Timely ‘God particle’ doc screens July 16 at Landmark

‘The Atom Smashers’

BEFORE SCIENTISTS at the CERN particle accelerator outside Geneva, Switzerland apparently discovered the long-sought Higgs Boson or “God Particle” earlier this month, 137 Films captured the ill-fated hunt by physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator outside Geneva, Illinois.

Filmmakers Monica Long Ross and Clayton Brown copresent a screening of their 2008 documentary The Atom Smashers with the Illinois Science Council July 16 at 6:30 p.m. at Landmark Century Centre, 2828 N. Clark St.

Long Ross and Brown are currently mixing their follow-up, The Believers, about the purported 1989 discovery of cold fusion and the continued study of low energy nuclear reactions in the aftermath of the ensuing scientific scandal.

Andrew Bird: Fever YearXAN ARANDA SAYS the Aug. 1 screening of her documentary Andrew Bird: Fever Year, about the elusive local singer/songwriter/violinist/whistler, will be the last in Chicago after a year of international festivals.

Bird, who financed the picture, stipulated — for reasons that haven’t been publicly disclosed — that the film should have no commercial release.

Bird was shot during a stint at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater and supplemented with interviews and archival footage

With Kartemquin Films, Aranda is now at work on Mormon Movie, her examination of the emergence of the Mormon film industry in which her mother was an actor in the ‘60s.

QWERTY, BILL SEBASTIAN’S ROMANTIC COMEDY, produced by Lake County Film Festival founder Nat Dykeman and Jeremy Truelove and written by Juliet McDaniel, has its Chicago premiere July 28 at 8 p.m. at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., with encore screenings July 30 at 8 p.m. and Aug. 1 at 8 p.m.

Dana Pupkin and Eric Halley star as star-crossed lovers, a competitive Scrabble player and unemployed security guard, respectively. With Bill Redding, Joel Wiersema, Mike McNamara, Katherine Banks and Claire Tuft. It also screens Aug. 14 at the National Scrabble Championship in Orlando, Florida. Additional screenings can be arranged via Tugg.

'The Last Truck'OHIO FILMMAKERS Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, who split the 2007 nonfiction Emmy with Spike Lee for their A Lion in the House, about kids with cancer, will appear at the Aug. 7 Midwest Independent Film Festival with their documentary The Last Truck

It’s about the final days of a General Motors plant in Moraine, Ohio, shot partly on hidden cameras by the workers there. 

Reichert and Bognar won the best short award at Silverdocs last month for Sparkle, about the nearly unprecedented four-decade-and-counting career of Sheri “Sparkle” Williams as a lead dancer at the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.

ESAÚ MÉLÉNDEZ’S DOCUMENTARY Immigrant Nation! The Battle for the Dream, about the movement to grant amnesty to undocumented immigrants and Elvira Arellano’s resistance of a deportation order that would separate her from her young son, is a nominee for the 27th Imagen Awards honoring media that projects positive images of Latinos. The awards are Aug. 10 in Beverly Hills, California.

DANA SCOTT of 24 Truth Productions and Mischa Ayoub have locked picture on Double Negative, their debut feature. Scott stars as a very pregnant woman trapped on a teetering elevator with a tweaking corporate executive (Ayoub). They directed and produced together from Ayoub’s script.

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