The centerpiece of this year’s Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival is Sauerbruch Hutton Architects (Sat 1/31, 3 PM), the penultimate documentary feature by German filmmaker and theorist Harun Farocki, who passed away last summer at age 70. Farocki’s massive body of work—which spans films, gallery installations, and critical essays—centers on the theme of social control in everyday life, and Sauerbruch documents a group of Berlin architects as they design an impersonal-looking office complex for a French software company. The longest scenes depict intensely focused discussions of things like window handles and the backs of chairs; as presented by Farocki, these moments are quietly disturbing, showing how much money and planning go into public spaces we’re meant to take for granted.
Fava Beans makes a perfect lead-in to the next short on that program: Philip Hoffman’s Aged, the most touching piece in this year’s fest. Hoffman assembled this 45-minute work from footage he shot over six years while tending to his infirm father. Using both analog and digital manipulation techniques, he makes the images appear otherworldly while maintaining a heartrending intimacy with his subjects.
Continues Thu 1/29-Sat 1/31, Columbia College Ferguson Theater, 600 S. Michigan, 773-293-1447, chicagofilmmakers.org, $8.
