Two tapes about animals – one about the gorilla, Sinbad, of the Lincoln Park Zoo and one about the dolphins and their trainers at the Brookfield Zoo. The works are “Sinbad Has Surgery” and “Everybody Loves Dolphins.”
Image Union episode called “Rock n’ Roll Disciples” by Thomas Corby. The work is a documentary about obsessive Elvis enthusiasts, who speak about their difficulties in dealing with the rock star’s death.
Image Union program featuring the documentary “Death in the West,” a British anti-tobacco film. The film focuses on the then-controversial issue of whether smoking is harmful to a person’s health and features interviews with people on both sides of the issue. It is framed by the stories of several real cowboys with lung cancer, in order to counteract the image of smoking as a masculine activity.
Compilation tape highlighting the work of the members of the Chicago Area Videomakers Coalition. The group was formed in 1977 to formally bring together Chicago’s independent videomakers to create a higher profile and bring their work to the public. This tape was first broadcast on Channel 44 on June 18, 1977, based on a commitment from general manager Ed Morris. The production of this tape made it apparent that the most pressing need in the videomaking community was editing facilities. In 1978, aided by the visibility produced by the sampler tape, the Coalition opened the Chicago Editing Center, which provided low-cost editing facilities to the public on a first-come, first-serve basis.
A video letter from Doug Michels to Tom Weinberg documenting the Ant Farm’s tour of Australia. It begins with an onscreen introduction by Doug Michels and includes several appearances on Australian television shows, including some outrageous behavior.
Part two of three of the Image Union 10th anniversary special.
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.
An episode of “Watch It!” featuring segments mostly about the environment and differing lifestyles. Includes cigar aficionados in Beverly Hills, an interview with New York’s “Wild Man”, a feature on a Caribbean restaurant called “The Islander”, and more.