The dawn of the Portapak era saw a flurry of activity in New York City, but almost immediately video spread to San Francisco and Chicago, but also to western Ohio, to upstate New York, to rural Kentucky, to New Orleans… all over the country, in cities and towns, at colleges and at local TV stations. This panel looks at the unexpected centers of production that arose in the 1970s, and the importance of these community-based organizations to the wider Guerrilla Television movement. Moderator: Angela J. Aguayo, Associate Professor Media & Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and author of Documentary Resistance: Social Change and Participatory Media. Panelists: Deirdre Boyle, professor emerita of media studies at The New School and author of Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited; Ariel Dougherty, mediamaker, teacher, producer, advocate, co-founder of Women Make Movies; Gene Fredericks, archivist, New Orleans Video Access Center; Tom Weinberg, creator/producer of Image Union, Center for New Television, founder of Media Burn Archive; Denise Zaccardi, founder and executive director, Community TV Network.
00:01Copy video clip URL Media Burn’s Adam Hart introduces the panel.
01:10Copy video clip URL Moderator Angela J. Aguayo introduces Deirdre Boyle, Ariel Dougherty, Gene Fredericks, Tom Weinberg, and Denise Zaccardi.
03:32Copy video clip URL Dougherty discusses the feminist communities and feminist aims of community-oriented video in the 1970s. Developing a network between feminist media groups, exchanging tapes. The International Videoletters.
12:10Copy video clip URL Fredericks discusses working at New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC) briefly in the 1970s and then moving to San Francisco to work at Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC). Returning to NOVAC and transferring tapes.
15:45Copy video clip URL Zaccardi discusses the beginnings of Community TV Network. Teaching children video through the Alternative Schools Network. The freedom with which students of color could move with cameras. Teaching children to “come up with a solution” through their videos. Starting a cable access show in 1986. The power of video as a tool for young people.
22:55Copy video clip URL Weinberg talks about his early interest in television and his first independent productions. Producing TVTV’s The World’s Largest TV Studio.
28:07Copy video clip URL Boyle tells a story about “discovering media activism” as a child when she appeared on a “gripe session” for the show Wonderama. Becoming a media scholar and an early critic of video art, and eventually realizing that she was a video historian. Visiting regional media centers like Broadside Video and NOVAC and the importance of video being made from within the community. Her book Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited.
36:50Copy video clip URL Aguayo asks a question about the ethics of documentary filming within communities and the dangers of “extractivism” by videomakers.
38:00Copy video clip URL Weinberg asserts that, in the 1970s, everyone worked closely together regardless of background.
39:50Copy video clip URL Fredericks talks about NOVAC’s early educational mission within New Orleans.
42:30Copy video clip URL Dougherty discusses putting videomaking tools in the hands of community members so that they could tell their own stories.
43:48Copy video clip URL Boyle aligns the efforts of NOVAC to collaborate with and brings video to the community with a larger documentary history that begins with John Grierson. TVTV’s The Good Times Are Killing Me, which is for Boyle a negative example of a video made about a community by outsiders.
49:00Copy video clip URL Skip Blumberg asserst that he finds the question about ethics to be “objectionable” because he makes videos about “communities that aren’t my own.” He sees documentary as a means of creating empathy and understanding across cultures and communities.
50:39Copy video clip URL Gordon Quinn talks about the history of Kartemquin working with communities of color. Kartemquin’s educational and production work with people of color. The necessity for documentarians to ask themselves questions about whether they “have the right” to make their film. Making For the Left Hand, a documentary about a pianist who is Black, with a crew of trained classical musicians.
54:34Copy video clip URL Tom Poole discusses the “intimacy” and “expediency” of video and the transition from Portapaks to camcorders, and now to smart phones. A question about the relevance of media centers for the contemporary moment.
58:34Copy video clip URL Dougherty discusses the recent history of teaching girls to make their own video. The early mission of Women Make Movies. Younger generations of women who are interested in older feminist video work.
60:40Copy video clip URL Fredericks discusses working with high school students, and the difference between having a camera on one’s phone and being part of a videomaking group. The work done to create a film and videomaking community in New Orleans.
63:00Copy video clip URL Boyle describes videomaking in developing countries, focusing on Cambodia.
65:42Copy video clip URL DeeDee Halleck discusses the need for young media makers to understand the corporate and structural history of media. A story about children from Brooklyn Public Access coming to Albany to preserve public access.
68:34Copy video clip URL Dougherty points out that our phone bills provide money for community media, and that we should demand that money goes towards creating better community access to media.
69:00Copy video clip URL Zaccardi asserts the need for communities to continue to tell stories. Fredericks points out that NOVAC uses the tagline “enabling storytellers.”
70:05Copy video clip URL Weinberg talks about being part of television at a time when that was a means of reaching broad audiences in the community.
71:50Copy video clip URL Quinn talks about smart phones turner viewers into a commodity. The importance of working within a group.
74:10Copy video clip URL Joan Logue and Fredericks talk about camera choices and prices.
77:08Copy video clip URL Tracy Fitz asserts that International Videoletters was “very effective at making change” and suggests that contemporary videomakers should create similar exchanges.
77:56Copy video clip URL A discussion of grants that are based in media training for marginalized communities.
79:40Copy video clip URL Aguayo ends the panel. Hart introduces Daniel Morgan, Chair of the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.
80:12Copy video clip URL Morgan delivers the day’s closing remarks. Morgan briefly discusses the history of video being overlooked by media scholars. He thanks supporting and partner organizations and those who worked on the symposium, including the School of the Art Institute’s Video Data Bank, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and at University of Chicago: the Film Studies Center, the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, the Franke Institute of the Humanities, the Chicago Studies program, the Institute for Contemporary Theory, the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, and the Grey Center for Arts and Inquiry, as well as Doug McLaren, Ben Ruder, Jane Kerannen, Sara Chapman, Adam Hart, Max Hart, Tom Weinberg, Jane Bohnsack, Hugo Ljunbach, Lilian Kong. The history of the Guerrilla Television collaboration between the University of Chicago and Media Burn.
90:15Copy video clip URL Morgan discusses the themes of the symposium thus far. The sense of discovery and excitement at the novelty of video technology. The role of teaching and pedagogy in early video. The possibilities of early video.
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