Home » Posts tagged 'John Reilly' (Page 3)

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  Joe Albert’s Fox Hunt and Other Stories from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, John Reilly, Julie Gustafson, Roots of Video

  In JOE ALBERT’S FOX HUNT, documentary team Julie Gustafson and John Reilly experiment with the short story form in a series of vignettes about the people and environmental issues facing the New Jersey Pine Barrens, the last remaining open wilderness between Washington, D.C. and New York City. Once considered a wasteland, the Pine Barrens have become a battleground of conflicting interests between developers, conservationists and longtime inhabitants. Colorful characters include the developer of Crestwood Village, a 6000 unit housing project aimed at urban dwellers seeking a piece of the American Dream; a small town mayor who believes in biblical stewardship of the pristine aquifer that underlies the area; and Joe Albert, a fox hunter and member of the “Pineconers,” a bluegrass group whose music descends from early English settlers. Albert laments, “I never thought it would go. I always thought it would be there. That’s what the Indians felt.” Completed in 1979 and aired in 1980 on public television stations in New York and New Jersey. Anne Wooster of the VILLAGE VOICE said, “Autobiography and politics intermingle in personal tales from the last wilderness in the Eastern Megalopolis…a complex and compelling orchestration of passions.”

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  Giving Birth: Four Portraits

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, John Reilly, Julie Gustafson, Roots of Video

  An examination of American birthing traditions focusing on four couples and four different types of childbirth: a standard hospital delivery with high technology and anesthesia, a Leboyer “birth without violence,” a Caesarean section, and a midwife-assisted natural childbirth using the Lamaze method. The first collaboration of husband and wife documentary team Julie Gustafson and John Reilly, GIVING BIRTH illustrates the joys and pains of childbirth in intimate, video vérité portraits. Through interviews with Frederick Leboyer, Elizabeth Bing and Margaret Mead, GIVING BIRTH contextualizes emerging ideas and techniques for birthing. As Mead says, “There are cases when childbirth is surgery, but there is no reason we should take a life process and treat it always like a disease.” One of the first video documentaries produced by WNET’s pioneering TV Laboratory, GIVING BIRTH aired nationally on public television in 1976 to critical acclaim. The Scripps Howard News Service said, “Splendid… absolutely candid…The medical, physical and spiritual points of view explored.” According to John Cashman of Newsday, “Men should see it…Women should see it…Explicit and absolutely real.” Originally shot in ¾” Color and B & W video. Winner of “Best Video Documentary” awards at the Athens Video Festival (1977) and the Chicago International Film Festival (1977).

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  Lifestyles: An Experiment in Feedback

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, John Reilly, Roots of Video

  Two students from a Global Village workshop explore their lives and family’s beliefs about gender roles by using video feedback. One is a New Jersey housewife who hopes to convince her flamboyant and macho husband that she can be more than a wife and mothers; the other is a NYC single mother and writer already forging an independent path. Poignant and often funny, the resulting ‘experiment’ evolves into a striking feminist documentary using the power of new video technology.

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  The Irish Tapes

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, John Reilly, Roots of Video

  THE IRISH TAPES was one of the first major video documentaries produced with 1/2-inch portable equipment. From 1971 to 1973, John Reilly and Stefan Moore shot over one hundred hours of footage in Northern Ireland, profiling one of the most volatile and violent moments in the decades-long conflict from the vantage point of those who lived through and remembered it. Includes rare interviews with members of the Provisional IRA, individuals suffering from unrelenting violence in Belfast and Irish-American perspectives on “The Troubles.” Originally shown as a three-channel, twelve-monitor installation at Global Village. Edited and kinescoped for broadcast by WNET in 1975. Originally shot in 1/2″ B & W video. Permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, 2013, Brooklyn Academy of Music 2014.

  In 2014, curators at the Brooklyn Academy of Music described THE IRISH TAPES as “a striking example o the creative and political potential of the then-new video technology… offering an immediacy, intimacy, and unabashed subjectivity that was then unheard of in broadcast television journalism.”

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  John Reilly, 1939-2013

  Blog

  On July 28, 2013, video pioneer John Reilly died at the age of 74, but his contributions to independent video nationwide will live on. Back in 1969, Reilly and Rudi Stern co-founded Global Village in New York, one of the first places to watch independent “underground” video. It eventually expanded into an annual video festival that lasted 15 years. Reilly produced and directed several video documentaries; two of the best-known are “The Irish Tapes” (1971-74) with Stefan Moore and “Waiting […]