FILM INDIANA 2007

"SCREENING SHORTS"

September 14-16, 2007
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN

Film Indiana, scheduled for September 14-6, 2007, showcases the archival film holdings and cinema-related collections at Indiana University at Bloomington, including most notably: the Bradley Collection, Kinsey Institute, and IU’s extraordinary collection of instructional and educational films. The inaugural conference, "Screening Shorts," will focus on short films produced within and beyond the Hollywood tradition.

Organized and sponsored by the Department of Communication and Culture, Film Indiana will combine screenings of films from IU collections, keynote lectures by internationally known scholars, Tom Gunning (University of Chicago) and Haidee Wasson (Concordia University, Montreal), refereed research presentations, and workshops—all connected to a common theme. In this way we seek to make important material from IU collections available for study and thereby help to open up new directions in film and media studies. The conference should prove to be a valuable resource for faculty and graduate students both at Indiana University and across the region and the nation, a way to celebrate the vitality of film studies and to encourage the next generation of scholars as the movies move into their second century.

The conference includes several major screenings—“Historical Erotica from the Kinsey Institute”—a Friday evening (September 14) screening of rarely seen films from the Kinsey Institute, co-hosted by The Ryder Magazine, combined with a number of early educational films related to sexuality and gender. Saturday afternoon’s screening—“Hollywood in Brief: Short Films from the David S. Bradley Collection”—showcases some hidden gems from the Bradley collection, including trailers, promotional shorts for the industry ("behind-the-scenes" looks), fiction films currently not in distribution, as well as rarely-seen works by women directors. Finally, Film Indiana and Bloomington’s famous Buskirk-Chumley Theater will host, “Sex, Hygiene and Cultural Byways: Vintage Films from IU's Instructional Film Collection.” This event will focus on instructional and educational films which discuss such topics as teaching gender, monitoring sexuality, appreciating our friends around the globe, managing problems in the workplace and the psyche. We have designed this particular part of the program with a broad audience of both university students and faculty and also Bloomington residents in mind.