Chicago Film Archives Join The Internet Archive

By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 6, 2011 9:20PM

Give the most banal moving image enough time, and it will become fascinating. Just offering a peek into a long-lost world is enough to hold our interest, which is why we were excited to see that the Chicago Film Archives is joining the collections of moving images at the Internet Archive, where they can be either streamed or downloaded and where they are sure to find a wider audience.

Only a handful of titles have been included in the archive so far, but who gets tired of watching footage from the 1933 World's Fair (love that cable car footage), anyway? We did enjoy the gauzy Christmas tale, The Fairy Princess, an earnest 1950s companion piece to the ubiquitous paean to Midwestern winter holiday longing that is A Christmas Story. Amateur filmmaker Margaret Conneely uses stop-motion and live action to tell her story and won a number of awards for the finished product.

Of course, streaming and downloading never does true justice to celluloid, and CFA regularly organizes screenings. The Fairy Princess, and will play in 16mm as part of Northwest Chicago Film Society's Classic Film series at the Portage theater on December 21 (with Remember the Night).