The Workers Film and Photo League was an American film collective during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
http://leohurwitz.com/movie/detroit-workers-news-special-1932-ford-massacre
Top Value Television (TVTV) was an American video collective during the Swinging Sixties.
https://guerrillatv.bampfa.berkeley.edu
The Dziga Vertov Group was a French film collective in the 1970s started by Jean-Luc Godard and others.
https://ubu.com/film/vertov_lotte.html
The Black Audio Film Collective was started in the UK in 1982 partly as a response to the media coverage of Black unrest in England.
https://ubu.com/film/bafc_handsworth1.html
FROM WEEK 3 DISCUSSION:
The End of Time (Peter Mettler, 2012) is on Amazon Prime. It is an odd documentary that uses a variety vocal montages over nature shots. It is an interesting model for us to think about. Take a look at the film and think about when it works well, and when it doesn’t.
Boats and Trains:
One idea that came up in the discussion was the notion of trains as metaphors for connection and for wandering. Here are two pieces I did recently. They should be seen as sketches, not films. Terminal has all nat sound, and the sound editing was central, the other has unrelated text read over the images. Again, take a look and think about what does and doesn’t work.
Terminal (M. Lucas, 2021)
Madness of Charon (M. Lucas, 2021)
BRITISH DOCUMENTARY & WW2
The documentary movement that John Grierson created in Britain in the 1930s adapted quickly when war came in 1939. One director, Humphrey Jennings (originally a member of the Surrealist Collective) made the film Listen to Britain (1942). I thought it would be interesting for us because it is built around the sounds of British life during World War 2.
FOR WEEK 5
We will be joined on March 4th by folks from the Meerkat Media Collective. Please take a look at their website before class:
FOR WEEK 6
We will be joined March 10th by Kelly Anderson from New Day Film Collective
HERE ARE SOME OF THE FILMS FROM Week 6 (March 11)
Columbia Revolt (Newsreel, 1969)
https://archive.org/details/Columbia1969
Hour of the Furnaces Pt. 1 Neocolonialism and Violence (Solanas & Getino, 1968)
Four More Years (TVTV, 1972)
Fred Hampton Interview Pt. 5 (Videofreex, 1969)
Building a Dome at Earth People’s Park, Woodstock (Videofreex, 1971)
Also check out this page from the Pacific Film Archive:
https://guerrillatv.bampfa.berkeley.edu
PAPER TIGER TELEVISION COLLECTIVE:
https://archive.org/details/mrreadsthestrangecaseofbabysm
FROM WEEK 9
One of the things that came up was avant-garde theater. The Wooster Group produced a piece called The B Side:
http://thewoostergroup.org/the-b-side
And I mentioned a group called Mabou Mines, one of the other avant-garde theater groups doing important work in New York in the 1990s…
Here is a clip from an interview with Lee Breuer, one of the directors:
One of the other subjects we spoke about was migration and images of people who migrate. In the spirit of The Right to the Image I thought this article spoke to forms of depiction, and to public art. And the artist is named “Mask.”
Here is the link to the Black Audio Film Collective film Handsworth Songs. The password is “IMA743”
Collective Production 