The Camille Cook Collection consists of outtakes, work prints, original negatives, collected films, home movies, and edited diary films of the experimental and personal work of Camille Cook, filmmaker and founder of The Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (now The Gene Siskel Film Center). The films depict various aspects of Cook’s life in Chicago throughout the mid 1960s, ranging from images of city street life to moments with her friends and family in Western Springs, IL, as well as her experiments in structural filmmaking.

The David Drazin Collection contains both commercial prints that were created for the home market and home movies that were made at the Holy Family Academy school in Chicago between 1939 and 1946. The commercial films include educational films, a Dick Tracy cartoon, and Charlie Chaplin’s 1916 short “Behind the Screen.” The Holy Family Academy was an all-girls Catholic school on Chicago’s north side, and the home movies document nuns and young girls playing outside and on various outings in and around Chicago, as well as seasonal dance recitals.

These film materials consist of news footage Frank Koza shot from the mid 1930s through the late 1980s. They contain local, national and international news events.