Caleb Allison

Biography

Caleb Allison is an award winning independent filmmaker, specializing in small gauge formats, including super 8mm and 16mm. His professional interests are split between film production and film and media preservation. His scholarly research is focused on moving image archives and restoration practices, cinephilia, home video, taste politics, film exhibition and spectatorship, and film history.

He is the recipient of the inaugural 2021 Jorgensen-IU Libraries Moving Image Archive Fellowship, as well as a 2023-24 Graduate Pathways Fellowship, contributing to strengthening generative collaboration and communication between academia and moving image archives.

As a filmmaker he loves the look and feel of small gauge celluloid, and uses super 8mm and 16mm whenever the occasion and resources allow it. The continued use, preservation and education of celluloid is vital 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.

His most recent film, Rough Cut, a short film shot on digital and 16mm, won Best Editor at the 2023 Hoosier Films Annual Festival and was an official selection at the Bloomington Indiana Film Festival and Dark Red Horror Film Festival in New Mexico.

He also served as cinematographer for In the Morning Kitchen, a commissioned 16mm film written and directed by Oscar Nominated actor Jesse Eisenberg for A Century of 16mm – a conference and celebration dedicated to the centenary of the 16mm format.

He is the chair of the IU Cinema’s City Lights Film Series, dedicated to programming key masterworks of the 20th century from the David S. Bradley Film Collection. He was a regular contributor to IU Cinema’s blog, Establishing Shot, and has written about film for the Center for Documentary Practice and Research’s (CDRP) DocTalk.

He’s also founded a nonprofit-stye shop, Moving Image Designs, that features products inspired by the art and history of amateur cinema designs. All proceeds through 2022 go towards supporting the The Ryder Magazine and Film Series, located and published right here in Bloomington, IN.

Allison, C. (2023, June). “Ciné-Kodak Model B (f/1.9) – Ostrich Leather Edition.” In C. Dupin & R. Stoeltje (Eds.), Tales from the Vaults: Film Technology over the Years and across Continents. FIAF/Technès.

Allison, C. (2023, June). “Revere Model 88.” In C. Dupin & R. Stoeltje (Eds.), Tales from the Vaults: Film Technology over the Years and across Continents. FIAF/Technès.

Allison, C. (2024, March). “Formal Slacking: Aestheticizing Idle Resistance in Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1990).” Paper Presented at the 21st Annual Interdisciplinary Conference. Hosted virtually.

Allison, C. (2023, September). “Losing Film and Finding Gadgets: Designing the Amateur Cinema Gadget during WWII.” Paper Presented at the Century of 16mm Conference. Bloomington, IN.

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. (2020, March). “Restorative Politics: Notes on the Exhibition of Digital Film Restoration.” Paper presented at the Conversations Around Materials for Interaction Symposium (Cultural Studies Program). Bloomington, IN.

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.