Champaign County On Film, the second event in the Town & Gown Speaker Series, will be held in the Lewis Auditorium at Urbana Free Library, Wednesday, October 15, at 7pm. The Champaign County Historical Archives and the Student Life & Culture Archives will present an evening devoted to the changes of Champaign County from the 1920s through the twenty-first century as captured by the film lens.

Josh Harris, UIUC Media Preservation Coordinator, will briefly discuss his work in preserving local film and present clips from the first sound film ever made, developed by University of Illinois professor Joseph Tykosinki-Tykociner. Tykociner, electrical engineer, arrived at the University in 1921 and invented sound motion pictures less than a year later. Archivist Bethany Anderson wrote an in-depth post on Tykociner and the history behind this invention in February, 2013.

Following this relic, an archival film mashup will take viewers on a tour of Champaign County from the mid-1920s through the twenty-first century, including aerials of Champaign-Urbana, college life, agricultural technology, Orpheum Theatre, the Flat Iron fire in the late 1940s, civil rights protests, African-American C-U Day Reunion, and the changing nature of transportation that includes trains, buses, and cars.

All films used during this presentation are located at either the Champaign County Historical Archives or the Student Life & Culture Archives and are available for viewing either online or on-location. Information on finding these films in the Archives will be available at the event.

To conclude the evening, Josh Harris will have an ask-the-expert booth for preserving home movies.