On a recent Monday afternoon, The Block Cinema team and a handful of scholars from across Northwestern gathered in the empty auditorium to screen the film Paydirt (1981), a little-seen film by director Penny Allen about Oregon winemakers who grow marijuana to ease financial strain. The event was part of a series of weekly research screenings the team has organized to watch rare films sourced from local and national archives.
Other recent films unearthed for the research screenings have included Prelude in Black and White (Mary K. Simpson, 1971–72), an independent drama about an interracial relationship made at West Virginia University, and Orange (Karen Johnson, 1970), a sensual short film of a girl eating an orange. Most of these films haven’t been publicly screened in years, and they’re nearly always viewed on film—though the condition of the film prints vary.
This informal project began in the summer of 2024, growing in attendance each week. The screenings present films based on The Block Cinema team’s research interests or those of colleagues, with an open invite to those academically or professionally interested in the material to attend.
“It’s a way for us to expand our work,” said Associate Film Programmer Malia Haines-Stewart. “We see the screening space as a place for research, learning, exploration, and connection—with each other and with the larger campus and community.”
The research screenings serve two purposes: they support intellectual discovery through film, and they help recover long-unseen or even lost works tracked down in archives or from artists who haven’t been active in years.
For a recent research screening of Communication from Weber—later screened publically as part of the Trans Portraiture series—Block Cinema showed a rare 16mm print of the film, which had previously been nearly impossible to see. The team—Michael Metzger, Pick-Laudati Academic Curator for Cinema and Media Arts; Haines-Stewart; and projectionist Ben Creech—found out about the film through deep online research. Metzger searched film collection databases and discovered a copy housed locally in the Picture Start collection, managed by Chicago Filmmakers.
Thanks to a connection Creech had with Chicago Filmmakers Programs Manager Leila Sherbini, the Block team visited the attic where the Picture Start collection had been stored for decades. There, they uncovered a trove of films that provided months’ worth of material to project and identify at the screenings.
“All of a sudden, we had access to about a hundred films, many of which were relevant to our research interests,” Creech said.
In addition to Picture Start, the team has also drawn on collections from Columbia College, the Chicago Film Archives, and the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.
One goal in exploring these archives and setting up screenings is to identify specific titles and assess the condition of various prints. While Metzger knew Communication from Weber was part of the Picture Start collection, he wasn’t sure it would be among the first boxes they received from the attic. He was also interested in locating films from the woman-run independent film distributor Serious Business Company, some of which were located and later shown in the Block’s Films by Women/Chicago ‘74 series.
“Picture Start’s emphasis on animation meant that there was tremendous overlap with the films that we wanted to show in the program Not By Magic that we did as part of Films by Women/Chicago 74,” he said. “ We were watching a lot of those films, as well as other things that we were just uncovering that were interesting to us.”
Other research themes included Chicago experimental cinema and political documentary.
In addition to contributing to Block Cinema’s original programming, the research screenings have supported programming for partner venues. A discovered 16mm print of Ed Counts’ short animated work Rockers was included as part of the 2024 Eyeworks Experimental Animation Series and presented private showing for the filmmaker’s family. A pristine print of Karen Johnson’s Orange also turned up, prompting Johnson to reconnect with Chicago Filmmakers after its previous restorers at Pacific Film Archives had been unable to track her down.
“Now, thanks to this work, they can finally deliver her the preserved copy,” Creech said.
The screenings have led to other collaborations, including with Screen Cultures PhD candidate Kylie Walters, who attends regularly. Cinema scholar and Chicago librarian Joshua Mabe will present newly digitized Kurt Heyl films at an upcoming Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference. Metzger is exploring a collaboration with the Shorefront Legacy Center to digitize a 1960s documentary related to the desegregation of schools in the Chicago area.
In addition to exposing her to films she otherwise might not have seen, Walters said the research screenings have offered incredible insight into the process of Block Cinema’s work.
“The research screenings have given me both a window onto materials that are incredibly difficult to access, and into the archival and recovery work of film curation,” she said.
First-year Screen Cultures PhD student Ira Beare also became a regular attendee of the research screenings after a recommendation from a colleague. For Beare, the screenings offered an immersion into experimental film, “What’s special about these screenings is that they’re casual,” Beare said. “We watch the films and talk afterward—it pulls you out of that overly analytical mindset.”
With so much archival material coming to light, the research screenings will continue through the foreseeable future. True to The Block’s collaborative spirit, the team hopes to welcome suggestions from members of the Northwestern community and other film researchers and curators around the city.
“The more we use this platform to make films available and visible,” Metzger said, “the more we can bring hidden works into the light.”
Top Image: The Picture Start archives, photographed in the attic of Chicago Filmmakers Credit: James Hosking, Courtesy of Chicago Reader.
Contributed by Chris Forrester, Executive Assistant
