This morning I watched two documentaries about the sixties that were structured around the reminiscences of senior citizens (like me) who were radicals back then. One titled “Here Come the Videofreex” opens today at the IFC Center in NY and tells the story of the pioneering efforts of a video-making collective of the same name to record some of the most important events and personalities of the period using the Sony CV-2400 Porta Pak, the first hand-held camcorder to hit the market. The other is a Youtube video titled “Activist State” that allows veterans of the San Francisco State student strike of 1968 to reflect on the struggle and its lingering impact on student activism. It was made by Jonathan Craig, who during his junior year of college in 2008-2009 developed and produced it on behalf of the broadcast department at San Francisco State University.
Sometimes when I am watching films such as these, I have to step back and consider how far we have travelled chronologically. With the Videofreex collective getting started in 1968, the same year as the SF student strike, you are talking about a nearly half-century in the past. It would be around the same timespan as between the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the events that the Videofreex, SF State activists and my entry into the Trotskyist movement. I try to imagine what it would have been like for Lenin and his band of merry revolutionaries to have camcorders on hand in the Smolny Institute or for Farrell Dobbs to have them in Minneapolis in 1934. It makes my head spin. full: https://louisproyect.org/2016/03/09/videofreex-activist-state/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
