10/30/14: Anda Korsts’ Video Metropolis at Conversations at the Edge

Thursday, October 30, 6:00 p.m.

Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State St., Chicago, IL
312.846.2600

Followed by a roundtable with documentary filmmaker Judy Hoffman, Media Burn Archive Founder Tom Weinberg, and Executive Director Sara Chapman

In the 1970s, Chicago journalist and artist Anda Korsts helped pioneer video as a radical tool for art and activism. A key figure in the guerrilla television movement, she worked on a series of media exposés as part of the national video collective Top Value Television (TVTV) and founded Videopolis, a Chicago organization that put video in the hands of everyday people. She also produced hundreds of tapes, many in collaboration with makers around the country, including a groundbreaking television series called It’s a Living, inspired by Studs Terkel’s Working. The event features videos and television clips from across Korsts’ career and a discussion of her continuing legacy today.

1972–82, USA, multiple formats, ca 60 min + discussion

View the full program notes here: https://sites.saic.edu/cate/wp-content/uploads/sites/100/2015/05/CATE_AndaKorsts_Notes_V2a2.pdf

ANDA KORSTS (1942, Riga, Latvia–1991, Chicago) was a journalist, artist, and video pioneer based in Chicago. Born to Latvians fleeing the Soviets during World War II, her childhood was spent as a refugee throughout Eastern Europe before the family immigrated to the United States in 1950. She worked as a model and radio reporter, covering the City Hall beat for WBBM, before discovering her life’s passion: portable videotape. Seeing in this new technology the potential to open up the television airwaves to the public, Korsts and a few dozen like-minded makers from around the country formed the video collective Top Value Television (TVTV) to record the behind-the-scenes politics at the 1972 Democratic and Republican national conventions. The result was the first independently produced program to ever air on US television. In Chicago, Korsts founded Videopolis, a collective focused on expanding video production, particularly by women and minorities. The organization also created an archive of the city’s people and events, including Chicago’s vibrant 1970s Lincoln Avenue storefront theatre scene, and produced several projects that combined video with established forms of art like theater and writing. Her body of work is preserved at Media Burn Archive.

Presented in collaboration with Media Burn Archive. CATE is organized by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center and the Video Data Bank. Programs take place Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. at the Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State St.), unless otherwise noted.