Skylight Social Media

Whether it be Dziga Vertov’s Kino Train in the 20’s Russia,to Herbert Biberman’s necessity to use garage-based sound recording gear whilst banned from using professional studios for Salt of the Earth during the McCarthy era, to the use battery-operated 16mm Bell & Howell projectors in India’s Bihar region or Bolivia’s indigenous communities in the 60’s and 70’s, to the mass production of over 2,000 vhs copies of the Miners Campaign Tapes jointly produced by a collective of Independent filmamkers during Britain’s Miners Strike of 1984-85, progressive filmmakers and political movements have always been both innovative and quick to seize upon the opportunities afforded by the current technologies (… and what they had access to!!!) to get their messages across.

Your proposal looks upon both the distribution and ‘diffusion’ (active use of progressive media)
with an eye to grasping and utilising the power of the web. 

To the extent that the web is less able to fall under the knife of censorship of the predominant media and ideologies, and Government controls , it should afford a greater range of voices to to be heard.  Cubavision, Al-Jazeera TV, and Venezuelan-based TeleSUR.tv are perhaps the best- known web-based outlets on the international scene to give access to independent voices and commentary.

Where, as politically active media workers, we have often but not always fallen short, is having, on the one hand, the economic independence to sustain the infrastructure your proposal implies.  Who is going to do all the work, how will it be costed, and is it sustainable?  Is this foresen by you as an extension of the work of Skylight, or something broader in which you are trying to solicit the involvement of a wider group of progressive production ‘partners’? Dare I say, in any case, we’d need a good ‘business case’ to ensure its survival even in the short (2-3 years) run.

In many countries where political opposition movements have enjoyed popularity, a strong organisational base and successful outreach / dissemination of their ideas, viewpoint, and ‘agitation and propaganda,’ they have relied on the political organisation and infrastructure of the movement to provide the networks for the distribution of materials, and on their own ‘internal’ teams for the production of these media, be they leaflets, posters, tape/slide shows, puppet theatre, films, videos or whatever.

No doubt Skylight’s recent (and laudible) success at distribution and diffusion of the Quechua language version Estado de Miedo Quechua / State of Fear has taken advantage of social, political and cultural networks within the indigenous communities in Peru. 30 years earlier Jorge SANJINES and Grupo Ukamau would have done similarly with both the production and dissemination of their acclaimed ‘El Enemigo Principal’, but these are not structures or networks that necessarily bear any resemblance to organisations, distribution outlets nor political consciousness about the media in North America, Europe, or much of Asia.

Despite the recent and welcomed success of Barack Obama, the USA remains, fundamentally, a very conservative country.  My understanding of the ‘operating environment’ for progressive groups there is that they can on occasion risk being labelled ‘radical,’ but sit more comfortably wearing human rights labels, or being known as ‘advocates’ for this campaign or that. (No doubt the reliance on ‘a degree’ of public-funding does put constraints on the ‘editorial’ and political content of output by progressive media workers, be they in North America, Europe or elsewhere.)

In light of the above, the challenge for the future of your CPU proposal, and for those who wish to establish it, is to decide to what extent it wishes to operate as an educationally-based archive (seeking grants from foundations, a main ‘clientele’ based in academic institutions, etc), or that it wishes to become an independent cultural collective, representing the ‘rights and intellectual property’ of various contributors, be they North American-based progressive film/video makers, or a wider group of media workers worldwide.

Skylight, for example, have generously supported various Latin American filmakers by allowing them to use ‘archive’ material for local agitprop and productions.  Yet you would rightfully ask PBS or commercial channels to pay the going rate to use the same footage as part of a package they may wish to put out.

Latin American filmmakers, themselves, have traditionally had to fight with networks here in Europe to get their ‘just price’ for distribution rights for televised broadcast of their work.  Having had experience as a distributor representing a number of progressive production companies in the 70’s and 80’s, I saw time and again how broadcasters here (and across Europe) often relate to 3rd World filmmkers as they do to local communities seeking outlets for their agricultural produce.  TV execs garble words like ‘the market place’, ‘minority interest’ and ‘minimum possible advertising revenue’ as justifying arguments towards offering lower prices for ‘3rd World’ product.

Whilst your proposal is more about using material from films as opposed to the films as a whole, you still would be drawing upon the legacy, in the States, of distribution organisations such as Tricontinental Films and Newsreel, amongst others, and their campaigning work to represent progressive filmmakers and content throughout the 60s-80s.

Their work, like Liberation Films in Belgium and The Other Cinema in Britain, enjoyed their greatest success at the height of political opposition movements following ‘Paris ‘68’, and earlier environmental and anti-war movements in the Sixties.  Their crises came in the mid- to late 80’s as those movements began to transform and subside.  Government attitudes to funding ‘alternative media’, educational establishments and societies attitude and capacity to hire films vs. video, or neither, and the dismantling of many less formal politically-informed networks led to the dissolution of the economic base that had sustained these organisations.  Whilst they struggled to survive by broadening the ‘range’ of their catalogue, and in some cases trying to establish ‘alternative’ theatrical (movie theatre) distribution for their own titles, the reality was that times had changed.’

Barack Obama rode the tide of the mantra for the need of a different type of change to take place.  We are now in an new era economically, as well, where uncertainty will inevitably lead, in the short-term, to a constriction in the sort of public-funding that has traditionally contributed to the mixed-economy approach of successful ‘alternative media’ outlets.  So ‘funding’ is going to be tight!

But the need for ever-more incisive progressive content finding its way into more and diverse arenas, as a base for discussion and action, can not be understated.

Campaigns for justice and human rights, exposure of new attempts of big economic powers to establish hegemony against the interests of local populations, the enormous challenge to change minds and adopt practical policies in respect to Global Warming, and the ongoing campaigning for a decent wage in return for a day’s or week’s work, these all cry out action.

It is incumbent on today’s progressive media producers, in your country as in ours, to link up with various campaigns and communities, building bridges where needed to get discussion and collaboration going, and to continue to produce and distribute the sort of incisive content that Skylight has been doing for 25 years.

We would welcome any highly organised, politically-informed body that could sustain itself economically, and serve the needs and interests of a whole range of campaigning organisations. 

We recognise the inherent and ongoing value of so much archive material held by many filmmakers worldwide, and that this wealth of recorded experience and practice needs to have new life breathed into it.  Use of your material on Guatemala in the current judicial proceedings taking place in Spain is an excellent example of this.

We would be interested to hear yours and others’ views as to how you would determine and implement any ‘editorial policy’ in respect to the use of a whole range of ‘archive material,’ as whilst one picture may speak a thousand words, the commentary over the top of its broadcast will speak, most often, with ‘His Master’s Voice.’

Good luck with your investigations, and keep us informed.
Fred Coker / Ana Lucia Cuevas
Armadillo Productions(UK/Guatemala)

    – Fred (11/27  at  27-Nov 13:56 -05:00)