TeleVISIONS (January 1978)

9 REVIEWS The 1977-78 Bread Game poster published by the Museums Collaborative is again available for those who would like to keep posted on federal funding deadlines for museums, zoos, botanical gardens, historical societies and for dance, music, theatre, crafts, film, video and architecture programs. Individual copies may be purchased from Museums Collaborative, Inc. 655 Madison Avenue. NY, NY 10021. Do not send cash. Bulk orders will be billed and the cost goes down. 11-25 copies—2.00; 26-50—1.00; 51-100—.70; 100 on—.60. Telephone (212) 688-9808 Media Grantees $189,000 from the Bush Foundation to The Chicago Educational Televisions Association to complete program series Look At Me, on parenting and child development. $25,000 from the Kazanjian Economics Foundation to Saint Louis Educational Television Commission, for a series of programs on basic economics for primary level children. $5,000 from the Gerbode Foundation to the Institute for Aesthetic Development, to develop San Francisco Bar Area Museum-Television project. The Project will bring together museums and television to produce PSA's, mini-programs, and museum magazine series as a national model of collaboration. $11,310 from the Gannett Newspaper Foundation to Howard University, School of Communications, to purchase editing-production equipment for electronic journalism laboratory. $25,000 from the Edward E. Ford Foundation to the Fund for Theatre and Film, NYC for audiovisual presentations dealing with occupational health and safety for use by workers, unions, and plant management. $25,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to Children’s Television Workshop for development of teaching materials in dental health. $10,000 from the Davis Foundation to KQEE to underwrite early research and development costs of new religious series for public television. Series title: In Quest of the Sacred. $284,500 from the Spencer Foundation to The University of Kansas, Lawrence for study of the effects of formal features of children's television programs on development of attention, comprehension, and behavior. $50,000 from the Polaroid foundation to the AmericanSouth African Study and Educational Trust, Johannesburg for charitable, cultural, educational, or medica! causes in South Africa. $529,505 from the Kellogg Foundation to Jackson State University, Jackson, MS to strengthen Programs in telecommunications and film. $160,000 from the Ford Foundation to the United Church of Christ, Office of Communications to reduce racial and sex discrimination in television and radio programming and employment. $20,000 from the Sloan Foundation to Community Television of Southern California toward support of research and development phase of public television series on astronomy called Man and the Cosmos. $100,000 from the Sloan Foundation to Public Communication Foundation for North Texas, toward production of public television series on free enterprise economic system called The American Gift Photo: Leonard Rizzi photo: KSTW-TV Speak out moderator, John Lippman interviews a citizen at Seattle’s Pike Place market. “Speak Out” in Seattle By ERIC CARLSON The camera frames the figure of an elderly man in working clothes. It moves in slowly as he begins to speak nervously in a heavy, Scandanavian accent. People come and go in the background. He is 69 years old, we learn, and he’s ready to retire. He’s got alittle dairy farm he’s worked for forty years and he wants to subdivide it now, suburban style, so he can finally relax a little. But the county won't allow his project because of some recent land use regulations. The story unravels in his own words with minimal questions asked by the reporter. It looks like it might be the beginning of a public affairs program on land use planning or perhaps a segue from a network special on aging but in fact it’s just one, five minute unedited portion of a new, half hour public affairs programming concept called Speak Out, which is being aired by Seattle/Tacoma’s independent commercial station, KSTW. Speak Out Features mobile production and a public access format and has been on the air weekly, Sundays during prime time since last Fall. John Lippman, news director for KSTW and _ producer/moderator of Speak Out, conceived the program as a mobile public forum, reaching a diverse group of people, and so far he has succeeded in attaining his objectives. Shows have been shot at locations including a county fair, and Seattle’s Pike Place Market, and his guests/speakers have ranged from gum snapping girls living in a foster home, and farmers like the dairyman caught up in bureaucracy to bureaucrats like a local school superintendent talking about taxes—all presenting themselves and their views with little prompting from Lippman who has also scrupulously refrained from editing their natural hesitations in speaking when each show is aired. What brought a program like Speak Out to prime time television? According to Lippman, when Gaylord Broadcasting was negotiating for the purchase of the station about two years ago market research and general ascertainment interviews for the FCC indicated substantial support for public access style programming. Lippman had already done some research on public access and was favorably inclined in that direction himself so when the FCC required 2 hours of prime time public affairs programming as a condition for the purchase of the station the die was cast. The clincher for Speak Out’s format came when the station finally acquired.a mini mobile production unit earlier this year, allowing the remote set ups, which Lippman had been looking for all along. Lippman has been pleased with the program so far but has hopes for more ambitious shows in the near future, including a program originating from the Washington State Penitentiary. Now that public access programming on cable TV is no longer required programs like Speak Out may be the best and perhaps only opportunity for citizens to be seen and heard in electronic media without the inevitable editorial brackets which seem to come with conventional commercial news and public affairs programming. Eric Carlson is an architect in Seattle and a video consultant in environmental design. “Structural Realism” By SARAH ORDOVER A video documentary which opened the New Filmmakers series at the Whitney museum is now on view at The Kitchen in New York. Revolve, produced by Nancy Holt, is an interview with Dennis Wheeler, a video artist and leukemia victim who has managed to overcome his illness. Using Wheeler’s studio in Vancouver, Holt succeeds in her attempt to bring this interview out of the forum of documentary and into the realm of art. Verite in approach, Revolve’s form is what David Stern, the Kitchen’s director, calls “structural realism.” Through repetition in editing, different gestures, phrases and sentences are emphasized. By repeating a moment, as a composer would a refrain, Holt is able to underscore thematic ideas from Wheeler's conversation. Revolve is a video portrait, a look at death through one man’s eyes. In an hour and ten minutes, Wheeier describes his comprehensions of death, both when he was at its edge and now, as aman with leukemia who must deal with death everyday. His metaphors continually change, describing his feeling of dying as a pancake on a clothesline, the light from a desk lamp, or a dark undifferentiated form. Wheeler asks that his audience “meditate through points of view...the death experience in its pain and orgasm.” Beyond the pictures of death Wheeler draws for us, are the pictures of Wheeler Ms. Holt supplies. She also asks us to meditate through points of view, and Wheeler's dialogue is the perfect vehicle for her artistry. Revolve derives its name from the essence of Wheeler’s experience, found in his attitude towards death as an inevitable part of a larger cycle. Using three cameras mounted on tripods, the portrait of Wheeler slowly revolves in concert with the circular pattern of his thoughts. There are three primary shot positions, a front desk shot, a profile shot and an over the shoulder shot, usually of Wheelers hands or the typewriter he is sitting behind. All three cameras recorded the entire interview from these triangular positions and the tapes were later edited into a whole. This is the second video piece by Ms. Holt, a recent convert from film. Her first video production, Underscan, also available at the Kitchen, is a kinostasic journey into the life of her Aunt Ethel, an elderly widow who lived in New Bedford, Mass. Excerpts from the aunt’s letters are read while a montage of photographs depicting Aunt Ethel’s environs are underscanned by the camera. The difference in sophistication between the two pieces is outstandingly visible. Underscan, 8 minutes long, is arelatively insignificant work but viewed along with Revolve, gives you tremendous insight into her progress as a video artist. Revolve was made possible through a multitude of grants, including the Kitchen, National Endowment for the Arts, the Sonnabend Gallery, and the New York State Council for the Arts. JUMP CUT providing in-depth analyses of new films JUMP o UT developing a radical film criticism JUMP cur 6 issues $4.00 po box 865 berkeley ca 94701