A year of special programs and new initiatives
40 Arts Circle Drive
60208 Evanston IL
The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of its Block Cinema program with Projecting the Future: Block Cinema at 25, a year-long series exploring the evolving possibilities of the moving image.
Founded in 2001 as a programming showcase for Northwestern’s student-run Film and Projection Society, Block Cinema has grown into one of the Midwest’s most distinctive university cinema programs. Today, its work encompasses public screenings, teaching and research, film preservation, artist collaborations, and student learning. More than 40 free public programs each academic year bring audiences together around cinema from across the globe, with a particular emphasis on underrecognized and difficult-to-see work and original 16mm and 35mm formats.
“Seeing films is not an exercise in nostalgia. It’s a way to come together in the present and think about ways of living together in the future,” says Michael Metzger, Pick-Laudati Academic Curator of Cinema and Media Arts at The Block. “We’re infatuated with the possibilities of cinema.”
The anniversary takes Block Cinema’s first twenty-five years as a starting point for exploring what cinema can make possible now. Three interconnected themes organize the year: Discover Hidden Histories, Experience Expanded Cinema, and Imagine the Future of Cinema.
Discover Hidden Histories foregrounds research, archival discovery, and preservation as practices that expand our understanding of cinema’s past. Through partnerships with filmmakers, scholars, libraries, archives, and collections, Block Cinema has helped return rarely seen and, in some cases, previously lost films to public view. Recent projects include the recovery and first public screening in more than 50 years of Karen Sperling’s The Waiting Room (1973), research into overlooked trans film histories, and the rediscovery of films by Kentucky experimental animator Ed Counts.
Experience Expanded Cinema includes performances, outdoor projections, and cinematic events that rethink the relationship between audience, image, and place. Block Cinema has long treated film as more than an image on a screen, exploring how projection, performance, sound, and setting can transform the experience of cinema. Projecting the Future builds on that approach, activating the Block auditorium and spaces beyond the museum through live performance, analog projection, artist collaborations, and hands-on workshops.
Imagine the Future of Cinema reconnects with Block Cinema’s student-led origins through a new undergraduate film-programming initiative. Paid opportunities will enable Northwestern students to work alongside cinema staff researching films, developing programs, and presenting screenings for public audiences. Designed to continue beyond the anniversary, the initiative provides practical experience in film curation and gives students a meaningful role in shaping Block Cinema’s future.
The participatory initiative “The Film That Changed Your Life” invites filmmakers, artists, scholars, alumni, students, and audiences to reflect on encounters with cinema that have shaped their lives. Across disciplines and biographies, these contributions will explore how films inspire careers, spark research, challenge assumptions, and open new ways of thinking.
“Film offers us an encounter with the past that we can carry forward with us throughout our lives,” Metzger says. “Block Cinema has always been about creating the conditions for those encounters. Twenty-five years in, we’re interested in where they might lead next.”
Projecting the Future is supported by an anonymous friend of The Block, Drs. James Pick and Roz Laudati, and the Romenesa Foundation. Additional programs and initiatives will be announced throughout the academic year.
All Block Cinema programs are free and open to the public. Additional Projecting the Future screenings, performances, guests, and student programs will be announced throughout the 2026–2027 academic year.
