Friday 17
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The circus is in town, i.e., The Dime Circus, an exhibit of the evocative etchings by Tony Fitzpatrick that grace the pages of the Reader. Fitzpatrick and gallery owner Edward Varndell have pledged to give 40 percent of the net proceeds from tonight’s opening to Project: Protect, which provides legal assistance and housing for abused women and children. The opening starts at 6 at 2153 W. North. The exhibit remains up through April 1. Call 486-2052 for more.
The Last Bolshevik, Chris Marker’s video look at the life and work of Russian director Alexander Medvedkin, took the number nine spot on the 1994 top-ten list of Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, who called it “a guarded self-portrait of Marker himself, trying to bear witness to his own communist dreams and what he, Medvedkin, and history itself made–or didn’t make–of them.” It shows tonight at 8 at Kino-Eye Cinema at Chicago Filmmakers, 1543 W. Division. Tomorrow you can see Medvedkin’s surreal 1934 comedy, Happiness, banned in the Soviet Union for many years, on a double bill with Marker’s Letter From Siberia. Each night’s admission is $5, $2.50 for members. Call 384-5533 for more.
As a child, artist Samuel Bak survived the Nazi occupation of his hometown of Vilnius (then a part of Poland, now the capital of Lithuania). In his dark, fractured, almost surreal landscapes he’s attempted to “tell about a world that had been destroyed.” Myth, Midrash and Mysticism–The Paintings of Samuel Bak, a survey of his work, opens at the Spertus Museum, 618 S. Michigan, at 1 this afternoon. At 2 Bak and curator Michael Fishbane, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Chicago, will speak. It’s free with regular museum admission–$4, $2 for kids, students, and seniors. Call 322-1747 for more.
Tuesday 21
Thursday 23
