Screening 35mm & 16mm film prints from studio vaults, film archives, and private collections.

  • Five Films by Fred Camper

    Friday, October 6 at 7:00 PM — Film Studies Center (Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts) — 915 E 60th Street
    Tickets: Free Admission

    FIVE FILMS BY FRED CAMPER
    1967 – 1969

    Filmmaker In person! Introduction and discussion with Fred Camper

    Fred Camper’s incisive film reviews ran in the Chicago Reader from 1986 through 2010, but long before he was a celebrated critic he was a young cineaste absorbing ideas and images he glimpsed while programming 16mm screenings at the MIT Film Society. Soon he turned to making films himself. Armed with a few rolls of Ektachrome and the crudest technical equipment, Camper turned his Cambridge rooming house into an expansive cinematic constellation, finding infinite reward in a patch of peeling paint in the bathroom or the leaves outside his window. Drawing equally from Stan Brakhage and Howard Hawks, Gregory Markopolous and Douglas Sirk, Camper’s films are omnivorous explorations of the everyday. Camper’s five 16mm shorts represent a unique synthesis of his seemingly disparate influences, often locating an aesthetic epiphany in a forgotten work of Hollywood cinema and extrapolating a rigorous and suggestive way of seeing that can be applied to non-narrative ends. (KW)

    All films preserved by Chicago Film Society. Dan Potter and Bathroom preserved with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation. Welcome to Come and A Sense of the Past preserved through the NFPF’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant Program and the Film Foundation; funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

    • Joan Goes to Misery (1967) – 8 min – 16mm
    • A Sense of the Past (1967) – 4 min –  16mm
    • Dan Potter (1968) – 39 min – 16mm
    • Welcome to Come (1968) –  3 min – 16mm
    • Bathroom (1969) – 25 min – 16mm 

    Total Runtime: 85 min

    NEXT UP: Border Radio on Wednesday, October 11 at NEIU

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Upcoming screenings:

View all upcoming screenings & venue info

Fri 10/6 at 7:00 PM @ Logan Center
Five Films by Fred Camper

Wed 10/11 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
Border Radio

Mon 10/16 at 7:00 PM @ Music Box
I Was Born But…Advance Tickets

Tues 10/24 at 7:30 PM @ Music Box
☆TECHNICOLOR TERROR! PRE-CODE DOUBLE FEATURE! ☆
Doctor X + Mystery of the Wax Museum
Advance Tickets

Sat 10/28 at 11:00 AM @ Chicago History Museum
Home Movie Day

Wed 11/1 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Mon 11/6 at 7:00 PM @ Music Box
The Bright Shawl

Wed 11/15 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
The Plot Against Harry

Wed 11/22 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
Paths of Glory

Wed 11/29 at 7:00 PM @ Music Box
The New World

Wed 12/6 at 7:30 PM @ NEIU
Night World

Mon 12/11 at 7:30 PM @ Music Box
16mm Centennial Celebration

Tue 12/19 at 7:00 PM @ Music Box
Girl Shy



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The Chicago Film Society works to promote the exhibition of analog film prints, to preserve the equipment and skills used to create and exhibit them, and to encourage an approach to film history that positions cinema as part of the broader history of technology and society.

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