For the (marginal) WIN! 🙄

See also "Threading the RCA Projector" on @avgeeks.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUXN... and more on his channel: www.youtube.com/@avgeeks/sea...

For your viewing pleasure!

Some exciting books from @ucpress.bsky.social of interest to our community are dropping this fall! The Development Film in the Americas by Molly Geidel + Pipeline Cinema: The Cultural Infrastructure of Oil Extraction in Iran and Iraq by Mona Damluji #FilmSky #AcademicSky

Okay, here's another nontheatrical series idea: Films as teach-ins. It could draw from the feminist and antiwar traditions of holding teach-ins and both screen films *of* teach-ins and *as parts of* teach-ins. Everyone watches and then stays to discuss.

We're eagerly awaiting the release of "A Century in 16mm: The Remaking of Cinema" edited by Greg Waller and Haidee Wasson. Coming soon from @oxfordunipress.bsky.social!

Check out this list of 2025 National Film Preservation Fund grant recipients! Home movies, amateur films, travelogues, 'useful' media, and more. A treasure trove of #nontheatricalmedia! 🤩 @orphanfilm.bsky.social @amianet.bsky.social

Love it when viewer’s guides and discussion guides are affixed inside film canisters! Evidence of “useful cinema” in action!

You're in luck! You can find most of the Barbara Loden and Joan Micklin Silver 16mm short films curated by @cinemiasma.bsky.social online! 🧵 THE BOY WHO LIKED DEER (1975) streaming via @avgeeks.bsky.social on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Gn...

Did you know Barbara Loden and Joan Micklin Silver both directed 16mm educational films?!

Colleagues: please share widely! Precarious Labor Fee Waiver deadline approaching! @scmstudies.bsky.social @videoessays.bsky.social @scmsfaas.bsky.social @scms-tv.bsky.social @nontheatricalscms.bsky.social @scmsmst.bsky.social

New academic year means it is *that* time again — online compliance training modules! Whenever I give talks about my historical research on #usefulcinema I always mention these videos as contemporary iteration. Useful media is transhistorical, existing across moving image formats and technologies.

The quote posts of this are a treasure trove of #nontheatricalfilm and educational media.

Co-chair of Precarious Labor Organization @scmstudies.bsky.social again. If you applied for waiver *prior* to 2:35pm on Friday, July 11, please reapply again at same link. There was an error in the survey and we did not properly capture names of applicants. 🤦‍♀️ Link here: shorturl.at/nom91

Precarious scholar? Are you thinking of submitting to #SCMS2026 but no institutional support for membership? Co-chair, grad rep, or on an SCMS committee? Apply for a 2025/26 SCMS membership fee waiver from the PLO! Deadline August 1st! More here: conta.cc/4lrwcdk

Great piece on South Side Home Movie project! Interview by Nicky Ni (@mllecolettex.bsky.social‬) with Jacqueline Stewart! www.newcityfilm.com/2025/07/08/w...

"A geographical film is cinema as much as Ben Hur. A film designed to teach children the alphabet has as much claim to be considered cinema as a grandiose production with psychological pretensions." — Jean Renoir, 1974

CFP: Call for Proposals to present at the 2026 Orphan Film Symposium, "Crisis and Community," April 8-11, 2026, Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University, in Columbus, Ohio. wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2...

New issue of journal SCREEN includes essay by Georgie Carr on recruitment films produced, distributed, and exhibited by police forces in U.K. schools during 1960s and '70s. "Coercive Cinema Coercive cinema: police film in schools, 1966–75" doi.org/10.1093/scre...

The official CFP for the 2026 Orphan Film Symposium (theme: "Crisis & Community") is LIVE! Consider submitting if this is up your alley. Among my favorite semiannual academic/archive gatherings! @orphanfilm.bsky.social **PLEASE SHARE WIDELY!** See you in Ohio! wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2...

Michael M Reinhard's contribution to our "Nontheatrical Medias" special issue @femmediahist.bsky.social puts nontheatrical scholarship in conversation w/ contemporary digital practices via case of sponcon home movies made by LuLaRoe sellers, neoliberal monetizing of the home doi.org/10.1525/fmh....

New issue of THE MOVING IMAGE dropped a few weeks. It's devoted entirely to #16mm film! #nontheatricalfilm muse.jhu.edu/issue/54229

Dalila Missero's contribution to our @femmediahist.bsky.social special issue on "Nontheatrical Medias" uses these film catalogs and brochures to discuss NGOs, grassroots distribution, and media production workshops during the UN Decade for Women ('75-'85) (CC: @benspky.bsky.social)

For their contribution to our special issue of @femmediahist.bsky.social, Sonia García López (@garloso.bsky.social) + Marina Cavalcanti Tedesco discuss the career of the Spanish-born, Soviet-educated Rosina Prado who directed several short documentaries in postrevolutionary Cuba.

There's a #nontheatricalfilm for that! Short documentary THE OROZCO MURAL QUETZALCOATLwas released in 1962 + circulated via distributor Brandon Films. It has been preserved by Dartmouth with funding from National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF). Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePC1...

Excited to finally see this article up online, in which I bring together my interests in city and regional planning and nontheatrical film. www.southerncultures.org/article/stat...

Katerina Korola's @femmediahist.bsky.social essay discusses the orientalist exoticism of press images + films made by interwar German zoologist Lola Kreutzberg. Korola considers how the "freedom + mobility of white European women were articulated + enacted against the background of colonial[ism]."

Ankita Deb's contribution to our @femmediahist.bsky.social issue, "Sensationalizing Nontheatrical Cinema," uses advertisements from the Indian trade press to discuss how prosaic educational films from North America and Europe were recast as illicit on the "B circuit" in postcolonial India.

Best part: "Super #16mm... a type of film that's very close to my heart" — Ryan Coogler (Turns out he used the format for his debut FRUITVALE STATION)

Frames from FOUR NEW APPLE DISHES (1940) dir. by Judith Crawley for the National Film Board of Canada. Liz Czach analyzes this cooking process film in "Nontheatrical Films for Women" @femmediahist.bsky.social. 🍎 Stream the film via NFB's website and get cooking! www.nfb.ca/film/four-ne....

[email protected] + I edited new special issue of @femmediahist.bsky.social on "Nontheatrical Medias." I'll be showcasing some photos used by our contributors! Jasmyn Castro takes inspiration from this pic of an African American servicewoman projecting a 16mm training film for troops (c. 1950).

A special issue on "Nontheatrical Medias," you say?! Time to celebrate! 🥂 Get started with editor intro by @benspky.bsky.social + @tanyagoldman.bsky.social online.ucpress.edu/fmh/article/...

Educational film humor via FILM WORLD AND A/V NEWS MAGAZINE, May 1964

Nice! 👀 🎞️ 📽️ @nontheatricalscms.bsky.social

Our final sponsored panel of #SCMS25 is coming up at 2:15pm — Sinophone Non-Fiction Media (Q15). Come on down before you go!

Who's still here and ready to check out our next sponsored panel at 11:00am — "(Un)Natural Ways of Seeing & Systems of Visualization" (P07) chaired by past SIG co-chair @joeginclark.bsky.social! Topics include 🌲, 🌋, canyons, and radar! #SCMS25

We're delighted to announce winner of the 2025 Nontheatrical Student Essay Award 🍾 #SCMS25 Miao Wang (UChicago)—"Formatting Chinese Cinema: Small-Gauge Projectors in the Socialist Era" + honorable mention to Gonçalo Albergaria (Utrecht U)—"Geoscientific film in the 1957/58 Capelinhos eruption"

Good morning #SCMS25! Our next sponsored panel is at 11am today — L14 — "Cold War Formats: Nontheatrical, Industrial, and Educational Cinemas in the Midcentury" with scholars Gregory Waller, Eli Boonin-Vail, Pedro Noel Doreste Rodríguez, Zoë Druick, and Lisa Rabin!

Body cams! Traffic safety films! Facial recognition software! Process films! Films about science, reforestation, electricity (and more!) Oh my! Two fabulous nontheatrical + useful media panels this evening and, alas, I'm missing them both! #SCMS25 🤦‍♀️

Hey #SCMS25, our next two sponsored panels (J10 and J13) are both at 6:15pm tonight! J10 — Useful Media J13 — Global Nontheatrical Media and the Civic Imaginary (hey, @scmstudies.bsky.social program committee, we'd like a word with you about this pesky scheduling conflict 😜!)

I won't be at #SCMS25, but my book will be—for 30% off with the code SSCMS25 online & at the SUNY Press table. You can read about how a young Jean Simmons sits in a chair, how a "schizophrenogenic" mother changes a diaper, & the way families use space at the zoo—all in the first chapter! #SCMS2025

A huge thank you to @mediaburn.bsky.social @danerdman.bsky.social for hosting three different group archive tours this week. It was a pleasure to learn about Media Burn’s collections and preservation challenges unique to video tape formats #SCMS25

Good morning SCMS'ers! Our next sponsored panel takes place at 2:15pm today — "Media and Pedagogy In and Beyond The Classroom" with Charles Acland, Jülide Etem, Ronit Ghosh, and Zach McLane" #SCMS25

Good morning SCMS'ers! Our next sponsored panel takes place at 2:15pm today — "Media and Pedagogy In and Beyond The Classroom" with Charles Acland, Jülide Etem, Ronit Ghosh, and Zach McLane" #SCMS25

Our first two sponsored panels are this evening (both at 6:15pm). Wish we didn't have to choose! 😭 E11 - ROUNDTABLE: Useful Television: Expanding Understanding of the Medium through Alternative Histories E16 - Activating Devastation

For those attending @scmstudies.bsky.social #SCMS2025 in Chicago later this week, we've prepared a list of sponsored and recommended panels. So much great scholarship ahead! Link ⬇️ docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Some real #nontheatricalfilm gems, many comparatively forgotten today, recovered in early Cinema 16 programs by Amos Vogel. Get your popcorn! 🍿 @tanyagoldman.bsky.social's personal favorite was UNDERGROUND FARMERS starring... 🐜s. archive.org/details/oaun...

We like your meme style, @sbwatter.bsky.social!

Still time to enter lottery for trip to @mediaburn.bsky.social during #SCMS25 @scmstudies.bsky.social. Due to overwhelming interest, we've scheduled additional visits on Thursday AM + Friday AM. Contact @tanyagoldman.bsky.social to enter lottery by 5pm ET on 20 March. TY @danerdman.bsky.social!

Here's a lovely way to wrap up #AmateurMovieDay2025 - with a film specially uploaded by LUPA (Laboratório Universitário de Preservação Audiovisual) for the event: "A virgem do Pirapitinga" - a stunning amateur film from the 1920s. Enjoy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iJt...