TFW No GF was released on Valentine’s Day. As a cruel joke? Or in ironic solidarity with the film’s subjects? Both, I hope. Alex Lee Moyer’s documentary film, premiered at the digital edition of SXSW in 2020, tells the stories of five men. More specifically, they are white, millennial internet trolls identified only by their first names or handles: Sean,…

CHICAGO—Ten minutes before the scheduled virtual opening of Theatre Y’s “We’re Gonna Die,” I heard that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died. I didn’t want to go, even though all that it required of me was to click a Zoom link and log-in. No shoes, no parking, no awkward lobby mingling. These are the luxuries of digitized theatre, with Theatre Y among…

Icarus Films—the independent film producer that has created documentaries on Ohad Naharin, Pina Bausch and Trisha Brown—has a new dance film making its way to your laptops and living rooms. Marius Petipa: The French Master of Russian Ballet is currently available for use by academic institutions and libraries, and will be released on home video and streaming platforms May 12….

CHICAGO—A triptych of films screened Thursday to Sunday, collectively marketed under the header In Focus: Dance, forms an anchor point of the 2019 Chicago International Film Festival, North America’s longest-running competitive film festival. The films—director Levan Akin’s And Then We Danced, Isadora’s Children, directed by Damien Manivel, and Cunningham, a documentary on Merce Cunningham directed by Alla Kovgan—run concurrent to…

KANSAS CITY, MO — Kicking off Wednesday at Cinemark Palace on the Plaza in Kansas City, MO, the 22nd annual Kansas City FilmFest will feature more than 100 local, regional, national and international films through Sunday. I caught wind of this festival while in town for Kansas City Ballet’s 60th anniversary performances, and was delighted to see that it’s not just…

CHICAGO — A line of men struggled to shift along the walls of a cell, backs turned and elbows struggling to fit in and out of the spaces between the cell’s bars. The wall-to-wall screen of Loyola University Chicago’s Damen Cinema amplified these movements so that we the audience felt as though we were there with the men, feeling the…

Visiting Mana Contemporary at its relatively new Chicago location nestled in a weird, barren block of Pilsen is becoming a more frequent occasion, and it seems likely that Mana will soon be on EVERYONE’S radar. It’s not too far and there is more parking than imaginable, plus, Mana has a hip vibe that can only be felt in this brightly white, unadulterated…

Producer Jesse Welch and professional dancer Melanie Buttarazzi teamed together recently with a vision to enrich the lives of foster youth through dance. Welch and Buttarazzi recruited choreographers Sean Cheeseman, Stacy Walker, Gustavo Vargas, and Robert Chino Lopez, who have worked with world renowned entertainment giants the likes of J Lo and Michael Jackson, as well as in television and film….