Chicago Film Lover Meetup

YOU NEED TO WATCH THIS FILM ON A BIG SCREEN- Spirits in the drinking water, stolen ears, crabs with human faces: such are the endless wonders of Kwaidan (1964). Masaki Kobayashi helmed this supernatural anthology film based on Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, a 1904 collection of Japanese folktales from Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-Irish writer and renowned proponent of Japanese culture in the West. At the time of its release Kwaidan was the most expensive Japanese film ever made, and it seems to have been worth every penny. Extraordinary sets built inside an empty airplane hangar were intertwined with transcendently beautiful hand-painted backdrops, shimmering optical effects, and an expressionistic score composed by the great Tōru Takemitsu – in keeping with the cultural ping-pong between Japan and author Hearn, Takemitsu was inspired by American avant-garde composer John Cage.

THE TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YadApPG8W7Q

YOU CAN BUY YOUR TICKET HERE: https://musicboxtheatre.com/films-and-events/kwaidan

I’ll see you in the lounge at 6:30. Dinner, discussion afterwards!

It Was Just an Accident (Palme d’Or Winner at Cannes) is the first movie that Jafar Panahi directed since he was released in 2023 after spending seven months in Tehran’s prison. It Was Just an Accident is a tragicomedy but doesn’t fit into a tidy categorical box. It’s a fiction that its writer-director Jafar Panahi has drawn straight from life, his own included, and which unpredictably mixes tones and story types. It’s a drama about retribution, a comedy about collective action (and action in general), a low-mileage road movie and a slow-boiling ethical thriller. It’s a cry from the heart, a comic howl in the dark and one of the year’s essential movies. The premise — victimized men and women turn the tables on their victimizer — is the stuff of law and culture, daydreams and nightmares.
If you are not familiar with Panahi’s films and want to understand why he ended up in jail more than once, watch his “THE CIRCLE” on how Iranian society views women.

YOU CAN BUY YOUR TICKET HERE: https://facets.org/programs/it-was-just-an-accident/

We’ll meet in the lobby at 6.40. After the film, we’ll discuss the film in Facets’ lounge with a drink (or soda).