphor for both drugs and dreams: in one particularly vivid image the dirt-poor hitchhiker thrusts his hand in front of the lens and, for a moment, holds the world in his palm. The leads are attractive, the dialogue minimal, and the mood downbeat–the title scavengers seem to portend the death of not any one character but civilization itself. In Portuguese with subtitles. 101 min. (AG) a 7:15 PM
R Border Cafe
The exquisite Zhou Xun (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress) stars as a Beijing girl resentful at being given over to her grandmother and aunt’s care by parents who reside in a remote province. She can hardly wait to leave for university, but on her very first day there she falls prey to a mendacious young deliveryman who will exploit her in an especially cruel and insidious way. Director Li Shaohong uses handheld video to probe the squalid quarters and inner isolation of the protagonist, who becomes more cut off as her fortunes decline, but neither filmmaking technique nor Xun’s meticulous performance rescues this indictment of Chinese misogyny (2005) from sinking under the weight of its melodrama. In Mandarin with subtitles. 94 min. (AG) a 7 PM
Short narrative films from Argentina, Burkina Faso, China, India, and Mexico/Venezuela. a 2 PM
