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EVENT, SCREENING

Inquiring Nuns and Parents

Ongoing

With Gordon Quinn, founder and Artistic Director of Kartemquin Films



Inquiring Nuns
, Dir. Gordon Quinn. 1968, 66 mins. Digital projection. In one of the earliest documentaries by Kartemquin Films, two outgoing Catholic nuns, Sister Marie Arne and Sister Mary Campion, walk around Chicago asking just one question: “Are you happy?” The answers they get are by turns reasoned, spiritual, and even philosophical, but a recurring motif is a prevailing anxiety over the Vietnam War. The sisters’s warmth and interest are reciprocated by their subjects, most of whom show concern for others and little regard for their moment in the spotlight.

Parents, Dirs. Gordon Quinn, Gerald Temaner. 1968, 22 mins. Digital projection. Members of a parish youth group in a lower middle-class Chicago neighborhood gather together to discuss the pressing concerns of their lives: what adolescence means, the specter of authority, and the difficulties of communicating with their parents. In this unvarnished cinéma vérité account, these young people collectively offer a 1960s viewpoint different from that of their more prosperous or radical counterparts. 



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