Newsreel: Old and New.

Towards An Historical Profile

Author(s): Michael Renov
Source: Film Quarterly , Autumn, 1987, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 20-33
Published by: University of California Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1212325

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 ilyn Bell, a Canadian who was the first person to swim across Lake
Ontario, and "their Marilyn," Marilyn Monroe, whose body
represented an entirely different set of attitudes and assumptions.
The film utilizes archival footage and reenactment to invert the nor-
mal dramatic curve-stressing the middle of Bell's swim over her
setting out or arrival-and to fracture the mythic meanings that
have settled around each of these two Marilyns.
12. If read as exploitative, Gardner's Forest of Bliss contrasts fas-
cinatingly with the highly moralistic Not a Love Story. If Not a Love
Story is an ethnographic pornography, Forest of Bliss is a porno-
graphic ethnography.
13. Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," and
Gaylyn Studlar, "Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the
Cinema," both in Movies and Methods, vol. II (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1985), Hayden White, "The Value of Nar-
rativity in the Representation of Reality," in W. J. T. Mitchell, On
Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
14. Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity," pp. 14-15.
15. Vivian Sobchack in "Inscribing Ethical Space: Ten Proposi-
tions on Death, Representation and Documentary," Quarterly
Review of Film Studies (Fall 1984), describes six different visual
forms in which the encounter of film-maker and death or dying can
be registered, each bearing a distinct set of ethical implications. The
"professional gaze" is one of these.
16. Sobchack, "Inscribing Ethical Space," p. 298. See also Michael
Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American
Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978) which argues that the
"professional" or "objective" code of reportage derives, ironically,
from a loss of faith in the givenness of the world in the post-World
War I environment. If the world is open to manipulation better to
remain apart from it and report "the facts" dissociated from values;
objectivity provides an internal, evaluative code of professional con-
duct independent of the values that can be assigned to the facts
presented.
17. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, pp. 35, 102.
18. Barry King, "Articulating Stardom," p. 45.
19. Vivian Sobchack makes a similar distinction in her own descrip-
tion of the representation of death in cinema: "Thus, when death
is represented as fictive rather than real, when its signs are structured
and stressed so as to function iconically and symbolically, it is un-
derstood that only the simulacrum of a visual taboo is being violat-
ed. However, when death is represented as real, when its signs are
structured and inflected so as to function indexically, a visual taboo
is violated and the representation must find ways to justify the vio-
lation." "Inscribing Ethical Space," p. 291. This is precisely the
strategy of Roses: to offer complex justification for the sight with
which it begins, the disinterment of the four bodies.
20. In contrast to the front-page news of the disaster itself, for
example, the shipment of the recovered remains to Dover Air Force
Base in Delaware for "final treatment in accordance with the fami-
lies' wishes" became a small, two-paragraph item buried on a back
page of the April 25, 1986, New York Times.
I wish to thank Julianne Burton, Vivian Sobchack and Michael
Renov for numerous, extremely valuable comments and sugges-
tions. An earlier reflection on some of the issues presented in this
essay appears in another essay, "Questions of Magnitude," in John
Corner, ed., Documentary and Mass Media (London: Edward
Arnold, 1986).

MICHAEL RENOV

Newsreel: Old and New-

Towards An Historical Profile
Our films remind some people of battle footage:December 1987 will mark the twenty-year anni-
grainy, camera weaving around trying to get the versary of the formation of Newsreel, a radical
material and still not get beaten/trapped. Well, we
film-making collective conceived during the last
and many others, are at war. We not only document
flush of New Left activism. Once boasting
that war, but try to find ways to bring that war to
offices in New York, San Francisco, Boston,
places which have managed so far to buy themselves
isolation from it. . . . Our propaganda is one ofLos Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and Atlanta,
confrontation. Using film-using our voices with and
Newsreel now survives in two versions: Califor-
after films-using our bodies with and without
camera-to provoke confrontation. ... Therefore nia Newsreel, San Francisco, producers and dis-
we keep moving. We keep hacking out films, as tributors of films about the workplace as well
quickly as we can, in whatever way we can. as South Africa and apartheid, with a new fo-
-Robert Kramer, New York Newsreel, 1968'cus on media education (educating Americans
Documentary remains the major form of political about rather than through media); and Third
filmmaking in this country. It has always been andWorld Newsreel, New York, vortex of film and
video activities intended as the cultural inter-
probably will be in the forseeable future. And yet,
there has been very, very little discussion of how
ventions of the disenfranchised. In the following
documentary films actually function. The political
pages, I hope to suggest areas of conceptual as
efficacy of documentary is derived from the relation-
well
ship of the audience to the film-not the relationship as functional continuity and discontinuity
of the filmmaker to the subject. between the two extant Newsreel organizations,
-Larry Daressa, California Newsreel, 19832as well as between the present enterprises and
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 COLUMBIA
REVOLT

(1968):
one of
Newsreel's
first
films

their Newsreel predecessors. In doing so, I seek It is the combination of youthfulness, enthu-
to draw attention both to the achievements of a siasm, and volatility that links the work and
generation of American film activists and to the writing of Dziga Vertov with the first wave of
necessarily altered requirements for survival for Newsreel practitioners. Both were dedicated to
politically committed documentarists in the late the concept of a continuing revolution and the
eighties. A historical profile of this sort can only potential of the cinema to mobilize a shared
point to a few of the most dramatic tendencies political identity necessary for broad-based
across decades of activity; this account will be social change. What separates the two and
supplemented by the soon-to-be updated Third forces us to pose them in dialectical tension are
World Newsreel catalogue featuring descriptions their respective relations to state power and to
of the Newsreel films in circulation (in addition technology. Vertov and his comrades worked at
to the hundred or so independently produced the cutting edge of a state-run revolution.
films and tapes they distribute) and by more Newsreel was a manifestation of the countercul-
in-depth accounts of the Newsreel infrastructure ture, defining itself always in opposition to the
and output during its several phases.3 dominant, generating and encouraging resis-
tance to the authority of the prevailing system
NEWSREEL PRE-HISTORY of social, political and economic relations.'
The counterculture of the New Left tended Vertov, trained as were so many other Soviet
toward negation, the issuing of shocks against film artists for a scientific vocation, envisioned
cinema as a technological vehicle for extending
presumed middle-class sensibilities, all the while
reinforcing oppositional ties. Consequently,human powers of observation and cognition.
one must look elsewhere than to the culture of His kinoki were labelled as "pilots" or "engi-
the American Left of the thirties for radical an- neers" whose machine eye and radio ear could
tecedents, perhaps to the surrealist or construc- transform history. A child of his time, Vertov
tivist positions earlier in the century. If one may praised the beauty and perfection of the me-
judge from the rhetoric of first-generation chanical world and of chemical processes as the
Newsreelers such as Robert Kramer, it is the triumphant extension of natural forces.
utopian socialism of the immediately post- A half-century later, the relationship of New
revolutionary Soviet Union that resonates most Left media activists to technology was chiefly
deeply with the cultural radicalism of the New one of negation. Early Newsreelers harbored
Left, not the populist humanism of the Ameri- little hope of appropriating or re-routing chan-
can thirties. nels of communication to further their political

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 goals. ("None of us are old enough to have any slate of historical representation is both an act
illusions about infiltrating the major media to of youthful bravery and of a willing forgetful-
reach mass consciousness and change it-we ness which breaks ties with a set of complex his-
grew up on TV and fifties Hollywood."'). Un- tories. The popular frontism of the American
like Vertov and his kinoki, or even the Ameri- Left in the late 1930s and early 1940s was root-
can Old Left, the founders of Newsreel in late ed in a hope of base-building and eventual
1967 could claim no institutional or mass-based unification while the political radicalisms of the
source of support. Rather, as suggested earlier, late 1960s implied a contrary motive-the inten-
mass base had become mass culture; party wassification of social contradiction to the point of
replaced by a constituency-in-media. And yet, rupture. For while the founding membership of
as with Vertov, there was within the early News-Newsreel in New York included a core of veter-
reel movement a feverish impulse toward anans of mid-sixties community-organizing cam-
elemental reconstruction for its audience-ifpaigns, the organization was forged in a
not of perception, at least of consciousness.
moment of communal anger and indignation
These radical cineasts were inspired by thefollowing the October 1967 March on the Pen-
enforced aesthetic privations of true guerrilla
tagon. The agenda for a grass-roots, participa-
footage, documents of forces fighting wars oftory democracy was buckling under the weight
liberation in Vietnam, Africa, or Latin Ameri-of a growing militancy.7
ca, or by the pre-industrialized methods of the The altered agenda of an increasingly
American underground film, which also apocalyptic moment is expressed quite succinctly
offered refuge from the seamless, ideologically in Garbage (Newsreel, 1968), a film which
complicit products of the culture industry. examines a planned provocation by the mem-
There is a further point of historical tangency bers of a New York anarchist group calling
between early Newsreel and Vertov's efforts in itself "Up Against the Wall, Motherfuckers."
the pre-dawn of radical cinema. Just as the During a prolonged strike of garbage collection
Soviet agit-trains, armed with camera equip- workers, the Motherfuckers devise a plan to
ment, film lab and projector, traversed the land bring rotting garbage to the bastions of high
from 1919 to 1921 helping to forge a nascent culture and political power. They therefore
cultural identity, so too did early Newsreelersdump enormous heaps of trash at the entrance-
mobilize their own community outreach pro- ways of Lincoln Center, home of the Metro-
gram. Recent Academy Award recipient Deb- politan Opera and New York Philharmonic
orah Schaffer (Witness to War, 1985) has Symphony. As footage of this confrontation
spoken of the methods of distribution and ex- unspools, one demonstrator observes in voice-
hibition in the Ann Arbor, Michigan chapter of over that the difference between the Old Left
Newsreel in 1969-70: and the New is expressed by their differing
approaches
We had two motorcycles and we put this box on the
to problems-the former sought to
solve them, the latter to intensify them.
back of the motorcycle to hold the projector. We'd
go off on motorcycles with the projector and films.
We would show them in dormitories, churches,
INSTITUTIONAL TIES-THE MYTH
people's living rooms, union halls, high school
auditoriums.6 OF CREATION
Vertov and his New Left cousins shared the zeal As interviews with early New York Newsreel
and inventiveness of the bricoleur-evangelist. members indicate, the first generation of this
The reconstruction of consciousness for the radical film-making group represented a con-
Newsreel audience was to be achieved by vergence a of disparate impulses and constituen-
willed abdication from the standards of qualitycies.8 There were the former SDS activists
or craft; the intention was a return to an essen-whose political sensibilities had been forged
tial cinema dedicated to the requirements of through a decade of community-based activism
building an adversarial culture. The simplicity
and programmatic wrangling. Of this number,
of the appellation "Newsreel" figures a desireRobert Kramer and Norm Fruchter, with his
for a fundamental reinscription of values and ties to such influential journals as Studies on the
practices. The unstinting revisionism which un-Left and New Left Review, remain the proto-
derlies this naming and its return to the blanktypes. These were the ideologues, the political

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"heavies" whose Movement credentials and
rhetorical skills were capable of intimidating
opposition in mass meetings. In addition, there
were the "underground" film-makers whose
concerns were loosely tied to notions of alterna-
tive art-making and self-expression, products of
the boom period of the New American Cinema
when the Brakhages and the Baillies command-
~rr. ~ L?s
L3 ~7
ed a sizable audience in the museums and on the
campuses. The former Newsreel faction was
likely to give priority to the construction of cor-
rect political positions expressed in filmic terms
while the latter tendency defined itself more
The Newsreel opening title
directly in terms of its craft, guided by political
concerns but not subsumed by them. This is, of
course, a rough approximation or profile of Marilyn Buck and Karen Ross gave voice to the
some forty or fifty people whose idiosyncracies mythic origins of the collective: "And all the
tended to obscure any such general tendencies.9 TV channels and American films speak from
There is a larger and quite striking commo- the same mouth of control and power. We
nality decipherable, however; neither faction looked around ... and Newsreel was con-
could claim for itself an organized or structur- ceived and born."" There is the suggestion
ally coherent base of support-in short, an a kind of autochthony here, of a cleansing ora
audience. Neither the Marxists nor the under- cle arisen from within the belly of the mas
ground film-makers could presume to know cultural beast. The two films which catapulted
Newsreel to success in countercultural terms
their constituencies in any but the most abstract
terms, the political activists because the Move- (Columbia Revolt, Black Panther-both 1968)
ment was undergoing a painful process of frag- offer further evidence of such a mythos of
mentation typified by the SDS splits while the spontaneous generation. The films share an
film artisans were rooted in a tradition of ex- aura of revolutionary romanticism, offering
pressivity which valued the isolation of the artist
direct contact with what appeared at the time to
within the hegemony of mass culture. The very be the most advanced elements of the
values which united every Newsreel audience orstruggle-in short, news from the front. Th
potential audience were based on a fundamen- Panther film, alternately titled Off the Pig (a
tal negation of institutionalized frameworksphrase hypnotically chanted by a phalanx o
(alienation from accepted social and politicalPanthers during a demonstration at the Ala
forms, cynicism toward the trade unionism thatmeda County Courthouse), brought the word
had been the bastion of the Old Left, a prefer- and images of Huey P. Newton, Eldridge
ence for vaguely articulated rather than explicitCleaver and Bobby Seale to Movement au-
associations). A politically inflected culturaldiences everywhere. More importantly, by its
group like Newsreel, in bearing what Bill Nich-mise-en-scene and incantatory music track
ols has characterized as a barometric relation- accompanying bereted and leather-jacketed
ship to the Left,'0 could only reproduce the softPanthers-in-training, the film manages to sug
boundaries and conceptual dissonance of late
gest a great deal more than it can show. "No
sixties political dissent typified by the rainbowmore brothers in jail/The pigs are gonna catch
of orientations and agendas that combined to hell" sing the militant brothers and sisters whi
protest the 1968 Chicago Democratic Conven- Cleaver speaks of the bald-headed businessmen
tion-from the Dave Dellinger-style anti-warin the Chamber of Commerce whose exploit
pacifists to the anarchic Yippie contingent. tion will be countered by mass insurgency
Despite the conceptual pluralism of News-soon as the rest of America catches on (whic
reel's position in the early years, we can discern
Cleaver assures us will be very soon). Here is
certain frequently unstated premises of the or-mixture of buoyant militancy and a political op
ganization. From an interview with a range of timism which is well nigh infectious-or would
Newsreelers published in a 1968 Film Quarterly,have been for a sympathetic 1968 audience. I

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 any case, hundreds of prints sold in a matter of to slow liberal head-nodding and general won-
months. derment at the complexity of these times and
As for Columbia Revolt, one need only con-their being out of joint."'3
sult the published responses of student audi- Given the avowedly confrontational status of
ences to be found in the underground press of the work, the emphasis upon a collective
the day. According to an October 1969 account scheme of organization and production
appearing in Rat, a New York-based organ of("Newsreel is a collective rather than a cooper-
the radical counterculture, Revolt was respon-ative; we are not together merely to help each
sible for an incendiary outburst at a collegeother out as filmmakers but we are working
campus in Buffalo: "At the end of the secondtogether for a common purpose"),'4 what can
film, with no discussion, five hundred membersbe said about the precise division of labor of the
of the audience arose and made their way to thegroups in question and the material conditions
University ROTC building [the Reserve Officer of production? As every Marxist knows, con-
Training Corps, target of much campus protest sciousness does not anticipate productive rela-
during the Vietnam War]. They proceeded totions but is conditioned and determined by
smash windows, tear up furniture and destroy them. But a major philosopher of the New Left
machines until the office was a total wreck; andlike Herbert Marcuse was quite willing to the-
then they burned the remaining paper and flam-orize (in An Essay on Liberation, 1969) that, in
mable parts of the structure to charcoal."'2 a stage of advanced capitalism, imagination
What the Buffalo student body had observedcould show reason the way. Artists and free-
(and the apocryphal nature of the tale is no hin-thinkers could reshape the horizons of a society.
drance to a discussion of mythic contours) was soured and and desensitized by an over-
the vanguard action of their Ivy League cousins, rationalized ethos of thought and action. As a
a model of energetic but sustained resistance toloosely-bound group of like-minded cultural
malign authority. The analysis contained in interventionists, Newsreel was the ideal
Columbia Revolt is muted in comparison to the manifestation of this New Age dogma.
spectacle of solidarity and community it offers. Decision-making and the setting of policy
The New Age marriage rites of two students,were matters of some contestation given the
the support marches of sympathetic facultylack of clear lines of authority and the diverse
members, the pitch-and-catch of food stuffsbackgrounds of the participants. At a time that
holding intact the supply lines which, like the felt like a crisis period, specific goals (even ill-
Ho Chi Minh Trail, meant sustenance for the defined ones like "stop the war") offered suffi-
guerrillas under siege-all these depictions ofcient binding power to keep the wheels turning
newly conceived social relations live on longand the Movement audience served. Those
after the immediate gymnasium constructionwho, like Norm Fruchter, were accustomed to
issue is forgotten. a greater precision of shared principles and a
The efforts of the early Newsreel collectives more disciplined group dynamic found the
aimed to inform and inspire their MovementNewsreel experience a trying one. "I was ...
audiences, with the balance between the two
functions always in question. While a pre- COLUMBIA REVOLT
Newsreel film like Troublemakers (1966), which ~~*-i-i?~-iiii .- :::: I:- : i~:ii:iiiiii- I~- :-i-:---:-;::: ?
:::::I --:---~~~:-~
~i~~si--~-~~~iii:: _-:-:i-:::::~-- I::::::--~ss~i~i:-~

follows the struggles of a community organiz- li:i'ai:;----:-i-- -iii:--i:ii~i

:~~i:i- : ::::--:--
i~i-i~
ing group in a black neighborhood in Newark -:::?:,:,i~mi- ..: . ..... li-ii--- ?,--_::--, --: - i-~~
::-:::::~~~~-iiii :i~iii~i~li~i ii-i;iii`iii
iiii-a~i:~i:c-a'-i-i~iiii?ii~i: i-i:::ii:i:$i _:,_ -----iiiiii~i':- ::--:-- - :: :::?:-~~.i-i~~i-~-~i:-:i::i

before the riots (examining the project's achieve- ~i8i s iii~iii-iiiii~iiii

Xi~i6-2
iii:i:i:i

ments and defeats), explores the contradictions

-,.--i-j_;

inherent in grass-roots political activism, the i:i-i?iiiiii i?i-i-i-i:i

':-:-::?:-::j::-:-::::::ilii~-ii

post-'68 Newsreel film was likely to stress action iiiii.~isiii-s-Q~i:i

and elicit engaged (if not educated) response. In ~.~..~~~~:_: __.--:~_ ~:~ lkBB~I~B~$L~BR98~i.F~8$8~89B-81sgi~8~b~
~ii~:i-i~:i- i:iiiiii-i-i-

a pronouncement that echoes the Surrealist po- ;:::::

sition of the 1920s, Robert Kramer outlined the

-- --:-ii:i--

~ca.~~ i:~::: ::
~-:~j-::::: :: ::

Newsreel program circa 1968: "We strive for

confrontation, we prefer disgust/violent dis-
agreement/painful recognition/jolts-all these ---_-:::: :i-i-i~~

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more of a Marxist, I think, than a lot of people candidates for institutional support, were well
in Newsreel," says Fruchter, "and so I was under way as independent film-makers. By
both interested in those congeries of different 1968, Marvin Fishman and Allan Siegel had
folks, and at the same time skeptical about both organized film-making workshops at the
whether we were going to hold together. The Free University in New York and were able to
energy was awesome." 5 translate their expertise into Newsreel product.
So far as the mechanism for production deci- At the moment of Newsreel's formation in De-
sions was concerned, the pattern was erratic at cember 1967, it was decided that a film was
best. The most fundamental decisions always needed to chronicle the October 1967 March on
surrounded the initial question-what films the Pentagon; Fishman was farthest along with
should be made. But a second question-how a personal project along those lines. Newsreel
to finance a given project-often proved deter- #1 (1968), entitled No Game, was the result,
minant. Films could be made if there were those despite the fact that the film bears only a pass-
within the collective who could manage to makeing resemblance to the "Newsreel style"
them by whatever means might present them- familiar from the later works-scenes of con-
selves. If the final result was unacceptable to the flict; lively, non-synch music interspersed with
group, the film could not receive the "News-multiple voice-over narrations from impas-
reel" imprimatur. Several funding routes seem sioned participants. There were concerted ef-
to have recurred in the early days. There was a forts made to disseminate the technical skills,
core elite within the New York collective who but the difficulties were more deeply embedded
matched the profile of the SDS leadership than these well-intentioned attempts could hope
throughout the sixties-college-educated white to rectify. Women and minorities--after life-
males, verbal, assertive, confident, with access times of limited access to resources, possessing
to funding sources both personal and institu- severely stunted self-images as producers of
tional. Robert Kramer and Robert Machover culture-were incapable of closing the gap over-
could call upon family resources to finance night. Frustration and unspoken critiques
projects. (Indeed, this pattern is a time-honored festered beneath the surface of the organi-
one in American Left circles, most recentlyzation.
exemplified by Haskell Wexler's anti-Contra And yet a necessary pragmatism reigned. In
feature, Latino-bankrolled in part by his the words of Allan Siegel: "It was the kind of
mother.) The Fruchters, Kramers, and Mach- thing that if you came up with the money to do
overs of Newsreel were the bright and persua- it [make a film], well then, you could do it. You
sive young men who could function within the made a film. I always used to stash myself away
world of capital, either by virtue of birthright someplace and make things out of nothing. So
or by acquired expertise. Fruchter, for example, I kept turning things out .. ."6 Power and sta-
was well-suited for fundraising given his schol- tus were thus linked to the ability to produce
arly and literary credentials (as a published despite the unequal distribution of the requisite
novelist) and his first-hand experience with Left tools for the task. In his discussion of News-
funding networks. Fruchter has estimated that reel's collective process in the early days, Norm
he succeeded in raising more money for Fruchter recalls the inequities with some regret:
Troublemakers, his film about the Newark
Your participation depended on having another
Community Union Project, than had the means to finance yourself. There was a group of
Project itself over its several year lifespan. people who worked and therefore could never stay up
There were simmering animosities over this all night . . . and couldn't shoot certain sequences
relative monopoly of capital-access, rooted as
?. And there were a lot of arguments about the
it was in class background. Furthermore, thiscontradictions of being in, not a rich person's organi-
zation, but certainly an organization which required
same group of men (who were a key faction of the leisure to be full time in it. We talked about
the New York collective's coordinating commit- income-sharing but never did it. We talked about
tee) possessed far greater technical skills and ex- finding some way to subsidize the people who had to
perience; Fruchter, Kramer and Machover hadwork and never did that. All the income that was
formed Blue Van Films several years before. brought in and all the fundraising that was done went
right into the production of more films and that per-
A second faction consisted of yet another petuated the reign of the people who had self-
group of white males who, though less likely sufficient resources or could somehow juggle their

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lives or their jobs or whatever so that they could do
within the New York organization, which began
that. And I don't think it bothered us that much at
to control distribution and exhibition; most of
the time. I remember thinking that, yeah, it was
the men left the collective in the months that
absolutely unfair and there was nothing to be done
about it.'7 followed.

Problems arising from inequities internal to the

As the Third World faction within the group
collective-income differentials, housing, or began to focus on recruiting minorities and
childcare needs-were viewed as secondary topassing on production skills, the rift between
white members and those of color intensified to
the pressing struggle for social change. The
politics of sexuality and of everyday life re-the breaking point. With the dwindling of the
mained issues to be addressed in a later phasemembership, the resources capable of sustain-
of the organization. ing the collective enterprise were near exhaus-
tion.
By the early seventies, although the first gen- Gone were the human resources-years of
eration Newsreelers had left the organization, experience in shooting and assembling footage
under pressure for no money, and the financial
factionalism based on differences of privilege
and access enjoyed by collective members reserves-family wealth to be tapped, as well as
prevailed. From 1971 to 1973, New York News- most of the equipment.
It should be noted that while the schisms that
reel members split themselves into "haves" and
"have-nots," with the distinctions among eth- developed within Newsreel during the early
nicity, class background, and functional class seventies around class, gender, and race effect-
position somewhat blurred. Thus Christine ed a series of ruptures at the localized, institu-
Choy, a Chinese woman, at 22 the holder of a tional level, these organizational convulsions
master's degree in architecture from Columbia
serve to reinforce a sense of continuity at a
broader historical level. For indeed, these were
University, was a have-not, due in part to her
the same issues (gender, race, class) that in-
activities within the organization's Third World
creasingly split the always tenuous coalition of
Caucus. While salary differentials posed no ba-
New Left/countercultural forces as the focus
sis for contention-minimal stipends and rent
on war resistance waned. As debates over con-
support for collective dwellings were the extent
tradictions, primary and secondary, came to
of financial support-stratification was ex-
occupy center stage within Movement organi-
pressed in subtle forms: the haves edited on a
Steenbeck while the have-nots made do with an zations, consensus collapsed. Newsreel was
old Moviola.'8 never merely a reflection or conduit, that is,
about Movement tactics and sensibilities; it has
But the rift within the collective evidenced by
always remained of the Movement, a palpable
the have/have-not division was only one stage
index of shifting fortunes and newfound neces-
among a series of convulsions that left New
sities.
York Newsreel a three-person collective by
1973. The success of the San Francisco-shot The single factor that ensured New York
Newsreel's viability in 1973 remains the material
The Woman's Film (1971) had coincided with
basis for twenty years of continuity despite con-
the emergence of an outspoken feminist faction
vulsions from within-that is, the collection of
From THE WOMEN'S FILM films themselves. The resurgence of production
in New York did not occur until 1975 when
work began on From Spikes to Spindles (1976),
d: a project that established Third World News-
reel's reputation for compact, historically situ-
ated overviews of ethnic minorities in crisis (in
this case, Chinese Americans in New York).
Until that time, the focus of collective activity
remained the revival of distribution of the orig-
inal Newsreel collection (achieved in part
through the issuing of a new catalogue) which
was recognized as the backbone of the organi-
zation. The films were the sole resources that
remained to the New York organization in
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1973; they have sustained the Newsreel effort
since that time as financial asset and historical -:::::~:-a~;~::~?:~~;

legacy even as the New York and San Francisco :'::: ::: ?:8:X:::

collectives move toward a reordering of goals -:::: ::: :::::?: :::::::_:

:-::::::::i::::::
... : : ::::: ::::::::::::;::: ::::
::: ??:j;:::i::: :::::;

and priorities.
:::::lii-
:::-::::~
::::-j:: :: ::::::::::: : ::::::::?:
::::::: :?::-::::::

:::-::::::li:-
:..:: i:::::j:::::~
:ji:::::::
_-:-:_-i-::---:::::
-:-::::: --:-,i:i~::.-i'i?iii

::::::::::::

~ii-i2si~

CALIFORNIA NEWSREEL ,.-.:.:

::::: ::?-::.::::::

The film-making collective calling itself \::~:':::::ii_::

_::. -. :::::l:'i:-_::::-
:?:i:::::

::?:rl::::::::

California Newsreel was formed in 1975 from

the ashes of a San Francisco Newsreel branch
which had absorbed the sort of gut-wrenching
political upheavals and bitter factionalism that
shook the New York group during the same
period. (The chief source of San Francisco's
Interest attempts in its 45 minutes to explain the
division was a move toward the Revolutionary
complex nature and operating procedures of the
Communist Party by certain influential News-
multinational corporation and was produced at
reel members.) By 1978, California Newsreel a time when no such study was available for
was comprised of three white males-Larrypurposes of political education. The film has
Daressa, Larry Adelman, and Bruce Schmie-sold over 800 prints since its release in 1978.
chen-none of whom had been a part of the The Business of America ... likewise aimed
earlier incarnation of the San Francisco News- to fill a gap in the available public-educational
reel collective that produced Black Panther andresources. It was conceived in the aftermath of
other militant films from 1968-73. Several yearsthe Reagan victory and was intended as a more
later, another collective member was brought personalized treatise than the data-heavy Con-
on to deal exclusively with archival and dis- trolling Interest, capable of exposing the mas-
tributional matters (a black man, Corneliussive failures of the Reagan economic program
Moore) while only recently Schmiechen has leftand its supply-side, trickle-down ethos. Both
the collective to pursue independent projects.films "found" their audience precisely because
No greater contrast could prevail between they were tailored to its particular needs-
Cal Newsreel and its predecessors with regard arrived at through a variety of feed-back
to its financial underpinnings, organizationalmechanisms and close contact with the client
precision, and concentration on distributiongroups.
over production. Unlike New York Newsreel of No longer can the Newsreel audience be de-
the early years (and to a lesser extent Third fined as an amorphous mass of like-minded
World Newsreel), California Newsreel has em- individuals concerned to stay abreast of break-
phasized distribution over production. Indeed,ing stories of exploitation and political victories.
in the twelve years of its existence, the collective
It's now a discrete body of buyers or renters of
has produced only two films of its own while a media product deemed vital to the educational
becoming a major player within a clearly de- needs of their organization or curriculum. What
marcated sector of the educational film market. is interesting about this shift is that, to a certain
Cal Newsreel distributes films of particularextent, these two audiences overlap inasmuch as
interest to an audience of economists, sociolo- the 1980s generation of Left academics, orga-
gists, and labor historians for classroom use; tonizers, and educators are largely drawn from
labor educators and organizers within the tradethat ill-defined body of radicalized spectators of
union movement; and to various progressive the late sixties/early seventies. If California
and special interest groups at the grass-roots Newsreel seems a more briskly functional and
level (churches, action groups, campus organi- business-like version of its progenitors, the
zations). The two films produced, Controlling same can be said of its audience, the Left activ-
Interest and The Business of America ...,ists who have survived into the eighties, who
were the results of the collective's perception ofhave withstood the onslaught of budget cuts,
a felt need within this clearly defined audiencediminishing numbers, and the nation's mood-
and within the Left in general. Controllingswing to the right.
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 Since I have discussed the two California concerned individuals provided the bulk of the
Newsreel productions at length elsewhere, itfunding for that project while The Business of
seems more appropriate to concentrate here onAmerica ... was financed largely (2/3 of the
the significant features of the organization as a$120,000 total cost) by the Corporation for
business enterprise.19 The San Francisco group Public Broadcasting, the corporate arm of the
has remained profitable by a combination ofPublic Broadcasting System now firmly con-
prescience and hard work. In the months aftertrolled by Reagan acolytes. In the first year of
the Soweto uprisings in South Africa (Juneits circulation, more than 250 prints of the film
1976), a collective decision was made to choose were sold to what can only be considered its
a Southern African focus-to purchase the dis- secondary market (a series of nationwide PBS
tribution rights to a variety of films about airdates broadcast the film to approximately
Southern Africa and related issues in order to four million Americans).
distribute them to interested parties worldwide. The remarkable truth is that California
At the time, no such collection of films existed;Newsreel can boast liquid assets sufficient to
even now, California Newsreel is the world's ensure its existence for years to come. In spite
principal source of films on apartheid, divest- of its bountiful resources, each collective mem-
ment, and related issues with a total of 21 ber draws the same salary ($25,000 annually)
documentaries acquired from independents and and will continue to do so, no matter how bul-
BBC alike.
lish the Left-wing educational film market may
The escalation of apartheid aggression
become. In fact, all workers-from Daressa
throughout Southern Africa over the past sever-
and Adelman to the person who sweeps the
al years and the upswing of world interest in at the crumbling, warehouse-district
floors
countering the brutality of the Botha govern-
office perched in its San Francisco alleyway-
ment through sanctions and strategies of
receive the same base pay. This feature of the
resistance have subsequently rendered these
organization is its clearest link with Newsreel's
films a resource in high demand. Duringpast.
the There is one additional point of tangency
recent nationwide surge of campus protests
with the early days, at least with one faction of
against corporate investment in South Africa,
the first New York collective. California News-
California Newsreel played a vital role in boost-
reel's activities as producer and distributor are
ing the level of educated debate simply deeply
by tied to the perceived requirements of the
providing a range of relevant films as well as
American Left and are calculated in pragmatic,
printed material researched and developed over
politically sophisticated terms. Like the core
nearly a decade.* Once again, although perhaps
membership of New Left ideologues of the late
in a less dramatic fashion than in 1968, News-
sixties, Cal Newsreel (and Daressa in particu-
reel was in the right place at the right time.
lar), is equal to the task of mastering the vagar-
California Newsreel's formula for fiscal suc-
ies of contemporary Marxist theory as well as
cess combines business acumen with a knack mainstream economic thought and of offering
for low-budget production made possible bycogently
the argued, conceptually sound analyses
shrewd recycling of archival footage and, in and
the critiques of national labor policies and
beginning at least, the ability to attract donated
long-term economic programs.
labor (crew members, editing assistants, etc.). In something of a departure from its past
Controlling Interest was made for $30,000 withachievements, California Newsreel has chosen
only 10% of that figure generated internally. to mark its twentieth anniversary year by
The Methodist Church, small foundations, and launching a major five-year project aimed at
deconstructing media as conventionally
*Over its 12-year lifespan, California Newsreel has publishedproduced
eight and received. This "Media on Me-
separate catalogues and five books including an 88-page text entitled
dia" project will attempt to use the prevailing
Planning Work, a manual of resources on technology and invest-
ment for labor education funded by the Ford Foundation and technology
the (namely, broadcast television) to
German Marshall Fund. Using Films in South Africa: An Activa- generate a meta-discourse on communications,
tion Kit on Investment contains suggestions for post-film discus-
an anti-television capable of exploring new
sions, a series of fact sheets exposing the scope of U.S. investment
modes
in South Africa and a packet of reprinted articles covering precise, of expression as well as new techniques
related topics culled from newspapers, scholarly journals for
andreading-in effect, to establish a context for
pamphlets.
exchange between media products and their au-
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diences. California Newsreel thus commits itself ----.. -:::: : ---::- - -:-I -- li----li:--1::

to the creation of an environment favorable to

::- '''-

:i:-ll
: ::-- - :---:::::::
_Illiiiil:i:_lli::-i:liililll _ :i-_--iii:_iii :i:: :::-::: - :: ::

a rejuvenated, experimental, reflexive docu-

:-:?- ::: :

mentary form at a moment of flagging hopes

among American independent producers.
California Newsreel thus announces a dra- i-i -: i--- ...-.-..s -.:.-- - -I-: -ii:i:-i-l--;:-::i :-ill_: i::::--: -- : :

i-:lllli ii:: i'i'l:ll:-:~~~-8--- ----:

matic shift of emphasis from "point of produc-
tion" (the work place) to "point of reception" -~-i~i i~-:-a?zi~:~-~~
?i~?~?~?:~~:~~????I?~~i.::,ii

(the home) consistent with its analysis of the ~~iiiiii_:ii~_-i ..--.: ..-- :il:i--_i-ii:_i:~l~,i:'?

___:: ------- --- ,:~~ra~:~:~?i,~-ii~-~~~~

::-:--- _ :: : :: ::: - ::: --:: - :-_ :: -- ;::-__-:-_ :-:: : _ ::. -:_ ::_ : : -- : : : _ :: - : : ::: : _-:: :::::i:: -''--:-i :: -?:lill----ll:i--:

political/cultural focus that Left organizations -....-.: il;-li--r--- ::l-:_::li:': -... .---- --::'::::'?:-::::: -'---:
II1 ii----i-l _ ..:... .- III

need to develop in present circumstances. But : -:i-ilj:i_-i: ::_ii: .... _::: -i ::: :_:: ::: : :I:: -:: :

the concern for engaging a nationwide rather

,i:ii i-:iii:i:i:i --ii-:i-ii~
~iiili-iii:i:ii -..;

than Movement audience is in accord with the ~:I: - :-:l----:i:--- --I~

organizations's public profile for nearly a dec-

ade. As co-chair of the National Coalition of
tB~~~

Independent Public Television Producers, Larry

iii

i-:i:ii-i-i-iii:i__ iii:il--ii:::i_:::-:-::-: :::-:--:-:-:: ::::::i:-:: ..--..

:--: ::-:::- : - ::: --' -::::- i:- :I-l-::-;iii::i:_li--l-- .-- : -:: ::: ::--::- i-::- '-I-I--
-.--. .. ;Ijl:ll;l-:ljiill :-_i_-::i:-i_-i::: _---::_--i:-l .. :_i:::_::i:_-i: :::- -::-::::i: ::: : ::

Daressa has lobbied strenuously in Washington ::

,i~i~l~~~i~ ~ii::~:::::;:::::: ;::-:::?;?:::::j*:
~,::~ii:ii:ii i__:ii i~~i~i--:;~i'i~j -i~':::~:ii

for a more meaningful role for independent ~::::::: ::::::?i~i:~i:_ii:_i::_::_:i:::-:_::-~i-

producers within public broadcasting's pro-

~'""";::l""""--'~i~ns_?~??-i-i:i-

~:jl I

gram schedule as a way of insuring the vitality .......* .i-i:i-.:- .. :......: .......: .-. :i: ..

of contestation within an ever more uniform

cultural climate. The present "Media on Me-
dia" project, while unique to the American air-
waves, is clearly consistent with the efforts ..:.
of:?::-iiii-i-,i-_: i-:ii-ii,::-iaiiiiii~,iiii~ii~~iiii:~~

British Channel Four's Michael Jackson, pro- From an early Newsreel br

ducer of "Open the Box" (1986), a six-part ser-
If that function has been lost at California
ies exploring the complexities and social effects
of television, and Jean-Luc Godard whose Newsreel, it lives on at the Manhattan head-
groundbreaking videoworks of the seventies quarters of Third World Newsreel. At a time
(Six Fois Deux and France/Tour/Detour/Deuxwhen politically oriented documentary film-
Enfants) radically challenged the French viewing making in the United States has suffered a near-
public's media expectations at formal and catastrophic decline, Third World has remained
thematic levels. Indeed, California Newsreel's capable of producing films at a dizzying pace.
ultimate aim is to intervene in the viewing habits The garment district offices of the collective are
of America, to alter not so much what we see always alive with production activities at several
but how we see it. This will mean working to stages; the editing rooms are in constant use for
establish a space for innovation and experimen- in-house projects while visiting independent
tation on American television, perhaps through film-makers frequently avail themselves of the
the creation of an Independent Programming facilities and expertise at hand. In 1985, Third
Service on the order of Britain's Channel Four World shot and completed two 50-minute films,
to explore new dissemination technologies and both of them commissioned or initiated by out-
sponsor unconventional programming. Perhapsside sources rather than generated from within
the organization. Namibia: Independence Now
it is the sheer scale of such aspirations that pro-
vides the clearest vector of continuity with the was commissioned by the United Nations
Council on Namibia; distributed by Third
New Left utopianism of Newsreel's founding
moment. World Newsreel, the film has been translated
into seven languages. Chronicle of Hope:
Nicaragua was a project developed in coordina-
THIRD WORLD NEWSREEL tion with the Nicaraguan Peace Fleet, a Florida-
As we have seen, the early Newsreel opera-
based organization that regularly ships clothing
and of
tion was able to offer battlefront coverage medical supplies donated by concerned
Americans.
contemporary struggles from a recognizably The film traces a single journey
Left perspective-quickly and in vast number.
from its source in upstate New York, through

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a series of American communities, to the point
a while to figure out how you survive as a small
of embarkation in Florida and at last to safe
business, and in that sense, California Newsreel
is much more adept. . . . We've been some-
harbor in Nicaragua, thus establishing a human
bridge among nations. what more anarchistic in that regard."20.
The primary sources of this productive And yet, the track record of Third World
momentum remain Christine Choy and Allan Newsreel is a tremendously solid one. When in-
Siegel who, while maintaining a long-standing
creased funding for women's and minority arts
projects began to become available in the late
personal relationship, manage to stay involved
in countless projects simultaneously, all at
seventies, Third World Newsreel was already a
different stages of completion. Siegel's relation-
veteran organization with an impressive roster
ship with Newsreel extends from the original of completed films to its credit. Choy's endur-
December 1967 meeting through 1970 and from ing advocacy in the field of Asian-American
1974 to the present. During that time, he hascultural studies and her high visibility within
worked in a range of capacities: shooting much
ongoing lobbying efforts for minority access to
of Columbia Revolt; editing and directing such
public funding have helped to secure for Third
World Newsreel and other minority media
early works as Garbage, America, Community
Control, Pig Power, and We Demand Free-groups some measure of financial stability.
dom. Siegel's recent credits include the Another avenue of Newsreel's sponsorship has
Nicaraguan film and one of the three segmentsbeen the establishment of the Third World
of The Mississippi Triangle, a 1984 film thatProducers Project administered by the Film
examines a particularly eccentric ethnic News Now Foundation, conduit for a variety of
conjuncture-Chinese/black intermarriage in Newsreel-related projects. Under the leadership
white Mississippi-with film-makers of each of Choy and Renee Tajima (a frequent Third
ethnic background directing the appropriate World Newsreel collaborator), the program
segments. provides one-on-one consultation to Third
Choy has directed at a furious pace for the World and women media producers in all as-
past decade, receiving in the process fellowshipspects of their work (fundraising, film and video
from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ameri- production skills, distribution). Still another in-
can Film Institute, and the National Endow- creasingly significant component of the Third
ment of the Arts. Having come to the US as aWorld Newsreel portfolio is the Advanced
teenager from the People's Republic of ChinaProduction Workshop. Begun in 1978, the
to attend school, Choy retains something of theworkshop offers ten to fifteen people a year-
outsider's view of American culture and poli-long experience in film and video production
tics. She has a photographer's eye and the skills through weekly classroom sessions culminating
of a graphic artist refined during her years of in several finished works. The workshops offer
architectural training; she designs many of the valuable training and experience, a community-
layouts for the pamphlets and booklets whichbased alternative to the competitive, industry-
Third World distributes. Choy has also main-oriented film school model.
tained a high profile in the Asian-American On another front, Third World Newsreel's
film and art-making communities and is active exhibition programs constitute a vital sector of
in a range of related organizations, coalitions,the collective's activities. Former Newsreel
and support groups. member Pearl Bowser was responsible for con-
Unlike their San Francisco cousins, Third ceiving and programming a series of travelling
World Newsreel cannot begin to support its film exhibitions. "Independent Black American
many projects through the sales and rentals of Cinema 1920-1980" began as a retrospective of
its films. Films are financed on an ad hoc basis, more than forty films and videotapes show-
each one having a life and history of its own. Incased in France in 1980 which then toured the
answer to a question concerning the economicUnited States over a two year period. Other
health of the organization, Siegel replied:major efforts of this type have included the
"Generally, we survive. There's a certain ten-publication (in 1982) of a booklet entitled "In
sion to that survival which just has to do with Color: Sixty Years of Images of Minority
being a marginal-type arts organization....Women in the Media," which offers a series of
Basically, we're a small business. It's taken usessays intended as a contribution to the dia-
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logue around the imaging of Third World wo-
men and the position occupied by women
within the media. A related program of a dozen
films ranging from Ousmane Sembene's Ceddo
i~~8:i~
~6h
:::.::,::::::::::

to short independent works such as Sylvia 1

Morales's Chicana was organized as an exhibi-

::
---::?.?-:: :::: ::: :
C::r:--?_---:_----:i-i:i-ii : ---:::-:::: :: --'--i-:i:i-i~::i

tion event in the New York area. A more ambi-

i-iiii:i?

:::~:'::

*:
tious exhibition series and accompanying
:
:??:::-:::?:_::- :
ii~i~lifa9iiiii _-::--:

Fi:;

publication was completed in 1983-"Journey :::~i :: :::I:

Across Three Continents," which combined a

diverse selection of films by African cineasts u ~1E. -: ~3~ L :.n i a ::~

and film-makers of the black diaspora with a

lecture series and 70-page catalogue. The series
toured 35 cities over a three-year period in an
attempt to expose new audiences to the work as nature of the work-or its aesthetic roughness.
well as to convey the richness and diversity of In Griffin's opinion, the time has not yet ar-
the black experience in Africa, Europe, and the rived when aesthetic standards alone can be
Americas. "Journey Across Three Conti- allowed to determine the life of socially con-
nents," assembled and curated once again by cerned programming. Training programs and
Pearl Bowser, drew upon the research contribu- consultational services rather than elitist dis-
tions of seven Black Studies scholars. Through tributional practices have been chosen as the
its exhibition projects, Third World Newsreel way to raise the level of professionalism within
has sought to facilitate dialogue between the minority media community.
minority artists and concerned spectators, to The Anthology of Asian-American Film and
develop an American audience for black and Video functions as an additional and ongoing
Third World media works outside the major distribution project for the collective. Begun in
urban centers. In this sense, Third World News- 1984, the Anthology houses some thirty films
reel shares California Newsreel's emphasis by and about Asian-Americans making this the
upon organizing at the "point of reception." most significant collection of such work. Like
Spearheaded by Ada Gay Griffin, who joined the larger Third World distributional scheme of
Third World Newsreel through the Advanced which it is a part, the Anthology functions as a
Production Workshop, distribution has become clearinghouse and organizational vehicle for
an area of intensified focus with the collection independent productions, both documentary
including more than 150 films and tapes. In and fiction, which would be hard-pressed to
addition to the early Newsreels, Cuban and find their appropriate audiences. The Anthol-
Vietnamese films of the late 1960s and early ogy is a serious contribution toward the redress
1970s, and the subsequent Newsreel projects of of an historical imbalance, the exclusion from
Siegel and Choy, the Third World Newsreel public view of the dreams, aspirations and
catalogue features the work of such indepen-achievements of minority populations within the
dent producers as Arthur Dong, Charles Bur-United States. Given its history and the tenacity
nett, Steve Ning, Lourdes Portillo, and of the core collective members, Third World
numerous lesser-known artists. By opting for Newsreel's position in the vanguard of cultural-
nonexclusive contracts with minority produc- political change seems assured.
ers, Third World seeks further coverage and
heightened visiblity for producers, while offer-
CONCLUSION
ing an average 50%o return to the film-maker. In assessing the complex contributions of
Griffin has emphasized outreach to educationalNewsreel in its various incarnations, we must
and community groups on a sliding scale: "I note the relationship of the local and cultural to
use discretion to give discounts to people Ithe macro-economic or infrastructural level
know should have access to the film."2' The which is, in the end, determinant. The uncere-
monious retreat of progressive forces in this
priority here is to promote the work of minority
artists unable to find distributional outlets else-decade has by now convinced us that a Marcus-
where due to the limited appeal or controversial ean analysis sacrifices explanatory or predictive

31

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 power for inspirational zeal.22 Fredric Jameson,
in a recent ambitious attempt to periodize the
sixties, concludes that the turbulent decade
represented, after all, a moment of transition
from one infrastructural or systemic stage of
capitalism to another. The eighties can, accord-
ing to Jameson, be characterized as global capi-
talism's moment of reentrenchment, the era in
which the unbound social forces and liberating
energies of the prior moment must be brought
to heel. The sixties unleashing of prodigious
and unexpected new forces, issuing from the
social movements of blacks, students, feminists
and Third Worlders, produced a kind of "sur-
plus consciousness" disinclined to forward the
multinational corporate agenda.23 It is these
emergent, relatively maverick constituencies
that late capitalism must now attempt to
proletarianize. But Newsreel has, from its be-
ginnings, remained an active contributor to the
development and dissemination of this "surplus
consciousness," advocating resistance to the
hegemonic while cultivating the values of a nas-
cent political culture. Amidst the conservative
backsliding and backlashing of the eighties,
Newsreel has emerged as America's most con-
sistent radical documentary voice. If, in the
early years, its films spoke primarily to the
Movement vanguard, Newsreel has moved
toward a deepening of its ties with a broad spec-
trum of working Americans, offering a coher-
ent Left perspective for an analysis-starved
audience as well as a route to public access for
minority artists. And finally, through continu-
ing distribution of the early films of struggle
and confrontation, the Newsreel enterprise has
sustained the popular memory of concerted,
energetic political activism. If the efforts of the
sixties are to escape recuperation, to survive
and, in time, to be renewed, it will be through
cultural as well as political agitation. Given the
history of the organization and its achievements
to date, one can reasonably look to Newsreel
for leadership in the struggle ahead.
NOTES
The address of California Newsreel is 613 Natoma Street,19.
cisco, CA 94103; tel. (415) 621-6196. Third World Newsreel is lo-
Radical
cated at 335 W. 38th Street, 5th floor, New York, NY 10018; tel.
(212) 947-9277.
1. From a series of interviews with Newsreel members in Film
Quarterly XX, No. 2 (Winter 1968-69), 47-48.
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2. Author's interview with Larry Daressa, 22 December 1983.
3. See Bill Nichols, Newsreel: Film and Revolution, unpublis
master's thesis, UCLA, 1972. Nichols has, to date, produced
most valuable and extensive scholarship on Newsreel. In additi
to the fine master's thesis cited here, see his Newsreel: Documenta
Filmmaking on the American Left (New York: Arno Press, 198
4. Newsreel was but one of many Movement manifestations of
"Great Refusal." Identifying with the dispossessed, the relativ
affluent first generation Newsreelers cast their lot with those syst
atically excluded from privilege. By the end of the decade, the lum
pen ranks were swelled by middle-class youth who rejected th
birthright in order to effect meaningful social change.
5. Interview with Norm Fruchter in Film Quarterly, 44.
6. Author's interview with Deborah Schaffer, 19 August 1986.
7. A particularly striking index of the shift of organizing focus a
radical sensibility from 1965 to 1969 is provided by contrasting tw
films by Norman Fruchter, one of the central figures of Newsree
"first generation." Troublemakers (Fruchter and Robert Machov
1966) chronicles an SDS organizing effort (the Newark Commun
Union Project led by Tom Hayden) that brought the skills a
energy of middle-class college students to a black ghetto of th
urban north. The film's brilliance lies in its willingness to consi
the Movement's shortcomings and limitations in the period prec
ing the outbreaks of violence and confrontation. For further discu
sion of this phase of New Left realpolitik, see Wini Breines, T
Great Refusal: Community and Organization in the New Le
1962-69 (New York: Praeger, 1982). The second film, Summer
(Fruchter and John Douglas, 1969), focuses on the several facets
cultural and political struggle within the ranks of a foundering N
Left coalition (the G.I. coffee house movement, the undergrou
press, draft resistance organizing) which culminated in the Aug
1968 confrontation on the streets of Chicago at the Democrat
National Convention. The shift is from community organizing
mass agitation, from fighting small battles using non-violent tact
to waging mass-mediated war with Daley's shock troops.
8. Interviews with two founding New York Newsreel membe
Allan Siegel and Norm Fruchter.
9. This political/aesthetic bifurcation, though significant, obscu
the relative homogeneity of the class, race, and gender compositio
of both factions. Neither women nor people of color tended
occupy positions of leadership in the organization prior to 197
10. Nichols, Newsreel: Film and Revolution, 73.
11. Interview with Marilyn Buck and Karen Ross in Film Quarterly
44.
12. Rat (October 29-November 12, 1969), 8.
13. Interview with Robert Kramer in Film Quarterly, 46.
14. Interview with Marilyn Buck and Karen Ross in Film Quarterly
44.
15. Author's interview with Norm Fruchter, 18 June 1985.
16. Author's interview with Allan Siegel, 18 June 1985.
17. Author's interview with Fruchter. In addition to the ideolog
and the underground filmmakers, another smaller faction of News
reel producers existed-still primarily male-composed of th
who raised funds necessary for production through illicit activitie
principally drug-dealing. Pot was the ritual cornerstone of the cou
terculture; funds generated by its sale, when turned to the pub
good, were viewed as a fully legitimate source of income. The fa
out from that method of fund-raising was a small but painful r
of attrition as Newsreelers were sent to prison on drug charges
18. Author's interview with Christine Choy, 20 August 1986. Ch
noted that her first Newsreel paycheck was not drawn until 1981,
full ten years after her arrival. A two-year CETA grant, welfare a
unemployment compensation furnished her means of survival f
a decade.
SanSee
Fran-
my "The Imaging of Analysis: Newsreel's Re-Search f
Film Practice," Wide Angle 6, No. 3 (1984), 76-84.
20. Author's interview with Siegel.
21. Author's interview with Ada Gay Griffin, 8 August 1986
22. See in particular Herbert Marcuse's An Essay on Libera
(1969), which contains the following succinct formulation of
 "aesthetic ethos" of the sixties, a theoretical position that validat-
ed the realm of the creative imagination independent of quotidian
(and frequently neglected) efforts toward mass base-building:
"... the development of the productive forces beyond their
capitalist organization suggests the possibility of freedom within the
realm of necessity. The quantitative reduction of necessary labor
could turn into quality (freedom) ... But the construction of such
a society presupposes a type of man with a different sensitivity as
well as consciousness: men who would speak a different language,
have different gestures, follow different impulses . . . The imagi-
nation of such men and women would fashion their reason and tend
to make the process of production a process of creation." Herbert
Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 21.
23. Fredric Jameson, "Periodizing the 60's," in The 60's Without
Apology, 208-209.

MARSHA KINDER

Pleasure and the New

Spanish Mentality:
A Conversation with Pedro Almod6var*

Following the enthusiastic critical reception offeaturing homosexual and transsexual pro-
Pedro Almod6var's La Ley del Deseo (The Law tagonists in a sado-masochistic triangle involv-
of Desire) at this year's Berlin Film Festical,
ing incest, murder, and suicide and including
Spain's oldest and largest-circulation film jour-several sexually explicit homoerotic love scenes.
nal, Fotogramas & Video, ran an editorial It's a film that in most national contexts would
saying: be marginal, to say the least. And yet in March,
"The recent Berlin Festival has demonstrated an when it was screened in New York, concurrent
important fact for Spanish cinema: the interest with but not as part of the Ministry of Culture's
that our cinema can arouse abroad, not only at Third Annual Spanish Film Week (which in-
the level of interchange or cultural curiosity, but
cluded an equally extreme Almod6var melodra-
as an exportable and commercially valid
product. ... Spanish cinema is trying to leave the ma called Matador), La Ley del Deseo again
national 'ghetto' and join a movement that received critical raves in the Village Voice and
proclaims the necessity and urgency of a 'Euro- in the New Yorker where Pauline Kael devoted
pean cinema' which transcends nationalities
a full page to the film-an achievement that
without renouncing their specificity."'
was duly reported as "news" in Spain's most
Although this editorial mentions several films
prestigious daily, El Pals.2
at the festival to support its point, it focuses
At the very moment when Spanish cinema
most specifically on "the enormous and over-
may be facing its most serious economic crisis,
whelming success of La Ley del Deseo. . . , a
Almod6var's films are achieving modest suc-
film that is eminently 'Spanish' but comprehen-
cess both at home and abroad. Since the death
sible to any person," and which confirms that
of Franco in 1975 and despite the earnest ef-
"when one makes a cinema that has something
forts of the Socialist government which came to
to say, these things can have appeal power in 1982, Spanish films have not only
everywhere."
failed to find adequate distribution in foreign
Fotogramas fails to acknowledge the irony
markets, but they have steadily been losing their
that this film being singled out as a model of
home audience. Spanish spectators are either
"universal" appeal is an outrageous melodrama
staying home in droves with their VCRs or
flocking to see the latest imports which increas-
*This conversation took place on May 25, 1987 at Pedro Almod6-
ingly dominate Spanish movie houses with their
var's piso in Madrid. It was made possible by a research grant from
the Comit6 Conjunto Hispano Norteamericano para la Coopera- block booking. The number of total spectators
ci6n Cultural y Educativa.
who attended movies in Spain decreased from

33

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