Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art and Block Cinema (Venue Partner)
40 Arts Circle Drive
Northwestern University
847 491 4000
This event has passed.
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F for Fake
- When
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Friday Jan 27 (7–8:30pm)
- Where
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Directions: On the south end of Northwestern University's campus, just off Sheridan Road. Free parking at NU after 4 pm weekdays and all day weekends. Near the CTA Purple Line Davis and Foster stops and the Metra Davis stop.
- Price
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$4.00 for Block members; University faculty, staff and students with valid WildCARD; students from other schools with valid college/university ID; seniors 65 and older. $6.00 for the general public
- Links
“F for Fake is Orson Welles' farewell to filmmaking, as well as a crafty reminder of the art form's slippery relationship with artifice. The "documentary" on infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory delights in toeing the truth/fiction line. It includes supposedly found footage from an unfinished film on the dishonest de Hory, notorious hoaxster Clifford Irving as an interviewer, and allusions to the director's own work dealing in deception (the War of the Worlds broadcast, for example). Viewers should know to take everything in Welles' self-aware and mischievous swan song with a grain of salt — if not a whole shaker of it.”
Jason Jude Chan, Flavorpill
(Orson Welles, 1973, France, 35mm, 89 min.)
This exuberant essay film weaves together notorious art forger Elmyr de Hory, fake Howard Hughes biographer Clifford Irving, the War of the Worlds radio hoax, and even a mythic Picasso heist, into a both joyful and melancholy rumination on art and human purpose. In full magician mode, Orson Welles conjures a film from spare parts, questionable coverage, and outright bluff, taking epicurean delight in the filmmaking process itself. With F for Fake, Welles also tenderly forges a self-portrait of an artist commonly thought to be at career bottom actually reaching the top of his game.
