The Block Museum of Art’s Block Cinema continues its tradition of celebrating work by under-seen media artists with a rare screening of Amy Halpern’s FALLING LESSONS (1992), a classic of American independent and experimental cinema. This special event is part of “Palm Down: The Films of Amy Halpern,” a citywide collaboration celebrating Halpern’s legacy and […]
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In late November, The Block Museum of Art was proud to unveil the results of the Climate Crisis + Media Arts (CC+MA) Working Group’s transformative media-funding initiative. The two-night event included the first public presentation of six original media arts works made possible with funding from CC+MA. Since 2021, The Block Museum of Art has […]
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On a sunny afternoon in late August, 16 people gathered in the grass of Northwestern’s sculpture garden to make a film. A cohort that included Northwestern faculty, Chicagoland graduate students, and analog film fanatics of all varieties, they came armed with 600 feet of 16mm film, film processing supplies, film splicers and tape, an array […]
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A Historic Festival Revisited offers a Tribute to Women Filmmakers and their Legacies This fall, The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University and the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago proudly announce a joint celebration of the 50th anniversary of the pioneering Films by Women/Chicago ’74 festival. […]
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In One Man Dies a Million Times, a “true story, set in the future,” two young botanists who work at the Institute of Plant Genetic Resources commit themselves to tending seeds meant to sustain future populations while contending with the present reality of mass starvation. Emerging from a process of historical research, artistic imagination, and […]
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A pair of Block Cinema screenings that might seem unrelated at first glance share a common inspiration: the films of David Lynch. Loosely inspired by and programmed in collaboration with Northwestern School of Communication Professor Jacob Smith’s course Media and the Environment: Meet David Lynch, The Block’s presentation of The Black Stallion (Ballard, 1979) and […]
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Rebecca Fons is always excited to get a call from the Block Cinema team. Fons is Director of Programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and usually calls from either of Block Cinema’s co-programmers foreshadow exciting collaborations; in 2022, they anticipated Tsai Ming-liang’s visit to The Block and artist talk plus screening series at the […]
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In October 2023, Northwestern Department of Asian Languages and Cultures Professor Licheng Gu was at AMC Newcity 14 for a movie. The renowned Chicagoland film festival Asian Pop-up Cinema was celebrating the closing night of its season, with the South Korean musical-comedy-thriller Killing Romance (2023). Both its star, the late Lee Sun-kyun, and its director, […]
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Not all audiences may realize that most theatrically screened films are not actually film at all. Outside of venues like art theaters – The Block included – and the occasional multiplex special occasions, most contemporary cinema presentations are digital projection rather than analog. As cinema has evolved, so too has the role of projectionist, and […]
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For scholar, visual artist, and philosopher Byron Davies, a collection of finely crafted anti-communist propaganda cartoons produced in Mexico by some of the country’s top animators with support from the United States government offers a window into the relationship between the United States and Latin America, insight into the economy and function of propaganda, and […]
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