Collections
CFA's collections contain professional and amateur films of all genres, including documentaries, experimental films, and home movies, depicting histories of Chicago, the Midwest and the world. Our online catalog contains thousands of digitized items from our collections along with descriptive catalog records.
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circa 1965 – 1977
This collection of films was made by filmmaker DeWitt Beall in Chicago during the 1960s and early '70s. A large portion of the collection consists of elements and prints related to LORD THING, a film about a Chicago-based gang named the Conservative Vice Lords. The film was never released, but won an award at the Venice Film Festival in 1971. Various other educational films, documentaries and PSAs are in this collection, including the EARTHKEEPING television series which aired on WTTW in the early 1970s.
1932 – 2001
This collection of films was compiled by Jack Behrend who owned a camera equipment rental house and worked as a professional industrial filmmaker from the 1950s until the 1990s. Included in this collection are 13 reels of raw footage from an unfinished documentary of historical inns of America and time lapse footage of Grant Park, the Equitable Building and Lake Point Tower as they were being constructed. The collection includes industrial films about steel foundries, the making of railroad wheels and a film about the teachers' strike at Niles North in the 1970s. Also within this collection are films made by Gordon Weisenborn, a Chicago filmmaker who gave his films to Jack Behrend before his death. Behrend has donated the prints and rights of his films and those of Gordon Weisenborn to CFA. He has also donated 52 prints made by the National Film Board of Canada.
A collection of 16mm films that originally belonged to Illinois Aikido Club, a Japanese-American martial arts dojo in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.
1988 – 1990
The Susan Dobinsky Collection consists of outtakes and elements from an unfinished film made about murals in Chicago shot during 1988-1991. The footage captures murals in the neighborhoods of Pilsen, Little Village, West Town, and Humboldt Park during this time; accompanying audio tapes feature interviews with local artists. The unfinished film was spearheaded by Dobinsky and Julia Kurtz and funded primarily through a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, and supported by filmmakers Ronn Bayly and Susan Regele's then Chicago-based company Lightbound, which was active from 1980-1990.
1967 – 1990
The JoAnn Elam collection primarily consists of films made by independent filmmaker JoAnn Elam. Elam primarily shot on 8mm film, although she did work extensively with 16mm, Super-8mm film and early video. A number of 8mm films have been printed to Super-8mm stock, and films like Rape (1975) and the unfinished Everyday People employed multiple formats (16mm, video, and 8mm). This collection also contains several historically important medical films made by James O. Elam, M.D., JoAnn Elam's father, which document his development of the "rescue breathing" technique and numerous other advances in clinical anesthesiology and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Additionally, there are at least two titles by experimental filmmakers and artists Dan Perz and Ruth Klassen. This collection is sponsored by Susan Elam, Kenneth Belcher and Sandy Ihm.
1966 – 1969
The Film Group was a Chicago commercial film production company that made television commericials and political documentaries in the late 1960s/early 1970s. This collection includes original prints and preservation elements of their political documentaries on the 1968 Democratic National Convention including AMERICAN REVOLUTION II and the educational series URBAN CRISIS AND THE NEW MILITANTS. Filmmakers associated with the Film Group include Mike Gray, William Cottle, Howard Alk, Mike Shea, and Chuck Olin.
1966 – 1977
The Robert Flaxman Collection consists of 16mm film prints and elements made or worked on by Chicago-based filmmaker Robert Flaxman in the 1960s and 1970s. The films include theatrical short subjects such as CLEO (1966), featuring an enterprising young shoe-shiner, and THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RALPH WILLIAMS (1969) about the 1968 Chicago Auto Show; a segment of an unfinished feature film starring the cast of Second City ("PTA MEETING"); commercials for products like Yellow Pages phone books and new ATM banking technology; three educational films produced by Coronet Films, including the award-winning BOYHOOD OF GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER (1973); and industrial films.
1962 – 1964
The Robert Ford Collection consists of four short films made by Robert Ford while he was living in Chicago in the 1960s. Ford was a student at Northwestern University, and the collection includes a film made while he was a graduate student, “The High Up Doll,” a whimsical look at childhood desire that includes both live-action and collage animation techniques. Ford’s three subsequent films were produced with the assistance of Northwestern University and examine subjects including the Chicago Vice Lords street gang in “The Corner,” the rehabilitation of individuals with physical disabilities in “The Way Back,” and homing pigeon racing in "The Homing Pigeon."
1970s
The Robert Frerck Collection consists of elements and different release prints of two documentaries created by Chicago-based filmmaker and photographer Robert Frerck: "Stella" documents the life of Ray Slupik, captain of the ship Stella and the last commercial fisherman in Chicago. "Al Andalus" (also titled Spain: The Moorish Influence) tells the history of the Moorish Culture of Spain, shooting on location in France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. Also included is stock footage and Kodalith artwork incorporated into the production of "Al Andalus."
The William Franklin Grisham Collection contains 16mm films, audio and paper materials primarily related to Chicago's role in early cinema history. It contains interviews with important figures from Essanay and Ebony Studios as well as documentaries Grisham made on these topics in the 1970s.
circa 1938 – 1973
This collection contains 35mm elements related to an unfinished film about folk music in Chicago. Directed by Charles "Sky" King in the early 1970s, the footage features folk acts such as Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah, Fred Holstein, Bonnie Koloc, and Terry Callier performing at the Earl of Old Town and the Old Town School of Folk Music. The collection also contains a number of unrelated 16mm boxing matches.
1972 – 1979
The Bob Heiber Collection is made up of student films, 16mm industrial films and 35mm filmstrips produced at Pilot Productions in Evanston, Illinois from 1976 until 1979. For all of the films in the collection, Bob was the film editor and sound mixer. In the later films he was also the director. These films are representative of the kinds of corporate sponsored films made to demonstrate new products or techniques. With the introduction of video technologies at the end of the 1970s much of this work was taken “in-house” to corporate communication departments and 16mm film production for corporate films rapidly declined.
In the Bob Heiber Collection, locations range from constructions sites all around the United States as well as scenes filmed around the Chicagoland area.
In the Bob Heiber Collection, locations range from constructions sites all around the United States as well as scenes filmed around the Chicagoland area.
1962 – 1976
This collection includes ethnographic films produced or shot by the pioneering visual anthropologist, Paul Hockings, and work created under his mentorship at the University of Illinois at Chicago including Susan Stechnij's examination of a Mexican immigrant family, MI RAZA: PORTRAIT OF A FAMILY. The collection also includes films shot by Hockings as part of his reasearch on the Badaga people in the Nilgiris Hills in India, and THE VILLAGE shot in western Ireland, on which Hockings was the consulting anthropologist.
1965 – 1967
The six films in this collection represent the early work of documentary filmmaker and Hollywood cameraman Peter Kuttner. The films include a student film made at Northwestern University, two films he made with students at Dillard University in New Orleans as part of the War on Poverty in 1965, and three kinescopes of shows he made at Chicago's public television station WTTW.
1970s
The Bob Link Collection consists primarily of 16mm work prints and camera originals of sailing footage from the 1970s, including sailing scenes near the shores and harbors of downtown Chicago and a sailing race aboard Ted Turner's American Eagle. The Bob Link Collection also includes 1 file folder titled "1977" filled with client correspondence, receipts, budget logs, audience testimonials and polaroid photographs.
1994 – 2003
The Silvia A. Malagrino Collection consists of production master tapes from her 2005 experimental documentary Burnt Oranges, which mixes poetic personal narrative with documentary to confront the painful period of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina. Also included are production master tapes from her 1994 documentary poem Hotel America.
1962 – 1984
The Harry Mantel Collection came to CFA via the University of Chicago and consists primarily of production elements (camera originals, outtakes and numerous magnetic & optical soundtracks) made by Chicago cameraman, producer, and journalist, Harry Mantel (1923-2007). The few distribution prints in the collection are part of a series titled "Harry Mantel's Vignettes," which were produced and directed by Mantel thanks to a grant from Encyclopedia Britannica. The series primarily includes brief portraits he constructed of the city of Chicago and its people as well as subjects and scenes shot in Iowa, Wisconsin and Ireland. Some of the many subjects Mantel explores in his Vignettes include a waitress at a former Marina City Towers restaurant, O'Hare air traffic controllers, the various manifestations of fire, Iowa square dancing, circus & zoo animals, leaves & trees, Irish culture and a suburban arts and crafts fair replete with many a macrame booth.
circa 1960 – 1998
The Judith Paine McBrien Collection mostly consists of unedited 16mm documentary footage related to Chicago architecture and to the legacy and influence of Polish immigrants in the Chicago area. Much of the footage was shot for “Skyline: Chicago,” an award-winning 5-part series about Chicago’s history, development, and urban design that was broadcast on WTTW in the 1990s.
This collection contains production elements and prints related to films made by Maria Moraites and her collaborators. It includes material related to early projects, most notably Good Night, Socrates (1962), as well as films produced during her time as head of Northeastern Illinois University's Learning Services division, which produced films for NEIU's faculty and student community during the 1960s – 1980s.
1926 – 1985
The Rod Nordberg Collection contains 16mm film prints and videotapes of documentary series and educational programs produced by Chicago’s public television station WTTW 11 and Rod Nordberg’s company Hollywood East in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. These include The Architecture of Chicago (1968-9), Metro!!! The School Without Walls (1970), Until I Die (1970) Earthkeeping (1972-3), and Making M*A*S*H (1981). The collection also features 16mm prints of student films from Columbia College, the Chicago Public High School for Metropolitan Studies (Metro), and University of Illinois at Chicago Circle (UICC), as well as 16mm Chicago home movies from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s collected by Nordberg.
This collection, donated by Northwestern University's Radio/Television/Film Department, is mainly comprised of 16mm films. These include prints of feature film classics formerly used in film studies instruction at Northwestern, a collection of film elements shot by Swiss nature photographer Helene Fischer, and a collection of films made by Wilding Picture Productions (a Chicago-based maker of industrial films).
1965 – 2001
The Chuck Olin Collection is comprised of films, videotapes and ephemera made by Chuck Olin from his work at two Chicago area film production companies from the mid-60s to the late 1990s: first with the Film Group/Mike Gray Associates and after 1974 with his own Chuck Olin Associates. Included are political documentaries made by the Film Group on the 1968 Democratic National Convention; television commercials for a variety of clients including Sears, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and politicians running for election; sponsored films for the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Medical Association, and Eli Lilly; educational films for Encyclopaedia Britannica; and a documentary by Olin on the Jewish Brigade in World War II.
1940 – 2001
The Tom Palazzolo Collection consists of experimental films and documentaries, their elements, and outtakes made by Chicago-based filmmaker Tom Palazzolo, once called "Chicago's filmmaker laureate" by critic Roger Ebert. Although the subjects of his films vary widely, they are all united in their humanist depiction of those living on the margins of society. Included in the collection are well-known works like Jerry's (1976), featuring the explosive owner of a deli in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood and At Maxwell Street (1984), about the city's storied Maxwell Street market, as well as lesser-known films like Pigeon Lady (1966), Palazzolo's first film, and Rita on the Ropes (2001), the most recent film in the collection.
1958 – 1966
The Charles Dee Sharp collection consists of five 16mm films, including a short Christmas themed narrative film, two promotional films for the Illinois Institute of Technology and two short documentary films, one about a Kibbutz in Israel titled The Kibbutz, and another about Russia after Stalin, titled The Iron Curtain Lands: The Post-Stalin Period. All films are Cameras International productions. All films are written and directed by Charles Dee Sharp, except for Symbolic Control, which is written and directed by David A. Tapper for the IIT.
circa 1930 – 2008
Collection of over 5800 films, videos, and audio elements related to C.L. Venard Productions, a Peoria, Illinois-based producer of industrial films, mainly related to agriculture. Venard ran a production studio, distributed films made by others, and did work for hire for companies like Caterpillar. The collection was donated to CFA by Gary Smith, who worked in production for the organization for many years before purchasing the company from Venard in 1967.
1947 – 2012
The films in this collection were made and collected by Chicago photojournalist, critic and filmmaker Bill Stamets. The bulk of the collection consists of Super 8 films and footage shot by Stamets in the 1970s and 1980s. They depict political events primarily in the city of Chicago, including former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington's two election campaigns, inaugurations, and time in office; numerous street protests and marches; and cultural festivals around the city.
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Collections in Progress
Our staff is always working to expand CFA's catalog by researching, describing, and digitizing new collections. Here are the collections that are currently in progress.
Five 8mm home movies shot in Chicago between 1958 and 1962.
A collection of 129 16mm films, mainly educational titles.
Materials related to the work of experimental filmmaker and Chicago high school teacher Eleanor Binstock.
13 reels of 16mm adult films rescued from the Oak Theater in Chicago, at Armitage Ave and Western Ave, as it was being cleared out for renovation.
52 reels of 16mm home movies and collected films from the Beverly and South Shore areas of Chicago, shot and collected by Chester Faust.
Two 16mm films about Fred Flom, of Menasha, Wisconsin, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam from 1966 to 1973.
circa 1963 – 1967
The Leon P. Granacki Family Collection consists of twelve 8mm home movies taken by Leon P. Granacki. The films capture the life of a Polish American family living in the Old Irving Park neighborhood of Chicago. The footage features vacations, trips to the Squaw Lake (Minnesota), Channel Lake and Long Lake (Illinois), and travel to St. Louis. Other films document Easter and the Graduation of Leon’s daughter, Victoria Granacki.
Collection of films produced by Guzik as part of his work for various companies during the late 1970s.
Collection of 13 home movies from the mid-1950s, most of which were shot by Judith Hembree's father.
Films made by, worked on, or collected by documentary filmmaker Judy Hoffman.
3 reels of family outings; 1 reel, Bar Mitzvah party, Albany Park, 1956; 1 reel, Carnival, 1956 at the University of Illinois, Champaign.
38 reels of 8mm home movies shot by Sydney Katz, primarily of family birthday parties, weddings, holidays, and vacations.
Collection of 71 8mm home movies.
36 reels of 8mm and Super 8 home movies shot in the Chicago, Albuquerque, and Milwaukee areas.
Collection of predominantly industrial films worked on by Charles S. C. Lee, who worked in film production in Chicago from the 1960s – 1980s.
About a dozen rolls of 16mm film, mainly comprising unedited footage shot during the 1966 football season, as well as 16mm kinescopes of the Vince Lombardi Show and the George Halas Show.
Home movies on 8mm and Super 8 film.
A collection of independent/student films made in the late 1960s and early 1970s in and around Chicago, Park Ridge, and Niles, Illinois.
Collection consisting mainly of 16mm elements of films made by or in collaboration with Robert Orr, both during his high school years and his professional career.
Collection of 4 16mm home movies.
47 reels of 8mm home movies found in a dumpster and donated to CFA. Reel labels indicate that the films depict visits to Europe as well as to Crivitz, Wisconsin.
13 reels of 16mm film from Dr. Herbert Ratner, who was health commissioner of Oak Park, IL, from 1949 to 1974.
2 reels of 16mm film about urban planning in Chicago, produced by the City of Chicago Department of Urban Renewal.
circa 1955 – 1974
Multiple 8mm and Super 8 films taken by Caroline Wenz Rubin in the 1950s-'70s in Chicago, lL; Perrysburg, OH; Yellow Springs, OH; Newton, MA; Washington, DC; and various other locations. Collection includes one or more short movies filmed by Betsy Rubin, then a high school student. Most films are family or travel documentary in nature; a few are filmed stories or plays, including one stop-action short film.
circa 1955 – 1964
The Sanetra Family Collection consists of 27 home movies (including thirteen of 8mm and fourteen of Super 8mm) taken by Charles Sanetra. The films capture family holidays and celebrations – Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, communions, church picnics, parades, and neighborhood sporting events. Among them are documentation of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła’s (Wojtyła) visit to Chicago in 1976 and the 1964 Alaskan earthquake in Anchorage.
Collection of 31 reels of 16mm home movies from a Michigan family.
Three reels of film found in the church when they were clearing out old things.
A collection of educational films, newsreels, and student films.
12 cans of 35mm negatives in cans from National Film Archives - Public Archives Canada.
Materials documenting street cars in Chicago, including films, mini DV tapes, and paper materials.
Collection of 8mm home movies.