It’s shaping up to be a busy year for Chicago Cinema Society, the local programming organization that’s committed to screening rare and exotic genre films. Tonight and tomorrow at the Davis Theater at 11:55 PM, the group presents the local premiere of Kuso, the first film directed by noted musician Flying Lotus. CCS also has plans to screen work at the Nightingale Cinema and the soon-to-reopen Chicago Filmmakers in the near future. But the big news is that CCS is going to distribute pristine 35-millimeter prints of two beloved cult classics, Dario Argento’s Italian horror feature Suspiria (1977) and the new-wave sci-fi film Liquid Sky (1982). The first of those titles, which will screen at the Music Box sometime in the fall, begins its tour of U.S. art-house theaters at the end of this month.
The Society’s print of Liquid Sky has presented fewer problems. In fact the group has been supported in their efforts to distribute it by the film’s director, Slava Tsukerman. “Tsukerman and I have a mutual friend, and this friend had mentioned to him that we acquired this print and that it’s near perfect. So the friend put us in touch with him, who had this renewed enthusiasm to get Liquid Sky out there and screened again. Tsukerman’s print had become faded and so badly worn that he recently retired it. There’s another print of it in an archive in California, but three of the reels are on Eastman Kodak film stock, which has a tendency to fade. The print that we acquired is entirely low-fade film stock, so the color is perfect throughout.” When Tsukerman heard about what Calderone and Coffman had recovered, he suggested that they work together to arrange screenings.
