Friday 6
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A panel on tattooing and piercing, a potentially eye-opening look at the relationship between John Lennon and Brian Epstein, an analysis of lesbian homoeroticism in music videos, and scads of feature films and shorts are on the agenda at the 12th annual Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival, running tonight through next Sunday at Chicago Filmmakers, 1229 W. Belmont, and the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport. The opening reception tonight at 6:00 at the Music Box will be followed by Where Are We? Our Trip Through America, an on-the-road documentary from Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein (Epstein directed The Life and Times of Harvey Milk). The screening and the reception cost $8. Other highlights: A “Chicago’s Own” evening at Filmmakers on Wednesday at 9 including, among other shorts, Columbia College film department cochair Doreen Bartoni’s A Common Flower. That same night Christopher Munch’s The Hours and Times, about Lennon and Epstein, plays at 9:30 at the Music Box. Armistead Maupin Is a Man I Dreamt Up, a BBC feature on the San Francisco author of “The Tales of the City” series, shows at the Music Box on Tuesday at 7. “Cross-Sexing the Narrative: Lesbian Subtext in Music Videos,” a multimedia presentation by Marusia Bociurkiw, will run at the Music Box Sunday at 7. The panel discussion, “The Allure of Fringe Erotics–Tattooing, Piercing, and Scarring,” happens at 12:30 PM Sunday at the Rodde Center, 4753 N. Broadway, suite 1200. Admission to the panel is free: everything else will run you $4 to $6. Call the festival at 281-1981 for more.
Marshall Field’s multimillion-dollar restoration of its State Street flagship gets feted tonight at a ten-story, tres-tony dinner party that’ll culminate in the lighting of the store’s seventh-floor “Great Tree.” The $250 and $150 tickets benefit the AIDS Foundation of Chicago; with the entire landmark store as the setting, you get cocktails at 7, dinner at 8:30, the tree lighting at 9:30, songs by Michael Feinstein, and dancing till midnight. The store is at 111 N. State; call 642-5454 for tickets and info. The store’s traditional Christmas windows, 36 scenes fronting State, Washington, and Randolph, get unveiled today as well.
Monday 9
Wednesday 11
