UChicago’s Film Studies Center to preserve groundbreaking work by Black and Filipino filmmakers

Inside a climate-controlled vault at the University of Chicago are hundreds of films and pieces of cinematic history. Each celluloid frame is cared for by the Film Studies Center, who maintains the collection for students, faculty and the public.

Thanks to two grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation, the Center’s vault will soon be home to groundbreaking and restored films by Black and Filipino filmmakers. These include two experimental short films by filmmaker Aarin Burch—Dreams of Passion (1989) and Spin Cycle (1990)—and five home movies depicting early 20th-century Filipino community life.

The home movies are part of the collection of the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago and are being processed and housed in partnership with the Film Studies Center and UChicago’s South Side Home Movie Project. Eventually, over 300 of the Historical Society’s films will become accessible via the South Side Home Movie Project’s public archive.

New 16mm negatives will be created for each preserved film, which will also be scanned in 4K and digitally color corrected.

“For film, the reality is very precarious,” said Assoc. Prof. Allyson Nadia Field, who recently served as the faculty director for the Film Studies Center. “These are ephemeral media artifacts that need proper care in order to have longevity. This preservation project is to ensure the long term care of the work so folks can see it, but, hopefully, also encourage future projects.”

"In their purest form"

Watching a film in its original format—whether print or digital—can add vital depth and insight.

“It’s the equivalent of being in an art history class and going to the Art Institute to see the works on the walls versus on slides,” said Douglas McLaren, assistant director of the Film Studies Center.

However, all film formats are vulnerable—whether to natural wear and tear or the constant evolution of technology. The Film Studies Center, which supports the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, aims to help students view films in their best possible format. They also hosts screenings that are free and open to the public.

In March 2023, Field helped organize the Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts. The film fest commemorated the original 1976 festival, held in New York by a group of Black women activists and artists. The revived gathering brought together original organizers with new generations of filmmakers for screenings, panels and celebration.

Two of Burch’s films were screened on the first day. Dreams of Passion explores Black lesbian desire as it follows contemporary dancers Matima Hadi and Debra Floyd. The autobiographical Spin Cycle is driven by Burch’s stream of consciousness voiceover, which questions her creative process and romantic relationships, ruminating on representations of identity, race and sexuality.

“These are incredibly vivid films. Aarin’s work was really a revelation for everybody that was there,” said Field, who also taught the films last year in a course on the history of Black women’s filmmaking.

“I was completely blown away by them,” McLaren said. “I ran up to Aarin afterward and told her how much I loved them.” When Burch expressed dismay that the prints were scratched from making their rounds on the festival circuit, McLaren replied, “We could do something about that.”

The National Film Preservation Fund grant—the Film Studies Center’s first—will create physical and digital copies of each film for both the vault and Burch.

“I feel so proud and so honored,” Burch said. “I cannot wait to see these films the way that I first made and intended them—in their purest form.”

Since the festival, Burch has continued getting phone calls asking to screen her films and to make appearances on the festival circuit.

“To have a resurgence has been an affirmation of how relevant these films are. I want everyone to be able to find them and see them,” Burch said. “I took some big risks to be transparent and vulnerable. I hope that's an invitation to others to go: Oh, I could put myself out like that.”

Documenting Chicago’s Filipino community

In 1986, Estrella Alamar—a self-made cultural historian and lifelong Hyde Park resident—established the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago. Her home on Dorchester Avenue serves as a repository for historical records, photographs and ephemera documenting Chicago’s Filipino community.

When Alamar passed in 2022, collection manager and archivist Ashley Dequilla uncovered over 300 films made by Alamar’s uncle, Nicholas Viernes, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1926. Viernes worked as a migrant farmer until settling in Chicago, where he served as the unofficial Filipino community film historian—capturing baseball games, family beach days, and holidays on 16mm film.

“The film collection is significant because there's very little Filipino representation in the early 20th century that is considered autonomous, meaning representation of Filipino people by Filipino people,” Dequilla said. “Especially in the early 20th century, as we were colonized and indexed by the United States, a lot of our representation in the archive was to reinforce stereotypes.”

After immediate triage assistance by the Chicago Film Society, Dequilla brought the collection to UChicago’s South Side Home Movie Project. Established in 2005 by Prof. Jacqueline Stewart, the initiative of UChicago’s Arts + Public Life collects films and stories tracing the evolution of the city’s South Side.

Five of Viernes’s films, all made before World War II devastated the cultural heritage of the Philippines, were selected by the National Film Preservation Fund. The rare home movies not only expand Chicago’s history, but are also key primary sources documenting the Filipino diaspora.

“For the National Film Preservation Foundation, this collection was a clear priority not only because it shows this underrepresented community self-documenting, but also because of the incredible quality of the films,” Field said.

Both the Historical Society and the South Side Home Movie Project will work together to make the films publicly accessible, through the project’s digital archive and community events. In October, the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago Museum will re-open at Mana Contemporary, an art space in Pilsen, after 21 years of closure.

“The immense size of this collection will not only expand South Side Home Movie Project’s collection of home movies substantially,” said Saroop Singh, the project’s former archivist, “but will also project the immense diversity of the South Side of Chicago and bring new narratives to light.”