Join us the 2nd Tuesday of the month at the Hideout for our new series, CFA CRASHERS! At CFA we are constantly inspired by the sea of talented individuals who call Chicagoland their home. In our upcoming CFA CRASHERS series, we are inviting some of our favorite locals into our vault to curate a film program all their own (absolutely no rules or strings attached). The general motivation behind the series is to have a lot of different communities and voices engaging with our materials, as we’re increasingly interested in collaborating with those who are eager to mix it up with the CFA films in ways not thought of before. Beginning this August, a guest programmer (aka “Crasher”) will introduce a screening of their making over happy hour at the Hideout. All films will be presented in 16mm.
This December we are lucky to have Mimi Nguyen picking the films!
Mimi Thi Nguyen is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her first book, called The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages, focuses on the promise of “giving” freedom concurrent and contingent with waging war and its afterlife (Duke University Press, 2012). She continues to understand her scholarship through the frame of transnational feminist cultural studies, and in particular as an untangling of the liberal way of war that pledges “aid,” freedom, rights, movement, and other social goods, with her following project on the promise of beauty. Nguyen was recently named a Conrad Humanities Scholar for 2013-2018, a designation supporting the work of outstanding associate professors in the humanities within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois.
She is also co-editor with Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu of Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America (Duke University Press, 2007), and co-editor with Fiona I.B. Ngo and Mariam Lam of a special issue of positions on Southeast Asians in diaspora (Winter 2012). She publishes also on queer subcultures, the politics of fashion, and punk feminisms. In 2012 and 2013, she went on the POC Zine Project/Race Riot! Tour to discuss and read from zines by people of color.
Mimi’s selections include:
American Revolution 2: What We Have (1969, Film Group, 16mm., B&W, Sound, 27m)
The second of three parts to American Revolution II- a Film Group documentary by filmmakers Howard Alk and Mike Gray that charts their journey to a deeper understanding of race relations and the political reality outside of the chaotic 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. They follow Black Panther Bobby Lee as he attempts to find common cause with the white Appalachian community living in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. The seemingly disparate groups find shared social and political objectives that overcome racial differences – police violence, poverty, lack of employment, and poor living conditions. This potential for a cross-racial and interethnic political movement is the movie’s beautiful but unrealized dream.
Social Confrontation: The Battle of Michigan Ave. (1968, Film Group, 16mm., B&W, Sound, 11m)
Social Confrontation captures the havoc of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention firsthand. The Film Group, a Chicago-based production company set up to create industrial films and ads, found a new purpose in late August 1968. On a lunch break from shooting a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial, founding member Mike Gray and his crew were shocked by police violence on the very streets where they lived and worked. Radicalized, they filmed the chaos. Social Confrontation juxtaposes the events inside the convention hall with those on the streets, connecting the brutality of police with the oppressive tactics of the Democratic leaders.
Murder of Fred Hampton trailer (1969, Film Group, 16mm, B&W, Sound, 5m)
This trailer was made before Fred Hampton’s death when the film was to be called “Black Panther.” It shows Hampton (August 30, 1948 — December 4, 1969) giving a speech on revolution and racism in front of a large audience. Includes glimpses of Panthers Bobby Rush and Bobby Seale and filmmaker Howard Alk.
Angela Davis Interview (1972, Don McIlVaine Collection, 16mm, B&W, Sound, 32m)
Back in 1972 Angela Davis stopped by Malcolm X College during her presidential campaign for a conversation with fiery journalism pioneer & activist Lutrelle “Lu” Palmer. This is a one-camera recording of that conservation.