It's the film that matters, not the convenience

This article was originally written for the Chicago Tribune as one of a periodic series of guest columns by experts from local arts organizations.

Film for me is the most important art form of the last 116-plus years. Movies have the power to change lives. In my 36 years at Facets, I've seen films help kids who have trouble in school connect to learning. I've watched as films help adults cross seemingly unbridgeable divides of understanding and compassion.

Calling All Teachers: Take a Crash Course on Cinema

This summer has flown by, and I have shamelessly neglected this blog, partly because I am coordinating a special week-long seminar here at Facets. Called the Summer Film Institute, the seminar is aimed at public school teachers who would like to incorporate movies of all types into their classroom. The Summer Film Institute begins on July 25 and concludes July 29, and it will definitely be worth the time that I have put into it.

The goal of the Summer Film Institute is to give teachers a crash course in film studies. By understanding film as an art form, teachers will be better able to incorporate movies into their classrooms. In other words, the seminar does not tell teachers directly how to teach films; instead, it offers them the history, aesthetics, and techniques of cinema so they can figure out the application on their own. (continued)

VHS or Bust! #4: KAFKA

We are pleased to announce the return of film critic and scholar Gregory Hess as guest blogger for the Facets website. Gregory will continue to offer insights into interesting films available only on VHS. And, where can you still rent titles on VHS? Facets, of course.

Franz Kafka is a writer whom most bookworms first encounter at a fairly early age, somewhere not far removed from their teen years, when his gothic, tragic tales of alienation and futile resistance against authority resonate with a bang, rather than a thud. Appropriate, then, that Steven Soderbergh found Kafka for only his second film, which he completed at the age of 28. His sex, lies and videotape had been an unexpected smash at Cannes and Sundance in 1989, going on to almost singlehandedly secure the reputation of Miramax Films, its distributer. Though Kafka failed to a similar audience, it may have done more to mold Soderbergh’s future than might be guessed.

Filmed mostly in black and white, Kafka opens on a man fleeing down an alleyway, pursued by an unknown fiend. The otherworldly attacker eventually catches him, shrieking and cackling in a disturbing fit of laughter. His face is terrifying and monstrous, pocked with scars. Another shadowy figure enters, and gives the attacker a bottle of elixir, which he drinks, cooing like a man-child. After this jarring opening scene, the film settles into the workaday world of Kafka (Jeremy Irons), the film's protagonist, who works, as Kafka did in real life, at a worker’s accident insurance company. The man abducted in the alleyway was one of Kafka’s coworkers, Eduard Raban, and Kafka winds up embroiled in the mystery, eventually becoming involved with a group of anarchists (another faithful homage to the author’s life), whose mission is to infiltrate “the castle,” the faceless headquarters of authority, derived from Kafka’s unfinished novel of the same name.