Feb. 3
6:00 p.m.
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State St.
Chicago, IL 60601

Hosted by: Conversations at the Edge

Chicago’s Conversations at the Edge hosts a night of classic movies by Vivienne Dick, one of the leading figures of NYC’s No Wave scene. The screening will last about 80 minutes and featuring short films from the late ’70s, including her most notable films She Had Her Gun All Ready (1978) and Beauty Becomes the Beast (1979).

Born in Ireland and studying and living in places such as London, France and Germany, Dick eventually wound up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the  mid-’70s. Although No Wave would never consolidate into a movement like the Cinema of Transgression that followed it, there was a loose coalition of low-budget filmmakers, such as Dick, Amos Poe, James Nares and more, screening films in unconventional places such as Max’s Kansas City and the New Cinema storefront theater.

Dick’s early movies were mostly shot on Super8 — although the movies screening at this event have been transferred to Digibeta video — and featured punk musicians such as Lydia Lunch, Pat Place and Adele Bertei. She Had Her Gun All Ready features Lunch and Place in a twisted psychodrama that culminates in a to-the-death fight between them on Coney Island’s Cyclone roller coaster; while Beauty Becomes the Beast has Lunch tormented by ghouls and recounting horrific tales of parental sexual abuse.

Image from She Had Her Gun All Ready taken from CATE website: