Girls’ Voices Now, a new show currently streaming and airing on HereTV, recently won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Children’s Program. While most of our blog entries have focused on historical works or objects, we are thrilled to have an opportunity to highlight an important contemporary series. The show’s premise revolves around a summer program that seeks to…
When I first visited UW-Madison as a prospective student, I had the chance to spend some time in the WCFTR. I did not initially realize campus had this wealth of historical content framing the trajectories of broadcast television and film, and once I knew it was there, I looked forward to getting back once I started as a PhD student.…
by Lauren Wilks New York City has been in the news lately for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the current mayoral election which has unearthed questions around whether candidates can equally serve all constituents in one of the most populous and diverse cities in the world. The musical film In the Heights has also recently increased…
Before the invention of YouTube, Zoom, and Instagram, before a city was transformed by waves of “urban renewal,” the AIDS crisis, and a terrorist attack, hundreds of people took turns entering a video booth inside the World Trade Center and—for exactly three minutes—described what love meant to them. It was 1980, and the participants came from a diverse range of…
by Pauline Lampert At the WCFTR, we are committed to the preserving historic films and making them as broadly accessible as possible. For these reasons, our new ability to scan films in 4K has been nothing short of a game changer! This short video details how the UW-Madison Department of Communication Arts and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater…
by David Ronis In thinking about research, historic reading rooms in places like London, New York, and Washington D.C. come to mind. But sometimes there are great riches to be found in one’s own backyard! In 2016, when I was casually scouting for ideas for a creative research project, I became aware that the Marc Blitzstein Papers were part of…
by Olivia Riley The 1950s saw an explosion in demand for television content, surpassing what live performances and Hollywood film reruns could provide—enter, the “telefilm.” These pre-recorded programs were made specifically for TV, produced and sold by independent companies for distribution by local stations. The Frederick W. Ziv company was a leader in this mid-fifties boom in first-run syndication, producing…
Welcome to the first post in the Secrets From the Ziv File section of the WCFTR blog. So just what is the Ziv File?
by Mary Huelsbeck While in Amsterdam last week for the Orphans Symposium, I had the chance to visit the Anne Frank House and Museum. Words cannot really describe the experience of visiting the house and seeing firsthand where Anne, her family, and four others hid from the Nazis during World War II.
On Friday, September 27th, Emile de Antonio again found himself in the company of students, experimental artists, marginalized heroes, and non-fiction filmmakers. As part of the 2013 Orphans Midwest Symposium hosted by Indiana University , the WCFTR presented three rarely-seen trailers from the De Antonio Collection: two trailers for Point of Order (one in German) and a trailer for Millhouse…