Damien Chazelle’s meticulously-realized film First Man (2018) follows astronaut Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) and wife Janet (Claire Foy) on the long and difficult path that led from the death of their daughter Karen in 1962 to his 1969 moon landing. While FIRST MAN has no shortage of thrilling astronautical sequences, Chazelle is less interested in […]
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Roger Corman’s visionary 1963 sci-fi classic X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes follows a scientist (Ray Milland) who develops eyedrops that allows him to see beyond the spectrum of visible light, penetrating mysteries of the human body and the deepest reaches of the cosmos. What starts out as a hospital drama about medical ethics […]
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In October 2022, The Block welcomed Tristen Ives as Head Projectionist, an integral role in the Block Cinema program. We sat down with Tristen to learn more about their work and background, and the skill, technique, and care behind a projectionist’s craft. Can you tell us a bit about your background? How did you find […]
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In December 2022, New City Magazine shared its list of the 50 most influential professionals in Chicago’s film and media community, including Block Cinema’s own Michael Metzger, Pick-Laudati Curator of Media Arts, and Malia Haines-Stewart, Associate Film Programmer. The magazine includes an essay articulating Block Cinema’s work and unique impact. Michael Metzger and Malia Haines-StewartPick-Laudati Curator of […]
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A pioneering work of Moroccan women’s cinema, A Door to the Sky (Bab Al-Sama Maftuh, 1988) by Farida Benlyazid is a powerful feminist tale of Islamic spiritual awakening and the interplay of cultural heritage and modern identity. The Block Museum of Art screened the film in October 2022, in conjunction with its presentation of the […]
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In May 2022, Block Cinema organized “To Render the Infinite,” a screening that brought together scholars and filmmakers to consider the role of the camera and the moving image in capturing and cultivating generational and familial relationships. The unique program connected the work of Kevin Jerome Everson, Paige Taul, & zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal in […]
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In 1971, ten civil rights activists, including 24-year-old Rev. Benjamin Chavis of the United Church of Christ’s Commission on Racial Justice, were wrongfully convicted of arson in Wilmington, North Carolina. Through interviews with the parents of the Wilmington 10 (as well as political prisoner Assata Shakur, filmed just before her escape from the Clinton Correctional […]
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“Terra Femme is Stephens’s magnum opus. It is also a meditation on the unresolved matter of women’s relationship to earthly places. What kind of home is earth, family, society? Where does the body go to live and to die? What does it mean to move through the world with this particular body, raced and gendered, […]
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In Winter 2021 The Block was honored to present Voices Across Time: Sharing Women’s Experiences of Re-entry, a special program bringing together organizers from Beyondmedia Education with current and former members of Grace House, a residential program for women exiting the Illinois prison system. This screening and discussion centered on women’s experiences of re-entry after […]
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In Winter 2021 the Block Museum hosted a discussion between UK filmmaker Onyeka Igwe and Professor Bimbola Akinbola of the Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. The conversation was presented as part of the Block Cinema program The Loose Ends of Empire: Unforgetting Colonialism a screening of experimental film and audio-visual works from the […]
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