Arts + Public Life and Film Studies Center are hosting a 6-part film exhibition series this winter, We Tell: Fifty Years of Participatory Media. The series chronicles the hidden histories of place-based documentaries that situate their collaborative practices in specific locales, communities, and needs for social and political change, featuring non-fiction videos produced collaboratively by community media producers/centers from across the US between 1967 - 2017.
Curated by Louis Massiah (Scribe Video Center) and Patricia R. Zimmermann (Ithaca College) with archive research by the XFR Collective, the exhibition is organized into six thematic programs: Body Publics; Collaborative Knowledges; Environments of Race and Place; Wages of Work; States of Violence; and Turf. Each of the thematic programs is organized chronologically to show development of ideas, media technologies, and politics. The screenings will take place from Jan - Mar 2020 at the Logan Center and the Green Line Performing Arts Center.
Our plan is to situate these historic materials in the ongoing work of community media-making in Chicago, and in the larger conversation about the role of participatory media in social movements. Each program includes a guest speaker to connect the themes to Chicago communities, with conversation moderated by a UChicago to provide additional context.
Presented with generous support from the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture.
Thursday, January 16, 2020, 7PM
States of Violence
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
915 E 60th St, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Hosted by Jacqueline Stewart (UChicago) with guests Louis Massiah (Scribe Video Center), and Maira Khwaja (Invisible Institute)
Debates and politics surrounding the American criminal justice system are extremely complex, involving stories of evidence, interpretation, policies, and laws that can center around just one case. States of Violence approaches this urgent topic from those directly affected by crime, incarceration, police, and war. From the 1970s to the present day, this program demonstrates how participatory community media has produced scalable documentaries in the name of creating an engaging communal discourse for better sociocultural understandings as well as tangible progressions toward political change.
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Thursday, January 30, 2020, 7PM
Environments of Race and Place
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
915 E 60th St, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Hosted by Susan Gzesh (UChicago) with guest Alaka Wali (Field Museum)
This program zeroes in on issues surrounding immigration, migration, and racial identities unique to specific environments. These works embrace and amplify the micro rather than the macro in scope. They move from the national to the hyperlocal, advocating that understanding conflicts and contradictions can lead to change. Discussions of police brutality in Third World Newsreel’sBlack Panther a.k.a. Off the Pig or animations about toxic pollution made by the Indigenous youth media collective Outta Your Backpack expand conceptualizations of the range of participatory community media and the varieties of forms environmental media inhabits.
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Thursday, February 6, 2020, 7PM
Body Publics
Green Line Performing Arts Center
329 E Garfield Blvd, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Hosted by Judy Hoffman (UChicago) with guests Sarah Oberholtzer (Free Spirit Media) and Alex Halkin (Chiapas Media Project and Americas Media Initiative - AMI)
The "Body Publics" collection of films focuses on controversial issues surrounding public health and sexualities. It exposes the ailments from within and the diseases from the outside. These works unpack how access or lack of access to various forms of healthcare affects people from many different ethnicities and identities. Some works also probe concerns of the LGBTQIA community. Body Publics also looks at institutions that either inhibit or advance affordable and accessible health care. From the 1970s to the 1990s, shorts like HSA Strike from Kartemquin Films, Diabetes: Notes from Indian Countryfrom Beverly Singer, and Nature’s Way from Appalshop chronicle continued advocacy by citizens for control of their own bodies and health.
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Thursday Februrary 20, 2020, 7PM
Wages of Work
Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
915 E 60th St, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Hosted by Salome Skvirsky (UChicago) with guests Patricia R. Zimmermann (Ithaca College), and Andrew Friend (filmmaker)
Citizens and communities approach issues surrounding job opportunities, occupations, wages, unemployment, and underemployment in a myriad of ways. They engage in union organizing. They reclaim stories about what is not spoken, repressed, or suppressed. They launch political protests. Wages of Work spotlights people from across the United States operating under various restraints on making a living. Focusing on labor and work, this program showcases shorts like I’m NOT on the Menu, which profiles Chicago fast-food workers marching on McDonald’s headquarters during a nationwide walkout to protest sexual harassment, and Los Trabajadores, made by Scribe and CATA (El Comite de Apoyo a Los Trabajadores Agricolas), which reveals the day-to-day experiences of mushroom farm laborers in Pennsylvania.
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Thursday, February 27, 2020, 7PM
Collaborative Knowledges
Green Line Performing Arts Center
329 E Garfield Blvd, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Hosted by Jacqueline Stewart (UChicago) with guests Carmel Curtis (XFR Collective) and Margaret Caples (Community Film Workshop of Chicago)
The "Collaborative Knowledges" collection of films focuses on inter-generational dialogues as a way to reclaim history and knowledge in people rather than in institutions. This program features videos that unearth lost knowledge and histories; elaborate shared experiences; and document traditions and practices of storytelling. This program includes shorts from community media centers such as Appalshop in Kentucky; Paper Tiger TV in NYC; and Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia. These groups view participatory community media making as a tool for self-expression, education, and social and political change.
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Thursday, March 12, 2020, 7PM
Turf
Green Line Performing Arts Center
329 E Garfield Blvd, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Hosted by Allyson Field (UChicago) with guests Angela Aguayo (SIU, author of Documentary Resistance), Denise Zaccardi (Community TV Network), Anton Seals Jr. (community organizer) and Gordon Quinn (Kartemquin Films)
The works in the "Turf" collection dig out the complexities and politics of gentrification, homelessness, housing, and the significance of urban spaces for democratic participation. The projects span cities such as Braddock, Pennsylvania; Detroit; Houston; New Orleans; New York City; Philadelphia; San Francisco; and Seattle. The videos in Turf reveal that cities have transformed into battlegrounds between communities and those in power who would take land and space to expand economic and political power.
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