French filmmaker Chris Marker all but created his own genre, interweaving elements of documentary, fiction, experimental, and essay filmmaking into vibrant cine-mosaics. His 1997 feature Level Five, screening for the first time in Chicago this weekend, is characteristically dense and flowing, much easier to watch than to summarize. It centers on Laura (Catherine Belkhodja), a fictional computer programmer working on an interactive online game in which players will “re-create” the Battle of Okinawa in World War II by retrieving historical materials from a vast, decentralized virtual library, then ordering the events down to the last detail....

With the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, political upheaval has arrived; writers in Chicago, like many across America, wonder if they should address any other subject. On January 15, Writers Resist, a national network of authors and journalists driven to defend the ideals of a free, just, and compassionate democratic society, launched a concurrent series of events nationwide to foster communal strength in advance of president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. This day of resistant rhetoric looped in seemingly every literary collective in the city, and included events at Open Books, Woman Made Gallery, Flor del Monte, Cafe Urbano, Bookends and Beginnings, and La Bruquena, with a concluding showcase in the evening at Cole’s in Logan Square....

Steve Krakow is a one-man cultural industry. Under the alias Plastic Crimewave he leads a grimy psych-rock band that bears his name (the latest of many such groups), plays psychedelic banjo solos, and creates a hand-drawn Reader comic called the Secret History of Chicago Music about underappreciated local musicians. He also writes Galactic Zoo Dossier, an extremely intermittent but lavishly lettered periodical that celebrates mind-altering music from around the globe, some of which he’s released via his Galactic Zoo Disk label, an imprint of Drag City....

“I don’t know if you can quote this, but this world is fucked,” says Carris Adams, program and exhibition manager for south-side cultural incubator Rebuild Foundation. Today that’s a widely held opinion because, well, Trump, but the fuckedness of the world has been the only thing black Americans have known since our transatlantic voyage. “Black people need a place—whether it’s literature, film, art, or a physical space—where they can relax for a minute and be normal and not have people stare at them for being there,” Adams says....

A few days after President Obama pledged to cut the number of standardized tests students take each year, high school art teacher Molly Pankhurst sat with her kids in a Chicago classroom, apologized for what she was about to do to them, and forced them to take another central-office-mandated test. Those would be the PARCC—Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers—and the NWEA—Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress....

Trumpeter Russ Johnson is a fleet, lyrical soloist and a shrewd, supportive accompanist with a satisfyingly broad tone—qualities that made him a prized sideman during his 23-year sojourn in New York City. Since moving back to his home state of Wisconsin in 2012 to take a teaching position at University of Wisconsin-Parkside, he’s been a frequent visitor to Chicago. He is equally valued as a collaborator and supporting player for saxophonist Nick Mazzarella and bassist Matt Ulery, among many others, but he’s really come into his own as a bandleader....

In 2008 I was lucky enough to see “© Murakami,” a significant retrospective of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s work, at the Brooklyn Museum (the show had opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which organized it). The exhibit was very much of that moment in time, visualizing and addressing the symptoms and aesthetics of mid- to late-2000s capitalism, right before the housing market was about to collapse the global economy....

Sorcerer For the next two Fridays and Saturdays at midnight, the Music Box will screen a new restoration of Sorcerer, William Friedkin’s 1977 remake of Henri-Georges Cluzot’s The Wages of Fear. The director’s first feature after the smash hits The French Connection and The Exorcist, Sorcerer was a critical and commercial disappointment when it was originally released. Audiences were baffled by the film’s structure, which devotes nearly its entire first half to exposition before getting to the central conflict—the fact that none of characters are particularly sympathetic was surely another hurdle....

Indefinable musician Willis Earl Beal hasn’t made much of an appearance in his hometown of Chicago since January 2015, when he performed a synth-heavy set that coincided with the debut screening of the restless 2014 indie flick he starred in called Memphis. Since then Beal has dropped three releases through Tender Loving Empire, an arts shop/record label based in Portland, where he now lives. The imprint first rereleased his 2015 EP Noctunes, then came an EP called Through the Dark last April, and in July there was A Chaos Paradigm, which Beal made under the name Nobody....

Since Evanston’s Muse of Fire Theatre Company will disband in September, after nine summers of performing Shakespeare for free and mostly outdoors, it’d be great to say that they’re going out with a bang. But that’s not the case. Although it offers stalwart performances, some smart direction by Jemma Alix Levy, and an entertainingly breezy, unapologetic embodiment of the title villain by Jon Beal, this Richard III has its troubles. Some of which are familiar from previous MOF productions....

In the last few years a little-known movement of 70s rock music from the African nation of Zambia has become one of the more satisfying discoveries of the Internet age. Reissues of albums made by groups and singers like Witch, Amanaz, Paul Ngozi, and Chrissy “Zebby” Tembo have exposed this peculiar strain of pysch-flavored rock, known as Zamrock, to new ears. In 2011 the great Now-Again label released Dark Sunrise, a deluxe two-CD package of music by a singer and guitarist named Rikki Ililonga, widely regarded as the driving force behind the movement and the guy who’s helped chronicle its history by facilitating the surge of reissues....

Hi, my name’s Sean,” said the server, flagrantly at variance with his crisp, white, 50s-style gas-station-attendant work shirt, which clearly identified him as “Lloyd.” At Bernie’s Lunch & Supper, the first foray into Chicago from a nascent restaurant group based in the Detroit area, all the servers wear pseudonyms. The menu is equally unfocused; the Mediterranean is a big drink of water, after all. Spain, Italy, and southern France all weigh in, but none more memorably than Lebanon, with a dish confusingly called “lamb hashwi....

Wye Oak The weekend of nice weather we just had feels like an occasion worth celebrating, and there’s no better way to continue to toast the end of a brutal winter than with live music. Fortunately you’ve got plenty of opportunities to do just that during the next few days. “This Swedish trio reflects a sun-baked American stoner-rock style back at us from the cold, dark north,” writes Monica Kendrick....

Michael Gebert Chef Jake Bickelhaupt and his wife, Alexa Welsh, at 42 Grams, one of Chicago magazine’s top picks If there were a Chicago food “establishment,” its debutantes’ ball would be the list of the best restaurants published by Chicago magazine around this time each year, trotting out the latest all-dressed-up progeny from distinguished families such as the Mergeses and the Nahabedians, the One Off Hospitalitys and the Element Collectives....

New York clarinetist and sound artist Jeremiah Cymerman has developed a multipronged artistic practice over the years, working his mixture of improvisational exploration and pure sound into a variety of disparate projects. His curiosity is on display regularly in his terrific, broad-minded podcast 5049 (a name shared by his label), which has run for more than 110 episodes and features discussions with folks like jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, new-music cellist Michael Nicolas, art-rock drummer Greg Fox, and singer Amirtha Kidambi....

Although Rudy Winfrey says he’s “blind as a bat,” he regularly experiences the joy of cycling. Winfrey, a 72-year-old clerk with the Chicago Department of Streets & Sanitation, lost his sight in the 90s to retinitis pigmentosa. Andy Slater, the visually impaired musician profiled last month in this column, has the same condition. However, while the national bike-share revolution has made cycling accessible and affordable to a wider swath of the population, municipal rental networks have been geared almost exclusively toward able-bodied riders....

You’ve heard that the ambitious new museum coming to town, the one with an emphasis on storytelling and a national reach, has just secured its high-profile downtown location, right? The American Writers Museum announced last week that it has leased an 11,000-square-foot space in a vintage building at 180 N. Michigan, and plans to open the only museum in the world dedicated to American writers there in 2017. This museum was dreamed up by founder and president Malcolm E....

In the city of Chicago, there is a 20-year life expectancy gap between communities of color and predominantly white communities. If you live in a neighborhood like Pilsen, statistically speaking, you’re likely to not live as long as someone who lives in Oak Park. Pilsen native Tanya Lozano has set out to combat this gap through her nonprofit, Youth Service Corps, and her fitness and dance studio, Healthy Hood. Three years into Youth Health Service Corps, Lozano realized that putting the responsibility of prescribing a lifestyle plan for someone else onto students wasn’t effective or realistic....

Cole Bennett founded local hip-hop blog Lyrical Lemonade almost five years ago, and on Sunday it hosted its first outdoor festival, the Summer Smash, in Douglas Park. Bennett and the site’s editor, Elliot Montanez, planned the event in the spring and announced it last month. Chicago had more than enough festivals already, but the Summer Smash justified its existence with a distinctive 25-act bill that leaned heavily on young rappers who’ve made their names on the Internet, including Joey Badass, Trippie Redd, Lil Skies, and Vic Mensa....

Mounting Tension (1950) On Thursday at 7 PM, the Poetry Foundation will present a free program of short films made by Rudy Burckhardt (1914-99) in collaboration with famous poets, among them John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara. Burckhardt remains best known for his photography—pace the UK Independent‘s obituary, “his images of [New York City], for example the classic one of the Flatiron Building, are among the most fundamental and enduring taken this century—though he was also prolific as a painter and filmmaker....