Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

09/22/2025

"UW–Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research preserves priceless materials from the entertainment industry.”

Read the profile of the WCFTR published on the University of Wisconsin-Madison News site today. The article shares insights into our past. It also shares our recent successes, challenges, and fundraising efforts as we adapt to federal funding cuts.

UW–Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research preserves priceless materials from the entertainment industry.

08/06/2025

We are aware of issues that users are experiencing when attempting to access many of our websites, including the Media History Digital Library and Lantern.

We are investigating the root cause and will provide further updates as we learn more about the situation. Please stay tuned to our social media feeds for more information.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

08/04/2025

ICYMI: There's a new documentary about legendary television host Ed Sullivan and his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. SUNDAY BEST, directed by Sacha Jenkins, uses materials from the WCFTR's collections to tell this important piece of entertainment history.

Now streaming on Netflix: https://buff.ly/t2RtIIO

07/17/2025

This week over 200 scholars, teachers, archivists, and creators will be participating in the inaugural Hollywood Conference. Whether you're attending the conference or just following along via social media, check out this list of online resources that WCFTR Director Eric Hoyt has compiled for studying Hollywood's rich and storied history.

https://buff.ly/pw4b0S4

An extraordinary gathering is taking place this week at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Over 200 scholars, teachers, archivists, and creators will be participating in the inaugural Hollywood Conference. An ambitious …

07/12/2025

06/13/2025

We had a great time hosting Chancellor Mnookin, showing off our facilities, and sharing some of our collections with her and her family!

04/22/2025

This Sunday the UW Cinematheque will be screening a program of shorts (held at the WCFTR) in tribute to Amos Vogel's Cinema 16 Society and its formidable influence for filmmaking beyond the mainstream. The program is Sunday, April 27, 2 p.m., at the Chazen Museum of Art — admission is free!

Read more about the program in the screening notes written by the WCFTR's own Matt St. John: https://buff.ly/tUQVTRj

The following notes on the Cinema 16 Anthology program were written by Matt St. John, PhD, Manuscript Specialist at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Television Research (WCFTR). This program of short films, the culmination …

04/10/2025

It's been a whirlwind week here at the WCFTR, but through it all, we are immensely proud to be able to share with the world our new website to browse and explore hundreds of digitized tapes from Wendy Clarke's collection!

Wendy Clarke’s projects such as the Love Tapes, New York Tapes, and The Out Tapes continue to be influential with their elevation of individual voices. We hope you enjoy viewing and experiencing this incredible body of work!

Read more:

Throughout the Love Tapes, Wendy invited participants into a small booth where they talked for three minutes about what love meant to them. The people who shared their views and experiences represent a wide expanse human experience; African Americans, Asian Americans, Puerto Ricans, and people of ma...

04/08/2025

Thank you to everyone who attended our panel last week at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference in Chicago! We greatly enjoyed the opportunity to share our ongoing work on the Wendy Clarke collection and to hear from Juan Carlose Kase and Michael Renov about their research on Shirley Clarke and Wendy Clarke's impressive careers.

In case you missed it, WCFTR director Eric Hoyt recorded his own "love tape" at the end of the session, discussing what the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) means to him. In the spirit of Wendy's work, we'd like for this to be shared widely and seen by as many people as possible!

03/18/2025

In this recent blog post, Tanya Goldman continues to examine materials from WCFTR’s Amos Vogel collection and has compiled his numerous informal summaries and indexes of Cinema 16’s screenings to put together a list of titles from Cinema 16's early programs along with Vogel's own excerpts, program notes, and film credits.

Many digitized materials discussed here – and many more! – are available on the Internet Archive thanks to a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). Other listed titles are available online thanks to other film archives and societies.

02/21/2025

At the WCFTR, we love supporting researchers and hearing about the innovative projects they accomplish using our collections. In this guest blog post, Will Hair—recent alumnus of the Cinema Studies Master’s program at NYU—shares his journey of working with archival materials to analyze the 1970 ABC TV production "Help." The show depicts Afram, a manufacturing company that was managed and staffed by African Americans in Asheville, North Carolina. Read more here:

https://wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/index.php/2025/02/21/help-afram-and-black-capitalism/

The Fall 2024, Volume 94 edition of The Velvet Light Trap opens with the article, “Help: Afram and Black Capitalism” by Will Hair. The essay provides a formal and historiographic unpacking of Help, a 1970 ABC television production …

02/19/2025

Tanya Goldman, WCFTR research fellow, has been working with the recently-processed Amos Vogel collection. Drawing on these papers, as well as the Cinema 16 collection, she put together this broad survey of campus film societies in the postwar United States.

Read the blog post here, and stay tuned for more of her research to be publicized in the coming weeks:

Tanya Goldman The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WCFTR) is one of many institutions that house materials related to the great cineaste Amos Vogel (1921-2012). A man of capacious tastes and eager to …