Best of Block Cinema

Welcome to the Block Museum Campus Art Walk! These sixteen sculptures were gifts to Northwestern University by donors Mary and Leigh Block and other supporters. They are located outdoors and in indoor spaces around Northwestern's Arts Circle, as well as in a sculpture garden designed by renowned Chicago architect John Vinci.

Block Museum Campus Art Walk

16 - Ferrari - Prism in Two Elements

Intro from Giboom Joyce Park

Thank you for joining us!

15 - Ferrari - Armonía

Wilmington 10 -- USA 10,000(Haile Gerima, 1979, 120 min, 4K digital restoration courtesy the Academy Film Archive) 

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 Facility), groundbreaking Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima (Bush Mama, Sankofa) exposes the human toll of injustice. Nearly unseen for decades, Wilmington 10 – USA 10,000 will screen at the Block in a new restoration from the Academy Film Archive.

With an introduction and discussion by Allyson Nadia Field, Associate Professor, Department of Cinema and Media Studies at University of Chicago. Field is also the author of Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film & The Possibility of Black Modernity (Duke University Press, 2015), and co-editor of L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema (University of California Press, 2015).

Presented with support from the Kaplan Humanities Institute at Northwestern University

Cinema Talkback: Wilmington 10—U.S.A. 10,000

Flesh to Spirit: Materiality and Abstraction in Black Experimental Film, explored the manifold ways that film artists have embraced abstract techniques and explored the materiality of film and video to represent Black experience, from the 1960s to the present. Charting connections between several generations of moving-image makers, "Flesh to Spirit" showcased brilliant works in 16mm and 35mm film, analog and digital video.  

Filmmakers Paige Taul and Christopher Harris will appeared for a discussion and Q&A.

Flesh to Spirit: Materiality and Abstraction in Black Experimental Film

The program Environments of Struggle: The Slow Violence of Environmental Racism, focused on landscapes of decay and material traces of structural neglect where the films of Crystal Z. Campbell and Christopher Harris challenge our perception of American injustice. Campbell’s films GO-RILLA MEANS WAR (2017) and A MEDITATION ON NATURE IN THE ABSENCE OF AN ECLIPSE (2021) use found footage to trace fraught histories, from gentrification in Bed-Stuy to the water crisis in Flint, MI. Christopher Harris’ STILL/HERE (2001) bracingly documents the derelict architecture of North St. Louis, an open monument to systemic disinvestment in Black communities. Harris and Campbell appeared after the screening to discuss the ways their films offer techniques for visualizing and challenging the “slow violence” of environmental racism.

Environments of Struggle: Crystal Z. Campbell and Christopher Harris

Filmmakers' Talkback: Holding Binoculars, Pointing a Camera: A Cinema of Birdwatching

NO ORDINARY MAN, the 2020 documentary directed by Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, chronicles the life and legacy of the transmasculine American jazz bandleader and pianist, Billy Tipton (1914 – 1989), while also offering moving, thoughtful, and incisive commentaries on the history of trans representation and identity in the United States. NO ORDINARY MAN brings together archival materials, interviews with trans historians, artists, activists, and cultural critics, and re-enactments by transmasculine actors interpreting pivotal moments in Tipton’s life. The film asks important questions about representation, archival memory, and performance: How do we think about the past? How do we fill in the gaps of underexplored stories? And how might performance serve as a critical intellectual tool in reclaiming trans history?

Joynt participated in a discussion with program curator, Nathan Lamp, about the film and his body of work as a scholar and filmmaker, followed by Q&A with the audience. Presented with support from the Gender & Sexuality Studies program, The Sexualities Project at Northwestern (SPAN), the Hoffman Visiting Artist Series, and the MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern.

Filmmaker's Talkback: Chase Joynt on "No Ordinary Man" (2020)

(Various artists, 2008-2022, ~52 min, digital)

“To Render the Infinite” connects the work of Kevin Jerome Everson, Paige Taul, and zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal in a visual genealogy— reflecting on the ways that filmmakers have captured and cultivated generational and familial relationships through the camera. Films like Paige Taul’s 7-7-94 For my babe and Kevin Jerome Everson’s Flak-Kaserne Ludwigsburg serve as imaginative and speculative family portraits shot in vivid 16mm. zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal’s to render the infinite. offers a found footage driven response to the legacy of Lorraine Hansberry, exploring notions of belonging, intimacy, and Black women’s relationship to the everyday.

Following the screening, Everson, Taul, and o’neal appeared in person to discuss the formal and thematic kinship between their films. Co-presented with support from the Michael and Jane Hoffman Visiting Artist Series, the MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern, and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.

Filmmakers' Talkback: To Render the Infinite—Visual Genealogies of Black Kinship

From 1952 to 1956, a little-known anti-communist propaganda project was started in Mexico with support from the United States government. The project, headquartered by the company Dibujos Animados SA, brought together many of the most important talents in Mexican animation at the time (most of whom were unaware of the propaganda purposes), along with important animation directors from the United States, and even musical talents such as Juan García Esquivel.

The resulting cartoons are fascinating for demonstrating the blurred line between political propaganda and maquila, for manifesting the convergence of Mexican animation and UPA's mid-20th century abstract style of animation, and for the lingering mysteries that surround them. For example, although the production of the cartoons received significant coverage from the Mexican film press at the time, they never saw a mainstream release or distribution.

Listen to a panel discussion moderated by Derek G. Larson (Purdue), animation researcher Dan Bashara (DePaul), film philosopher Byron Davies (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow), and philosopher Carlos Oliva Mendoza (UNAM).

Mexican Animation, American Propaganda, and the Cold War (1952-56)

2023-24 Block Museum Interdisciplinary Fellow Madison Brown  discusses Donna Ferrato's photograph Women's Advocates St. Paul (1986)

Donna Ferrato - Women's Advocates St. Paul (1986)

2023-24 Block Museum Interdisciplinary Fellow Madison Brown discusses LaToya Ruby Frazier's photograph Zion Holding a Picture of Her Mother... (2017)

LaToya Ruby Frazier - Zion Holding a Picture of Her Mother... (2017)

2023-24 Block Museum Interdisciplinary Fellow Madison Brown discusses Michael Schwab's photograph "The Great Gymnasts of Heidburg..." (1993)

Michael Schwab -The great gymnasts of Heidburg (1993)

2023-24 Block Museum Interdisciplinary Fellow Madison Brown discusses Clarissa Sligh's artist book "What's Happening With Momma?" (1988)

Clarissa Sligh - What's Happening With Momma? (1988)

Melanie Garcia Sympson, Curatorial Coordinator, Collections Information and Digital Interpretation, discusses Zhang Huan's Foam (1), from the series Foam (1998)

Zhang Huan, Foam (1), from the series Foam, 1998

Audio from the "Lucid Figurations: Iranian Movie Poster & Film Art" symposium at Northwestern University's Block Museum of Art.

Introduction by Michelle Puetz, curator of "Salaam Cinema!: 50 Years of Iranian Movie Posters"

November 18, 2016

Symposium co-sponsored by Northwestern University Department of Anthropology, Department of Radio-TV-Film, Screen Cultures Program, International Studies Program, Buffett Institute for Global Studies, Kaplan Center for Humanities, Middle and North African Studies Program and the Center for Global Culture and Communication.

Rambod Vala: "To Cinema it May Concern"

13 - Ipoustéguy - Man Passing Through the Door

12 - Hepworth - Curved Form

11 - Hepworth - Two Forms (Divided Circle)

10 - Moore - Interior Form

09 - Arp - Resting Leaf

08 - Hunt - Small Twist II

06 - Miró - Constellation

05 - Pomodoro - Constructed Cylinder

04 - Matschinsky-Denninghoff - Reihe IV

03 - Goodman - Subjects-Objects

02 - Lipchitz - Musical Instruments with Compote and Pear

01 - Miró - Monument Raised in the Middle of the Ocean to the Glory of the Wind

Introduction

UCLA Professor of English and Comparative Literature Saree Makdisi will discuss the historical parallels between Blake’s era and the 1960’s, examining how these concurrent histories are the result of profound changes in politics, economy, art, and society during their respective periods.

Saree Makdisi received his BA in English and Economics from Wesleyan University in 1987 and his PhD from the Literature Program at Duke University in 1993.

Professor Makdisi’s teaching and research are situated at the crossroads of several different fields, including British Romanticism, imperial culture, colonial and postcolonial theory and criticism, and the cultures of urban modernity, particularly the revision and contestation of charged urban spaces, including London, Beirut and Jerusalem. He has also written extensively on the afterlives of colonialism in the contemporary Arab world, and, in addition to his scholarly articles, has also contributed pieces on current events to a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the London Review of Books.

His most recent book is Reading William Blake (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is also the author of Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2014); Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (Norton, 2010); William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s (University of Chicago Press, 2003); and Romantic Imperialism (Cambridge University Press, 1998). He is presently working on two new books: London’s Modernities (on the mapping and unmapping of London from the nineteenth century to the present), and Palestine and the Psychogeography of Denial (on the ways in which the affirmation and landscaping of certain values—tolerance, democracy, eco-consciousness—have played key roles in denying the Palestinian presence in and claim to Palestine).

October 18, 2017
Block Museum of Art
Co presented by Northwestern University Department of Art History

Saree Makdisi: Beholding William Blake at the End of Empire in the 1960s

Ambient audio track created by Thomas Matthew Molash for the exhibition "Paint the Eyes Softer: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt" on view January 13th to April 22, 2018 at the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University.  Track created in conjunction with the course Museum Sound Design taught by  Professor Stephan Moore of the Sound Arts and Industries Program in the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Northwestern University.

Paint the Eyes Softer - Block Museum Exhibition Soundtrack (Abyss)

Although noted for its evocative black and white cinematography and for John Hurt’s sensitive and powerful performance, David Lynch's "The Elephant Man" derives its emotional landscape from its rich, atmospheric use of sound. Seven time-Academy Award-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom (Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Finding Nemo) discusses the film. (October 10, 2019)

Block Cinema: Sound Designer Gary Rydstrom on "The Elephant Man"

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. Maple appeared at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University to discuss filmmaking, and her new memoir The Maple Crew, which reflects on these achievements.

Filmmaker's Talkback: Jessie Maple on breaking boundaries

An Opera of the World
(Manthia Diawara, 2017, Portugal/USA/Mali, digital, 70 min.)

A world-renowned scholar, filmmaker, and theorist of cultural hybridity, Manthia Diawara left Mali at the age of 19, emigrating to France and later to the United States. He returned to Mali in 2008 to film rehearsals for Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera that tells the story of northward migration. Diawara frames this moving performance between interviews (including discussions with filmmaker Alexander Kluge, novelist Fatou Diome and sociologist Nicole Lapierre), personal commentary, and archival footage that documents the cycles of migration throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The result is a cinematic essay as free-ranging, and as inspiring, as the borderless society he imagines.

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Part of the film series
Personal Passages: African Filmmakers in Europe

Personal Passages responds to the concurrent Block exhibitions CARAVANS OF GOLD and ISAAC JULIEN: THE LEOPARD (WESTERN UNION: SMALL BOATS) through a series of films which illuminate 20th and 21st century migrant experiences across the Mediterranean. While dozens of films have been made by European filmmakers addressing the challenges faced by refugees and immigrants to Europe, the films in this series, made by Tunisian, Mauritanian and Malian emigré filmmakers, all provide more intimate perspectives on these experiences of displacement and diaspora.

Filmmaker's Talkback: Manthia Diawara on "An Opera of the World" (2017)

In 2002, artist PAUL CHAN was working as a member of the Iraq Peace Team, formed by the Chicago-based activist group Voices in the Wilderness (now Voices for Creative Nonviolence), which was on the ground in Baghdad to protest the imminent Iraqi war. Chan captures the calm before the storm in this “ambient video essay,” with his focus on the routine work and leisure of the Iraqi people. Among the details captured, he reveals a shared humanity, one that is under threat of destruction.

With JOE PROULX of VITW/VCNV in person

Cinema Talkback: Baghdad In No Particular Order (2002)

The Block is a dynamic, imaginative, and innovative teaching and learning resource for Northwestern University and its surrounding communities, featuring a global exhibition program that crosses time periods and cultures and serves as a springboard for thought-provoking discussions relevant to our lives today.

Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University

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