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BLOG ROLL

Programming Doc

Doc Films members voted on the Society's spring 2010 schedule Wednesday, February 3, turning in ballots to programming chair Edo Choi, '10 (center).

Presiding over the Doc Films planning meeting is programming chair Edo Choi, and he runs a tight ship. A representative for each film series proposal is allowed to make a one-minute pitch, and Choi cuts off any that run too long. Some pleas are emotional: "This is the last time I'm going to propose this series, because I'm leaving,” says Nick Tell, '10, of his list of French films from the 1970s and 1980s. Some pleas are pragmatic: "Considering how expensive the other series are [$3,000-5,000], this is incredibly cheap—only $1,100," says Joe Rubin of "Cinevangelism," a series of films with evangelical Christian messages.

Programming a series for the longest continuously running student film society in the country is not easy. Doc Films must maintain ticket sales while upholding its reputation for innovative film programming.

This challenge comes to a head on Wednesday of Week Five, when roughly two dozen members of Doc Films—including undergrads, grad students, alumni, and even a few faculty—cram into an Ida Noyes conference room to eat noodles catered by Chant and to vote on a ballot offering 14 themed proposals to fill the spring quarter's six programming slots.

Each proposal includes a list of ten films and at least two alternates, the official distributors for each print (usually in 16 mm or 35 mm format), fees for rental and for shipping and handling, and any on- or off-campus organizations helping to fund the series. The students also write 100 words summarizing the merits of each film and a longer essay to run in Doc's quarterly newsletter detailing the series' purpose.

One of the few rules is that a film cannot have been shown as part of a regular series in the past four years. Although there have been some radical proposals over the years, Choi is reticent to criticize them. "I would hesitate to call any series...outlandish or crazy, because at Doc we encourage such ideas and take them seriously. The outlandish, for us, is closer to a virtue than a guilty pleasure. Even mainstream films like Avatar are pretty outlandish, after all."

The ballot for spring 2010 features the avant-garde (art-house auteur Stan Brakhage's films of 1980-2003), the generic (postwar westerns, proposed by Choi), and the populist (a retrospective of John Hughes movies and a collection of Spike Lee "joints").

In addition to voting for their six favorite series, members must also choose one "marquis" selection. The marquis series was implemented when Choi took his post in 2006, just after the club had gone through what he describes as a "near financial disaster." Choi and his cohorts decided that among the rare prints and oeuvres d'art on offer, they needed to program a weekly series that would help boost sales of season passes. In winter 2009 the marquis series was a popular collection of Coen Brothers films, and this winter features "Lynch and Cronenberg: Just a Couple of Daves."

After counting all of Wednesday's votes, including six absentee ballots cast by e-mail, Choi and general chair David Levari, '10, released the results last Thursday afternoon.

Doc Films’ official lineup for spring 2010 will be:

Urban Encounters: The City in Middle Eastern Cinema
Stage to Screen: Cinematic Visions of the Theatre
Cinevangelism: Christian Feature Films from the '70s and '80s
A Nos Amours: French Films in the '70s and '80s
British Cinema After the Death of British Cinema

The marquis selection is the John Hughes collection.

Emily Riemer, AM'09

And the winners are...

Illinois voters had their say in Tuesday's statewide primary, and four UChicagoans advance to the general election in November.

Dan Seals, MBA'01, won 48.2 percent of the vote, topping two opponents for the Democratic nomination. In November he faces Republican Robert Dold for Illinois's 10th District seat.

Toni Preckwinkle, AB'69, MAT'77, received 49 percent of the vote for Cook County Board President, beating three other Democratic candidates, including incumbent Todd Stroger. Her competition in November will be Republican Roger Keats.

Mike Quigley, AM'85, and Scott Harper, MBA'85, were unopposed in their campaigns for Illinois's 5th and 13th districts, respectively.

To learn more about these candidates, see "Some red, some blue, all Maroon."

Elizabeth Chan

February 5, 2010 at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

Like, Tchaikovsky funny?

“Tchaikovsky’s funny because you think the third movement is the end because it’s so big, and then you get to the fourth and it’s just like, ‘Oh.’”

Not exactly my idea of comedy, but that quote from a friend, after Saturday’s University Symphony Orchestra concert, is actually a pretty good way to summarize the 19th-century composer’s sixth symphony, Pathétique.

The orchestra’s third concert of the year—billed as Tchaikovsky’s Tapestry—opened in a big way. Conductor Barbara Schubert, X'79, led with the 45-minute-plus symphony and finished with fanciful and sweet excerpts from Swan Lake. As Schubert explained to the audience, it was too cold to leave with a piece as strong and serious as Pathétique.

Going into the concert, I was nervous. It’s not that I don’t like classical music; I played an instrument in high school just like everyone else at this university. It was the bassoon. Oh, I was good—sort of. Anyhow, I’ve been to my share of Chicago Symphony concerts, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t go into a classical-music concert feeling sleepy. And I was sleepy Saturday night; that’s what four weeks of winter quarter will do to you.

I arrived at Mandel Hall a few minutes early, and I was already worried. It was just the right temperature, just the right distance from the bright stage lights, and, in the opening moments of the symphony, just the right amount of bassoon solo to nearly lull me off to neverland.

Fortunately, Tchaikovsky was smart enough to include an alarm clock in the middle of that first movement. A sudden crescendo shook me from the brink, and the rest of the performance passed without the dread of falling asleep.

The program notes provided a full explication of the symphony and the ballet excerpts; I found most interesting Tchaikovsky's general philosophy of wanting to “express something fully” through his music.

Although I’m still well short of being able to understand composers’ intentions merely by ear, maybe next time I’ll be able to catch Tchaikovsky’s jokes.

Jake Grubman, ’11

February 3, 2010 at 4:03 PM | Comments (0)

What will become of the books?

Princeton history professor Anthony Grafton, AB'71, PhD'75, speaks to the American Historical Association about how the digital age is forever transforming libraries and the way scholars use them—for better and for worse.

February 3, 2010 at 1:04 PM | Comments (0)

It's not piracy if they offer it for free

Although it's already February, readers have one day more to download the University of Chicago Press's free e-book for January: Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates by Chicago history professor Adrian Johns. Johns, author of the award-winning The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (U of C Press, 1998), here provides an "important reminder that today’s intellectual property crises are not unprecedented," writes Publishers Weekly, "and offers a survey of potential approaches to a solution.”

Johns isn't the first Press writer to take on intellectual property. In Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property (2006), Press editor Susan M. Bielstein recounts a treacherous journey to find a famed Antonello painting in the remote Sicilian mountains. In a Magazine interview, Bielstein discusses how the Internet has posed copyright problems for editors.

See other free e-books from the Press, and check back there to see February's offering.

Amy Braverman Puma

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