This past year, Block Cinema set out to explore a big question:How can moving images be created in ways that honor and protect the environment? With support from the Earth Rising Foundation’s Sustainable Visions grant and in partnership with Northwestern’s Climate Crisis + Media Arts Working Group, Block Cinema hosted a three-part series of eco-processing […]
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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 April 2022, Chase Joynt, director of Framing Agnes (2022), visited Block Cinema for two evenings of programs. On the first night, a workshop and screening on Joynt’s filmmaking practice welcomed students and visitors interested in documentary media, trans studies, gender studies, and queer & trans archives. The workshop event was followed the next day […]
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For many, London is an imaginary landscape, a composite of images that circulate in art, literature, and popular culture. On November 12, 2020 Block Cinema explored this landscape with Unreal City: Film Essays on London by Ayo Akingbade and Reece Auguiste a program of experimental essay films from the UK. The screening was followed by a […]
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In November 2018 the Block Museum of Art welcomed documentarian PJ Raval for a conversation on his award-winning feature documentary Call Her Ganda. The film following the 2014 murder of Jennifer Laude, a transgender Filipina woman killed by an American Marine, and the struggle for justice waged by her family, friends, lawyers, and investigative journalist […]
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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 […]
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In November 2019, The Block welcomed Toronto-based filmmaker Brett Story for two nights of her acclaimed documentary films and conversation on her groundbreaking practice. The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) explores the criminal justice system and mass incarceration in the U.S. from a number of oblique vantage points, rather than focusing on prisons themselves. Story looks […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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