To mark its 10th anniversary, the Al Larvick Conservation Fund presents two programs from its touring screening series In Another Light: Cinema of Memory at the Music Box Theatre on February 1.

This program is presented in partnership with the Media Burn Archive, a sponsor of the Al Larvick Conservation Fund, and the Chicago Film Archives. Media includes motion picture originals recorded on small gauge film and magnetic formats.

Additional digitization support for collections featured in this program has been generously provided by A/V Geeks, The MediaPreserve, and Preserve South.

Program 1: Not-So-Ordinary (45m) explores the immigrant gaze through home movies and amateur films from Polish American families in Chicago—often referred to as “American Warsaw.” The program traces evolving ways of seeing across generations, moving from dislocation and curiosity to familiarity and belonging. Featuring films such as Chicago 72 by Jerzy “George” Skwarek, alongside selected family collections, the program offers an intimate portrait of cultural memory shaped by migration and everyday life.

Curated by Agata Zborowska with live musical accompaniment performed by accordionists Marek Kalinowski and Julian Antos.

Together, these programs celebrate home movies as vital records of creativity, identity, and community history.

Program 2: Artistic Impulses (43m) traces grassroots filmmaking, highlighting makers who used consumer equipment not only to document their lives, but to experiment and reach audiences beyond the family circle. Seen through this lens, the home-movie maker works at the intersections of politics, culture, influence, and personal expression. The program also explores the role of performance in home movies, revealing how the act of filming can shape behavior, perspective, and meaning, just as performance itself can direct how the camera sees the world.

Curated by Kirsten Larvick and Kelly Burton, edited by Kimberly Brown, and accompanied by original score by Gene Pritsker.

The screening will be introduced by Al Larvick Fund Founder & Director Kirsten Larvick; board member and archivist Brian Belak; and grant recipient and cultural historian Agata Zborowska, with additional remarks from home-movie makers and collection holders represented in the program.

About the Al Larvick Conservation Fund

The Al Larvick Conservation Fund is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation, digitization, and exhibition of home movies, amateur films, and community

recordings captured on analog and obsolete media formats. Beginning grant making in 2015, the Fund supports filmmakers, families, institutions and community historians through micro-grants, partnerships with preservation labs and and venues that foreground personal media as vital cultural records.