The Portapak allowed for a new approach to political image-making, in which videotape became central to activist efforts. The camera recorded protests and speeches; it was used by feminist collectives to share information about women’s health and abortion; it recorded landlord neglect and other abuses of power. The video camera inspired organization and action, and connected activists all over the country. This panel explores the range of video activism in the 1970s, and its legacy 50 years later. Moderator: Tara Merenda Nelson, curator and director of public programs, Visual Studies Workshop. Panelists: DeeDee Halleck, media activist and co-founder of Paper Tiger Television and Deep Dish TV Network, author of Hand-Held Visions: The Uses of Community Media; Judy Hoffman, filmmaker and Professor Emeritus of practice in the Department of Cinema of Media Studies at the University of Chicago; Mona Jimenez, former Professor and Associate Director of the Moving Image Archiving Program at New York University and co-editor of The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued; Gordon Quinn, filmmaker and co-founder of Kartemquin Films; Mirko Popadic, media activist and member of Communications for Change.
00:01Copy video clip URL Introduction by Media Burn’s Adam Hart.
3:15Copy video clip URL Tara Merenda Nelson moderates a panel featuring Deedee Halleck, Gordon Quinn, Judy Hoffman, Mona Jimenez, and Mirko Popadic.
4:31Copy video clip URL Halleck talks about her history in video, including working with Shirley Clarke and Liza Bear and advocating for public access television. Her history in the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF). Paper Tiger Television’s history and its antiwar focus throughout its run. The national and global network of independent videomakers in the 1970s, 1980s, and later.
15:41Copy video clip URL Nelson introduces each member of the panel and asks them to speak about their relationship to television when they were children.
17:50Copy video clip URL Mona Jimenez speaks about the role of television in her family.
19:25Copy video clip URL Mirko Popadic talks about children’s television.
21:16Copy video clip URL Judy Hoffman talks about the television programming of her childhood, including Winky Dink and You, an interactive TV program, and The Mickey Mouse Club. The impact of the coverage of the Vietnam War. First video productions, working with Jim Morrissette.
25:33Copy video clip URL Gordon Quinn’s earliest memories of television, including watching Howdy Doody at a neighbor’s house on a TV screen with a magnifying glass and the cancellation of Captain Video.
27:21Copy video clip URL DeeDee Halleck talks about Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. Working part time as a teenager at Continental Films.
29:49Copy video clip URL Nelson reads a statement from Hoffman about Guerrilla Television producers being “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola… and television. We were the products of TV and out to change the world. Also to change our relationship to TV. We would no longer be passive consumers and receivers.”
30:27Copy video clip URL Hoffman discusses the impact of the Sony Portapak on media and culture. The democratization of the media and the formation of video collectives and video’s “utopian moment.”
33:13Copy video clip URL Popadic on his transition from film to video. Working with Jim Morrissette and the Chicago Editing Center leading to a job with Communications for Change. Using video equipment to “change the dynamics” between people and figures of power.
37:21Copy video clip URL Quinn on his early 16mm filmmaking. Making Where’s I.W. Abel? on video and the difficulties of the early video editing equipment. The immediacy of video. Hoffman making a video on one day and showing it to workers on strike the following day.
40:49Copy video clip URL Hoffman on the unique qualities of video: immediacy, sound, rewinding/rerecording and in-camera editing, being able to hook the deck up to any television. Working with Kartemquin on a video about local workers who were fired for striking. Showing the workers the tape she recorded in a bar. Showing the tape to audiences of local workers and union members to gather support for their wildcat strike. Setting up a screen in Grant Park for rallying workers. The workers winning their jobs back.
45:31Copy video clip URL Nelson on the video camera as “a tool of accountability” and evidence. The impact of the Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA) on spreading video technology and expertise.
46:52Copy video clip URL Jimenez on using video with the Geneva Women’s Resource Center. Collaborating with local activist/advocacy organizations. The expense of Portapaks and video editing technology and the need to overcome anxieties about damaging the equipment. The effectiveness of video cameras for activist purposes even when not recording. Recording appearances of people like Amiri Baraka, Gloria Steinem, Louis Farrakhan, etc, from visits to local colleges, playing those tapes for local audiences. Video as a means of communication that “was really about moving information around, for us… It was really more of a live situation than creating tapes. “
54:13Copy video clip URL Hoffman talks about early video being more about “process” than “product”: “It was about taking a video, showing it to a group, having them respond to it, sometimes recording what they said in the discussion, and taking it back to another group and just getting this dialogue going… It was about process. It wasn’t about being some ultimate bourgeois artifact.”
55:26Copy video clip URL Popadic discusses efforts working with a group in Uptown Chicago. Using the video camera to “change the dynamic” between powerful figures and the community members they were exploiting.
57:33Copy video clip URL Halleck on the importance of “having a cohort.” Her work as a teen with Highlander. Discussion of the filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion, especially Zeinabu Irene Davis.
59:24Copy video clip URL Quinn on the “media access battles” through which film and video makers fought to demand public access to television. Screening Where’s I.W. Abel? for workers and realizing that videos made for small, focused audiences could be just as significant and consequential as work seen by countless people on television.
62:13Copy video clip URL Nick DeMartino remembers the “unique, hyperlocal phenomenon” of early video, discussing his work in the neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. “The impact of seeing yourself on television was a generational change. It had never existed for anybody in the history of the world.”
65:07Copy video clip URL Angela Aguayo asks a question about how scholars and contemporary audiences can understand and preserve the “process over product” mentality of early video. Hoffman discusses the narcissism of contemporary media making. The importance of understanding what’s important for enacting social change, and perspective gained from studying Marx and other thinkers.
68:04Copy video clip URL Halleck talks about mandates in the Florida educational system to teach Communism. Nelson discusses the importance of archives.
69:20Copy video clip URL Popadic talks about a recent screening of his early activist videos, at which audience members weren’t interested in product or process, but in issues like housing that were dealt with in the videos.
70:51Copy video clip URL Jimenez wonders about the perspective of other members or activist or community groups, as opposed to the videomakers. Ariel Dougherty discusses the necessity for a large network of video archives to make early video available. Hart mentions the work of the Visual Studies Workshop as an organization that believes in making early video available to the public for free.
72:52Copy video clip URL Filmmaker Christopher Harris speaks about the importance of Black and minority film and video groups that have made activist and Guerrilla Television-style work, naming Not Channel Zero, Menelik Shabazz, Zeinabu Irene Davis, the Black Audio Film Collective, and others. The “global movement of grassroots people who got a hold of Portapaks.”
74:36Copy video clip URL Hoffman discusses working with the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation of British Columbia to make their own films and videos. The Salmonista video group. Those videos becoming important as an archive but also for establishing legal land claims.
77:31Copy video clip URL Ted Hardin talks about the distribution and sharing of tapes during Gulf War protests.
81:16Copy video clip URL Halleck on the importance of not letting public access to media die.
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