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  Resurrecting Guerrilla Television: Henry Kissinger and Rosalynn Carter

  Blog, Politics, TVTV

  An ongoing series reflecting on our favorite videos from the Resurrecting Guerrilla Television project. In 2021, Media Burn, along with the University of Chicago and other partners, began the “Resurrecting the 1970s Guerrilla Television Movement” project, which is funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources. That grant has funded the digitization, cataloging, and sharing of hundreds of essential tapes from the early history of video, with hundreds more to come. This is “the people’s television” – a version […]

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  Thanksgiving 1933: ‘The First Time That Devil’s Brew Hit My Lips’

  Blog

  Prohibition had just been repealed in Illinois on Thanksgiving 1933. At age 21, Studs Terkel had his first taste of what he calls “the devil’s brew.” His first drink was alongside the residents of the Wells-Grand Hotel, a men’s hotel near Washington Square Park that his mother owned. His mother decided to have Thanksgiving dinner with everyone that year since many of them didn’t have anyone else to celebrate with.  Technically, Prohibition was officially repealed at the federal level on […]

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  Resurrecting Guerrilla Television: Nick Despota’s Tooth Stories

  Blog, CLIR, Guerrilla Television

  An ongoing series reflecting on our favorite videos from the Resurrecting Guerrilla Television project. In 2021, Media Burn, along with the University of Chicago and other partners, began the “Resurrecting the 1970s Guerrilla Television Movement” project, which is funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources. That grant has funded the digitization, cataloging, and sharing of hundreds of essential tapes from the early history of video, with hundreds more to come. These tapes range from abstract visual studies to […]

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  Bill and Mike Veeck and “The Saint of Second Chances”

  Bill Veeck, Blog, Chicago, Cubs, Sports, White Sox

  Bill Veeck and Media Burn founder Tom Weinberg at the White Sox’s spring training in 1978. This week saw the release of The Saint of Second Chances on Netflix, the new documentary from acclaimed filmmakers Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor) and Jeff Malmberg (Marwencol). The film is a lively portrait of Mike Veeck, son of Chicago royalty Bill Veeck (1914-1986), who inherited his father’s passion for baseball and for the ballyhoo and PT Barnum-esque stunts that endeared his teams to their […]

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  Resurrecting Guerrilla Television: Julie Gustafson’s The Politics of Intimacy

  Blog, CLIR, Global Village, Guerrilla Television, Julie Gustafson

  An ongoing series reflecting on our favorite videos from the Resurrecting Guerrilla Television project.

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  Watch PBS coverage of our collaboration with Appalshop!

  Blog

  On July 31, Kentucky Educational Television aired a fantastic segment on their program, Kentucky Edition, that highlights our ongoing partnership with Appalshop. Together, we worked to digitize and make available historic videos created by independent Appalachian media makers in the 1970s. In the segment, Media Burn executive director Sara Chapman states, “We’ve been working for about 20 years to preserve exactly this type of material: community-based work that was rarely seen like outside of local contexts at the time that […]

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  Guerrilla Television: Rugby Women, by Eleanor Boyer, Terra Levin, and Jeanne Meyers

  Blog

  In 2021, Media Burn, along with the University of Chicago and other partners, began the “Resurrecting the 1970s Guerrilla Television Movement” project, which is funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources. That grant has funded the digitization, cataloging, and sharing of hundreds of essential tapes from the early history of video, with hundreds more to come. These tapes range from abstract visual studies to documentaries to home movies. They include the work of major artists like Julie Gustafson, […]

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  Having a Ball with the House of Avant Garde

  Blog

  Ballroom culture, popularized both by the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning and the 2018 drama series POSE, is closely associated with New York City. However, Chicago is home to its own rich ballroom history and is often credited as the “birthplace of the ball.” The House of Avant Garde is a cornerstone of this history and the genesis site of a number of prominent figures in Chicago’s ballroom scene, such as Mauren Avant Garde, Tommy Avant Garde, Tracy Avant Garde, Cordell Avant Garde, […]