Springfield Hotel

This footage by JoAnn Elam was possibly shot around 1984 in Springfield, IL, which Elam might have visited for a postal workers’ union meeting. In the 1970s and 1980s, Elam worked as a letter carrier in Logan Square in Chicago and she was involved in the National Association of Letter Carriers fighting for the postal workers’ rights. Filmed entirely from inside a high building, probably a hotel, Springfield Hotel shows the traffic on the streets down below and the Illinois State Capitol in the distance. The camera first zooms in and out, then the footage is rapidly edited as in a montage sequence, before returning to a more familiar pace at the end.