Doc Films at the University of Chicago

Doc Films at the University of Chicago Doc Films is the nation's oldest film society, hosting screenings every day.
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THE POEM OF HAYACHINE VALLEY screens today at 3PM. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.
05/23/2026

THE POEM OF HAYACHINE VALLEY screens today at 3PM. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.

Our previously cancelled screening of INHABITANTS OF CASTLES IN HUNGARY IN 1966 and HOW LONG DOES MAN LIVE? (1967) will ...
05/21/2026

Our previously cancelled screening of INHABITANTS OF CASTLES IN HUNGARY IN 1966 and HOW LONG DOES MAN LIVE? (1967) will instead continue our Judit Elek series on Saturday, May 23 at 1PM.

These films find Elek fully in documentary mode. INHABITANTS OF CASTLES follows the residents of a new, socialist Hungary-old couples, artists, children-inhabiting the architecture of an older imperial nation. Perhaps Elek's most important documentary, HOW LONG DOES MAN LIVE? is another exploration of working class Hungarian life, following an older factory worker retiring and a young peasant boy coming to take up his post.

Our screenings for the academic year conclude with a selection of the films of Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928-1992). Scree...
05/21/2026

Our screenings for the academic year conclude with a selection of the films of Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928-1992). Screening Sunday, May 24 at 7PM.

Robert Beavers: “The program of Gregory Markopoulos’s very early films starts with LYSIS and CHARMIDES, made when the filmmaker was nineteen years old in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio. Both are highly personal allegories of ‘a wanderer’ in erotic rapture and melancholic isolation. SWAIN develops related themes, condensing its symbols and themes in a narrative of fleeing from restraints and norms. It is a cascade of fragments in memory. CHRISTMAS USA and its mirror, FLOWERS OF ASPHALT, presents the filmmaker’s home, family, and neighborhood, contrasted to his individual lyric rituals. And the last of these early expressions of adolescent sexuality is ELDORA.”

Screening this Sunday:

LYSIS (1948, 16mm)
CHARMIDES (1948, 16mm)
CHRISTMAS USA (1949, 16mm)
SWAIN (1950, 16mm)
FLOWERS OF ASPHALT (1951, 16mm)
ELDORA (1953, 8mm-to-16mm)

THE POEM OF HAYACHINE VALLEY (Sumiko Haneda, 1982) screens Saturday, May 23 at 3PM on 16mm 🎞️.Sumiko Haneda’s documentar...
05/20/2026

THE POEM OF HAYACHINE VALLEY (Sumiko Haneda, 1982) screens Saturday, May 23 at 3PM on 16mm 🎞️.

Sumiko Haneda’s documentary, part ethnographic record and visual poetry, focuses on mountain communities around Japan’s Mount Hayachine in Iwate Prefecture. Filmed over several years, Haneda’s portrait centers on a sacred dance (KAGURA) performed by villagers in honor of the mountain’s deity, a tradition passed down for centuries. Haneda wrote that this work is an “expression of the spirit of the farmers in Tōhoku, beyond what is visible to the eye, and as an expression of the ever-changing flow of history." Screened on a rare unabridged 16mm print recently shown in New York as a part of a Theatre of the Matters program at Light Industry.

Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.

Caroline Golum's new release, REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE (2025), screens on Sunday, May 24 at 2PM.Based on the first sur...
05/20/2026

Caroline Golum's new release, REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE (2025), screens on Sunday, May 24 at 2PM.

Based on the first surviving example of a book written in English by a woman, this film is adapted from the memoir of 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich. In this crowd-funded movie, Golum explores themes of love, religious ecstasy, and revolt, resulting in a period piece that imagines the life of a woman we know almost nothing about.

Unseeable for years before its recent restoration, NIGHTSHIFT (Robina Rose, 1981) screens tonight at 6PM. Screening foll...
05/20/2026

Unseeable for years before its recent restoration, NIGHTSHIFT (Robina Rose, 1981) screens tonight at 6PM. Screening followed by a talk by film scholar, critic, and programmer Elena Gorfinkel ().

A hotel in early 1980s London becomes an ethereal space of drifting encounters over the course of a single night. Punk icon Jordan (of Derek Jarman's JUBILEE and SEBASTIANE) plays the front desk clerk as she observes a procession of late-night wanderers passing through the lobby. The film’s dreamy rhythm is enhanced by music from Simon Jeffes of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Join us on Wednesday at 6PM for a screening of Robina Rose’s NIGHTSHIFT (1981), followed by a discussion with Elena Gorf...
05/18/2026

Join us on Wednesday at 6PM for a screening of Robina Rose’s NIGHTSHIFT (1981), followed by a discussion with Elena Gorfinkel.

A hotel in early 1980s London becomes an ethereal space of drifting encounters over the course of a single night. Punk icon Jordan (of Derek Jarman's JUBILEE and SEBASTIANE) plays the front desk clerk as she observes a procession of late-night wanderers passing through the lobby. Unseeable for years before its recent restoration, the film’s dreamy rhythm is enhanced by music from Simon Jeffes of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Elena Gorfinkel is a film scholar, critic, and programmer based in London. Her research concerns marginal and independent cinemas, including adult, experimental, & underground film, particularly from the 1960s to the present. She is the author/editor of five books, most recently “Wanda” (Bloomsbury/BFI Film Classics, 2025); and “The Prop”, with John David Rhodes (Fordham, 2025). She is Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London. Prior to King’s, she was Associate Professor of Art History & Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She earned a PhD in Cinema Studies from New York University.

MARIA’S DAY (Judit Elek, 1984) screens Sunday, May 24 at 7PM.Judit Elek’s intimate drama, set in an 1866 Hungary on the ...
05/17/2026

MARIA’S DAY (Judit Elek, 1984) screens Sunday, May 24 at 7PM.

Judit Elek’s intimate drama, set in an 1866 Hungary on the brink of monumental change, traces the descent of a formerly aristocratic Hungarian family. With a mood of decay, desperation, and the broken revolutionary hopes, Elek’s film is nevertheless gentle, and a tribute to the great Hungarian poet Sándor Petőfi.

05/17/2026

THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE (Mona Fastvold, 2025) screens Saturday, May 23 at 7PM.

Mona Fastvold's THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE traces the life of Ann Lee, a visionary who crossed the Atlantic to plant the seeds of the Shaker tradition in American soil. Rooted in communal worship, gender equality, and ecstatic hymn, the Shakers forged a radical theology of the body. Amanda Seyfried delivers a career defining performance as a woman whose "hunger and thirst" for utopia becomes an act of faith unto itself.

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