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  Do you still have untransferred 1/2″ open reel videotapes?

  June 18, 2013 at 4:55 pm / Blog

  (If you don’t know what this question means, you definitely don’t!) If you were a portable video pioneer who was active in the late 1960s and/or early 1970s, you might still have some lurking around somewhere that you never got around to transferring. Time is almost up… We are in the process of applying for a grant to transfer our remaining 1/2″ reels. We know that many wonderful tapes from this quickly vanishing era of video experimentation remain untransferred and … Continue reading →

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  Let’s Go Hawks!

  June 14, 2013 at 12:16 pm / Blog

  The Chicago Blackhawks were Stanley Cup champions in 1961 and again in 2010, but Blackhawk fever might be even more intense this year. Some of us still remember that 1961 team, when Bobby Hull, the Scooter Line (Stan Mikita, Kenny Wharram, and Ab McDonald), Pierre Pilote, Moose Vasko, and goalie Glenn Hall helped make the Hawks the toast of the town. Three years later, Hull’s younger brother Dennis joined the ranks, and the two became all-time Chicago sports legends. In … Continue reading →

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  A Sign of the Times

  June 11, 2013 at 4:22 pm / Blog

  This video shot by the daring Patrick Creadon in 1993 takes you up 130 feet over the Kennedy Expressway with two sign painters. This is something that was and still is pretty unusual to see on TV… We produced 17 Chicago Slices programs for WPWR/Channel 50–with more than 100 stories of and about people who were ordinary Chicagoans. Since then, Fox bought channel 50, which had been one of the two Chicago TV stations that were owned locally by non-national … Continue reading →

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  Inside The Baffler, 1993

  May 24, 2013 at 4:48 pm / Blog

  Today, we look back at the early years of The Baffler, a literary journal which was published out of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood for more than 20 years. Praised for its critiques of mass media and business culture, The Baffler came from a strong “do it yourself” ethic inspired by punk rock music and the advent of personal computers, which helped move cultural production out of the hands of big businesses and into the hands of everyday people. In this 1993 interview, Thomas … Continue reading →

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  Neon signs and baked Alaska

  May 8, 2013 at 4:33 pm / Blog

  We’ve been meaning to update you on the exciting results of our projects with five University of Michigan graduate students back in March. We had a great week together: the students showed us how to do amazing things with our website, and we gave them t-shirts and introduced them to Baked Alaska at Sabatino’s. Sara with the group at lunch (L-R): Yiqing Li, Maria Smith, Soohyun Park, Kimberly Springer, Krishna Vadrevu In just five days, they created some marvelous new … Continue reading →

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  Mike Gray (1935-2013)

  May 1, 2013 at 1:55 pm / Blog

  We’re sad to report the passing of a close friend and pioneering documentarian. Mike Gray was brilliant…a journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker, steadfast in his beliefs and and absolutely creative every day of his life. H. Michael Gray was born in Darlington, a small town in Indiana. He received an engineering degree from Purdue University, and came to Chicago in the early 1960s. He had lived and worked in Los Angeles since 1973. He was the co-founder of the Chicago-Based … Continue reading →

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  Richie Havens (1941-2013)

  April 23, 2013 at 10:19 am / Blog

  Three videos in honor of musician and activist Richie Havens. The first was shot in 1982 as part of a national nuclear disarmament survey with the participation of more than 300 videomakers. Next, from 1990, a short interview by Skip Blumberg for the PBS series THE 90′s. Lastly, enjoy a performance by Havens at the 1991 Studs Terkel Toast at the Bismarck Hotel in Chicago from our extensive Studs Terkel collection. As always, you can watch the full programs: Disarmament Survey (1982, … Continue reading →

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  Redwood Summer, 1990

  April 19, 2013 at 9:46 am / Blog

  For this year’s Earth Day, we take a look back to the year 1990, when thousands of activists congregated in various bases throughout California’s redwood forests as part of the large scale anti-deforestation protest known as Redwood Summer. The event involved various forms of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, including protesters sitting in front of bulldozers or chaining themselves to trees as well as legal motions for court injunctions against the logging of old growth forests. Redwood Summer sparked conflict … Continue reading →