Chicago Film Archives

08/14/2026

Fresh off the scanner: Super 8 scenes of the 1980 Wisconsin State Fair, from the John & Marilyn Sanner Collection. 🐄🌽🍻

08/05/2026

Filmed at E 71st Street and S Jeffery Blvd in South Shore, JIVE is a short film from ca. 1971 starring David McKnight and Jon Bowman.

The film was produced by the Community Film Workshop of Chicago, written and directed by Oshun Mugwana and Richard “Ike” Isaac. Both went on to storied careers in Chicago media; Mugwana was one of the first Black employees at WLS-TV, and was a broadcast engineer at WTTW for 28 years. Isaac has been a cameraman for WGN for more than 50 years.

16mm print found in our George Kirby Collection.

08/03/2026

Well folks, we survived Lollapalooza weekend!

From our recently-acquired Ted Bokhof Collection: silent 16mm footage of Jefferson Airplane performing a free concert at the Grant Park Music Shell on May 14, 1969, presented by the Chicago Park District.

07/31/2026

We have loved working with Agata on this project!

07/30/2026

A man using a riding lawnmower to pull a girl around a yard in a small wagon. From an 8mm home movie reel labeled "Iowa Vacation 1961" shot by Donna Adams.

07/24/2026

Ladies of the Faust and Wyckoff families drinking Schlitz with their pooch by the Lake in Belgium, Wisconsin, circa Summer 1945.

📽️ From a reel of 16mm home movies labeled "Wisconsin Vacations At Wyckoffs - Part I" in CFA's Chester E. Faust Collection.

07/23/2026

Fiesta del Sol starts today! This Pilsen tradition started in 1973. Here are some scenes from the 1988 iteration from our Susan Dobinsky Collection: https://collections.chicagofilmarchives.org/Detail/objects/34544

07/22/2026

An older woman spinning wool and knitting while wearing a magnificently chunky sweater vest, from a 16mm home movie shot in tiny, rural Bitely, Michigan circa 1929.

📽️ From the Toncray Family Collection.

07/17/2026

CFA's staff have been working closely with film scholar Agata Zborowska on this exciting project for the past few years! Check out the Chicago Reader's coverage.

Film scholar Agata Zborowska’s “Not-So-Ordinary” project archives and restores amateur films from the city’s Polish immigrant community.