Global Village
   1969 -
   New York City

About Global Village
Introduction - Fourth Annual Video and Television Documentary Festival

About Global Village
Global Village, the first independent video group in the United States, was founded in 1969. It is a non-profit video production group and major media center engaged in production for national public television and offering a variety of services as a media center. It is supported with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Sony Corporation of America, subscriptions, student fees, and donations. We have recently been awarded a Challenge Grant, a rare honor for a Media Center.

Our current activities include the following:
 -Global Village offers three of the most intensive video workshops available in the country: the Intensive Video Workshop, the Video Workshop in Electronic Editing and the Internship Program. Sponsored by the New School for Social Research, they are taught by John Reilly, Julie Gustafson, Susan Landry and Jonathan Brandeis. Hands-on portions of the workshops are directed by Susan Landry and Jonathan Brandeis.
 -We've successfully completed our "Ten Cities Public Television Workshops in Video Cassette Systems", a series of ten workshop/seminars conducted at public television stations with independent video and film producers and station personnel in attendance. The workshops were conducted by John Reilly, Julie Gustafson, and Karen Mooney. We have begun a second series entitled "The Independent Producer, Public Television, and the New Video Technologies"
for representatives of public television and independents in six citiesthe first seminar was at the Museum of Modern Art attended by 300 people.
 -Julie Gustafson and John Reilly are completing a new '/4-inch color work about the family and aimed for public television. They have received support for the project from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council on Humanities. We also received funds from the New Jersey Humanities Commission and WNET to do a program on "The Pinebarrens". Soundperson is Nathaniel Merrill.
 -Global Village has recently initiated a videotape and film distribution service for "Giving birth: Four Portraits." As the distribution becomes more established we will handle other Global Village works and perhaps the works of other artists. Initial mailings are approaching 10,000.
 -In addition to our annual documentary festival, our "Video and Film Series" offers biweekly screenings of the finest video and flm works, with artists present. The emphasis is on the documentary format and on strong works in other genres.
 -We are also distributing the "Ten Cities Public Television Workshops in Video Cassette Systems Workbook" and our second year's manual "The Independent Producer, Public Television and the New Video Technologies: A Resource Book," a 167 page manual dealing with all aspects of%-inch cassette equipment-use, application, and broadcast interface.
 -Global Village is editing Videoscope (incorporating Radical Software), a quarterly magazine published by Gordon and Breach. Issues include "Video in New York State", "The Future of Public Television", "Electronic Journalism" and the Media Center issue. John Reilly is Editor-in-Chief and Karen Mooney is Associate and Managing Editor. Through a thoughtful publication of new information and experience relating to small-format video, we feel the video medium can be strengthened in its social, cultural and artistic applications. We hope you will read, contribute and subscribe.
 -Our Guest Artist Program provides an opportunity for video artists and others who are interested in the medium to explore their ideas in our four-camera studio. They are supplied with a producer/director who is a member of the Global Village staff, and a full crew selected from the Global Village Video Study Center workshops.
 -Barbara. Mayfield, program coordinator of the festival and office manager, and Steven Schindler, technician, have joined us at Global Village.
 

Introduction - Fourth Annual Video and Television Documentary Festival

Global Village is pleased to present our Fourth Annual Documentary Festival -this year expanded from a video documentary festival to a video and television documentary festival. We feel that the documentary genre provides many of the most extraordinary and rewarding moments in American television. It comes closest to fulfilling the potential of television to provide for something other than a babysitter of the mind . . . . In the expansion of the festival from a video to a video and television event we recognize the increasing interaction of both the independent film and video makers with public television. (And we hope later commercial television). Almost all of the best documentaries on public television have been from independent producers. Witness the extraordinary success of Alan and Susan Raymond’s “The Police Tapes”, winning an Emmy, a Peabody, the Columbia Dupont Journalism awards and others. It is to the great credit of public television that it found an early and direct route -co-production of the work of the Raymond’s, Downtown Community Television, Global Village, Nam June Paik, Ed Emshwiller and others. For this, David Loxton and Carol Brandenburg of the TV Lab, and WNET are to be commended.

In the past four years much of outstanding American documentary work has emerged from the independent producer, with an enlightened public television station providing an opportunity for the work to be produced and aired. Among others in this category of the festival are three from the new VISA series of WNET-”Media Shuttle: N.Y.-Moscow” by Dimitri Devyatkin and Nam June Paik “Paris a la carte” by Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn, and “Vietnam: Picking Up the Pieces” by Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno; Kaddish” by Arthur Ginsberg is out of WNET, and “Making Television Dance” is a collaboration between Twyla Tharp and WNET/Channel 13’s TV Lab. “God Gives You Years” by Bob and Nancy Thurber is out of WPBT, Miami. “Small Visions” by Susan Landry and Deborah Perlberg is a co-production of Global Village and WXXI in Rochester. The Vietnam show, recently aired on the PBS network, is perhaps the most controversial of these. This highly personal excursion into Vietnamese territories by DCTV set off journalists and viewers alike in a contemporary dialogue reminiscent of the war years’ debates.

This year in recognition of some of the more outstanding efforts by public and commercial television producers, we are presenting works that were made for television either on film or on tape and produced by the stations. In this category are “Sex for Sale’, an ABC network presentation by executive producer Pamela Hill; “Even the Desert Will Bloom” produced by WXXI, Rochester, executive director William Berg; “Plutonium: Element of Risk” produced by KCET, Los Angeles, executive producer Don Widener; and “Mr. Speaker: A Portrait of Tip O’Neill” by WGBH, Boston, executive producer Nancy Porter.

“Mr. Speaker”, “Even the Desert Will Bloom” and “Plutonium” are all New York first showings at Global Village. They have not been aired on WNET or WNYC, although they were funded from the CPB-PBS Revolving Documentary Fund. The one million dollar Revolving Documentary Fund represents a major effort of CPB and PBS to solve the problem of selling documentaries to member stations prior to production. The fund is viewed by most participants in the field as a significant step in nurturing the documentary form. However, difficulty in distribution methods remains to be solved. These programs have not been uniformly purchased by the station program cooperative for a variety of reasons and the viewing potential of these documentaries has not been fully realized.

The plutonium work generated much controversy because PBS refused to air it nationally for failure to reach PBS standards of documentary journalism. Needless to say, the station and its producers disagree. We are eager to show it in New York, to give ourselves and viewers alike a’ chance to see what the controversy is about.

The O’Neill work, a provocative and revealing cinema verite portrait of the Speaker of the House, is exceptional and deserves particular attention-for it strikes a balance between praise and damnation that’s difficult to achieve when dealing with public figures.

Some of the other works that provide insight into our human condition are: the lyrical portrait of India “Snapshots For an Indian Day” by Bob and Ingrid Wiegand; “Mom 3/2/22-11 /11 /77”, a difficult to look at portrayal of the artist’s mother’s death; an excerpt of --the legendary James Blue’s “Who Killed Fourth Ward?”; and Alex Bennett’s “Midnight Blue Goes to the Movies”, sex with a sense of humor. The extraordinarily powerful “Kaddish” by Art Ginsberg about Allen Ginsberg deserves special attention as does “God Gives You Years”, the latest, award-winning work by two of America’s best independents, Bob and Nancy Thurber. There are many others of interest as well, and we are pleased to present them to you in the festival.

A few personal observations-in addition to thanks to Barbara Mayfield, Karen Mooney, Charles Addotta, Julie Gustafson, Lee Strobing, Steve Schindler and Millner Bros. for their hard work on the festival and festival brochure, and Steve Heller for his magnificent art direction, I would like to present a few Global Village citations for excellence in the following:

To Ted Conant for his aid to Global Village over the past two years as a member of our Board of Directors; to Barbara London for invaluable assistance in making The Independent Producer and Public Television conference at the Museum of Modern Art possible; to Dick Ellison for his friendship and dedicated work at PBS; to Susan and Alan Raymond for speaking up about the importance of independent producers during their time in the limelight; to Frank Lloyd for telling Jimmy Carter that the independent exists; to Congressman Van Deerlin for reporting out the best public television legislation ever; to Brian O’Doherty for his efforts on behalf of film and video makers in America; for Lydia Silman for her seven-year struggle on behalf of video makers in New York State; to Dave MacDonald of the Sony Corporation of America for providing a unique opportunity to work with professional equipment in our Independent Producer and Public Television workshops; special thanks to all the wonderful people who have welcomed Global Village in their home towns and attended our seminars and workshops; and finally, much appreciation to David Stewart, for quietly helping artists to join together with public television stations and to realize many a dream.
     John Reilly Festival Director

Note: When possible, artists will be present during the showing of their work and will join i7 a general discussion period following the last tape of that evening sequence.
If information is needed concerning distribution of the tape and it is not mentioned in the description, please contact the artist directly.