R NAmerican Factory The first title to debut from Higher Ground Productions, Barack and Michelle Obama’s partnership with Netflix, could not have been more timely. This pellucid documentary by longtime collaborators and Dayton residents Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert frames larger questions about the future of postindustrial America by focusing on one way their Ohio rust belt town is navigating the economic realities of globalization. The film opens with a clip from the directors’ Oscar-nominated nonfiction short, The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, about the final operating days in 2008 of a factory based in Moraine, Ohio, that had employed 2,400 locals. Flash forward to 2015, and Chinese billionaire Cao Dewang buys the shuttered plant for $500 million, modifying it to reopen as the American headquarters of his Fuyao Glass Industry Group, the world’s largest manufacturer of automotive glass. He brings in 200 seasoned Chinese workers to share their expertise with 2,300 American hires, and although some of them become close personally, it’s not long before the Ohioans, who made twice as much working for GM than they do now, begin calling for a union shop. There are no good or bad guys in this evenhanded film, only people from two vastly different cultures as they simultaneously clash, cooperate, and vie for a better life. In English and subtitled Mandarin. —Andrea Gronvall 115 min. Streaming on Netflix
Bessie Coleman, First Black Aviatrix Olivier Sarrazin directed this French documentary about pioneering flyer Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman to receive a pilot’s license in the 1940s. In English and subtitled French. 53 min. Showing as part of the Black Harvest Film Festival. Sat 8/24, 5:15 PM, and Tue 8/27, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center
Devil’s Pie—D’Angelo A Dutch-produced documentary about neo soul singer and songwriter D’Angelo, focused on the tour for his 2014 comeback album Black Messiah. Carine Bijlsma directed. 84 min. Showing as part of the Black Harvest Film Festival. Fri 8/23, 6:30 PM, and Sat 8/24, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center
NGiant Little Ones Keith Behrman directed this drama about an incident that affects the lives of two teenage best friends. R, 93 min. Tue 8/27-Thu 8/29, 10:30 PM. Logan
No More White Presidents Trans musician Gavin Rayna Russom (LCD Soundsystem) directed and scored this 2017 experimental political film that is an impressionistic exploration of contemporary issues as well as the artist’s emerging Trans-Feminine identity. 60 min. Russom attends the screening. Followed by a panel discussion. Fri 8/23, 6 PM. Chicago Filmmakers
RoboCop Android policeman roots out criminals in futuristic Detroit at the behest of greedy corporate controllers. Gentrification, criminality, what’s the difference? Not much, according to Paul Verhoeven’s creepily stylish SF thriller (1987), though Verhoeven, with his taste for subterranean kinks and slick continental veneer, is careful not to let his satirical assaults intrude on the more numbingly physical kind. Still, there’s a brooding, agonized quality to the violence that almost seems subversive, as if Verhoeven were both appalled and fascinated by his complicity in the toxic action rot (the entropic mise-en-scene is more than a designer’s coup: Verhoeven can’t get out of the sludge, so he cynically slides right in). As the human cop turned android, Peter Weller hardly registers behind his fiberglass visor, though Verhoeven, usually a master at suggesting the sleazily psychological through the physical, might have made something more of his eerie Aryan blandness. With Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, and Ronny Cox. —Pat Graham R, 102 min. 35 mm. Wed 8/28, 9:15 PM. Music Box
