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Doc Films at the University of Chicago Doc Films is the nation's oldest film society, hosting screenings every day.
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SERIOUS GAMES I-IV (Harun Farocki, 2011) and AMERICAN SNIPER (Clint Eastwood, 2014) screen on Sunday, Oct. 25 at 7PM.SER...
10/20/2026

SERIOUS GAMES I-IV (Harun Farocki, 2011) and AMERICAN SNIPER (Clint Eastwood, 2014) screen on Sunday, Oct. 25 at 7PM.

SERIOUS GAMES explores military use of video game technology in training for the war in Afghanistan. Trainees play simulations resembling mass-market combat games and use laptop programs aimed at remedying PTSD. The lethal technologies of asymmetric warfare are on full display in AMERICAN SNIPER. Eastwood’s film debuted two years after he staged an imaginary interrogation of Obama at the Republican National Convention. It stars Bradley Cooper as Navy SEAL Chris, returning from his campaign in Iraq wishing he had “only killed more.”

Courtesy of Harun Farocki Estate and Greene Naftali. There will be a short intermission between screenings.

East Germany’s finest dissident cameraman (Thomas Plenert) and documentarist (Jürgen Böttcher) metabolize the fall of th...
10/20/2026

East Germany’s finest dissident cameraman (Thomas Plenert) and documentarist (Jürgen Böttcher) metabolize the fall of the Berlin Wall from inside. In a 2026 interview, their collaborator Gerd Kroske underscored Plenert’s obsessiveness while making the film, describing him “emerg[ing] from the eyepiece as if returning from a deep-sea expedition… to find a fixed point of reference again, as if he had just returned from another world.”

THE WALL (1991) shows Tuesday, Oct. 27 at 7PM. 35mm print from DEFA Film Library

THE BLACK VAMPIRE (Román Viñoly Barreto, 1953) screens Monday, Oct. 26 at 7PM as the conclusion to our Argentine Noir se...
10/19/2026

THE BLACK VAMPIRE (Román Viñoly Barreto, 1953) screens Monday, Oct. 26 at 7PM as the conclusion to our Argentine Noir series.

In 1950s Buenos Aires, a cabaret singer witnesses a child murderer disposing of a body and says nothing, fearing what an investigation would expose about her own life and her young daughter. Román Viñoly Barreto’s third adaptation of Fritz Lang’s M relocates the manhunt to the perspective the earlier films left offscreen: the vulnerable women whose testimony the city depends on and whose reputations it won’t protect.

10/19/2026

Don’t miss Ken Russell’s rock opera TOMMY on Thursday evening!

New Q***r Cinema icon Gregg Araki returns with his first directorial credit in over a decade. I WANT YOUR S*X (2026) scr...
10/17/2026

New Q***r Cinema icon Gregg Araki returns with his first directorial credit in over a decade. I WANT YOUR S*X (2026) screens on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 9:30PM.

His signature raunchy satire takes dead aim at Gen Z’s perceived sexual puritanism: when fortysomething artist Erika (Olivia Wilde) hires the fresh-out-of-college Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) as her studio assistant, their relationship quickly becomes anything but strictly professional.

THE HOLE (Tsai Ming-liang, 1998) screens on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 7PM on 35mm 🎞️.At the turn of the millenium, a strange ...
10/17/2026

THE HOLE (Tsai Ming-liang, 1998) screens on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 7PM on 35mm 🎞️.

At the turn of the millenium, a strange plague has spread across the city. Sequestered alone in a run-down apartment block, a man and a woman meet — absurdly — through the accidental hole that connects their two apartments. The rain outside seems like it will keep pouring forever, but in the face of loneliness, comfort can be found in the most peculiar of places. The film is punctuated by moments of levity, with surreal song and dance numbers set to the music of 50s star Grace Chang.

JUNIOR WAR (Ryan Trecartin, 2013) precedes Kathryn Bigelow’s ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012) on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 3PM.In JUNI...
10/17/2026

JUNIOR WAR (Ryan Trecartin, 2013) precedes Kathryn Bigelow’s ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012) on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 3PM.

In JUNIOR WAR, Ryan Trecartin films a group of high schoolers partying in the woods. The militarized mindsets of a youth coming of age during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come to the surface in this sort of play-war. ZERO DARK THIRTY, a thriller about the CIA’s hunt for Osama Bin Laden, documents this context. Controversial for what critics described as its endorsement of CIA torture, the movie’s October release date was rescheduled after allegations that the film was Sony Pictures’ effort to win Obama the 2012 election.

Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

10/16/2026

CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette, 1974) screens on Friday, Oct. 23 at 7PM.

This landmark of the French New Wave follows the peculiar friendship between Céline (Juliet Berto) and Julie (Dominique Labourier). Their fateful meeting occurs when Celine drops a series ofitems and Julie retrieves them, leading the two women to begin switching identities in their daily lives. CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING is Rivette’s best-known film and was co-written by its two leading actresses.

Ken Russell‘s TOMMY — starring Roger Daltrey, Elton John, Jack Nicholson, and others in an ensemble cast — shows Thursda...
10/16/2026

Ken Russell‘s TOMMY — starring Roger Daltrey, Elton John, Jack Nicholson, and others in an ensemble cast — shows Thursday, Oct. 22 at 9:30PM.

After a formative, yet traumatic childhood event, a now deaf, dumb and blind boy grows up to become both a master pinball player and the idol of a religious cult. Is it an adaptation of a The Who album for the silver screen, an off-the-rails rockglam opera, or a treatise on how religion and celebrity worship keep perpetuating cycles of abuse? Or, somehow most probably, all three? This larger-than-life surrealist fantasia features performances by Elton John, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton (and The Who, of course), as well as some comically large pairs of boots.

10/16/2026

GONE GIRL screens tonight at 7PM.

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