The Chicago Institute for the Moving Image (CIMI) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to including audiences and filmmakers who have been overlooked by mainstream media.
Founded in 2000 by Joshua Flanders, their first seminar "Intention, Movement, Perception" examined the connection between intention and action in the arts, sciences, and religion. Featured presenters were Paul Sills, a director and founding member of The Second City, who presented the Spolin Technique of improvisation, named after his mother Viola Spolin, and Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer, author of "This Is For Everyone: Universal Principals of Healing Prayer and the Jewish Mystics".
In 2001, they formed a think tank on the subject of "Deaf Cinema", in order to address the specific needs of deaf audiences at a deaf film festival setting.
In 2002, they founded the Festival for Cinema of the Deaf and held consecutive festivals and think tanks in 2003 and 2004 in Chicago, as well as festivals in Tampa, Boston and Texas.
WTTW story on CIMI