FLICK PICKS: Upstream Color With Director Shane Carruth at Music Box 4/12 #film #directorappearance

DO-IT-ALL DIRECTOR SHANE CARRUTH IN PERSON FOR MIND-BLOWING DOUBLE FEATURE AT MUSIC BOX THEATRE

OPENING NIGHT OF NEW FILM UPSTREAM COLOR IS FOLLOWED BY HIS 2004 CULT HIT PRIMER WITH LIVE Q&A IN BETWEEN

Friday, April 12 at Music Box Theatre

**The 7:30pm show of Upstream Color is completely sold out! Due to popular demand, director Shane Carruth will now also attend the 5pm screening of Upstream Color on Friday, April 12 with a post show discussion.  (The 5pm screening will not include a screening of Primer).   

Click here for Tickets 

Shane Carruth’s new feature film Upstream Color opens exclusively in Chicago at the Music Box Theatre for a regular run starting Friday, April 12. This gorgeous piece of experimental science-fiction is about two broken souls who share a unique (and hallucinatory) bond.  On opening night of the run, the Music Box welcomes the do-it-all filmmaker – writer, director, star, producer, co-editor, composer, casting director, production designer, sound designer and distributor – in person for a very special double feature of his work. First the audience will be treated toUpstream Color at 7:30pm. Next up will be Carruth’s 2004 breakthrough Primer – which beat out Garden State andNapoleon Dynamite to take home the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and subsequently earned a cult following for its sophisticated twist on the complications of time travel – at 9:45pm. Carruth will introduce the films and do a Q&A withAV Club’s Scott Tobias between shows, Friday, April 12 at Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Avenue.  Upstream Color will continue its regular Chicago run through April 19 at the Music Box Theatre.

Friday, April 12th

·         7:30pm: Upstream Color

·         9:45pm: Primer

Tickets: The double feature of Upstream Color and Primer with director Shane Carruth is $12 in advance at www.musicboxtheatre.com/collections/the-av-club-presents-upstream-color-and-primer-with-director-shane-carruth or $15 day of at the Music Box Theatre box office.  Tickets for just Primer will only be available the night of the screening after Upstream Color has finished.

Upstream Color (2012): 7:30pm

Shane Carruth’s sensuously directed and much anticipated sophomore effort is a truly remarkable film that lies beyond the power of language to communicate while it delivers a cohesive sensory experience. With its muscular cinematic language rooted in the powerful yearnings felt before words can be formed, Upstream Color is an entirely original, mythic, romantic thriller that goes in search of truths that lie just beyond our reach. Kris (Amy Seimetz ) is derailed from her life when she is drugged by a small-time thief. But something bigger is going on. She is unknowingly drawn into the life cycle of a presence that permeates the microscopic world, moving to nematodes, plant life, livestock and back again. Along the way, she finds another being—a familiar, who is equally consumed by the larger force. The two search urgently for a place of safety within each other as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of their wrecked lives.

Primer (2004) 9:45pm

Four friends/fledgling entrepreneurs, knowing that there’s something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they’ve built, wrestle over their new invention.  Shane Carruth’s feature debut, which cost $7,000 and was shot on 16mm, won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize in 2004.

About the Music Box Theatre: 

For nearly 30 years the Music Box Theatre has been the premier venue in Chicago for independent and foreign films, festivals and some of the greatest cinematic events in Chicago. It currently has the largest cinema space operated full time in the city. The Music Box Theatre is independently owned and operated by the Southport Music Box Corporation. SMBC, through its Music Box Films division, also distributes foreign and independent films in the theatrical, DVD and television markets throughout the United States. For additional information please visit www.musicboxtheatre.com . 

Download the entire Music Box Theatre Spring Calendar here

 

WHAT WE'RE WATCHING: Must See Shows at Music Box This Weekend

It's a director filled weekend in Chi-town.  Chicago-born filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton will be here for the opening of her new movie Somewhere Between, Jan 11-13, as will the stars of the movie.   We caught a press preview of this moving, thought provoking doc. and highly recommend it!

I'm the daughter of an ESL (English as a second language) teacher and my cousin adopted Chinese girl twins as toddlers who are now 9.   You can check out their "Somewhere Between" experiences via the blog And Babies Make Four right here.  International families have always been a part of my world, and we're making a concerted effort to raise urban kids who have friends from many cultures.   So this film was of particular interest to me.   My husband's also a location sound engineer who travels the world on documentaries and other TV shoots, so he's picky about production values.   Even he was impressed by the quality of the audio and video in Somewhere Between.

The girls' stories are thought provoking, unique and insightful and raise great questions for adoptive multicultural families and society as a whole.   Check it out!

JOYOUS AND MOVING SOMEWHERE BETWEEN ASKS “WHO AM I?”

Award-winning documentary about adopted Chinese girls by Chicago-born filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton opens exclusively at Music Box Theatre January 11

LINDA GOLDSTEIN KNOWLTON AND TEENAGERS FROM THE MOVIE WILL BE AT THE MUSIC BOX OPENING WEEKEND FOR POST-SCREENING Q&A’S

In profiling Chinese adoptees in contemporary America, the joyous Somewhere Between illustrates that even the most specific of experiences can be universally relatable. The deeply moving documentary by Linda Goldstein Knowlton (The World According to Sesame Street) intimately follows four American teenagers, some of the 80,000 girls who have been adopted from China since 1989 a decade after the country implemented its One Child Policy. These typical American teens reveal an inspiring sense of self-awareness as they attempt to answer the uniquely human question, “Who am I?” Somewhere Between makes its Midwest premiere Friday, January 11 for a limited engagement at Music Box Theater, 3733 N. Southport Avenue. Filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton and the girls from the movie will be in attendance for post-screening Q&A’s on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. www.musicboxtheatre.com/features/somewhere-between

“My daughter's name is Ruby Goldstein Knowlton,” Knowlton explains. “She’s seven. When my husband and I adopted her from China, we had no idea what lay ahead. We became a family in an instant. But as I began to think about Ruby's future, I started to wonder how her coming of age would differ from mine. I began talking to older girls who had been adopted from China and brought to the U.S., and plunged into a world not just of identity but of what it means to be who we are. This film, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN, was born.”

The four girls at the center of the movie – Haley, Jenna, Ann and Fang – meet and bond with other adoptees, some journey back to China to reconnect with the culture, and some reach out to the orphaned girls left behind. In their own ways, they attempt to make sense of their complex identities. Issues of belonging, race and gender are brought to life through these articulate subjects, who approach life with honesty and open hearts.  Born in China to families who are unable to keep them, largely because of China’s “One Child Policy,” the baby girls were raised in orphanages, and then eventually adopted by American families. Here, they grow up with Sesame Street, hip-hop and Twitter. They describe themselves as “bananas”: white on the inside and yellow on the outside. All is well until they hit their teen years when their pasts pull at them, and they begin to wonder, “Who am I?”

As Somewhere Between plunges the viewer into the ordinary and extraordinary days of these four girls’ lives, we, too, are forced to pause and consider who we are—both as individuals and as a nation of immigrants.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton (Director/Producer)

Linda Goldstein Knowlton co-directed and co-produced the feature-length documentary, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SESAME STREET. The film examines Sesame Street's international co-productions, made primarily in some of the world's political hotspots, including Kosovo, Bangladesh, and South Africa. The film made its World Premiere in competition at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival as an Official Selection in the U.S. Documentary category. The film was selected and screened at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto, the Seattle Film Festival, and other festivals including Boston, Dubrovnik, New Zealand, Melbourne, and Zurich. Previously, Goldstein Knowlton produced the New Zealand film WHALE RIDER (2002), directed by Niki Caro, which was the winner of the Audience Awards at Toronto, Sundance, Rotterdam, Seattle, San Francisco, and Maui film festivals. Goldstein Knowlton became involved with WHALE RIDER in 1992, a decade before its theatrical release, after reading the novella upon which the film is based. Prior to that, she initiated the development of THE SHIPPING NEWS after reading the novel in galley form in 1993, and then produced the 2001-released film, directed by Lasse Hallstrom. She made her feature-film producing debut in 1999 with both MUMFORD, written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, and CRAZY IN ALABAMA, directed by Antonio Banderas. She is currently developing both fiction and documentary films.

Born and raised in Chicago, Goldstein Knowlton studied neuroscience at Brown University. Following college, she remained in Providence to serve the governor of Rhode Island in the Office of Intergovernmental Relations. She subsequently worked raising funds for film preservation at The American Film Institute, in Washington, D.C., and, later, in Los Angeles. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

About the Music Box Theatre: For nearly 30 years the Music Box Theatre has been the premier venue in Chicago for independent and foreign films, festivals and some of the greatest cinematic events in Chicago. It currently has the largest cinema space operated full time in the city. The Music Box Theatre is independently owned and operated by the Southport Music Box Corporation. SMBC, through its Music Box Films division, also distributes foreign and independent films in the theatrical, DVD and television markets throughout the United States. 

For additional information please click here for the main MUSIC BOX site. 

Download the entire Music Box Theatre Winter Calendar here