CFA’s Collection Manager, Anne Wells, and Andy Uhrich (University of Indiana, Center for Home Movies) head to the University of Glasgow to present at the Children and Nontheatrical Media Conference– a meeting of archivists, academics and filmmakers who will explore the relationship between nontheatrical media (meaning amateur, orphan, sponsored, municipal, educational films and/or audiovisual material) and children. Andy and Anne will present on the Young Chicago Filmmakers Festival films found in CFA’s Chicago Public Library Collection.
‘From Social Commentary to Fantasy: The Chicago Public Library’s Young Chicago Filmmakers Festival’, Anne Wells (Chicago Film Archives) & Andy Uhrich (Indiana University), Saturday, April 12, 2014, 3-4PM
From 1971-1973, the Chicago Public Library (CPL) sponsored the Young Chicago Filmmakers Festival (YCFF) for “any amateur filmmaker, who is a resident or attending a Chicago high school, junior college or undergraduate college, as well as non-students, 25 years of age or younger.” Local teenagers picked up entry forms at their local library branch and submitted films that they made for class, community film workshops or just for the love of it. According to the CPL, the short-lived fest “encouraged film as an art and a means of communication by providing amateur filmmakers with a place to show their works, an audience to view them, and a jury to score them.”
The 15 (and counting!) films rediscovered from the YCFF represent a wide-range of genres and skill-levels: exuberant stop-motion animation, impassioned anti-Vietnam War protests, cineme verite documentaries, and narrative shorts. This jointly presented paper will place this group of films within larger efforts to train young people in filmmaking to combat economic and social inequality. The history of the festival will be covered and its place within the CPL’s role as a free and open space for the spread of knowledge will be considered. How did the library, which had a huge collection of educational films for the city’s children, go from screening films for kids to helping them make them? What implications does this point hold for media archives as they try to bridge the gap between preservation of old films and the collaborative creation of new audiovisual works? How can children become engaged in the library/archival worlds?
Conference Keynote Speakers:
Rick Prelinger (archivist, writer, and filmmaker)
Professor David Buckingham (Loughborough University)