WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Municipal laws greatly impact how people interact in urban settings; but the physical layout and design of cities also affects that interaction. A new documentary examines the design of cities across the world. Urbanized begins its run Friday at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.

Landscape as Archive is a program of three short films exploring the way an actual landscape can be a repository for history – or even ideas. It plays at the Gene Siskel Film Center on Thursday, Oct. 6 as part of the Conversations at the Edge series.

Chris “Sandman” Sand is a 39-year-old cowboy from North Dakota. But when it comes to music, he doesn’t dig country tunes; he creates rap music. The documentary Roll Out, Cowboy follows Sand and his friends on tour across the Midwest.

Zeina Durra’s parents wanted her to leave New York City after 9/11. But the London-born director of Middle Eastern and Bosnian decent decided to stay.

The 23rd Annual Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival opens Thursday in Chicago. The four-day fest features an array of experimental works from around the world. For WBEZ, Film Critic Jonathan Miller provided a preview of the opening program.

At its core, The Tree of Life concerns a family, the O’Briens, who live in a town in Texas. The film’s episodes unfold through the 1950s, while some of its scenes are set in the present in a large city.Tragedy befalls the family, precipitating an examination of its history.

Filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul was born in Thailand but his formative film education came about in the Windy City. He earned his MFA in experimental film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.