• "Great American Desert"

A staged celebration of the Hiroshima bombing and a seasonal camp of RV drivers share the Arizona landscape in British filmmaker Stephen Connolly's 2007 short film Great American Desert, invoking, Connolly says, "an examination of ‘social liberty’ in the West in relation to war, spectacle, the environment and consumerism."

Great American Desert screens in "Occasional Pieces," a selection of Connolly's short films and videos Saturday 11/7 at the Nightingale

• "Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love"

Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love plays a discounted screening courtesy of Black World Cinema, a day ahead of a weeklong run.

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's tribute to the iconic Senegalese singer and activist screens Thursday 11/4 at Chatham 14.

• George Clooney in "The Men Who Stare at Goats"

The Men Who Stare at Goats officially opens in a midnight screening Thursday 11/5, but if you can't wait that long, Gen Art hosts a preview screening and after-party with hosted drinks, Wednesday 11/4.

• "The Pool"

Before the ubiquity of reality TV, Chris Smith and Sarah Price set the standard for tragicomic portraits of quixotic dreamers with American Movie, their 1999 documentary about would-be horror auteur and fellow Wisconsinite Mark Borchardt.

The film's cult status launched Borchardt's acting career. But even after winning a 2007 Sundance Special Jury Prize, Smith struggled to find distribution for The Pool, his wry and touching fiction debut about a poor Indian teen who takes a pool cleaning job to spy on the rich girl he pines for, and maintains a veneer of optimism for his younger friend despite their abject circumstances.

The Pool screens Tuesday 11/3 in the Midwest Independent FIlm Festival.

• "The Principal Story"

"We're sinking all this money into the war and into pork barrel projects, it's unbelievable to me that we don't invest in our education system," local filmmaker Tod Lending told me in a 2008 interview, during production on his documentary The Principal Story. "That's where the culture grows out of."

The principals Lending and co-director David Mrazek follow in the film face problems originating far beyond their school walls, in the poverty, malnutrition, crime and family dysfunction of their surrounding communities. But their passion and commitment have allowed them to make progress in turning around struggling schools on the west side and in Springfield.

The Principal Story screens for free Tuesday 11/3 at No Exit Café.

• "The Yes Men Fix the World"

Clean-cut pranksters The Yes Men, who last week falsely announced on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the chamber had reversed its opposition to pollution controls, have made a career of impersonating corporate suits to shine a light on the excesses of globalization.

Lumpen magazine hosts a workshop with the Yes Men Thursday 10/29 to plan an action that will follow the Chicago premiere of their film The Yes Men Fix the World Friday 10/30 at the Music Box Theater.

Our own J.R. Jones didn't resist the temptation, but Kisor calls his choice of words witty anyway.

• "Into the Fire"

80 American women volunteered for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War to defend the Spanish Republic against a 1936 coupe by General Francisco Franco and his German-backed fascist forces.

Julia Newman interviewed 16 of these women, who mostly served as nurses, for her 2002 documentary Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War, screening Monday 10/26 at Facets Cinematheque.

Our print edition contains a schedule for this week-long series at Facets Cinematheque that was later completely revised by the promoter, but we missed the follow-up e-mail (which, except for the subject line, was hard to distinguish from the original). So our print schedule for this event is largely incorrect. The corrected schedule can be found here. I can be found out in the alley, yelling and throwing garbage cans.

• Charlotte Gainsbourg and Romain Duris in "Persecution"

Daniel is crippled by his intensity of emotion. Sonia can't bear to get too close. The couple, played by Romain Duris and Charlotte Gainsbourg in Patrice Chéreau's Persécution, were made to tear each other apart.

Persécution screens Wednesday 10/21 in the Chicago International Film Festival's Best of the Fest night.

• Jack Kerouac

"'One fast move or I'm gone,' I realize, gone the way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness," Jack Kerouac wrote in his 1962 novel Big Sur. "That feeling when you wake up with the delirium tremens with the fear of early death dripping from your ears like those special heavy cobwebs spiders weave in the hot countries, the feeling of being a bentback mudmad monster groaning underground in hot steaming mud pulling a long hot burden nowhere..."

Kerouac chronicled his retreat from fame and addiction in Big Sur, seven years after On the Road made him a reluctant generational icon. Filmmaker Curt Worden traces Kerouac's journey in One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur, screening one night only, Tuesday 10/20 at Webster Place.

At the close of the conference, confusion ensues — and some will say hilarity reigns — when a genuine chamber spokesman barrels in to denounce the fraud.

Here's a link to a video assortment, including the Fox Business Network's credulous coverage of the chamber's new position coming to a screeching halt.

• "Kanikôsen"

75 years after he was tortured to death at age 29 by Japanese secret police for his Communist Party organizing, writer Takiji Kobayashi has made an unlikely comeback.

His 1929 novel Kanikôsen, about insurrection aboard an oppressive Imperial crab fishing boat veering into hostile Russian waters, was adapted into a successful manga in 2006, and the novel was a bestseller when it was reissued last year, buoyed by a decade of unemployment and malaise for Japanese youth.

The new, second film version of Kanikôsen screens Monday 10/19 and Tuesday 10/20 in the Chicago International Film Festival.

• Colin Firth and Julianne Moore in "A Single Man"

Fashion designer Tom Ford makes his directorial debut with A Single Man, starring Colin Firth as a British professor in LA coping with the death of his partner (Matthew Goode) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. With Julianne Moore.

A Single Man is a last-minute addition to the schedule of the Chicago International Film Festival.

• "Police, Adjective"

A comically smalltime hashish investigation becomes fertile ground for a minutely observed exploration of the routines and doubts of a young Romanian detective in Police, Adjective, the second film by 12:08 East of Bucharest director Corneliu Porumboiu, screening Saturday 10/17 in the Chicago International Film Festival.