A look at Uptown in 1981 from the point of view of the everyday people who live and work in the neighborhood. In addition to on-the-street interviews with working class people about their opinions on their neighborhood, the documentary also spends a significant amount of time talking to gang members. The footage in mostly in color, although a few sections are in black & white.
Ant Farm promotes their ideas for inflatable living and demonstrates how to construct inflatables using basic materials.
This tape features a proposal for the Official Convention City, created by Ant Farm. In the mid-seventies, members of Ant Farm embarked on a journey to create a domed city in Texas with the sole purpose of using it to broadcast American political conventions. The proposal was meant to raise questions about the scripted and electronic aspects of political coverage. There is also footage of numerous news reports about Ant Farm’s various projects and other Ant Farm pieces including NASA moon walk, joy ride excerpts, and a time capsule news report.
This tape contains footage from the opening of the Houston Contemporary Art Museum in 1972. Produced by Ant Farm, the piece is a half-hour scrapbook of the events taking place during the opening gala, including Ant Farm’s creation of a time capsule. The videomakers speak with attendees and artists about their involvement in the event.
![[John Callaway and Studs Terkel on Tom Weinberg]](https://development-q5nzhaa-ou7jifsrmm4uk.us.platform.sh/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/653902004_640-228x160.jpg)
Raw interviews with John Callaway and Studs Terkel about Tom Weinberg for his Silver Circle Award presentation. Also includes miscellaneous footage scattered throughout the tape.
![[Guerrilla Television event discussion]](https://development-q5nzhaa-ou7jifsrmm4uk.us.platform.sh/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/653911879_640-228x160.jpg)
After the Guerrilla Television screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Skip Blumberg, Nancy Cain, Chip Lord, and Tom Weinberg participate in a discussion moderated by Amy Beste. Edited version.
A recent edit (2003) of Ant Farm’s classic video art piece examining and satirizing the media, particularly the impact of television. On July 4, Independence Day, 1975, what a TV newscaster described as a “media circus” assembles at San Francisco’s Cow Palace Stadium. A pyramid of television sets are stacked, doused with kerosene, and set ablaze. Then a modified 1959 Cadillac El Dorado Biarritz, piloted by two drivers who are guided only by a video monitor between their bucket seats, smashes through the pyramid destroying the TV sets.
Preceding the event are clips from various TV news broadcasts that covered it (many of the TV reporters make the comment that they “didn’t get it”). The tape includes interviews with invited guests, a speech given by Doug Hall as President John F. Kennedy explaining the message of Media Burn, the dramatic unveiling of the Phantom Dream Car, several sequences of the car smashing through the TV sets, and its triumphant return from the end of the Cow Palace parking lot.
Image Union program featuring the documentary “Death in the West,” a British anti-tobacco film. The film focuses on the then-controversial issue of whether smoking is harmful to a person’s health and features interviews with people on both sides of the issue. It is framed by the stories of several real cowboys with lung cancer, in order to counteract the image of smoking as a masculine activity.