Here Come the Videofreex Panel Discussion
@ Gene Siskel Film Center
164 N. State St. Chicago, IL 60601
Opening Thursday, May 19th, at 8PM
The screening will be followed directly by a Q&A with Video Data Bank (VDB) Executive Director Abina Manning, VDB Archive and Collection Manager Tom Colley, and Media Burn Independent Video Archive founder Tom Weinberg. Tom Weinberg was a founding member of the video collective TVTV and enlisted support of the Videofreex to provide alternative coverage of the 1972 Presidential nominating conventions. Together they will discuss the cultural significance and legacy of the Videofreex.
Here Come the Videofreex, directed by Jon Nealon, and Jenny Raskin
A vintage black-and-white video clip of two hippie dudes getting high amid peals of helpless laughter makes for a keynote kickoff to an essential documentary chronicling the pioneering efforts of the Videofreex. In possession of then-new portable video technology, three kids meet up at Woodstock and soon expand to a collective of self-styled radicals and self-taught videographers who snatch a front row seat on street-level history in the turbulent Sixties and Seventies. Their ventures range from an ill-fated collaboration with CBS to the establishment of the first pirate TV channel, and their body of work, seen in newly restored clips, features interviews with Abbie Hoffman and Black Panther Fred Hampton, and includes coverage of Vietnam War protests, women’s marches, the 1972 Republican Convention, and more. DCP digital. (BS)
The Videofreex archive is housed at Video Data Bank (VDB), a leading resource in the US for video by and about contemporary artists, located at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago – chronicling the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
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Tags: Abina Manning, Downtown, Jenny Raskin, Jon Nealon, Siskel Film Center, Tom Colley, Tom Weinberg
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