SPECIAL EVENTS

[WE DON’T KNOW YET] WHAT A CINEMA CAN DO: Expanded cinema

Presented in partnership with Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines (CCAM) and hosted by Public Works

Public Works (2141 W. North Ave.) | April 4, 2025 - Doors Open at 7:00PM & Show Starts at 8:00PM

Onion City and CCAM co-present the second annual edition of [WE DON’T KNOW YET] WHAT A CINEMA CAN DO, a night of new media live performance.

This event explores the resonances of “expanded cinema” today, putting cinematic art to the tasks of resistance, rupture, and reconfiguration of mediatic experience. We ask, “How can experimental modes of animating sound and moving images reconfigure the possibility of our relating to one another anew?” This year’s iteration centers visual-sonic collaboration, looking to the arts of DJing and live film scoring to embrace transmedia collage. Sound and moving image artists are paired to convene and animate an exquisite corpse of expanded cinema.

Advance ticket purchase recommended. Admission increases to $30 at the door.

PICTURE RESTART: Ronald Nameth’s THE GUNA REELS

Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Cinema (1326 W. Hollywood Ave.) | April 5, 2025 - 6:00PM

Join Onion City for RONALD NAMETH’S THE GUNA REELS: A Kaleidoscopic Journey Through Human Nature and the Cosmos, the fourth screening in Chicago Filmmakers’ PICTURE RESTART SERIES: 16mm FILMS FROM THE PICTURE START COLLECTION!

For the fourth program in our PICTURE RESTART series, we are showcasing a quintessentially experimental odyssey. Drawing upon the Bhagavad Gita and other works of Hindu philosophy, Ronald Nameth crafts a kaleidoscopic meditation on war and peace, sex and violence, and the essential forces of human nature. THE GUNA REELS is a triptych with an overture and a coda, journeying from darkness and ignorance to supreme cosmic awareness by navigating through the concepts of tamas, rajas, and sattva. Made while Nameth was a student at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech, this experimental epic has not played for an audience since the early 70s. Around the same time, Nameth made The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a film capturing the multimedia performances of Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground and Nico during one week of their happenings in Chicago. 1968, 100 mins, 16mm, B/W & color.

The film will be followed by an exclusive interview, recorded with Ronald Nameth in 2025, reflecting on process, philosophy, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the New Bauhaus, and other lessons from over 60 years of creative practice.  

Content Warning: some flashing light, nudity

DIRECT ACTION

Co-Presented with the Climate Crisis + Media Arts Working Group and hosted by Northwestern University’s Block Cinema

Northwestern University’s Block Cinema (40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston) | April 6, 2025 - 12:00PM

Onion City partners with Block Cinema and the Climate Crisis + Media Arts Working Group to welcome co-director Ben Russell for the Chicago premiere of DIRECT ACTION. 

DIRECT ACTION brings viewers into France’s rural Notre-Dame-des-Landes commune, whose activist inhabitants live and work to protect a “Zone to Defend” (ZAD) against development in the region. With a commitment equal to that of their subjects, filmmakers Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau deliberately observe the work and play of daily life in the commune: agriculture, domestic chores, recreation—and preparations for a major protest action against a proposed reservoir project. DIRECT ACTION inscribes the relaxed pace of commune life through long takes shot on vivid 16mm film, drawing parallels between the utopian aspirations of environmentalist action and of ecological filmmaking. As the state’s repression of the protest turns shockingly violent, mirroring similar actions against water defenders in the United States and Canada, the film’s careful framing becomes an ever-more powerful reminder that, for militants behind a barricade or for observers behind a camera, the most powerful act of resistance is simply standing one’s ground.

“The film isn’t just an infinitely pleasant experience— it’s also incredibly refreshing to see images of resistance that are hopeful, generative and optimistic, almost contagiously so.” – Matilda Hague, Filmmaker Magazine

Following the screening of the 216-minute film (which will include a 5-minute intermission), Russell will appear for discussion and audience Q&A. Presented with support from the Climate Crisis + Media Arts Working Group of the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University.

This event does not charge admission, however you must reserve a ticket through the link below in order to attend and doing so will take you out of the Onion City Film Festival website.

Disclaimer: As with all Block events, RSVP doesn’t guarantee a seat.

ONION CITY CLOSING NIGHT: SELECTIONS FROM THE 16MM FILM STUDY COLLECTION

Co-Presented by Chicago Film Society and the John M. Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute

Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Cinema (1326 W. Hollywood Ave.) | April 6, 2025 - 7:00PM

For over 50 years, the John M. Flaxman Library’s 16mm Film Study Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago has been a renowned resource serving faculty, students, and researchers within and outside of SAIC’s communities. The collection originates from prints acquired by SAIC’s academic departments and the Film Center, before its transfer to the Library in the 1970s. The Library provides access to over 700 16mm prints spanning the history of film, including a significant number of films by SAIC faculty and alumni. While the collection continues to be an invaluable resource for teaching and research, it also reflects a history of film pedagogy at SAIC, and has become a vital resource for preserving Chicago experimental film history.

Following a partnership with the Chicago Film Society to restore the 16mm films of SAIC alumnus Edward Owens, the Library has recently finished new 16mm restorations of Owens' earlier 8mm work. Owens, a Black queer filmmaker from the South Side of Chicago, was a student in the newly formed Film Department at SAIC in the mid-1960s, mentored by its founder, Gregory Markopoulos. In celebration of Chicago's rich experimental film legacy, and the Flaxman Library’s contributions to it, we are premiering these restorations with a selection of rare prints by Chicago filmmakers from the Film Study Collection. 70 mins, 16mm, color. 

REGARDING: A LEISURE INSTALLATION

Presented in partnership with Leisure

Leisure (2444 W. Division St.) | April 3-6, 2025 - 4:00-6:00PM gallery hours; 6:00-10:00PM street view

This gallery installs one video from a Chicago-based artist each evening of the festival in Leisure’s street-facing gallery. Meticulously observed scenes of everyday objects, settings, and activities provide a focused subjectivity towards the expansive haze of the world. At times lingering, at times fleeting, these videos consider the internal domestic in constant exchange with external infrastructures, imbuing the public and quotidian with renewed intimacy and attention. Each night of the festival from 4-6pm, Leisure will hold open gallery hours in which attendees are welcome to visit inside. From 6-10pm, works will continue to be displayed through the gallery’s window for the perusal of passersby outside.

Lineup:

APRIL 3: City Tissue Slices  - Yongfeng Fu, 12 min

A slow burning and impressionistic gaze through a downtown Chicago window. 

APRIL 4: Fantasia (The Weary Wheel) - Brett Swenson, 10 min 

An exploration of the reproductive fantasies of suburban middle class American life that draws strange slants of meaning out of quotidian affairs.

APRIL 5: Glistening Seagull - Chae Yu, Korea, 11 min

A dream-like Super 8 travelogue whisking together landscapes, faces, keepsakes, and debris. 

APRIL 6: at the bamboo green 在竹翠苑 - Xiaolu Wang, 12 min

The filmmaker’s visit to their grandmother’s grave in Hui Muslim tradition at the foot of China’s Helan Mountains. Shot on cellphone in one continuous take, the film accentuates an in-between: visiting from America, the space of chant, and a tension generated by the camera’s presence.