Block Cinema: Block Museum - Northwestern University

Block Cinema is dedicated to encounter, exchange, and learning through the art of the moving image.

In Fall 2026, Block Cinema marks its twenty-fifth anniversary. To celebrate this milestone, The Block Museum of Art presents Projecting the Future: Block Cinema at 25, a year-long series of screenings, performances, conversations, and special initiatives throughout the 2026-2027 academic year that explore the evolving possibilities of the moving image.

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Sep247 PM

Block Cinema at 25: IRMA VEP (1996) in 35mm

Block Cinema inaugurates its 25th year with a 35mm screening of IRMA VEP, a defining work of modern arthouse cinema that looks back to film’s origins and ahead to its uncertain 21st-century future.

Oct17 PM

COLD HANDS (1991) - The Lost DIY Horror Films of Kip Hanks

Late writer-director-star Kip Hanks’s sole feature, lost for decades and revived by a strange twist of fate, is an uncanny shot-on-video story of resurrection.

Oct87 PM

THE LONG DAY CLOSES in 35mm with guest Nick Davis

Film scholar Nick Davis introduces this 35mm screening of Terence Davies’ evocative tour-de-force about queer boyhood, post-WWII Liverpool, and the transformative power of cinema.

Oct97 PM

ELEVEN P.M. (1928) in 35mm with live score by Damon Locks

Independently made by filmmaker Richard D. Maurice with an all-Black cast, this surreal, Detroit-set silent melodrama screens in 35mm with live score by sound collagist Damon Locks

Oct147 PM

LES VAMPIRES (1916) w/ live score by Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl & Macie Stewart

The Chicago experimental string trio provides an improvisational score to “Hypnotic Eyes,” the iconic sixth episode of Louis Feuillade’s silent crime serial, presented in 16mm.

Oct297 PM

“Bridge to an Unseen Shore:” New Age Audiovision with Prof. Jacob Smith

A screening celebrating the publication of Professor Jacob Smith’s book on the music and visual culture of the New Age movement, featuring rare and restored 16mm prints.

Nov137 PM

Chicago Film Society Presents: DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY with Karina Longworth

Chicago Film Society presents a 16mm screening of Hans Richter's landmark 1947 surrealist feature film, DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY, featuring an introduction and post-screening discussion with writer and film historian Karina Longworth.

Past Cinema

"We’re very conscious of the valuable role that university cinemas like ours can play in the ecosystem of non-theatrical film. We look for opportunities to support and showcase the work of distributors who are expanding access to adventurous cinema, archives that are preserving endangered cinematic legacies and scholars and filmmakers who are promoting a more inclusive film culture.

We try to act as a conduit between that international community of passionate cinema workers, and diverse local communities at Northwestern and beyond, who see cinema as a way to encounter the world and exchange ideas."

Block Cinema