Caligari's Cure LIGHTBOX MEMBERS SCREENING

Since the 1960s, Tom Palazzolo has pursued a relentless and idiosyncratic career, earning the honorific “Chicago’s filmmaker laureate” from no less than Roger Ebert. Best known for the string of hilarious and keenly observed short documentaries he made throughout the 1970s, Palazzolo’s most famous works shine a light on the diverse range of strange customs, personalities, cranks, and eccentrics endemic to Chicagoland. Palazzolo’s first feature looks, at least on the surface, like a break from his earlier, cinéma vérité-leaning films: a semi-autobiographical account of his own St. Louis childhood staged inside of a spoof of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and inspired by the new wave of performance artists working in Chicago at the start of the 1980s. But while the thrift-store expressionist art direction and Midwestern-Weimar trappings may be a novelty, there’s no mistaking Caligari’s Cure for anything but pure Palazzolo, an affectionately prankish send-up of the very idea…