Our Mission
Co-organized by Michelle Baroody and Maggie Hennefeld, Archives on Screen is dedicated to bringing rare, unseen archival films from around the globe to movie screens in the Twin Cities. Animated by a love of cinema and a commitment to making visible excluded images from the past, we work with international film archives and local film venues to expose students and audiences to the richness of film history. We program events that foster open dialogue and community engagement between university students and local film audiences across the Twin Cities. Our programming draws on local, national, and international film archives, and it spans the early history of silent cinema, studio feature films, experimental counter-cinemas, third cinema, amateur and non-theatrical films, short films, unfinished films, and contemporary independent filmmaking.
Our Crew
Archives on Screen consists of a small but mighty team of film lovers.
Michelle Baroody is an educator and film programmer based in the Twin Cities. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Minnesota. She is the curator of Mizna’s Arab Film Festival and monthly film series as well as the former executive director of the Italian Film Festival of MSP. She is also a volunteer projectionist at the Trylon Cinema, where she enjoys watching and screening rare archival prints.
Maggie Hennefeld is Professor of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. She is author of Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema (2024) and Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (2018). She is a curator of Cinema’s First Nasty Women (Kino Lorber, 2022), a collection of 99 feminist archival silent films. She enjoys watching archival cinema on movie screens in the Twin Cities.
Dave Gomshay has been watching films since he was a baby. He’s been a volunteer at the Trylon Cinema since 2013. He’s also volunteered as a submissions screener for the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival.
Ansel Arnold is currently a PhD candidate at UMN and is also a visual artist and writer. He especially loves independent and experimental films and watching way too much reality television with his two cats and dog.
Archives on Screen, Twin Cities 