Block Cinema: Block Museum - Northwestern University
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Block Cinema

Block Auditorium
About Block Cinema

Block Cinema is dedicated to encounter, exchange, and learning through the art of the moving image. 

 

Learn More about the Block Cinema program.

Always free and open to all

Upcoming Screenings

Feb57 PM

THE HUMAN SURGE (2016) with guest Eduardo Williams

Argentinian filmmaker Eduardo Williams translates the sensations of 24-7 computing into thrilling, formally audacious cinema.
Feb67 PM

THE HUMAN SURGE 3 (2023) with guest Eduardo Williams

A new conjuring of cinematic vocabulary that navigates the age of digital global culture to dazzling effect with Williams in person.
Feb77 PM

SHORT FILMS BY EDUARDO WILLIAMS (2011-2019) with filmmaker in attendance

A selection of Eduardo Williams's short films that boldly remaps the horizons of cinematic and social possibility.
Feb137 PM

TIME PASSAGES (2024) with filmmaker Kyle Henry

Filmmaker Kyle Henry, an Associate Professor of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern, shares his newest documentary, an intimate portrait of his mother Elaine’s late-stage dementia emerging from an extensive family archive to explore the complicated bonds of identity, history, and belonging in his large Texas family. 
Feb217 PM

Amy Halpern’s FALLING LESSONS (1992) with guest author Laura Paul

A program that celebrates the experimental cinema of Los Angeles-based filmmaker Amy Halpern (1953-2022), including a 16mm screening of her feature film FALLING LESSONS (1992) alongside a new publication FILM ELEGY by Laura Paul.
Feb277 PM

STILL FILM (2023) with filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins

An idiosyncratic take on the mass culture of the movies utilizes 35mm presskit photos from Hollywood blockbusters by one of contemporary cinema’s most audacious voices with filmmaker in person.
Mar56 PM

I AM NOT THIS BODY (1971) with trans science researcher Dr. Os Keyes

A recently rediscovered documentary landmark opens a window to a pivotal moment in transgender medicine with trans science researcher Dr. Os Keyes. 

Mar67 PM

I AM MY OWN WOMAN & COMMUNICATION FROM WEBER with Elizabeth Purchell

Two innovative and unconventional 16mm documentaries portraying transgender subjects who lived on their own terms with guest speaker Elizabeth Purchell.

Mar137 PM

First Person Plural: New and Rediscovered Trans Documentary Shorts with filmmaker Connor O’Keefe

Two recent short films by documentary filmmaker Connor O’Keefe bookend three newly digitized portrait films from the 1960s and 70s, each offering an intimate approach to first-person testimony.

Past Cinema

Upcoming Film Series

Friends reclining and smiling

The Films of Eduardo Williams

February 5 Through February 7

Block Cinema and the MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern University welcome the acclaimed Argentine filmmaker Eduardo “Teddy” Williams for a three-day celebration of his work, including screenings of his two feature films THE HUMAN SURGE and THE HUMAN SURGE 3, as well as a masterclass and a program of short films. 

black and white image of two women smiling

Trans Portraiture

February 14 Through March 14
Block Cinema presents Trans Portraiture, a unique film series that explores early and contemporary representations of transgender lives on screen.
 
"We’re very conscious of the valuable role that university cinemas like ours can play in the ecosystem of non-theatrical film. We look for opportunities to support and showcase the work of distributors who are expanding access to adventurous cinema, archives that are preserving endangered cinematic legacies and scholars and filmmakers who are promoting a more inclusive film culture.
We try to act as a conduit between that international community of passionate cinema workers, and diverse local communities at Northwestern and beyond, who see cinema as a way to encounter the world and exchange ideas."

– Michael Metzger, Pick-Laudati Curator of Media Arts, Block Museum

 

 

Explore Block Cinema's work