Chicago Film Archives

10/07/2026

47 years ago this week, Pope John Paul II held an open-air mass in Chicago's Grant Park. This clip, from a Super 8 film shot by Bill Stamets, shows Mayor Jane Byrne receiving communion as part of the service.

10/02/2026

Come see "Street Signs: Murals in Chicago" next Wed 10/7 at Epiphany Center for the Arts, the third installment in our ongoing "Inside/Out: Stories of Origin and Displacement" series!

The program will also include a discussion led by journalist Alexandra Salomon, filmmaker Susan Dobinsky, artist Sandra Antongiorgi, and photographer Ivan Justiniano.

10/01/2026

The White Sox are moving on!! 🎉

In this amateur Super 8 film from 1976, Sox second baseman Jack Brohamer becomes the only player in MLB history to hit a home run while wearing shorts. The Sox wore these "Hollywood Shorts" for just three games (going 2-1!), including in this August 21 win against the Baltimore Orioles.

📽️ Filmed by Sox superfan Pat Pahr.

09/30/2026

Today we're remembering Jack Behrend, a great friend to CFA from our earliest years who lived so much of the Midwestern film history that our collections preserve.

This excerpt, where Jack recalls his earliest years working at theaters in the early 1950s, is from an oral history interview that our founder Nancy Watrous conducted with Jack back in April 2010.

📼 We’ve made that three-part interview available online so that everyone can experience his great stories — check it out here: https://collections.chicagofilmarchives.org/Detail/objects/14098

09/29/2026

Happy Silent Movie Day! This annual event started in 2021 to celebrate and highlight the challenges of preserving this art form.

Only about 20% of American silent feature films survive in full today; another 5% survive in incomplete form, such as SOME PUN'KINS (1925, dir. Jerome Storm). 35mm nitrate prints of reels 4 and 6 of this rural comedy are part of CFA's Charles Krosse Collection. That's "Country Boy Idol of the Screen" Charles Ray as small town fire chief Lem Blossom, and Duane Thompson as unsophisticated country girl Mary Griggs.

09/23/2026

Come see us tonight at Epiphany Center for the Arts!

09/18/2026

The next installment in our Inside/Out series is this coming Wednesday 9/23, featuring "Mi Raza: Portrait of a Family," a 1972 documentary about a working class Mexican American family in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood.

The program will be presented by journalist Alexandra Salomon and followed by a post-screening conversation with director Susan Stechnij, Carlos Arango, former director of Casa Aztlan, and Norma Seledon, Director of Leadership, Development & Capacity Building at Equality Illinois.

Full details here! https://www.facebook.com/events/1990241688346999/

09/17/2026

Dancer Mary Linda Swayze improvises movements for architecture of the Chicago Cultural Center in this scene from "City & The Arts," a 1977 documentary from CFA's Eleanor Binstock Collection about a program that supported employment for artists via the creation of public art.

09/15/2026

Starting tomorrow evening! Check out Kat Sachs's writeup:

The Chicago Film Archives series features four free screenings of films made by Chicago-based women exploring themes of identity, culture, and migration.

09/10/2026

Coming next Wednesday 9/16! More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1050111967493314