“What is the Breakout Film Festival?”

The Breakout Film Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland is an annual short film festival that holds a monthly international short film contest. Submissions are accepted each month, January through December, with a winner for each month chosen the following month. [The deadline for February is Saturday, February 29, A.D. 2020.] Monthly winners receive a selection laurel. In January of 2021, the winning film for each month will be screened in Edinburgh and a jury will select an overall winner. The overall winner receives a trophy and $500 (not £500). Click here to submit a short film via Film Freeway.

Submissions must be a minimum of one minute in length and a maximum of forty minutes in length. The filmmaker(s) must own the copyright to all footage and music and must submit promotional still for marketing purposes. Foreign language films must have subtitles.

The first Breakout Film Festival was the Breakout Film Festival 2019 held on Saturday, June 15, A.D. 2019. Adam Palmer’s Answer was the inaugural winner of Best Short Film. This year, the Breakout Film Festival 2020 will be held in April.

Edinburgh is the capital city of the Kingdom of Scotland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (U.K.). It is the seat of the Scottish Government, which includes the Scottish Parliament (a devolved unicameral legislature), the Court of Session (Scotland’s supreme civil court) and the High Court of Justiciary (Scotland’s supreme criminal court). The University of Edinburgh, the National Museum of Scotland, the National Gallery of Scotland, and the National Library of Scotland are all located there, as well. Edinburgh is also the second-largest Scottish city after Glasgow. It is home to annual performing arts festivals: Edinburgh International Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Edinburgh Castle, which sits atop Castle Rock, dominates the city’s skyline. It was a royal residence of Scottish kings from the 12^th Century to the 17^th Century. The Palace of Holyroodhouse is Queen Elizabeth II’s official residence in Scotland.

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The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.