Introducing CFA CRASHERS

**CORRECTION** – please note the new start time of 6:00PM 

Exciting news! We have a new film series in the works. It’s called CFA CRASHERS and it starts this August (over happy hour) at the Hideout.

We’ve invited some of our favorite locals to guest curate a program of CFA films all their own (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. It’s also a nod to those around town who make us proud to call Chicago home -or selfishly, a good excuse for us to collaborate with some people we admire ; )

So…mark those calendars (!) and join us at the Hideout the second Tuesday of every month. Expect a mix of films and topics, ranging from women in the workplace to local architecture and the existence of UFOs, all of which will be presented in 16mm thanks to our tabletop Eiki. Each program will begin roughly at 6:30PM 6:00PM (feel free to stop by early!) and end at 8PM before the Hideout’s live music programming commences. And we realize most of you might be craving a snack or dinner around that time (we sure do). We’ve got food trucks and general snacking options in the works…stay tuned !

Now let us introduce you to our guest programmers aka Crashers:

August 12, 2014: JESSICA HOPPER 

Jessica Hopper kicks off the series with two films about women in the workplace.  Jessica is a Chicago-based music journalist and the author of The Girls Guide to Rocking. She is the music editor at Rookie, an editor at The Pitchfork Review and an advice columnist for the Village Voice. An anthology of her criticism is due out next spring.

WOMEN IN BUSINESS (1980, LSB Productions, 16mm., Color, Sound, 24 min., found in CFA’s Chicago Public Library Collection)
Six different women who have successfully started their own business are profiled in this upbeat motivational film. Owners of a moving company, a security guard firm, a cooking school, a commodities brokerage & other businesses demonstrate how entrepreneurial spirit & hard work have made dreams into satisfying realities.

THE WILLMAR 8 (1980, Lee Grant, 16mm., Color, Sound, 50 min., found in CFA’s Chicago Public Library Collection)
Activist, actor and director Lee Grant shares the story of eight unassuming, apolitical women in America’s heartland–Willmar, Minnesota–who were driven by sex discrimination at work to take the most unexpected step of their lives and found themselves in the forefront of the struggle for women’s rights. Risking jobs, friends, family and the opposition of church and community, they began the longest bank strike in American history in a dramatic attempt to assert their own equality and self-worth.

event link: http://www.chicagofilmarchives.org/current-events/cfa-crashers-jessica-hopper

September 9, 2014: THE-DRUM 

Chicago production duo The-Drum consists of Jeremiah Chrome and Brandon Boom. Since arriving on the hybrid online electronic music scene in 2010, the two have put their touch on a variety of impressive releases (Le1f , Dre Green and as part of their R&B collective, JODY, to name a few). Just this past month they released their label’s debut compilation, Lo Motion Singles Vol. 1, which features 14 cuts of faded R&B from The-Drum and friends. More on Chrome and Boom here (via Britt Julious & Noisey).

Film program TBA
October 14, 2014: LEE BEY

Architecture Critic, Lee Bey, is one of Chicago’s keenest observers of architecture and urban planning. For four years he published the WBEZ blog, “Beyond the Boat Tour,” and before that he worked at the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Central Area Committee  and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning and Design for Chicago Mayor Richad M. Daley. Today, Bey is civic engagement and special projects manager at the Arts Incubator with The University of Chicago Arts and Public Life Initiative, where he manages strategic initiatives and partnerships with arts organizations, community groups and civic leaders.

Film program TBA
November 11, 2014: CHRISTEN CARTER

Christen Carter founded the Busy Beaver Button Company in 1995 after spending some time in England, where buttons (called “badges” over there) were still very popular. She moved back to the States and started making buttons for bands and record labels. Busy Beaver has gone from a one-woman operation in Christen’s college apartment to a Logan Square storefront with fifteen employees. Over the last 17 years, the Busy Beaver crew has overseen over 60,000 designs and produced millions upon millions of custom buttons for clients like Brooklyn Brewery, NBC Entertainment, The Art Institute of Chicago, Threadless, WordPress as well as thousands of bands, non-profits, small businesses and other great folks. Along with her brother, Joel Carter, Christen also founded The Busy Beaver Button Museum, one of the world’s only museums dedicated solely to pinback buttons.The museum, which is located at the company’s Logan Square headquarters, displays over 9,000 historical buttons and is open to the public M-F from 10-4 or by appointment.

Film program TBA
December 9, 2014: MIMI NGUYEN

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.

Film program TBA
January 13, 2015: GREG EASTERLING

Chicago native Greg Easterling got his start in radio while in twelfth grade at New Trier High School and later honed his skills at the University of Illinois’ WPGU. Now we know Greg as the voice of Chicago’s WDRV (97.1FM) overnight show, which airs Monday through Friday from midnight-5AM.

Film program TBA