Otto Neumann (1895-1975) survived conscription into the German army during World War I, persecution by the Nazis, and the suicide of his only child, and while none of those cataclysmic events appear directly in his many drawings, paintings, and prints, trauma and suffering were his lifelong subjects. Neumann’s most productive period was during the 1920s and 30s, and that work forms the basis of two illuminating exhibitions at Rare Nest Gallery in Avondale and the State Street Gallery at Robert Morris University downtown....

To explain why Days and Nights in the Forest (1970), playing this Wednesday in Doc Films’s valuable Satyajit Ray retrospective, is a masterpiece is a bit like explaining why flowers are beautiful: the film’s glories are so natural and self-evident that describing them feels redundant. One of the airiest of great movies, Days and Nights seems lightweight and plotless—yet it reveals countless insights into its characters, setting, and theme. Along with Aparajito (1956), Charulata (1964), and The Home and the World (1984), it represents the epitome of Ray’s talents—his ability to divine universal meaning from observations of local behavior, his nuanced approach to character, the way he makes time’s passing seem mellifluous—yet it displays these talents so modestly that you may not recognize them at first....

AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh Rahm Emanuel and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia at Thursday’s mayoral runoff debate. A mayor needs to be “clear, concise, and consistent,” Rahm Emanuel asserted early in last night’s debate. He says he’s strikingly different in that way from his opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, whom Emanuel has painted as vague and evasive. In the debate last night, Flannery asked Emanuel: “Mr. Mayor, why that 19 percent decline in detectives investigating murders?...

It’s hard to believe that a genre as vital to American popular music as country (and its cousin, country and western) had a bad rap for a while among many dwellers in major northern cities, who looked down their noses at what they mistook as simple tunes for the unsophisticated. Musical forms come and go, of course; for instance, the big-band era, born in the midst of the Depression, effectively ended with the close of World War II, yet its sound recently has been making a comeback....

In November, Chicago poet, teacher, and singer-songwriter Jamila Woods performed her 2016 debut album, Heavn, at the Harold Washington Cultural Center in Grand Boulevard. She brought in dozens of collaborators, including a youth choir, a small troupe of dancers, and a backing band. Several prominent young local poets of color, including Tasha, E’mon Lauren, and Eve Ewing, recited their work during interludes. The night paid tribute to contemporary Black Chicago and celebrated the joy its community can create....

On February 4, after a yearlong search, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago announced the appointment of Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell to the role of artistic director. A native of Baltimore, Fisher-Harrell began dancing at the age of 14. “My generation as a teenager was MTV. Michael Jackson was in his Thriller heyday. Beat It came out, Billie Jean. Solid Gold was on TV—Fame—Flashdance. I was surrounded by dance in popular culture in a really tangible way that was linked to adolescence....

Before the three main characters of the new video series Menace speak a single word, their phones buzz with an emergency alert: “Females seek shelter immediately. Attack in your area.” One thousand women in Chicago have been killed by a group of radical men’s rights activists, jokingly called GuySIS. Our heroes find themselves holed up in a tiny apartment, forced to rely on women they barely know for survival. And the whole story is told in 13 one-minute episodes on Instagram....

In the current issue of the Reader, Kathleen Sachs wrote an overview of this year’s African Diaspora International Film Festival, which continues through Thursday at Facets. This annual event provides as good an excuse as any to explore the great cinema produced by Africa and the people from its widespread diasporas. Of this cinema, the titles made by African American filmmakers understandably receive the most attention stateside, in part because the U....

For the past few weeks, Mayor Emanuel’s allies have been trying to bully Friends of the Parks into dropping its opposition to the Lucas Museum’s lakefront site by relentlessly lambasting the group as a bunch of elites who want to deprive “black and brown children” of a world-class facility. Anyway, in an attempt to offer an alternative view, allow me to wade into this fight by introducing you to Juanita Irizarry, the executive director of Friends of the Parks....

The term “minimalism” often conjures up white walls and bright lights—a defiant barrenness in a world steeped in chaos—but Chicago-based industrial duo Hide take their stark sounds to a far darker and more malevolent space. On the new Interior Terror, multi-instrumentalist Seth Sher (Coughs, Ga’an) and singer and visual artist Heather Gabel don’t attempt anything particularly complex or detailed, but they more than compensate with punishing volume and powerful messages—they use Gabel’s voice, field recordings, and a smokestack of electronic hardware (including a skipping Depeche Mode CD) to craft brutal social commentaries....

Looking at clothes is a form of time travel. In museum exhibits especially, where the clothes hang on headless mannequins, it’s entirely up to you to imagine the sort of woman who wore the narrow-skirted riding habit in 1880, or the man who wore the elaborately embroidered silk dressing gown—a banyan—in 1822, or maybe the girl who found it in the attic in 1910 and decided to appropriate it as her own....

The Lazarus Effect A thirtysomething couple, partners in work as well as life, are coming apart. They’ve been engaged for three years, but he keeps putting off the wedding, using their professional commitments as an excuse. She, on the other hand, desires a confirmation of their bond, and she can feel herself turning sour the longer she waits for it. Maybe it’s her Catholic upbringing that makes her feel this way or else some psychological need for certainty—she is a scientist, after all....

Ramzi Dreessen/Sun-Times Media Mayor Emanuel gets an assist from Magic Johnson (pictured here in 2013) on the campaign trail. I woke up yesterday morning filled with dread over the prospect of four more years of Mayor Rahm—to go along with Governor Rauner—when I found a little sunshine on, of all things, the front page of the Chicago Tribune. On the other hand, he’s not there yet, even though he’s spent ungodly sums of money on television commercials that are running almost as frequently as reruns of The Simpsons....

Flamingo Rodeo, the solo project of Ne-Hi guitarist and singer Mikey Wells, made a splash last year with Said Unsaid (Shuga), which was not only its full-length debut but also its debut as a full band. Easing away from the locked-in postpunk of Wells’s main group, Flamingo Rodeo showcases his knack for simple, breezy hooks—these songs are basically indie guitar pop, touched with spacey looseness, heartland-rock twang, or warm AM Gold production....

Ultimate Purity Sludgey noise-rock locals Rectal Hygienics welcome their brand-new Permanent Records release tomorrow night with two in-town shows, the first of which is an all-ages, free in-store at Permanent. The new record, Ultimate Purity, showcases the band’s twisted, heavy-handed Brainbombs worship, and today’s 12 O’Clock Track is the first public glimpse at the damaged LP, “Grandeur.” Employing the “play one riff over and over until it hurts” formula, the band smashes out the devastating, one-part song, its crushing tones and bad vibes steamrolling everything in its path....

I t’s easy to miss McKinley Park’s newest—and only—neighborhood bar among the billboards and bustling traffic at the intersection of Archer and Ashland. All the better that One City Tap has two sets of doors—one on Ashland, one on Archer—that open up into its surprisingly spacious interior. Double the door, double the likelihood that a passerby will end up sitting at the linoleum-topped bar, sipping on a spicy cucumber margarita. A spokesman for 12th Ward alderman George Cardenas wrote in an e-mail that One City has already become a hub for neighborhood gatherings: “A keen piece of the revitalization of McKinley Park is being built upon communication....

Until this year I’ve missed out on the beguiling folk-pop crafted by This Is the Kit, the moniker of Paris-based Englishwoman Kate Stables and a rotating cast of musicians from the UK, France, and beyond. The group’s fourth and latest album, Moonshine Freeze (Rough Trade), has led me to catch up on their previous recordings, but nothing I’ve heard quite matches its succinct beauty. Stables sings with a measured grace, melding sophisticated pop phrasing with a crystalline tone straight out of classic British folk tradition....