Biography

I’m a third year Ph.D. student with strong ties to Indiana: I’m from Lafayette (home of the much maligned Purdue University… at least here in Bloomington) and received my master’s in Media Arts and Sciences from IU as well. I completed an enlistment in the U.S. Navy where I was stationed in Greece on the island of Crete. My interests are split between filmmaking production and scholarly research on moving image archives and restoration practices, cinephilia, home video, taste politics, streaming platforms, and cultural heritage institutions.

My master’s thesis, “Collecting the Uncollectible: Residual Hardware, Streaming Aesthetics and the Criterion Collection,” researched home-video collecting practices and aesthetics through the Criterion Collection from disc to streaming platforms and remains the impetus for my future research interests.

I love the look and feel of Super 8mm and 16mm film, and use a Canon Auto Zoom 518 SV whenever the occasion and my resources allow it. I feel strongly about the continued use, preservation and importance of celluloid not only as a critical link to our collective cinematic history but for its aesthetic and political potential. It also teaches one the valuable lessons of patience, planning and creative limitations.

My new film, StalkHer, won Best Fiction Film, Best Cinematography, and Best Score/Composition at the 2020 Montage Film Festival in Bloomington, IN and Best Musical Score at the 2020 Circle City Film Festival. My last film, Starlite Gazing, winner for Best Non-Scripted Film at the 2019 Montage Film Festival was shot entirely on Super 8mm. It’s an experimental and historical visual exploration of the Starlite Drive-in Theatre, located just south of Bloomington off Old State Road 37.

I’ve been a regular contributor to IU Cinema’s blog, …A Place for Film, and written about film for the Center for Documentary Practice and Research’s (CDRP) DocTalk. I’ve also founded a nonprofit Etsy shop, Moving Image Designs, that features products inspired by the art and history of amateur cinema designs. All proceeds through 2021 go towards supporting the Al Larvick Conservation Fund, a 501(c)(3) organization, dedicated to the preservation and accessibility of American analog home movies, amateur cinema, and community recording collections.

Conference Presentations

Allison, C. (2021, March). Rediscovered, Restored, and Released: Milestone Film & Video’s Restorative Politics. Paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Hosted virtually.

Allison, C. (2019, November). Homemade and Jerry-Rigged: The Amateur Cinema Gadget During WWII. Paper presented at the Film & History Conference. Madison, WI.

Allison, C. (2019, March). Collecting the Uncollectible: Residual Hardware, Streaming Aesthetics and the Criterion Collection. Paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA.

Allison, C. (2018, March). Our Shining Beast: The Technological Uncanny and Postmodern In The Qatsi Trilogy. Paper presented at the IU Landscape, Space, and Place Conference. Bloomington, IN.

Allison, C. (2017, November). “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing…” Not Even Armageddon: Negotiating Fan Collecting Practices and Production Strategies of The Criterion Collection. Paper presented at the Film & History Conference. Milwaukee, WI.