AMIA 2024

Our screening, from the UWM Film Studies Collection’s Queer Media library, highlights three early films by Sadie Benning. Sadie’s work stands apart (including from their father, James Benning) in its DIY, punk rock, stream-of-consciousness storytelling. In this session, we will interrogate the difficulty of accessing their films through screening a VHS copy directly as a prelude to our VHS digitization project. These works, filmed in Benning’s bedroom using available materials on a Fisher-Price PXL 2000, are prime examples of the resulting “Pixelvision” style for which they are known. In tandem with Pixelvision is the difficulty in deciphering the images onscreen and risk of loss while rerecording in another medium. While watching a good-quality VHS release of “A Place Called Lovely,” “It Wasn’t Love,” and “Girlpower,” we aim to demonstrate both the importance of preserving queer voices through media while emphasizing the value of using already existing media for exhibition.

Since 2016, IndieCollect has digitally restored more than 80 films — half of them by women directors. Kirsten Larvick (Women’s Film Preservation Fund), Sandra Schulberg (restoration producer), and Eva Yuma (restoration colorist) focus on the 4K restoration of A Question of Color by Kathe Sandler, whose negative had to be pieced together with help from the Black Film Center & Archive. How IndieCollect works with archive and distribution collaborators is part of the story, as well as our approach to programming restored films by women in theaters and other venues. We’ll also report on launch of 20-title “American Independents” film series & restoration summit from Dec 6-12 at Laemmle’s Monica Film Center to mark 10th year of our #SaveIndieFilm campaign and educate various publics about the demise of works on celluloid.

On Wednesday evening, AMIA hosts a surprise Restoration Screening and a flashback to the music of the 1980s.

Prelinger Archives is in the final year of a three-year grant for mass-digitization of its film collection funded by Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. Since the start of the project, Prelinger Archives staff have scanned over 2.5 million feet of film and uploaded over 1500 items, while collectively developing practices of inclusive and reparative description to allow multiple avenues into a vast trove of moving images. This curated screening session will highlight rarities and treasures within the collection that have inspired, delighted and bewildered staff. The speakers, all Prelinger Archives staff, will each share experiences from the project as footage is screened and will speak to working with a unique collection that contains a wide array of materials (outtakes, home movies, warped films).

For over five decades, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Department of Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres has fostered a significant community of experimental filmmakers, who flock to the school for its focus on artist-driven practice. As one of the few schools that still requires students to gain experience working with 16mm film production, Milwaukee has become well-known in avant-garde film circles for its experimental film scene, and the city is now home to an abundance of institutions, programs, festivals, and itinerant spaces that focus on experimental film. In celebration of Milwaukee’s vibrant experimental film community, this screening session will present a survey of recent experimental 16mm films from Milwaukee, highlighting how analog filmmaking is being reinvented by contemporary filmmakers, who make specific use of the medium’s unique affordances and limitations. This session is sponsored by the Small Gauge and Amateur Film Committee.

Take a break from a long day of conference-going with a micro-film festival hosted by AMIA's LGBT Committee! We'll be celebrating queer cinema by screening a handful of the committee's personal favorite short films spanning genres, geographical locations, and the infinite richness and vibrancy of the queer community. (A full film program will be available at the door, complete with descriptions, backgrounds, and any content warnings.)

Archival Screening Night is a showcase for AMIA members’ recent acquisitions, discoveries and preservation efforts. The program represents the magnificent spectrum of media formats, works, and collections protected and preserved by the AMIA community.