Community Video Report (Summer 1974)

ye 2:community action Alaska’s Sky River Project : community use of video and film By Ray Popkin The use of video and film as tools for social change has long been exemplified by the work ’ of Challenge for Change, a communications project funded by the National Film Board of Canada. Tim Kennedy, current Director of Challenge for Change gave a talk in Washington recently at a seminar presented by the Information Center on Instructional Technology. His talk was about the Sky River Project in Alaska and though this particular project was in the United States, funded by O.E.O., it was modeled on the NFB experience. His experiences in Alaska and with NFB in Canada are well worth studying as they shed light on what the video process can be. Kennedy is a community organizer, not a filmmaker or video person. He worked in an Eskimo village for two-and-a-half years before using video there. All Challenge for Change projects use a community organizer before the video process begins. Media people—no matter how sensitive—have a habit of defining community needs in terms of how these needs can serve the purpose of introducing video into the community. The organizer focuses on whether and how media can fit into the community process. He might decide that the media won't fit into that process at all. Kennedy points out that the incentive to undertake projects must come from the people in the community. “First of all I do not believe an organizer should step into undertaking a program. The organizer should only be involved with a community that has made a specific request for assistance. It is one thing to make communities aware that you’re available and what you can do, and its another thing to impose your self on the community.” The Skyriver project was centered in Emmonak, a small Eskimo village. For the first year video was used in the community as a feedback tool for the villagers. During this period local people learned to use video and taped each other. These tapes were played at community meetings. The importance of this process was that it brought various factions in the village together. Young people and old people, Yukon people and Tundra people began to meet together to watch the video tapes and discuss the issues presented. The fact that they were reacting to the video tapes on the screen instead of to each other face to face gave people a safe space to operate in. People felt less threatened in reacting to the tapes than they would in reacting directly to each other. Out of this process came a concensus on certain issues. One the villagers agreed on the important issues and the communications process they wished to use, Kennedy brought in a film crew. Kennedy feels that film is a more powerful medium. for displaying the material to people outside the community; much of the material to be used to try to effect change in policy at the state level was recorded on film. Volume 2, Number 1 Summer, 1974 A quarterly publication of the Washington Community Video Center, Inc., 2414 18th Street, N.W., P.O. Box 21068, Washington, D.C. 20009. Phone: [202] 462-6700. Staff Collective: Victoria Costello, Nick DeMartino, Ray Popkin, Grady Watts, Jr., Gerardine ._Wurzburg. CVR Editor: Nick DeMartino. Copy editing: Frances Lang. Contributing editor: Becky Clary. Reporters this issue: Pege Gilgannon, Neil Goldstein. Community To facilitate the process the village selected their own organizer to work with Kennedy and the film crew. From here on in the whole process was completely controlled by the village. In meetings they voted on the issues they wished to raise and then selected a village spokesman, one whom they respected and felt could best reflect the feelings of the people on that subject. The spokesman decided where and when the film interview would take place and what would come out in it. [ilustrations courtesy of Access, Challenge for Change newsletter death would have on a child away at school. In Eskimo culture it is important that the whole family be present when one member is sick and nearing death so that it can understand what has happened and why. This film was taken to a meeting with the State Education Commissioner at which other nearby villagers were present. The film not only profoundly affected the officials but also the other villagers. After seeing someone like themselves with the same education and In each film the spokesman raises and offers a solution to a particular problem. The film rushes are then under the control of the person filmed. No one else sees them until the spokesman gets to view them and decide if they represent what he or she wanted to say. The editing is done in the presence of the spokesman under his or her control. When the spokesman is satisfied with the film, he or she signs a release allowing it to be shown to the rest of the village, which then discusses the film and decides whether or not it reflects the views of the community. Other members of the village can add to the film at this time if they feel more information is needed. When a consensus is reached the village signs a release for the film to be shown to specific people whom they select. The film that Kennedy showed to us in Washington was one of the best examples of community process media involvement I have seen. For example: in Alaska most Eskimo teenagers have been sent to the American mainland for high school because there were no highschools in the sparsely populated parts of Alaska. State officials felt that this program was satisfactory to the Eskimos. In the film on this subject the spokesman explained that in fact this was a great hardship on the people, not only because of the separation involved but because the children were needed at home to help. The film also pointed out that the kids forgot the Eskimo culture, while they were away. In addition, it explained the parents’ fears about the impact a parent’s eport This publication is typeset and laid out at The GW Composition Shop, George Washington University, and printed at Carroll County Times, Westminster, Md. Deadline for fallissue: October 1. Andre Monpetit background on film, the people lined up at the microphone to give support to the views expressed. The film was then taken to the capital of Alaska and shown to legislators. The village organizer took the video with him and taped the response of these officials to play back in the village. The villagers learned a new sense of power, because their actions obtained results. Emmonak now has its own regional high school and many more are scheduled to be built in other villages. Currently all the whites in the film crew have been phased out, as an all native crew has taken over. Though Tim Kennedy has gone, the process is still going strong under the impetus of the local people. In his talk, Kennedy pointed out one difficult part of the process which many in film and community video have experienced. This is the emotional problem of the media producers having to adapt to loss of control of the medium. It is not easy to sit at an editing table and watch all the best shots thrown in the trash, or to have to wait six months for the fishing season to be over before the material can be screened. Often this problem leads to deep conflicts between the crew and the community. A crew must understand that the product is secondary to the process. In Kennedy’s article on this subject in the Challenge For Change newsletter, he discusses the importance of the organizer and crew’s attitude toward the community they serve. He J8{YSIIN BIO discusses the distinctions between pity, sympathy and empathy. He describes pity as hearing about how horrible a problem is, discussing it and then just walking away. Sympathy involves imposing your own solutions onto a problem, from a position of uninvolvement. “Now, the third thing, Empathy,” he writes. “I feel the process we have developed in Skyriver, and what is happening in Challenge For Change, are good examples of Empathy because it takes involvement. It takes commitment which has to be done on the people’s own terms. It has to be openended and the people must have complete control over it.” Most documentaries evoke only pity; they do not present viewers with alternatives for action. In projects like Skyriver, media processes are used to enable communities to find solutions for themselves. For more information and copies of the newsletter, write to Challenge For Change, National Film Board of Canada, P.O. Box 6100, Montreal 101, Quebec. Challenge to WMAL sale probable (WMAL, from page 1) A bill currently pending in the Congress would extend the license renewal period from three to five years and make it more difficult for existing licenses to be challenged by community groups or potential competitors. The Justice Department has urged the FCC to rule existing cross-ownership arrangements illegal on the basis of anti-trust principles. The issue is one of several priorities currently facing the Commission. Licenses for D.C. broadcasters will come up for review in 1975. However, citizen groups have a much better chance of getting a broadcaster to agree to policy changes during a station transfer period than at license-renewal time. This is true primarily because a new owner is often willing to make concessions to the community so that the business deal will be completed—often by the end of a given tax year. At the present time the Nationa! Organization for Women has a petition to deny the license of WRC-TV because of hiring discrimination pending before the FCC. Interest in D.C. in the WMAL/Star transfer has thus far been expressed by several community groups: e The D.C. Chapter of National Organization of Women; e The Communications Committee of the Adams-Morgan Organization, which has called a meeting on the issue for Aug. 1 at 8 p.m. at the Video Center. Other interested groups may wish to contact NOW leader Kathy Bonk at 739-5128, or attend the AMO meeting at the Video Center.