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  Harold Washington 35th Anniversary

  Blog

  With the holidays just around the corner, the Media Burn family would like to share an early gift as a reminder of the legacy of Chicago’s 51st mayor, Harold Lee Washington (1922-1987). As Chicago’s first African-American mayor, Washington’s time in office would be no walk in the park– this, he knew. Despite the forces waged against him, Washington moved the needle of progress to support employment and economic development in the city. In this clip, a crowd of Chicagoans gathers […]

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  Toni Morrison on the founding of America, 1978

  Black, Blog, Julie Gustafson, Outside Agitators, Politics

  With voting day upon us, we’re besieged with campaign ads and news reports about the future of our local and national governments. With all this focus on the immediate future, it behooves us to also think about the past, about the path that led America to this point and the lessons that we can learn from our past mistakes. Few can teach us more than Toni Morrison about this country’s psyche and about its unspoken traumas that resonate across generations. […]

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  Golden Anniversary of Guerrilla Television!

  Blog, Politics, Roots of Video, TVTV

  Video art and video documentary began in the mid-1960s, but the first shots of the TV/Video revolution can be traced back to 1972. The summer of 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of TVTV and the Guerrilla Television movement. It was the start of a radical, exciting new form of documentary that critiqued and questioned mainstream television. Seen by a small number of viewers all over America, it invented new ways to make television and changed what television could look like. […]

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  Media Burn Presents: David E. Simpson’s Tom Chicago on Location

  Blog

  Newly available for the first time in decades! Media Burn is proud to have digitized a remarkable short-form documentary on one of the godfathers of independent film in Chicago: Tom Palazzolo. David E. Simpson’s 1990 work Tom Chicago on Location presents a playful and engaging portrait of Tom’s work, life, and idiosyncratic humor. To introduce the documentary, here are a few words from David:   “I first became aware of Tom Palazzolo in high school, when a renegade student teacher from the […]

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  Richard Stamz, Pervis Spann, and Carl Wright: They Don’t Make ‘Em Like That Any More.

  Black, Blog

  Blues & More was a local Chicago talk show on cable channel 25 during the 1980s and 1990s. It combined host and entertainment entrepreneur Pervis Spann’s offbeat sense of humor with music videos from R & B and blues artists. In this 1994 episode of Blues & More, Spann talks with movie actor and performer Carl Wright and longtime Chicago radio personality Richard Stamz, about Stamz’s career across a changing entertainment industry. Carl Wright was 59 at the time of […]

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  Reflecting on Media Burn’s Past and Future

  Blog

  By Sara Chapman, executive director If you value the work that Media Burn does to save and create access to history and culture, please consider a year-end donation by clicking HERE.We are deeply grateful for the hundreds of people like you who contribute to help make this work possible. Friends, As we close out 2021, I wanted to thank you for being part of Media Burn’s journey. During my winter break from college in 2003, I first visited the storefront […]

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  Newly uncovered 1940s footage of Harold Washington

  Blog

  How I met Harold Washington By Jeff Spitz, independent filmmaker When I moved from LA to Chicago in 1983 my goal was to meet Mayor Harold Washington. I had to figure out how to get into City Hall so I could make a documentary film showing the mayor’s remarkable back story which few people knew. I learned that he was a student at Roosevelt College (now Roosevelt University) in the 1940s. I found a 16mm can of film in the […]

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  In Memory of Roland Hemond (October 26, 1929 – December 12, 2021)

  Blog

  He actually WAS one of the truly nice guys, in baseball or anywhere else.