The eighth edition of the annual festival of black independent film continues through Thursday, August 17, at the Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, 443-3737; at Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton, 281-4114; and at the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 871-6604. Tickets are $5, $3 for Blacklight members; admission to the Music Box screenings will be $6. For more information call 509-2981.
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THE GAME A first feature by Curtis Brown, this is a political thriller with a very timely theme: a mayoral campaign in New York City that a black candidate has a good chance of winning. The action is set in the camp of a rival white candidate who hires a black executive as his campaign manager; the executive is a master chess player who views the campaign as a kind of chess game. His hidden agenda is the focus of the plot. A Chicago premiere. (Film Center, Saturday, August 5, 6:00, and Sunday, August 6, 4:00)
MAPANTSULA Shot in Johannesburg and Soweto by Oliver Schmitz, a white South African, and cowritten by its costar Thomas Mogotlane, this radical feature offers a grittier view of the antiapartheid movement than either Cry Freedom or A World Apart. The plot follows the gradual coming to political awareness of a petty thief (Mogotlane) who winds up in jail and meets other blacks involved in protesting racism; the dialogue is a heady mixture of subtitled Afrikaans and English. Banned in South Africa, this film conveys a volatile sense of both time and place, and, according to the South African censor, “has the power to incite probable viewers to act violently.” (Facets Multimedia Center, Friday and Saturday, August 4 and 5, 7:00 and 9:00; Sunday, August 6, 5:30 and 7:30; and Monday through Thursday, August 7 through 10, 7:00 and 9:00)
