Chicago Open Archives: Come see our archive next Friday, October 9th! While most of our videos are available for the public to watch on our website at any time, our physical archive is not usually open to the public. However, this special event will give visitors an opportunity to tour our facilities and see a short screening of some highlights from the collection. What: A behind the scenes tour of Media Burn Archive, including a short screening of highlights […]
Former President Jimmy Carter celebrated his 91st birthday on October 1, 2015. Many say that he has been the most effective ex-President in history. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his Carter Center activities worldwide. Despite his brain tumors, Carter still teaches Sunday school in Georgia and is active in Habitat for Humanity. Habitat for Humanity started in 1976 and has built more than a million houses all over the world for more than five million people. […]
Last Sunday (September 20, 2015) Jill Soloway won the prime time Emmy award for best director of a comedy series. The program is Transparent, based on her own family in which her father came out as a woman at the age of 74. The first video is Jill’s moving acceptance speech. The second video is our archival interview with her, produced by Skip Blumberg, that first appeared on The 90’s series in 1991 when Soloway and her sister Faith created a stage version of The Brady Bunch. Watch the […]
Summer is coming to a close, and soon enough we’ll all be wearing sweaters and grumbling about the crummy weather. In the spirit of holding on just a bit longer, we take you down to McCuddy’s bar in Bridgeport, which served baseball fans (and players!) from 1910 until 1988. According to Mrs. Frances McCuddy, Babe Ruth would walk across the street to her bar during the break between doubleheaders to pick up a roast beef sandwich. The bar eventually was […]
This summer marks the centenary of the 1915 Eastland disaster, one of the worst tragedies in Chicago history. On the morning of July 24, 1915, more than 2,500 people boarded the SS Eastland on the Chicago River near Clark Street. They were mostly employees of Western Electric headed to a company picnic in Michigan City, Indiana. Loaded to capacity, the ship tipped into the river, killing 844 people, many of whom were trapped in lower decks. Twenty-two entire families perished. […]
BABE RUTH… Ask people to name five baseball players. Most will include “Babe Ruth,” even though his prime was 80 or 90 years ago and he died in 1948, 67 years ago this week. Many consider George Herman Ruth Jr. one of the greatest icons not only in baseball, but in all of American history. He was the most dominant player ever. In the 1922 season, he hit 54 home runs. No other player hit more than 19 and only […]
2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This law has made it possible for millions of people with disabilities to participate equally in society and live independently. This video is an excerpt from Julia Lesage’s 1995 “Getting Around,” which tells the stories of several University of Oregon students with disabilities. Watch the full version of “Getting Around” at Media Burn. Also, check out Julia Lesage’s article in Jump Cut, “Perpetual Subversion,” about her […]
70 years ago today, the most devastating and destructive force the world had ever seen was unleashed on Hiroshima, Japan. The atomic bomb destroyed the city and killed nearly half of its inhabitants. In 1990, Jane Aaron, world class animator who shot just a few documentary videos in her life, went to Japan and created a series of short video vignettes. In this one, she visited the Peace Park in Hiroshima, where millions of people have left paper cranes to […]