As the Chicago Reader celebrates its 40th anniversary, here’s a look back at the paper in 1983, including interviews with then-Publisher and Editor Robert Roth and then-Assistant Editor Michael Miner. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06_hNo-VmAM] If you haven’t already checked it out, don’t miss the Reader’s own retrospective and specifically, Miner’s fascinating recollection.
Studs Terkel died three years ago yesterday, on October 31, 2008. In January 2009, about 200 of Studs’ close friends came to the Chicago Cultural Center to tell their favorite Studs stories and jokes and to remember his life and work. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?amp;v=FOv_mjlL9jw] Two Studs Terkel classics are now on DVD: It’s a Living (1974), the documentary based on Working, and Studs on a Soapbox (2000), a look at the feisty raconteur over several decades. The trailers are below […]
In this 1982 interview at Apple Computer in Cupertino, CA, we see how dramatically technology and the perception of computers has evolved in less than 30 years. Produced for a technology series, WIRED IN*, the vision of Steve Jobs was already alive and well. For more technology predictions at this early point in Apple’s history, watch the complete interview at Media Burn. Part 1: http://mediaburn.org/Video-Preview.128.0.html?&uid=1626 Part 2: http://mediaburn.org/Video-Preview.128.0.html?&uid=1627 *The demo for WIRED IN features young Bill Murray and Lily Tomlin […]
As primary season gets into full swing, here’s a behind the scenes look from 1992 at how campaigns craft their appearance for TV.
Today, we bring you clips from a fascinating and beautiful documentary being produced in Chicago by On Look Films. Like Media Burn, it is motivated by an effort to preserve and archive contemporary cultural reality that is in danger of being extinct. Voices and Faces of the Adhan: Cairo is an engaged, objective cinéma vérité documentary about the complex relationship between modernity and tradition in Cairo. The story develops as the ancient oral tradition of the adhan, the Muslim call […]
Once again, here are more rare materials from the archive! These materials cover projects from the last fifty years of independent TV and portable video, many available on Media Burn’s website. First we have a flyer from Ant Farm regarding their plans to bury a time capsule in 1975 to be dug up in 2000. However, this was no ordinary time capsule—Ant Farm buried a station wagon filled with items representing the average person’s values & culture. The car was […]
Thirty six years ago this Fourth of July, Ant Farm staged the Media Burn event in San Francisco. In addition to crashing a Cadillac through a wall of burning televisions, it featured a special appearance by the “Artist President” (Doug Hall), who put media monopolies and their effect on all of us in perspective. We think it probably has even more relevance today. See if you agree. [Courtesy, Ant Farm and Chip Lord] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieVwRqUxVI8]