Legendary advertising filmmaker Joe Sedelmaier passed away earlier this month. His most famous work was the 1984 "Where's the beef?" TV commercial (shot right here in Chicago!) CFA's Bill Stamets Collection includes a few behind-the-scenes Super 8 moments from the "beef" campaign:

Tomorrow night at the Logan Center for the Arts, come see HIGHLANDERS WEDDING (1961), a document of Chicago's Polish Highlander community featuring excellent music, brand new English subtitles — and a beautiful new 16mm print created with support from @filmpreservation.bsky.social!

Happy May Day! Here is Super-8 sound footage from a Progressive Labor Party rally on International Worker's Day in 1981. Shot by Chuck Kleinhans, with Joe Hendrix interviewing attendees. collections.chicagofilmarchives.org/Detail/objec...

Come see us at our open house this weekend! We'll be there on Sunday from 1 to 4:30 pm.

Enjoy these excerpts from Tom Palazzolo's 1969 film "Your Astronauts," an observational portrait of the August 13, 1969 parade held in Chicago to celebrate Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins a few weeks after their return from the moon.

An Easter-themed, portrait-style home movie, circa 1941, featuring young Bob Sommerfeld, his parents and baby brother, his cousins Sheldon and Diane Glick, and his uncle Jack Glick. 📽️ From a 16mm Kodachrome home movie in CFA's Glick-Berolzheimer Collection.

A home movie from the Glick family's Passover Seder, c. 1939, likely shot in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood in the two-room apartment at the New Lawrence Hotel where Jack & Dorothy Glick lived with their two children. Jack immigrated to Chicago from Ukraine and ran a bar and cigar shop at the hotel.

Time-lapse footage of spring flowers blooming, shot in 16mm circa 1957 by John Nash Ott of Winnetka, Illinois, whose elaborate greenhouse and camera system was called "ingenious" by American Cinematographer in 1947.

♫ Batter up! Hear that call! Now's the time... to plaaay ball! ♫ The real-life Rockford Peaches make an appearance in this 1943 home movie from the Dean Collection. The family brought their 8mm camera to this All-American Girls Professional Baseball League game during the Peaches' inaugural season.

This weekend we're celebrating the 127th birthday of Ruth Page, midwestern ballerina, choreographer, and founding mother of the Chicago dance community! Enjoy the very 1985 ambiance of this clip from a Betacam tape of her 86th birthday party:

It's St. Patrick's Day AND Election Day, Illinois! ☘️🗳️ Politics and politicians have long been a staple of Chicago's downtown St. Patrick's Day parade. In 1977, many floats were dedicated to the recently deceased and famously Irish Mayor Richard J. Daley.

This morning, flowers were scattered at Chicago's Jackson Park Lagoon to commemorate the death of lawyer and civil libertarian Clarance Darrow, a tradition dating back to the 1950s. This contemplative Super 8 reel from our Bill Stamets Collection documents the ceremony as it took place in 1977.

This 16mm home movie from the George Kirby Collection contains footage from the filming of "A Time for Laughter: A Look at Negro Humor in America," a 1967 TV special. This clip features Richard Pryor, Harry Belafonte, Redd Foxx, and Sidney Poitier. collections.chicagofilmarchives.org/Detail/objec...

Join us at the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 12 for a program of shorts by filmmaker Tom Palazzolo! Tickets on sale now: wifilmfest.eventive.org/schedule/699...

CFA is so excited that many of the great amateur films from our collection (including the iconic OBEY YOUR AIR RAID WARDEN) will be seen around the world for #AmateurMovieDay2026! Find an AMD event near you: www.amateurcinema.org/index.php/amd

We are very proud to announce the completion of a fully photochemical preservation of CALIGARI'S CURE, a 1982 underground ~feature film~ made by filmmaker Tom Palazzolo. Watch the whole film for free and read all about the preservation on our website:

Happy birthday to dancer and choreographer Sybil Shearer, born this day in 1912!

This is a thread of items from the collections of Chicago Film Archives that are newly available to view online. You can search the collection here: www.chicagofilmarchives.org/collections/

You're invited to "A Celebration," a new video artwork at 150 Media Stream (in the lobby of 150 N Riverside Plaza) created by experimental filmmaker Colin Mason & featuring footage from several CFA collections! Come see us at the opening reception next Thu 2/26.

Farewell to Chicago icon Reverend Jesse Jackson. 📽️ Super 8 shot by Bill Stamets from a reel labeled "Jackson - Misc 2º" (circa 1988)

On Feb 15 & 21, films from CFA's Mort and Millie Goldsholl Collection will be featured in the "Goldsholl Design & Film Associates" program at @anthologyfilm.bsky.social as part of their epic "Avant-Garde Ads" program. If you're in NYC, check it out!

Hope to see you this Sunday evening at the @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social!

Brave the cold and come see us at our open house this Sunday!

Films from our Jerzy "George" Skwarek Collection, digitized last year thanks to the support of @allarvickfund.bsky.social , will be part of this Feb 1 program at @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social! Hope we see you there.

Filmmaker Norm Bruns's invitation to a "Dickeys & Cumberbuns" themed New Year's Eve party to ring in 1983. (This one was sent to filmmaker Bill Stamets, whose films and related papers are also at CFA!)

16mm scenes shot circa 1956 at the Silvestri Art Manufacturing Co. factory in Chicago, from our Frank Koza Collection. Watch the whole reel here! collections.chicagofilmarchives.org/Detail/objec...

“Blackhawks Xmas Party,” a roll of mag-striped 16mm from the Frank Koza Collection depicting the 1975-'76 Chicago Blackhawks playing hockey against a gaggle of Sesame Street Muppets, has been 'liked' by over 34k people via our social media accounts.

Stickers of the day. Found while making an inventory for films in the Maria Moraites Collection.

Unedited 16mm footage of boxing matches set up in a ballroom at the Palmer House on Nov 30, 1977. 📽️ From the Frank Koza Collection.

Today we're remembering the tragic 1958 fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, which killed 92 children and three nuns. Our collections contain several reels depicting the fire and its aftermath, many of which are excerpted in the @wttw.bsky.social "Chicago Stories" doc about the fire:

Our Peter A. Nikulin Collection contains elements from 1952 TV program "The Adventures of Uncle Mistletoe." The titular character, a charming, winged assistant to Santa, debuted in 1946 as part of a Christmas display at Marshall Field's. This excerpt from Episode 4 features a friendly squirrel.

CFA has got a lot to be thankful for this year! Thanks to a steadfast and consistently generous donor, we're fortunate to have recently acquired a ⚡️Lasergraphics ScanStation⚡️ as part of our film digitization suite.

Chicago-based ballerina and choreographer Ruth Page's version of "The Nutcracker" premiered at McCormick Place's Arie Crown Theater in Dec 1965 and was presented there every holiday season through 1997. This clip is from a 16mm roll filmed from the mezzanine of the Civic Opera House in 1967.

This Saturday 11/8 at 4:30pm, CFA and Honey Pot Performance present a 16mm screening of LORD THING (1969) followed by a conversation around the histories North Lawndale, violence mitigation, and self-transformation through literature and the arts. Learn more about the screening & our speakers here:

Happy Halloween AND Happy Chicago Home Movie Day Eve! See you tomorrow at the Chicago History Museum.

Spent the day looking through some messy cans of production elements from a new collection and found this guy looking back at us.... plus a hidden razor blade 👀 🍎

Happy birthday to Illinois filmmaker John Nash Ott! Ott shot his remarkable timelapse films in his Winnetka, IL greenhouse, where he installed environmental control and irrigation systems along with automatic photofloods and an army of Bell & Howell "Filmo Model 70" 16mm cameras mounted on dollies.

Chicago Home Movie Day is coming up on Saturday, November 1 at the @chicagomuseum.bsky.social! Our staff archivists and projectionists from @chicagofilmsociety.org will be on hand to inspect and project a selection of YOUR celluloid home movies in 16mm, 8mm, or Super 8. More details here!

Join us at the University of Chicago's Film Studies Center this Friday at 7pm for a FREE screening of films by Chicago-based photographer, writer, filmmaker, and man-about-town Bill Stamets, who will be appearing in person!

Last year CFA preserved six films by JoAnn Elam. Tomorrow night, two of the new 16mm preservation prints created through this project will debut in Program 1 of @chicagofilmsociety.org's Celluloid Now! Be there, and check out the program at celluloidnow.org

154 years ago today, the Great Chicago Fire started to burn. And 70 years ago, Walter Cronkite recorded this mock news report about the fire for CBS's "You Are There," a series that reenacted events from history as breaking news. From a 16mm reel collected by Chicago filmmaker Margaret Conneely.

On this day in 1991, Chicago's Harold Washington Library Center opened to the public! This clip was shot about a week later as 16mm B-roll for "Skyline: Chicago," a series on the city's history and urban design that aired on @wttw.bsky.social It's part of CFA's Judith Paine McBrien Collection.

🎂 Happy birthday, Tom Palazzolo! Our tribute: this supercut of his varied and wonderful title cards.

Go behind the scenes at CFA with WGN-TV legend Larry Potash! His visit was a lot of fun for all of us, and we're impressed by the great films Larry and his team picked to highlight in this segment.

Come see us at our (super casual) open house this Sunday!

From "Joe & Apples" (JoAnn Elam, 8mm, circa 1980)

Join CFA and Honey Pot Performance on Sat 11/8 for a free screening of Lord Thing (1969, DeWitt Beall). The screening will be followed by conversation around the histories of the North Lawndale neighborhood, violence mitigation, and self-transformation through literature and the arts. Details:

Jim Edgar, who served as governor of Illinois from 1991 to 1999, died this past weekend. This clip from a Super 8 reel in the Bill Stamets Collection shows Gov. Edgar holding a soccer ball and speaking to the press at Soldier Field ahead of the 1994 FIFA World Cup.

New York, see THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON in a 35mm print from our collections tonight at 6:15pm and 9/21 at 7pm:

This project would not have been possible without the support of @clirnews.bsky.social!