Chicago Film Archives, one of largest regional movie repositories in US, celebrates 20th anniversary

Chicago -- In a huge, climate-controlled warehouse in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, the Midwest's largest repository of vintage film is held.

Some of the films are industrial or educational movies, produced by companies now no longer in existence, like Coronet Films or Wilding Productions. Others are classic independent movies from legendary local filmmakers like Tom Palazzolo and Bill Stamets. And there are hundreds of home movies, going back to the early 20th century.

This is Chicago Film Archives, the venerable not-for-profit which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

CFA was launched by Nancy Watrous, a Chicago film industry veteran who started the archive in late 2003 with a donation of 5,000 films from the Chicago Public Library.

"They were getting rid of their film collection and no other institutions could take the films," Watrous recalled. "They suggested that I start a nonprofit and take the collection, which I did."

It is one of only three regional film archives groups in the U.S., along with the Texas Archive of Moving Images and the Northeast Historic Film Group, located in Maine.

Now, Chicago Film Archives holds some 40,000 films and other media and thousands of those items can be streamed online on the foundation's newly-redesigned website.

"We love making as many of these films available for the public to see," said Watrous, who remains the president of the organization she founded 20 years ago.

Those films include the aforementioned industrials, educational and corporate films dating primarily from the 1940s to the 1970s, when Chicago was the premier home in the U.S. for the production of these types of movies.

The collection also contains ground-breaking documentaries produced by the Film Group, a 1960s collective which documented the social and political unrest in Chicago during that time. Other important documentaries preserved by the CFA include "The Murder Of Fred Hampton" and "Lord Thing," a 1970 film about the Vice Lords street gang.

Many of these films were rescued by Watrous and her group, and became rediscovered through their efforts. For instance, "The Murder Of Fred Hampton," a documentary about the slain Black Panther leader in Chicago, was selected for the National Film Registry in 2021, and was a key resource for the 2021 Fred Hampton biographical film, "Judas And the Black Messiah."

But perhaps the most fascinating part of Chicago Film Archives collection is its robust collection of home movies shot on 8 millimeter and 16 millimeter film. Watrous said there are over 100 home movie collections in the archives' vault, going as far back as the early 20th century.

The organization will occasionally screen these films at events like their popular "Home Movie Day" held at venues like the Chicago History Museum, where attendees are encourage to donate their own home movies, while watching select home-made films from the CFA's own collection.

In addition to collecting and screening these home movies, the CFA also will digitize and preserve these films for the donors.

"I would say home movie collections are a major reason for an archive like Chicago Film Archives to exist," said Rebecca Hall, the director of operations for Chicago Film Archives. "The films are always fascinating to audiences. I always enjoy watching home movies that were shot by teenagers. They're pretty funny - not so different from videos that people put on the internet today."

The CFA also finds unique venues to screen these home movies. One truly unique location is the CTA Green Line "L" stop at Cicero, where for the past year, an edited loop of home movies curated by Chicago Film Archives has been running on a wall next to the "L" stop's entrance.

"It's really a community connector and the films themselves are surprisingly different and beautiful when they're outside of private living rooms," Watrous said. "I think it's a good thing to have these movies projected so large and so publicly, because they are amazing expressions of love and belonging."

The main goal for Watrous in the coming years is to not only digitize the films that are acquired by the archives, but also to preserve this film. The CFA has received numerous grants over the years from the National Film Preservation Foundation, among others, to maintain the movies in their collection.

And there's good reason to preserve and maintain the film, as opposed to only digitizing this material.

"The people in film still believe and understand that film is about as robust of a archival format that we can have," Watrous said. "Unlike video and other formats, film can last for generations. So if we get a new film print, we can assume if it's treated well, that it'll last another a hundred years."