The 18th edition of the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival continues through Sunday, June 18, at Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark. Tickets are $8, $7 for students, $4 for CF members. For more information call 773-293-1447 or check www.chicagofilmmakers.org.
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The remaining eight programs of this festival are excellent. In “Program 2: Looking Outside, Looking Inside” (72 min.) Marcellvs L.’s man.road.river. (2004) has a wonderful simplicity: a single long take of a Brazilian river respectfully observes figures wading slowly across. The lush random marks in David Gatten’s What the Water Said, No. 4, made by submersing raw emulsion, are similarly respectful. Luther Price’s Nice Biscotts #2 (2005) sympathetically presents the lives of the institutionalized elderly by repeating shots to capture their boredom. a Fri 6/16, 7 PM
In the great work comprising Program 5, Ontic Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy: Bye, Molly (89 min., 2005), Ken Jacobs reworks a 1929 Laurel and Hardy short, freezing and superimposing images and introducing flicker. Alternating between two nearby frames creates an unresolved tension between two poses, and when the film appears in its original form the viewer has learned to see it in new ways. a Sat 6/17, 7 PM
