Expanding Film Culture’s Field of Vision

The "Expanding Film Culture's Field of Vision" project was funded by a 2023 NHPRC grant and matching funds from UW-Madison, allowing the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research to fully process and digitally curate four collections that broaden our understanding of American film culture: the Amos Vogel papers, the Chuck Kleinhans and Julia Lesage/Jump Cut papers, the Elfrieda Abbe papers, and the Wisconsin Film Festival collection. The four collections contain extensive connections with American film history, and they offer the chance to study a vibrant film culture that extends far beyond familiar studios and directors.

While they stem from different locations and time periods, the collections all focus on film criticism,  programming, and education outside the Hollywood mainstream. The earliest is the collection of Amos Vogel, a passionate film critic, distributor, programmer, and teacher who brought a wide range of foreign, experimental, and independent films to audiences, mostly in New York. The papers relate to his work with Cinema 16, Lincoln Center/the New York Film Festival, Grove Press, and the Annenberg Cinematheque. The Chuck Kleinhans and Julia Lesage papers/Jump Cut records document the work of two eminent film scholars, filmmakers, and co-founders of the journal Jump Cut. The third collection is the papers of Elfrieda Abbe, a writer, editor, and film critic from Milwaukee. The papers reflect her work through articles and film reviews, presentations, and the feminist journal Angles: Women Working in Film and Video, which she founded and edited. The Wisconsin Film Festival collection captures the development of the festival from its founding in 1999 to the present. We believe that these fascinating collections hold interest for researchers and students around the country, as the materials relate directly to national histories of feminist and independent art and culture, and we are excited to make them more widely available.

This website features exhibits focusing on the four collections with a selection of digitized materials.