While the Cinematheque's theatrical venues remain closed, our view-at-home series continues this week with two powerful new documentaries that were originally scheduled to screen as part of the 2020 Wisconsin Film Festival.

THE RABBI GOES WEST (USA, 2019, 78 min.) Rabbi Chaim Bruk, a self-proclaimed “salesman of God,” proves unwavering in his efforts to make Jews more religious in this disarming, provocative documentary by Gerald Peary (Archie’s Betty, WFF 2016) and Amy Geller. Brooklyn-born Bruk moves to unlikely Bozeman, Montana, placed there by Chabad, a branch of Hasidic Judaism that puts a high value on outreach. Members of the local Reform and Conservative Jewish communities are not entirely receptive to the methods of this charismatic interloper, who has made a pledge to place a mezuzah on the doorpost of every Jew in Montana. That’s less than 2,000 Jews in a state 14 times larger than Israel.  Sparks fly when Rabbi Chaim and Bozeman’s Reform rabbi clash on issues such as support of Israel, women’s rights, and interpretations of the Torah. But there is a real threat to all the Jews of Montana when Neo-Nazis cyberattack the local rabbis.

DETERMINED (USA, 2020, 74 min.) After losing their mothers to Alzheimer’s disease, three Wisconsin women — determined to find a cure — volunteer their bodies and minds to a pathbreaking UW Madison study. Hailing from Milwaukee, Madison, and Washburn County, respectively, Karen, Sigrid, and Barb face strenuous cognitive exams, exercise tests, and neural scans as part of the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention (WRAP). This clear-eyed documentary secures access not only to the high-stakes inner workings of medical research, but also to the intimate personal lives and families of the participants. Determined examines, in heartbreaking detail, the toll of Alzheimer’s, particularly on the inner lives of caregivers. It also introduces us to three brave women and a team of doctors who, together, give us hope for a brighter future.

Through December 24 only, the Cinematheque has a limited number of opportunities to view both Determined and The Rabbi Goes West at home for free. To receive instructions on how to view both movies, send an email to info@cinema.wisc.edu and remember to include the code WFF in the subject line. No further message is necessary.

Two new episodes of our Cinematalk podcast, this week! First, the Cinematheque's Ben Reiser talks with The Rabbi Goes West filmmakers Amy Geller and Gerald Peary. On a separate episode, Ben talks with the team behind Determined. Listen to both episodes of Cinematalk below or subscribe through Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

While the Cinematheque's theatrical venues remain closed, our view-at-home series continues this week with a restoration of an action masterpiece rarely screened in the U.S.

RAINING IN THE MOUNTAIN (KONG SHAN LING YU, Taiwan/Hong Kong, 1979, 122 min., Mandarin with English subtitles) Hailed as “spectacular, exhilarating entertainment” in the New York Times, Raining in the Mountain is one of the final signature achievements of Hong Kong’s original action master, King Hu (Dragon Inn, A Touch of Zen). In a Ming Dynasty monastery, competing bands of thieves, corrupt monks, and martial artists converge as the temple’s abbot, charged with protecting a sacred scroll, prepares to name his successor. Hu’s aesthetic and technical powers are in full effect in this nimble battle of wits, brought to life through his characteristic finely tuned choreography and balletic action sequences.

“Visually gorgeous and notably abstract… one of his best” (J. Hoberman, New York Review of Books).

For a limited time, the Cinematheque has a limited number of opportunities to view Raining in the Mountain at home for free. To receive instructions on how to view-at-home, send an email to info@cinema.wisc.edu remember to include the word RAINING in the subject line. No further message is necessary.

New on our Cinematalk podcast, the Cinematheque's Mike King talks about King Hu with renowned film scholar and Planet Hong Kong author David Bordwell. Listen to Cinematalk below or subscribe through Apple Podcasts.

Stay healthy and safe. We value your support for the Cinematheque and we look forward to being able to watch movies with you soon in the proper cinematic settings of 4070 Vilas Hall and the Chazen Museum of Art.

While the Cinematheque's theatrical venues remain closed, we invite you to supplement the American holiday celebrations this week with our latest view-at-home selection, a movie that is definitively Canadian.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (Canada, 2019, 90 min.) Sick to death of contemporary politics? Rewind to an even crazier campaign with this gloriously ludicrous delight, set in the improbably cutthroat political landscape of Toronto, 1899. Very loosely based on Mackenzie King, the real-life 10th prime minister of Canada (and who would surely be baffled by his own biopic), the film ushers us into a gorgeously realized, faux-technicolor dreamscape rife with surreal sex and nonstop backstabbing. The impossible-to-synopsize plot is a screwball sendup of Canadian national identity, leading its characters through a veritable ice maze of repression. Jam-packed with jokes and dazzling to behold, The Twentieth Century is guaranteed to be the most fun you have watching political machinations all year. (Mike King)

The Twentieth Century was an official selection of the 2020 Wisconsin Film Festival and Matthew Rankin's The Tesla World Light screened at the 2018 Wisconsin Film Festival.

“Matthew Rankin's hilarious and unbridled debut is a national treasure, boasting incredible cinematic compositions and stylized set pieces, while delivering a magnificent burn of Canadian identity politics and manhood" (The Globe & Mail).

“A nonstop wonder... the film’s style is impeccable, its comedic delivery perfectly timed, and its editing sharp and energetic. Every laugh segues immediately into anticipatory giggling at what’s to come next. The Twentieth Century being a biopic is merely the icing on the cake of Rankin’s incredible artistry, craft, and utterly bonkers comic and visual sensibility" (/Film).

For a limited time, the Cinematheque is providing a limited number of opportunities to view The Twentieth Century at home for free. To receive instructions on how to view-at-home, simply send an email to info@cinema.wisc.edu and remember to include the word CANADA in the subject line. No further message is necessary.

New on our Cinematalk podcast, the Cinematheque's Mike King leads a lively discussion with The Twentieth Century's ingenious creator, Matthew Rankin. Listen to Cinematalk below or subscribe through Apple Podcasts.

Stay healthy and safe. We value your support for the Cinematheque and we look forward to being able to watch movies with you soon in the proper cinematic settings of 4070 Vilas Hall and the Chazen Museum of Art.

While our campus theaters remain closed, the Cinematheque is continuing our series of view-at-home cinema programs with a tribute to a unique and important film programmer.

Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel at Oberhausen. This collection of remarkable and innovative short films from the 1960s reflect the personal and eclectic tastes of Amos Vogel (1921-2012), founder of the influential screening society Cinema 16 and co-founder of the New York Film Festival. Vogel was also a teacher and the author of the seminal book on experimental and avant-garde cinema, Film as a Subversive Art, originally published in 1974. His papers are currently archived at the Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research here at UW Madison.

"All along, Amos was the one hope. He had an audience of five thousand people to whom he would show works that my friends and I regarded as art. That was wonderful, but he showed the films we admired in a mix with scandal movies and documentaries of various shocking subjects...Amos's main concern and consideration was to show things that you couldn't see elsewhere, and that was what attracted his audiences" (Stan Brakhage on Amos Vogel).

The film selections in this program all received some of their earliest screenings in West Germany at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, where Vogel served as a member of the international jury and later as an American programming correspondent. The program has been curated by Tobias Hering, who currently directs the "re-selected" project at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, a festival segment as well as an ongoing program series based on the festival's analogue print collection and paper archives. The four view-at-home selections are:

THE HOUSE IS BLACK (KHANEH SIAH AST, Iran, 1963, 22 min., Farsi with English subtitles). Directed by Forogh Farrohkzad. In the only film she ever directed, the celebrated Persian poet Forugh Farrokhzad lyrically renders the denizens of a leper colony in Northern Iran. “Another taboo subject enters the cinema with this poetic and bitter glance at lepers living in enforced idleness and imprisonment...The commentary consists of a montage of Old Testament texts, and a detached, medical explanation…. The stream of mutilations of the human body - and our frightened response which may be more self-identification than empathy - makes us repeatedly avert our glance from what we know exists but cannot face” (Amos Vogel). Restoration courtesy Janus Films.

JOSEF KYLIAN (POSTAVA K PODPÍRÁNÍ, Czechoslovakia, 1963, 38 min., Czech with English subtitles). Directed by Pavel Jurácek, Jan Schmidt. In this absurdist comedy that heralded the Czech New Wave, a young man rents a cat from a “cat rental company” but when he goes to return the pet, it seems the business never existed. “Forerunner of the Czech thaw, this astonishing, Kafkaesque allegory of Stalinism was the first intimation of things to come. Mordant, sophisticated, and secret, it was insidiously anti-Establishment in its comments on bureaucracy, alienation, and the possible incomprehensibility of all human endeavour" (Amos Vogel). Restoration courtesy Czech Film Archives.

FEINE SPIELWAREN (SUPERIOR TOYS) - MADE IN USA (East Germany, 1969, 13 min., German with English subtitles). Directed by Günter Rätz. “The film is a slashing, frontal attack, skilfully edited, on American war toys (‘sold in West Germany') showing Nazi soldiers and tanks, and Fokker, von Richthofen, and Stuka planes ('Have the Americans forgotten that these planes bombed England?'). For good measure, the film ends with monster toys, torture chambers, the Bloody Mummy, and an operating guillotine ('we apologize for showing this in an East German film'). The conclusion is that even toys have been put at the service of aggressive American imperialism, which aims at achieving Hitler's unattained goal: the destruction of the socialist bloc” (Amos Vogel). Archival version, featuring newly translated subtitles by Tobias Hering, courtesy DEFA Film Library, UMass Amherst. Special Thanks to Hiltrud Schulz.

KIRSA NICHOLINA (USA, 1969, 16min). Directed by Gunvor Nelson. Kirsa Nicholina captures the birth of a child at home. “An almost classic manifesto of the new sensibility, it constitutes a proud affirmation of man amidst technology, genocide, and ecological destruction. Birth is presented not as an antiseptic, 'medical' experience, but as the living-through of a primitive mystery, a spiritual celebration, a rite of passage. True to the new sensibility, it does not aggressivley proselytize but conveys its ideology by force of example… Quiet guitar music (composed by the father) accompanies the poetic, tactile images, unobtrusively recorded by the detached camera; no avant-garde pyrotechnics interfere with the intentional simplicity of the statement” (Amos Vogel). Archival version courtesy International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

Beginning November 19 and through December 3, the Cinematheque is offering unlimited viewing of these four outstanding short movies. To receive access, send an email to info@cinema.wisc.edu and remember to include the word VOGEL in the subject line. No further message is required or necessary. We will reply with instructions on how to view the movies at home.

The presentation of this program is fully supported by the Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Chicago. Special thanks to Consul General Wolfgang Mössinger​ and Philipp von Dreusche.

On a new episode of our Cinematalk podcast, film curator Tobias Hering of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen talks with the Cinematheque’s Jim Healy about Amos Vogel and his legacy as a cinematic taste-maker. Listen below or subscribe through Apple Podcasts.

Click here to donate to the Cinematheque.

Stay healthy and safe. We value your support for the Cinematheque and we look forward to being able to watch movies with you soon in the proper cinematic settings of 4070 Vilas Hall and the Chazen Museum of Art.