On November 5, 2020 Block Cinema welcomed California-based artist Fox Maxy (Ipai Kumeyaay and Payómkawichum) for a screening and conversation of his work. The works in the program, California Girls (2018), Maat Means Land (2020), and San Diego (2020), offered a prismatic and timely vision of the artist’s home state, viewed through the lens of […]
Moving across languages, national boarders, and cinematic styles, the wide spectrum of feminist filmmaking by women from the Middle East and North Africa is largely unknown in the United States. The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University sets out to shine a light on this body of work with Liberating History: Arab Feminisms and […]
In the heart of the South Side of Chicago, an 85-acre area abutting a railyard means different things to different people. For more than 400 African American families, it is home. For Norfolk Southern railroad company, it is space to expand its train-to-truck intermodal depot. The 2018 documentary The Area tells a story that’s well known […]
On February 2, 2019 The Block welcomed filmmaker and NYU Professor of Cinema Studies Manthia Diawara for a screening and conversation on his 2017 film An Opera of the World. A world-renowned theorist of cultural hybridity, Manthia Diawara left Mali at the age of 19, emigrating to France and later to the United States. He […]
Block Museum hosts Chicago premiere of A Moon for My Father (2019) At age 30, acclaimed artist and filmmaker Mania Akbari was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. This experience became the core of the Iranian director’s personal new work A Moon for My Father (2019), an essay film made in collaboration […]
Director Jessie Maple is a true trailblazer: the first African-American woman to join the International Photographers of Motion Picture & Television union, she also established a long-running venue for independent Black filmmakers in her own home. New York Women in Film and Television called Maple’s work “a forerunner of the independent, minority filmmaking that would cultivate directors […]
On October 10, 2019 Block Cinema joined with Northwestern’s MA in Sound Arts and Industries to welcome Academy-Award-Winning Sound Designer Gary Rydstrom for a discussion of David ‘s Lynch’s 1980 classic The Elephant Man. Although noted for its evocative black and white cinematography and for John Hurt’s sensitive and powerful performance as Merrick, the film’s […]
In September 2019 the Block Museum welcomed Simran Bhalla as a 2019-2020 graduate fellow. Block Museum Graduate Fellowships are offered to two graduate students annually, one from Art History and one from any department within the Graduate School. Graduate Fellows are integral members of the museum staff and support projects through exhibition and collection research, curating, writing […]
Ism Ism Ism is the first major survey of Latin American experimental cinema in U.S. The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University has announced that it will bring the groundbreaking film program “Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America (Ismo, Ismo, Ismo: Cine experimental en América Latina)” to Chicago Oct. 3 to Nov. 16 […]
Since the 1960s, experimental filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky has been making a distinctive and stunning body of work. His silent 16mm films are lyrical explorations of the world around him, focused on the textures, colors, and rhythms of everyday objects and movements. His sharp eye for details reveals the small moments of beauty and wonder to […]