Home » Posts tagged 'television'

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  Nixon Resigns: The Legacy of Impeachment

  Blog

  August 8, 1974.  It was a different world, a different president and an unprecedented American crisis.  That was the night Richard Nixon sat in the Oval Office and made the surprise announcement that he was resigning as President of the United States. Some independent video producers obtained a videotape recorded in the moments before the speech.  It was the European pool feed, never intended for broadcast: a rare glimpse into the curation and production of a president’s image. We think […]

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  Nixon resigns, August 8, 1974

  Blog

  Forty years ago today, Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States. Millions tuned in to his televised address to see what Nixon had to say about his presidency and his reasons for resigning. What they didn’t see was the seven minutes of the television pool feed before Nixon went live. It’s a fascinating counterpoint to the gravity of the event and a unique look at Nixon’s mindset at this defining moment of his career. The video also includes […]

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  Super Sonic, etc.

  Judith Binder

  There are two sections of note in this footage. First some footage of a TV being changed through several different channels at the time of the Gulf War and second a performer on the Venice Beach Boardwalk. The rest of the video is the filmmaker chatting with friends around Los Angeles on Super Bowl Sunday.

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  Essential election viewing: Brian Springer’s Spin (1995)

  Blog

  In the early ’90s, media artist Brian Springer learned that, with a home satellite dish, it was possible to pick up and record the raw satellite feeds created by the TV networks. These parallel feeds included the behind-the-scenes signals sent to the TV shows’ control rooms but not intended for broadcast, such as talk show sets during commercial breaks or people waiting to be patched in to an interview with a news anchor. Springer recorded these feeds throughout the 1992 […]

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  Studs’ Place: Jimmy Romano is Home – The Living City

  Chicago, Studs Terkel, Studs' Place

  Studs’ Place (1951?) produced by Charlie Andrews. This episode is called “Jimmy Romano Is Home.” A neighborhood kid comes back from college on the East Coast and suffers embarrassment over his working class roots. Eventually he realizes the people in his neighborhood have more talent than he thought. Features musical performances by Chet Roble and Win Stracke. Followed by “The Living City” (1953). Instructional film dealing with urban problems such as how are existing slums to be eliminated, how to deal with congestion, etc. “How did our cities get this way?” “I was in bombed out cities in Europe in the war. And then I came back to Chicago to this.” We need to tear down the slums, and build up new affordable housing. Studs Terkel narrates.

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  L.A. “Trash” tape

  CLIR, Guerrilla Television, NHPRC, Tom Weinberg, TVTV

  This tape features footage that had been taped off of Los Angeles and Chicago TV stations during the production of TVTV’s “Adland.”

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  Media Burn by Ant Farm, 2003 edit

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

  A recent edit (2003) 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.

• Newsdogs

  Kartemquin Films

  Self-described as an experiment in which a group of improvisational actors play different roles as a news crew covering the days news. Mixes real footage with improv acting.