Of the many films — more than 175 by my count — that are part of the current edition of the Chicago International Film Festival, one of the shortest is also one of the best, for it allows viewers an exciting and intimate visit with one of our city’s most passionate and intriguing artists.
That artist’s name is Nick Cave and the woman who made the film is Claude-Aline Nazaire-Miller. Though “376 Days (Nick Cave: ‘Keep it Movin’)” is her first film and only 37 minutes long, it is a brilliant portrait of an artist.
“Part of it was having such full access to these amazing people,” Miller says. “They helped me tremendously to find my narrative within the timeframe I was given. I was able to observe them as much as I needed and that enabled me to form my vision for the film. I loved watching them work. And the trust they had in me empowered me so much. Telling their story was easy because they opened themselves to me and they are all such beautiful people.”
Cave came to Chicago from his native Missouri in the late 1980s and began teaching at the School of the Art Institute. His art has been displayed at exhibitions around the world. His first major career retrospective, titled “Forothermore,” opened May 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art and ran into early October 2022.
That show, which would later move to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, is the focus of the film, along with “The Color Is,” a fashion-oriented multimedia exhibition last year at the DuSable Museum of African American History, featuring a selection of the garments and accessories created by Cave and his brother Jack Cave.
Both shows are marvelously captured in Miller’s film, which also features Cave’s creative and life partner Bob Faust; his brother Jack Cave, an artist, designer and School of the Art Institute lecturer; and, charmingly, their mother Sharon who, wandering through the MCA filled with her son’s work, says on camera, “This show leaves me speechless.”
There is a minimum of talking heads but one of the best is Naomi Beckwith, the deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim and previously the senior curator at the MCA.
It was the MCA that suggested a short film about the creation of “Forothermore.” Cave approached Miller. “We were friends and had shared a lot of conversations about art and life,” she says. “Still when he asked if I wanted to make a film about him, I was of course flattered but also very moved. How could I not do it?”
And so did the film grow, its initial MCA budget embellished by Miller’s bank account, “a shoestring budget, to be sure,” she says. And she got to work with her crew, capturing the preparation for both shows, interviewing participants and creators over nearly a year, beginning in late September 2021.
“I was always running around, so excited,” she says. “I would try to be a fly on the wall. I just couldn’t get enough of the process, so much so that Nick would sometimes see me and say, ‘What, you’re here again?’
“But Nick trusted me and I was empowered by that,” she says.
Claudie, which is what everyone calls her, is a first generation Haitian American, one the three daughters raised on the South Side, a graduate of Seton Academy and Lewis University in Romeoville. She became a social worker with the Lutheran Children & Family Services, that venerable child welfare agency. Over a decade there she encountered the struggles of foster children and families and was so moved that she began to document their stories in words and photos.
“I had always been drawn to photography,” she says.
While also working, as she still does on occasion, as a flight attendant for United Airlines, she had opened a small photo studio in the Fine Arts Building.
At that point she had never heard of the man who would become her husband.
Sandro Miller is an internationally known and admired photographer, with many gallery shows and many books. He and I first met when he was photographing the great baseball player Bill “Moose” Skowron more than two decades ago.
Claudie met him when she attended the opening of a gallery exhibition of his work. It was, they will both tell you, “love at first sight” and they married in 2013. They live in a home and studio in West Town that is a vibrant and art-packed but cozy wonder.
Through her husband she met dozens of artists, including Cave and Faust.
She and Sandro successfully dealt with his two bouts with cancer and she continued, as best as was possible during the COVID-19 pandemic, her photography and also began making corporate advertising commercials for television.
“Sandro was never intrusive but always so supportive, willing to listen to me, hear my anxieties, nurture my ideas.”
She has no quick answer to how many hours of film was shot, hundreds no doubt, maybe even thousands, and she finally showed the final film in August 2022 to a very exclusive audience composed of her husband, Cave and Faust.
“Yes, I was nervous,” she says. “This was such a huge leap for me. I was praying that the result would please them. I was watching their faces for a reaction and I could tell right away. … They were laughing. They were crying.”
There were subsequent private screenings at the MCA and for the board of the Guggenheim and the reactions there were similarly enthusiastic. She began applying to film festivals. The first to accept the film was the CIFF.
Miller is proud of the film but typically self-effacing when talking about it, eager to lavish praise on all her collaborators. She will talk about editor Craig Lewandowski who, she says, “understood my vision for the film, grasped my ideas so seamlessly.” She will tell you about composer Ivan Iusco who, she says, “created original music for the film that captures my feelings across the heartbeat and soul of what the film should sound like.” There are others.
“Any artistic endeavor I have come to understand is such a collaborative effort,” she says. “Making this movie took a lot out of me, physically and emotionally but it also taught me so much, enriched me.”
Her film will be screened, along with another short movie, “Chronicle of a Summer Day,” at 6 p.m. Oct. 18 at the Siskel Film Center (164 N State St.; tickets $15) and at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N Clark St.; tickets $22). Miller will be at both, wearing clothes designed by Nick Cave and, deservedly, a smile of accomplishment.
The Chicago International Film Festival runs through Oct. 22; for a schedule, venue locations and tickets, go to chicagofilmfestival.com
This content was originally published here.
