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Videofreex
The Videofreex were a pioneering video collective who used the Sony Portapak for countercultural video projects from 1969 to 1978. They were founded in 1969 by David Cort, Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Parry Teasdale, after Cort and Teasdale met each other at the Woodstock Music Festival. They were based out of a 17 bedroom house in the Catskill Mountains named the Maple Tree Farm. In order to receive an initial grant of $40,000 from The New York State Council of the Arts, the Videofreex rebranded itself as the non-profit "Media Bus". Michael Shamberg, author of '' Guerrilla Television'' and founding member of TVTV, remarked, "The Freex are the most production oriented of the video groups €¦in terms of finished, cleanly edited, high quality tape, which is generally quite entertaining, the Videofreex are clearly the best." Mirroring the beliefs outlined in ''Guerrilla Television'', they believed they could turn the medium of television, at the time dominated by The "Big Three" Televis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parry Teasdale
Parry Teasdale is an American video artist and a founding member of the early video collective Videofreex. He was also involved with Lanesville TV, one of the first unlicensed TV stations, throughout the 1970s. Role in founding Videofreex Teasdale attended the Woodstock music festival during the summer of 1969 where he met and became friends with future Videofreex co-founder David Cort. Both having brought video equipment, the pair collaborated in filming the festival, placing emphasis on the crowds rather than the musical performers in their footage. After an unsuccessful attempt to sell the Woodstock tapes to the CBS news program ''60 Minutes'', Teasdale moved to Manhattan to found Videofreex along with Cort and Cort's then-girlfriend Curtis Ratcliff (Boyle 1997, p. 15). CBS executive Don West quickly became interested in the newly formed group's work, particularly their portrayals of youth and 1960s counterculture. He funded the shooting of the pilot of a new program ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pirate Television
A pirate television station is a broadcast television station that operates without a broadcast license. Like its counterpart pirate radio, the term pirate TV lacks a specific universal interpretation. It implies a form of broadcasting that is unwelcome by the licensing authorities within the territory where its signals are received, especially when the country of transmission is the same as the country of reception. When the area of transmission is not a country, or when it is a country and the transmissions are not illegal, those same broadcast signals may be deemed illegal in the country of reception. Pirate television stations may also be known as "bootleg TV", or confused with licensed low-power broadcasting (LPTV) or amateur television (ATV) services. History The apparently first pirate TV station in the US was Lanesville TV, active between 1972-1977 and operated by the counter-cultural video collective the Videofreex from Lanesville, New York. Another documented pirate TV ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Curtis Ratcliff
Mary Curtis Ratcliff (born 1942) is an American visual artist. Early life Mary Curtis Ratcliff was born in Chicago and grew up in Birmingham, Michigan. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1967. She moved to New York, living with artist David Cort on Rivington Street. After Cort met Parry Teasdale while shooting video at Woodstock in 1969, the three founded a collective which came to be known as the Videofreex. The group's early endeavors included covering countercultural subjects in Manhattan and California, and a trip to Chicago to interview Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman and Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, providing an alternate perspective to that of mainstream television. This footage was hastily compiled into a pilot for a prospective CBS television magazine series titled ''Subject to Change''. However, after an unconventional screening at the Videofreex loft in lower Manhattan, network executives declined ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TVTV (video Collective)
TVTV (short for Top Value Television) was a San Francisco-based video collective that produced documentary video works using guerrilla art techniques. History The group was founded in 1972 by Allen Rucker, Michael Shamberg, Tom Weinberg, Hudson Marquez, and Megan Williams. Shamberg was the author of the 1971 "do-it-yourself" video production manual '' Guerrilla Television'' TVTV pioneered the use of independent video based on the new and then-revolutionary media, ½" Sony Portapak video equipment, later embracing the ¾" video format. In 1975 the group left San Francisco for Los Angeles, where it took up a contract with PBS to shoot ''Supervisions'', a series of short tapes on television history. The group disbanded in 1979. Their last production was ''TVTV: Diary of the Video Guerillas''. Members Over the years, more than thirty "guerrilla video" makers were participants in TVTV productions. They included members of the Ant Farm (Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Hudson Marquez, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skip Blumberg
Skip Blumberg (born October 10, 1947) is one of the original camcorder-for-broadcast TV producers, and among the first wave of video artists in the 1970s. His early work reflects the era's emphasis on guerrilla tactics and medium-specific graphics, but his more recent work takes on more global issues. His work has screened widely on television and at museums. His video Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch Show (1981) is considered a classic documentary video and was included in the Museum of Television and Radio's exhibition TV Critics' All-time Favorite Shows. His cultural documentaries and performance videos have been broadcast on PBS, National Geographic TV, Showtime, Bravo, Nickelodeon, among others. He was a part of the early video collective Videofreex. He is currently producing works for The My Hero Project. and Sesame Street along with various independent productions. Works * When I was a Worker Like Lavern, 1976 - An early example of Blumberg's personal documentary appro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Data Bank
Video Data Bank (VDB) is an international video art distribution organization and resource in the United States for videos by and about contemporary artists. Located in Chicago, Illinois, VDB was founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement. VDB provides experimental video art, documentaries made by artists, and interviews with visual artists and critics for a wide range of audiences. These include microcinemas, moving image festivals, media arts centers, universities, libraries, museums, community-based workshops, public television, and cable TV Public-access television centers. Video Data Bank currently holds over 6,000 titles in distribution, by more than 600 artists, available in a variety of screening and archival video formats. It also actively publishes anthologies and curated programs of video art. The preservation of historic video is an ongoing project of the Video Data Bank. The total holdings, including wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Shamberg
Michael Shamberg (born 1945?) is an American film producer and former Time–Life correspondent. Life and career His credits include ''Erin Brockovich'', ''A Fish Called Wanda'', '' Garden State'', ''Gattaca'', ''Pulp Fiction'' and '' The Big Chill''. His production companies include Jersey Films, with Stacey Sher Stacey Sher (born November 30, 1962) is an American film producer. Early life Sher was born to a Jewish family in New York City and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She graduated and got her bachelor's degree from University of Southern Cal ... and Danny DeVito, and, , Double Feature Films, with Stacey Sher. In the 1960s and 1970s, counter-culture video collectives extended the role of the underground press to new communication technologies. In 1970, Shamberg co-founded a video collective called Raindance Corporation, which published a newspaper-magazine called Radical Software. Raindance Corporation later became TVTV (video collective), TVTV, or Top Value Te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portapak
A Portapak is a battery-powered, self-contained video tape analog recording system. Introduced to the market in 1967, it could be carried and operated by one person. Earlier television cameras were large and heavy, required a specialized vehicle for transportation, and were mounted on a pedestal. The Portapak made it possible to shoot and record video easily outside of the studio without requiring a crew. Although it recorded at a lower quality than television studio cameras, the Portapak was adopted by both professionals and amateurs as a new method of video recording. Before Portapak cameras, remote television news footage was routinely photographed on 16mm film and telecined for broadcast. The first portapak system, the Sony DV-2400 Video Rover, was a two-piece set consisting of a black-and-white composite video video camera and a separate record-only helical scan ½″ video tape recorder (VTR) unit. It required a Sony CV series VTR (such as the CV-2000) to play back the vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abbie Hoffman
Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ("Yippies") and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponent of the Flower Power movement. As a member of the Chicago Seven, Hoffman was charged with and tried―for activities during the 1968 Democratic National Convention―for conspiring to use interstate commerce with intent to incite a riot and crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot under the anti-riot provisions of Title X of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Five of the Chicago Seven defendants, including Hoffman, were convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot; all of the convictions were vacated after an appeal and the U.S. Department of Justice declined to pursue another trial. Hoffman, along with all of the defendants and their attorneys were also convicted and sentenced for contempt of court by the judge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional electronic products, the largest video game console company and the largest video game publisher. Through Sony Entertainment Inc, it is one of the largest music companies (largest music publisher and second largest record label) and the third largest film studio, making it one of the most comprehensive media companies. It is the largest technology and media conglomerate in Japan. It is also recognized as the most cash-rich Japanese company, with net cash reserves of ¥2 trillion. Sony, with its 55 percent market share in the image sensor market, is the largest manufacturer of image sensors, the second largest camera manufacturer, and is among the semiconductor sales leaders. It is the world's largest player in the premium TV market for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Three Television Networks
In the United States, there are three major traditional commercial broadcast television networks — CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), NBC (National Broadcasting Company), and ABC (American Broadcasting Company) — that due to their longevity and ratings success are referred to as the "Big Three." They dominated American television until the 1990s and are still considered major U.S. broadcast companies. Backgrounds The National Broadcasting Company and Columbia Broadcasting System were both founded as radio networks in the 1920s, with NBC eventually encompassing two national radio networks, the prestige Red Network and the lower-profile Blue Network. They gradually began experimental television stations in the 1930s, with commercial broadcasts being allowed by the Federal Communications Commission on July 1, 1941. In 1943, the U.S. government determined that NBC's two-network setup was anticompetitive and forced it to spin off one of the networks; NBC chose to sell th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
