My Friend Victoria at the Siskel / Flickering Empire in Schaumburg

Last summer I was fortunate to catch Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s My Friend Victoria at its single screening during the Music Box’s invaluable Chicago French Film Festival. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since and it ended up prominently featuring on my Top Films of 2015 list. Happily, My Friend Victoria has been picked up for distribution by Zeitgeist Films and is playing the Gene Siskel Film Center for a one-week run beginning tonight. There are no big stars in the cast and Civeyrac is not a brand-name auteur outside of his native France but it would be a shame if this haunting and poignant drama about the life of a young black woman in modern-day Paris doesn’t find the stateside audience it deserves. You can read my review in Time Out here.

Next Wednesday night I’ll be giving a talk about my book Flickering Empire with my co-author Adam Selzer at the Schaumburg Township District Library. (01/13) at 7pm. We’ll be showing clips from Chicago-shot movies from the silent era, including the brand new restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s His New Job in its entirety. Admission is free and open to the public but you must first register online. Hope to see you there!