Home » Viewers Choice (Page 5)

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  Media Burn by Ant Farm, 1975 edit

  Ant Farm, CLIR, Guerrilla Television, Outside Agitators, Performance, Viewers Choice

  Original version of Ant Farm’s classic video art piece examining and satirizing the media, particularly the impact of television. On July 4, Independence Day, 1975, what a TV newscaster described as a “media circus” assembles at San Francisco’s Cow Palace Stadium. A pyramid of television sets are stacked, doused with kerosene, and set ablaze. Then a modified 1959 Cadillac El Dorado Biarritz, piloted by two drivers who are guided only by a video monitor between their bucket seats, smashes through the pyramid destroying the TV sets.

  Preceding the event are clips from various TV news broadcasts that covered it (many of the TV reporters make the comment that they “didn’t get it”). The tape includes interviews with invited guests, a speech given by Doug Hall as President John F. Kennedy explaining the message of Media Burn, the dramatic unveiling of the Phantom Dream Car, several sequences of the car smashing through the TV sets, and its triumphant return from the end of the Cow Palace parking lot.

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  Image Union, episode 0318

  Image Union, Viewers Choice

  Compilation episode of Image Union featuring “The Long and Winding Road” by Dean Kendrick, “Clockwork,” “Iron on Courage” by Wazmo Vision, and “Assyrian Destiny in the Middle East” by Ben Polus and John Yonan.

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  Anna Deavere Smith in conversation with Studs Terkel

  Black, Chicago, Communities, Harold Washington, NHPRC, Performance, Studs Terkel, Viewers Choice

  A videorecording of a live event featuring Studs Terkel and Anna Deavere Smith in conversation at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago. It originally aired on Chicago Municipal Television, Channel 49.

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  National Sofa

  Viewers Choice

  Showing of plans for interactive monument called the National Sofa. There will be an unveiling of a model and a press conference. It will be a marble sofa (or an inflatable sofa) that can fit 100 people and a 100 ft by 50 ft screen, which will show scenes from inside the White House. The National Sofa is a place for dialogue between the US citizens and the First Family, whenever the family wants to initate one. Doug Michels and Jim Allegro are the architects, who answer questions. “A high tech monument for the high tech ’90s.”

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  [Robert Sandifer murder case #6]

  American Way, Black, Communities, Viewers Choice, Yummy Sandifer

  Robert Sandifer’s wake and funeral.

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  Chicago Boys

  International, Viewers Choice

  In 1973, after dramatic political upheaval in Chile, the “Chicago Boys,” led by University of Chicago economics professor Milton Friedman, were given the chance to rebuild the country’s economy. They opted to turn Chile into an experiment with absolute free markets. This documentary examines the poor state of the country ten years afterwards.

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  Friday Night on Channel 6 – Night Owl Show

  CLIR, Guerrilla Television, Outside Agitators, Performance, Sex, Drugs, & Rock 'N Roll, Viewers Choice

  0:14 Count-in and titles for “Friday Night.”

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  Once A Star #1

  Chicago, Sports, Viewers Choice

  The first of two hour-long programs profiling former professional athletes. The show focuses on these athletes’ lives after retiring from sports, with archival footage sprinkled throughout. We get an in-depth look at these personalities, while also indirectly getting a sense of the difference between professional sports of the 50s, 60s, and 70s versus today: virtually all of the athletes work for a living. This program features “no-hit” Chicago Cub pitcher Kenny Holtzman; Cy Young Award winner Steve Stone;  first African American in the NBA, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton; TV wrestling pioneer “Dick the Bruiser” (Afflis); all-time NFL scoring leader, kicker and quarterback George Blanda; bowling champ Carmen Salvino; Casey Stengel speaking “Stengelese;”  Clown Prince of Baseball, Max Patkin; and one-season phenomenon, pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych.