Doc Films at the University of Chicago

Home
United States
Chicago, IL
Doc Films at the University of Chicago

Doc Films is the nation's oldest film society, hosting screenings every day.
(307)

07/16/2026

BRINGING UP BABY (Howard Hawks, 1938) screens tonight at 8PM and tomorrow at 5PM.

07/15/2026

Opening our DISCO NOSTALGIA series, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO (1998) screens Tuesday, July 21 at 8PM and Friday, July 24 at 8PM on 35mm 🎞️

Ingenues Alice and Charlotte, recent graduates of Hampshire College, spend their nights after work at the social Mecca of 1980s Manhattan — the local disco — falling in and out of love with the club’s other regulars. The third installment in what director Whit Stillman calls his "Doomed-Bourgeois-in-Love series,” DISCO follows in the footsteps of METROPOLITAN and BARCELONA as a dry comedy of manners, and an insightful examination of the dying days of an era and way of life.

07/14/2026

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (Carl Franklin, 1995) screens on Thursday, July 16 at 5PM and Friday, July 17 at 8PM.

In need of work, private eye Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington) accepts an offer to locate Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), the vanished fiancée of a mayoral candidate who was last seen in the Black jazz joints along Central Avenue. As Easy takes on the case, people around him start turning up dead, and the LAPD comes looking for someone to pin it on. The only ally he can summon is Mouse (Don Cheadle), a charming yet temperamental killer from the past, who solves most problems with a gun.

07/13/2026

Howard Hawks, Katharine Hepburn, and Cary Grant on the set of BRINGING UP BABY (1938). Hawks’ riotous screwball concludes our presentation of his pre-war films. Screening Thursday, July 16 at 8PM and Friday, July 17 at 5PM on 35mm 🎞️

Katharine Hepburn plays Susan Vance, an aloof but endearing socialite who waltzes into the life of mild-mannered paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant). In the first day of their meeting, Susan steals David’s car, endangers a crucial donation to his museum, and ropes him into raising her new pet leopard, Baby. Despite the film’s poor initial showing at the box office (Hawks mused it would’ve performed better “if there had been a few sane folks in it” instead of an erratic cast of characters) it has since become a classic of the screwball genre.

07/08/2026

THE DAWN PATROL (Howard Hawks, 1930) screens Thursday, July 9 at 8PM and Friday, July 10 at 5PM on 35mm. Print courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Hawks ventures into the war film with THE DAWN PATROL, which tracks World War I ace Dick Courtney’s disputes with Brand, his commanding officer. Brand, however, has nobly been begging the high command in private to give his soldiers more training time and better prepare them for battle. Hawks, who was a flight training instructor during the war, flew a plane during production in an uncredited role — the beginning of his filmic fascination with aviation.

06/28/2026

Howard Hawks’ THE CRADLE SNATCHERS (1927) screens on 35mm 🎞️, followed by TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934) on DCP, on Wednesday, July 1 at 5PM and Thursday, July 2 at 8PM.

Pairing one of Hawks’ earliest films with his most lauded pre-Code screwball, this double feature traces the development of his comedic sensibilities in the years before the Hays Code. In the rarely screened THE CRADLE SNATCHERS, a group of housewives begin affairs with college boys to avenge their husbands' escapades with flappers. TWENTIETH CENTURY features John Barrymore and Carole Lombard as a mercurial Broadway bigwig and the ingénue he helped create, whose battle of wits unfolds aboard the cross-country Twentieth Century Limited passenger train.

The 35mm Library of Congress preservation print of THE CRADLE SNATCHERS survives only incompletely, with one reel and portions of two others lost. There will be an intermission between films.

06/23/2026

A rare 35mm print of THE CRIMINAL CODE screens alongside MEMENTO this week!

06/20/2026

Before Christopher Nolan grappled with what Erich Auerbach called the “uniformly objective present” of Homer, he first experimented with narrative temporality with MEMENTO (2000). Screening Thursday, June 25 at 5PM and Friday, June 26 at 8PM.

A man unable to form new long-term memories struggles to hunt down the man who attacked his wife. Piecing together a story through a system of loosely-connected Polaroids, notes, and tattoos — a methodology that mirrors Nolan’s non-linear storytelling — he is unsure whether he can trust his clues, his acquaintances, or himself. The L.A. cityscape becomes a mirror of his mind; a place where one can never be sure of where they came from or where they are headed.

Address

1212 E 59th Street
Chicago, IL
60637

Telephone

(773) 702-8574

Website

http://docfilms.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Doc Films at the University of Chicago posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Doc Films at the University of Chicago:

Shortcuts

Want your business to be the top-listed Cinema in Chicago?