Tucked inside the Block Museum of Art right by Norris Student Center and Lake Michigan is the Block Cinema. The theater shows a wide variety of programs open to the public and functions as an educational resource for undergraduate and graduate students. The auditorium seats up to 150 people and screens everything from modern experimental films to historic documentaries–all for free.

The cinema is currently running the series Films by Women/Chicago ‘74 to honor the 50th anniversary of the 1974 film festival of the same name. The original event, which took place at the height of the women’s liberation movement, showcased films created by women and was organized by an all-female team. Several of the organizers were Northwestern students and faculty.

The current film series is in partnership with the Gene Siskel Film Center, a public program in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The festival added some films that were released after the 1974 festival but still connect to its themes and mission of recognizing and celebrating female filmmakers. The cinema recently screened Will by Jessie Maple, the first independent feature film by a Black woman director, which came out seven years after the original festival. The staff felt it had the same spirit and helped to bridge the historical event to today.

“This was an opportunity to reflect on that moment and shine a light on that history,” said cinema director Michael Metzger. “But also to think about what the current work is and where there still remains effort to be done to recover and reclaim and celebrate the history and the present and future of women in cinema.”

When selecting films to show, the staff prioritizes representing the full diversity of filmmaking, challenging dominant narratives and histories that focus on privileged groups. After the current Films by Women/Chicago ‘74 festival, the cinema will begin a series called Trans Portraiture in February. Both of these series emphasize underrepresented groups’ role in film.

“It's not that women and people of color haven't been making films throughout the history of cinema,” Metzger said. “It's that those stories often haven't been told and have been sidelined for more conventional film histories that center white male filmmakers and commercial filmmaking.”

The filmmakers often come to the cinema to speak after the screenings which helps give emerging creators a platform to connect their work to the audience, Associate Film Programmer Malia Haines-Stewart said. The cinema also hosts more prominent artists as visiting speakers.

“Some of my great cinema heroes–some of the filmmakers that I really love the most–we have welcomed them to the Block Museum,” Haines-Stewart said, mentioning Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa.

Metzger said choosing films that will provoke post-show discussions is important to the cinema.

“We want to show something that is going to lend itself to conversation that you're going to want to try to unpack together, or you're going to want to listen to a guest speaker or a filmmaker talk about,” Metzger said. “So that you can build on the understanding that you have from watching the film and come away with a deeper appreciation for everything that goes into it.”

Rather than focusing on a specific genre, the cinema aims to showcase the full breadth of the film medium, from narratives to documentaries to experimental films.

“We want people to understand that the variety and diversity of the moving image is one of the things that makes it like such an interesting and compelling art form,” Metzger said. “It's about presenting a very expansive picture of the possibilities of the moving image, both past and present.”

The cinema shows experimental films that use innovative methods to convey their messages. Haines-Stewart said they try to appeal to a broad audience with these experimental films by creating dialogue.

“It’s really about trying to approach cinema accessibly, openly, with curiosity and passion so that we can all experience it together fruitfully,” she said.

Communication fourth-year and cinema assistant Kennedy Birtcher said that the cinema is able to show more experimental films because free screenings allow them to move away from focusing on attendance and profit.

“They can screen more interesting things, weirder things, things that don't get nearly as much attention as they deserve,” Birtcher said. “Those types of screenings have widened my education in a way that I wasn’t getting in a classroom.”

At the cinema, undergraduate workers like Birtcher distribute flyers, email on-campus organizations and work during events. Birtcher also did archival work over the summer, going through the cinema’s old unprocessed documents to identify their historical significance.

However, the cinema’s connection with the student body is often through graduate students. Frequently, graduate students partner with the cinema when their research or interests align with the cinema’s programming. The cinema recently worked with Ph.D. students from the Screen Cultures program to show celluloid trailers for classic Hollywood films and paired this with a talk from a visiting scholar.

“I'm always learning with the students because I get this great opportunity to have the insight of what they're passionate about and what their scholarship is revealing to them,” Haines-Stewart said. “Then we find a way to bring that to a Block Cinema program.”

Expanding the cinema’s education dimension by continuing to teach classes at the museum and using the cinema as a tool for research is a priority, according to Metzger, and the cinema is always looking to increase interaction with the Northwestern community through these efforts.

“Finding ways to give people both a historical appreciation for cinema and intellectual appreciation for the art, but also a practical hands-on understanding of the medium and the ways that it can be an expressive tool,” Metzger said. “That's all part of what we're imagining for Block Cinema going forward.”

The team at Block Cinema hopes to boost student attendance at screenings and student involvement with the program. One way they do this is by reaching out to relevant courses, departments, and student groups on campus. Birtcher said she encourages other students to become more familiar with the cinema.  

“I think entry into the museum art world can be really intimidating,” Birtcher said. “My message for students is that it doesn't need to be. It's there as an educational resource, and you'll get a lot from it.”

Thumbnail courtesy of Daderot on Wikimedia. Licensed under Creative Commons.