NEIGHBORHOOD CINEMA

⏩ NEIGHBORHOOD CINEMA

While technical and logistical barriers to grassroots film and video production fell in the last decades of the twentieth century, barriers to the channels and venues of distribution and exhibition did not. The problem of access to distribution was heightened with the increased monopolization of the media industry, particularly as the vertical integration of the industry stressed leastcommon-denominator blockbuster hits and took fewer risks with unproven, less-commercial material. As many video and filmmakers can attest, access to an audience is an integral aspect of media making. The primary point of media-making endeavors is to reach people with the images and audio the artist has arranged, a function vital to those who identify as video/film artists and media makers. Organizing independent local video or film playback, exhibition, and distribution became an essential part of the film and video movement. For decades it was typically the only way such work could be seen by an audience. The practice of film and video projection “happenings” in living rooms, backyards, storefronts, and other alternative forms of public space is not new, of course. In the United States, there is a long tradition of pinning a sheet on a wall and projecting work that is kept from the commercial venues. Early African-American cinema has its roots in this tradition, as work created by Black artists that portrayed the Black community in a positive light was not accepted into normal distribution chains. In Black neighborhoods around the United States, viewers could come into the backyards, barns, churches, and other public spaces to see work directed by Black directors with Black casts. Other historical roots of neighborhood and mobile cinema can be found in the activities of the Film and Photo Leagues of the 1930s,13 as well as numerous amateur film clubs that proliferated in the mid-twentieth century. The Film and Photo League was a group of filmmakers who were determined to provide independent media to working people who would not ordinarily be exposed to alternative views. Operating primarily during the years of the Great Depression, the League took their influences from similar groups operating in Europe as part of the great upheavals of labor worldwide. The Film and Photo League was a loose affiliation of local film collectives based in New York City, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other regions. 

Following in the tradition of other social realist photographers of the era, they sought to document the trials and tribulations of workers and poor people during dire economic times. Reflecting their commitment to radical social change, they also showed how working people were fighting back, not wanting just to generate sympathy, but action as well. With this in mind, getting their films to their audience was just as important as filming the strikes, trials, and demonstrations they covered. Carla Leshne’s account of the Film and Photo League is instructive in pointing out the importance of local screenings. In one such account of League members Balog and Royce, she writes, “Balog and Royce showed their films to an audience of 1000 at the Fillmore Workers Center, which Balog described as ‘very enthusiastic.’ They continued to Carmel for a showing the next night, where he observed that the audience in this sort of ‘artist colony’ was not as enthusiastic as at other showings.” “Balog spent 9 October preparing for the continuing tour down the California coast, by helping to print 15,000 publicity leaflets. Over the next two months, they showed the films throughout California.”14 The Film and Photo League also developed “mobile” theatre, whereby trucks were outfitted with screens and projectors to bring independent cinema to outlying neighborhoods. The link between the Film and Photo League of the 1930s and the US New Left filmmakers collective Newsreel is more than just inspirational; it is somewhat direct, as some past members of the League participated in the beginnings of Newsreel. Newsreel developed at a time when film was still the dominant form of news footage, on the cusp of the adoption of portable video for covering current events.

BLACK PANTHERS AND THE NEWSREEL COLLECTIVE

The insurgent movements of the 1960s demanded new institutions, new ways of doing things, and new outlets for creative expression. The counterculture that “The Movement” spawned created underground newspapers, freeform radio stations, alternative music venues, and radical film and video collectives. The “film at 11” newscast that the Big Three broadcasting empires of CBS, NBC, and ABC piped into US living rooms nightly was often scorned as establishment propaganda or diversion from the real issues of the day. In 1967, the Newsreel Collective was formed in New York City by a diverse group of filmmakers, ranging from experimental artists to commercial producers to military photographers, who all wanted to confront the conservative hegemony of film and television. Traditionally, a newsreel was a short, informational film about important current events projected for audiences at public venues such as movie theaters. The newsreel became popular during World War II as a means of keeping Americans informed about the war effort and to keep the public vigilant and alert. The Newsreel Collective of the 1960s wanted to provide a similar informational wakeup call to the US public. In the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the most profound and influential political movements in US history—the Black Panther Party—was moving to the forefront of current events. Started as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California, in 1966, the group emerged into a fullfledged revolutionary movement that soon found itself face to face with extreme repression from local, state, and federal authorities. Panther offices were frequently raided by police, and Panther members were often physically threatened, abused, and even killed by law enforcement officers. Bay Area radical filmmakers were determined to counter what they saw as the ignorant and fearful mass media representation of the Panthers with their own more sympathetic point of view of the Panther movement. A collaboration arose between Newsreel members in New York City and a group of Bay Area filmmakers and activists, and thus San Francisco Newsreel was born. SF Newsreel’s first task was to film the growing power of the Black Panther Party. The group produced two films on the Black Panther movement. Today these films are often called Black Panther but were produced as two separate films. Off the Pig was shot in 1967 and focused on the goals of the Black Panther Party. The film is a collage of images of police violence, political protest, and scenes of life in Oakland’s Black community woven around interviews with leading figures in the Party. Mayday was shot in 1969 and centers around a Free Huey Newton rally the Panthers held on May 1 in front of the San Francisco Federal Building. Both films display the power and discipline of the Panthers as well as the concrete steps the Party was taking to help their community survive, from fighting police brutality to providing breakfast for poor children. There was also a third film with the Black Panthers that was produced by Los Angeles Newsreel, entitled Repression. 

Off the Pig (total run time [TRT]: 14:34) opens with a montage of shattered plate-glass windows with Black Panther posters torn by police bullets. The film reflects the immediacy of low-budget filmmaking—black and white, high contrast, grainy, tattered with wear, frames missing—and the vestiges of a cinema of poverty. African drums keep the beat over handheld scenes of Panthers marching in military formation, carrying their flags and symbols. Scenes of the Oakland ghetto are cut together with the poster art of Panther artist Emory Douglas, whose artwork once kept the streets of Oakland covered with slogans and wheatpaste. Candid, spontaneous, and uncensored interviews with Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and other leaders bring out the heart and soul of the Black Panther Party’s ten-point program, in contrast to the mass media’s depiction of the Panthers as violent Black nationalists. Mayday (TRT: 13:30) provides footage of a large Free Huey rally, interspersed with footage of police brutality in the Black community and set to a jazz soundtrack. One scene captures the Panthers passing out boxes of Mao Tse Tung’s “Little Red Book,” while the speaker on bullhorn advocates revolution.

These films, though by now ragged, faded, and perhaps crude, are striking in contrast to today’s packaged and commercialized rebellion, a timeworn, clichéd marketing gimmick that seeks to capitalize on consumers’ desire to be perceived as rugged individualists. The histrionics of gangsta rap and bad-boy rock seem almost comical next to the Black Panther films, which capture real rebellion in dangerous times, not a public image strategy. The vérité “style” of much of the footage, and the simplicity of the films’ structure still gives these films an honest quality, despite their unequivocal stance in favor of the Panther movement. The organizational mission of the Newsreel Collective was not just to make and distribute films; it was also to actively exhibit them as well. Newsreel members would set up their projectors in community centers, backyards, churches, and even off the backs of trucks onto public walls, in an effort to get their vision out into the public. A Newsreel screening would often include other revolutionary cinema as well, such as work by Cuban director Santiago Alvarez, or films from Vietnam or Africa. Newsreel screenings typically involved a collective member showing up in person in order to stimulate a conversation about the films and to promote an active audience. Newsreel films were created to urge people to action. The rat-a-tattat of the Newsreel logo, as the letters machine-gunned in rapid staccato on the screen, was testament to that desire. The Black Panther films and other Newsreel films were created to be participatory, advocacy media, not detached observations with the classic omniscient voice of authority. Thus, they had more in common with cinéma vérité, the work of Emile de Antonio or the contemporary Cuban cinema, than with traditional US newsreels. In Black Panther, the audience is given a privileged position among the Panthers, as part of the movement, rather than situated as lurking from behind police lines, where most establishment media positioned themselves. In taking such a stand, Newsreel was an important contributor to contemporary advocacy and participatory film and video making.