During the 1960s and ‘70s, a little known and mostly forgotten media revolution called Guerrilla Television, built around the new medium of videotape, allowed marginalized groups— women, people of color, queer people, youth, poor people, political radicals—to create sprawling archives of tapes documenting local concerns, local struggles, and local triumphs.
Over the past few years, the Department of Cinema and Media Studies has paired with Media Burn and the University of Chicago Library system to conduct a massive preservation, restoration, and digitization project of this history. This project culminates in a conference on April 19-21 at the Film Studies Center. Along with public screenings, there will be panels and conversations featuring the video artists and activists involved in the original Guerrilla Television movement; archivists working to preserve this legacy; and scholars whose work focuses on community-based video making.
For more information about the conference, as well as a list of upcoming screenings in the Chicago area featuring material preserved through this project, see: https://mediaburn.org/events/guerrilla-television-the-revolutions-of-early-independent-video/
We look forward to seeing you there!