Local community curates rare film series

To Rogers, "Working Joy" is about showing the different things “people do to get by in their jobs, how they help each other and share, how they celebrate life while doing what you have to do in life.” Rogers, a master control operator for the Monroe County Public Library, said some of the film in the Calumet Regional Archives (IU Northwest) Multimedia Collection, especially those taken between the 1940s and 1970s, attracted his attention. These films, depicting people unwinding at United Steelworkers Union picnics, reminded Rogers of his own family. 

“It got me thinking about my father, who worked a lot in his life, as a carpenter and general tradesmen, built parade floats, and did major home renovation projects. It was always vital for him to find those moments of joy on the way to completing whatever task he had,” said Rogers. 

A drummer in the band Busman’s Holiday, Rogers said he gets joy by making music for people. His program of film shorts includes home movies, some commercials, and a “wonderful documentary of a monkey and an organ grinder working on the streets," all of which seek to give the audience their own “moments of joy.” 

And, Rogers assures, “There’s definitely going to be some laughs.”

Save your seat at Working Joy

When Sterling was asked to select films, she thought about the stories she would love to tell. Sterling facilitates workshops related to diversity and justice through the Bloomington Arts Commission, co-hosts the Bloomington Poetry Slam, and co-facilitates writing circles for Women Writing for a Change. She is also a bartender at local favorite, Uptown Café.

When researching her program, Sterling tried numerous key words to search the archives. Sterling said she used her academic and social justice background to seek films about feminism and race, and then focused on the theme of blackness and black women. Sterling said she found an excellent anchor film by a prominent filmmaker. 

“To find a film of this caliber was really exciting,” said Sterling, who moved to Bloomington in 2015 and earned an IU graduate degree in African-American and African Diaspora Studies. She then added films on race relations, both past and present, racial dynamics and labor, and how race and sex can intersect in a capitalist society. 

When people watch her program she wants them to grapple with questions about human labor, how it can change with different technologies, and how patterns can repeat themselves when society moves towards a more or less progressive future. Sterling hopes the films will make people think about their understandings of race relations and the exploitation of Black labor, and the ways they themselves can be exploited or be the exploiter. “I want the audience to see themselves in the films,” she said.

Save your seat at American Parasites

Dave Rodriguez, a media artist, musician, and curator from Miami, FL, currently based in Bloomington, dove right in when Curtis asked him to select films. Rodriguez, who has worked with film and motion picture archives in the past, shared, “That’s the fun of archival research – getting to explore all kinds of films and dig through this large amount of material.” 

He said his six-film program titled, “Best Practices: Films for Safe Living,” focuses on overall safety, with topics including childcare, fire safety, family communication, and the hazards of the modern workplace. The films were made from 1967 to 1983. 

Rodriguez, who has worked with 16mm collections for over 20 years explained that he found these films thought-provoking because they had a “very clear moral and ideological drive to them. The filmmakers do a lot of clever, interesting things to convey these messages about how we need to behave in society.”

The films Rodriguez curated draw on a range of styles and techniques. Some use elements of fiction filmmaking, with actors acting out scenarios; others use the “voice of God” narration; and still others borrow tropes from horror filmmaking, he said. Advice given in the films ranges from common sense ideas to “ridiculous anxiety-inducing catastrophizing,” added Rodriguez. As a regular attender of “You (probably) Haven’t Seen This Before,” Rodriguez said the chance to put together a program “was really fun and enjoyable.” He went on to say that this project is uniquely valuable because “I can go and not know what I’m going to encounter, but I know it’s going to be interesting and that I haven’t seen it before.”

Save your seat at Best Practices: Films for Safe Living