Collection of DeeDee Halleck
Historical and biographical overview:
DeeDee Halleck is an award-winning media
activist, educator, and independent filmmaker. From her work with Shirley
Clarke’s TP Video Space Troupe, to co-founding Paper Tiger Television, the Deep
Dish Satellite Network and helping to build the Indymedia movement—Halleck has
subversively (and playfully) deployed media tools to critique the corporate
landscape for the past 50 years. Halleck’s archive is an unparalleled resource
on alternative media arts and culture and would be a valuable asset to scholars
looking to historicize the uses of analog and digital technologies (film,
video, internet, and social media platforms) both as experimental art forms and
politically-engaged media for social movements, citizen-journalism, and
critical pedagogy.
The materials in this collection embody
Halleck’s individual artistic achievements, as well as those of the networks of
socially engaged artists and citizen journalists she was part of. Halleck has been
a longtime participant in numerous campaigns and movements to challenge
corporate media control—from the
cable access movement, projects promoting the cultural exchange of community
media-makers worldwide, and with the establishment of alternative media centers
following the counter-globalization movement. This work reflects a vast legacy
of creatively disrupting the dominant paradigm of media production through
collective interventions.
Early in her career as an educator, Halleck
was at the forefront of the media literacy movement. In 1961 she recorded these
early efforts in the first film documenting youth media, Children Make Movies, at Lillian Wald Recreation Rooms and
Settlement. The film was screened at the 1962 UNESCO symposium, and was recognized
by media theorist Marshall McLuhan as pioneering work. The use of filmmaking as
a tool for youth empowerment is exemplified in the collection’s 16mm and super
8mm films produced in workshops taught by Halleck, which include the Henry Street
Settlement Film Club (1962-1966) and a film program for incarcerated teens at
the Otisville School for Boys (1968-1972).
The archive also includes essays written about these experiences which were
published in Film Culture and Film Library
Quarterly. Her film made in 1964 about a community mural project at Henry
Street (The Mural on Our Street) was
nominated for an Academy Award in Documentary Short Subjects in 1965.
In the 1970’s Halleck was part of an eclectic
cohort of artists groups who facilitated playful media experiments outside the
spaces of traditional arts institutions. The diary she kept while working on
the artist Robert Frank’s film Keep Busy (1975)
exemplifies her experiences from this period through a series intimate and
often humorous reflections. The archive also contains flyers from Shirley
Clarke’s Teepee Video Space Troupe’s happenings, photos of the Videofreex’s
pirate television broadcasts, collaborations with Richard Serra, Nancy Holt,
Liza Bear, and Joan Jonas, and films from the community-based arts organization
Live Arts (Middletown, NY) which Halleck co-founded. Through these artistic
endeavors, Halleck and her collaborators ushered forth a new era of
participatory media production.
Beyond a ‘guerrilla’ aesthetic—Halleck’s work
reflects a deep commitment to creating and participating in socially engaged
work. The archive contains documents, stills, and audiovisual materials from
over 30 films she directed in addition to numerous television productions.
Halleck was a steadfast documentarian of the Bread and Puppet Theater, and
created several films from footage of their
annual circus festivals. The archive also contains extensive research and
rare materials from Halleck’s decade-long project examining the history of
Latin American stereotypes in US media from 1898-1945. The film she created
from this work, The Gringo in Mañanaland
was the target of the first censorship of NEA media funding in 1983 and the
archive contains legal documentation and correspondence from the case. The
finished film was selected for several international film festivals, including
The Venice Film Festival, The London Film Festival and the Trieste Festival on
Latin America.
Halleck’s activism and media production
focused notably on political issues in Latin America in the 80’s, and gross
misrepresentation in mainstream media. The materials in the archive are of
great value as they exemplify alternative perspectives on topics including the
revolution in Nicaragua, and the history of Haiti’s political economy. The
archive also includes a vast array of materials from Halleck’s solidarity work,
including posters and publications produced under the Sandinista government. It
includes many audiovisual materials from the region, such as materials prepared
for X-Change TV, a group that collected and translated videos from El Salvador,
Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico for distribution to community access channels
throughout the United States.
The archive reveals myriad unsung histories
of activists and artists creating community-driven alternatives to mainstream
media. In 1981, Halleck founded Paper Tiger Television, a groundbreaking
innovation in video art and public access television which presented a critical
view of mass media with a handmade, irreverent aesthetic. The archive contains
videorecordings, organizational papers, and documentation of their
installations in galleries and museums. In addition, Halleck also co-created
Deep Dish Television in 1986, the first grassroots satellite and cable
television production and distribution network for independent media-makers,
artists, and activists. Halleck’s work has been instrumental for citizen
journalists documenting grassroots social movements. The archive contains
extensive materials from seminal projects—the Gulf Crisis TV Project (a distribution platform for media
protesting against the first Gulf War), and the first television broadcasts of Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. Halleck
was the initiator of the first year of Democracy Now TV, turning what had been
a radio program into an important international source for daily news.
The collection significantly documents
struggles for media democracy and reform within the US. One pivotal campaign
which is represented is the fight to increase support and channel space for
independent video and film on public television, the legacy of which is
illustrated by the inclusion of programming such as Independent Lens and POV
today. As President of the Association of Independent Video and Film Makers
(AIVF) in the 1970’s, Halleck led this campaign in Washington, testifying twice
before the House Sub-Committee on Telecommunication. There is extensive
documentation of organizations such as the Coalition to Make Public Television
Public which spearheaded the Coalition for Public Broadcasting campaign. The
archive also contains material from the cable access television movement,
struggles to insure public interest set-asides for Direct Broadcast Satellite
(DBS) and low power radio. These struggles fundamentally altered the media
landscape, enabling the broadcast of media made by independent producers,
citizen journalists, and university students.
The materials in the archive epitomize
Halleck’s involvement in media reform and community media on an international
level. There are documents, ephemera, audiovisual materials, and photos from
her workshops at alternative media centers around the world, which include
several trips to Nicaragua (1983-2000) where Halleck worked with the
Communication Office of the Ministry of Agriculture (MIDINRA) to train and
assist video makers in creating educational video. She presented workshops in
Japan, Mexico, Korea, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Spain, Netherlands, Germany,
Austria, the UK and Ireland. There is also extensive correspondence and
documentation from Halleck’s leadership in international organizations—such as
Videazimut, a federation of community and independent television—and from her
participation in gatherings including the World Summit on the Information
Society and more recently ICANN (The Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and
Numbers) where she has been an active member of the Non-Commercial Users
Constituency. Significantly, the archive
contains materials documenting the formation of “Indymedia”--independent media
centers—participatory networks of citizen journalists--which formed
internationally after the protests against the WTO in Seattle in 1999.
The collection signifies Halleck’s
substantial contributions to media scholarship. She held a Full Professor
position at the University of California for 17 years, where she specialized in
alternative media and Latin American cinema. The archive includes syllabi and comprehensive
materials she compiled for her courses, as well as the work of her students,
many of whom went on to make their own scholarly contributions. The collection
also contains documents from her collaborations with student activists
including the Burn Website (1993), one of the first uses of an early
pre-internet browser (Mosaic) for social issue activism and radical imagery.
The archive holds numerous articles and essays about alternative media Halleck
authored during her tenure, as well as writings compiled in her book Hand Held Visions: the Impossible
Possibilities of Community Media (Fordham University Press).
DeeDee Halleck’s body of work occupies a
unique place between art and activism. She has achieved recognition and acclaim
for her contributions including four awards for lifetime achievement: an Indy
from the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, The George Stoney Award
from the Alliance for Community Media; The Lifetime Achievement Award of the
National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), and the Dallas Smythe
Award from the Union for Democratic Communication, 2008. Traversing the artistic avant-garde, her
archive essentially charts a complex and critical narrative of networks of
communication, from the 1960’s to the present which fully present the depth and
breadth of community media history and the cultures of social movements
globally and within the United States.
Scope and Content of the Collection:
Selected film and television productions: 1961-2015
●
Production files- production notes, press, promotional materials, and audiovisual
elements of approximately 30 films, videos, and television productions produced
by Halleck between 1961-2003.
●
Paper Tiger
Television- two banker boxes of
organizational papers, photos, fliers, programs, artworks, correspondence, and
proposals.
●
Deep Dish
Television- Three banker boxes
of organizational papers, budgets, proposals,photos, fliers, programs,
artworks, correspondence, and downlink station lists.
●
Gulf Crisis
TV project- one banker box of
organizational papers, photos, fliers, programs, artworks, correspondence, and
proposals.
●
Democracy
Now- one banker box of early proposals,
correspondence, budgets, down-link lists and promotional materials.
●
Bread and Puppet Theater- posters, photographs, correspondence, artworks,
programs, and audiovisual recordings.
●
Lock Down
USA and
other prison programs. Four banker boxes of research materials regarding
prisons, crime, death penalty and prison abolitionist movements such as
Critical Resistance and off-air copies of legislative hearings, news coverage
of prison issues and extensive correspondence and writings from prisoners.
●
Reverend Billy Television Series (2013)- 8 half hour programs (miniDV/DVD) of series The Last Televangelist with Bill Talen,
Choir of The Church of Stop Shopping, Laura Newman, James Soloman Benn and Joan
Baez.
Youth-made media: 1961-1974
●
Lillian Wald Recreation Rooms and Settlement- one folder of flyers photographs, and articles,
film Children Make Movies.
●
Henry Street Settlement- one folder of flyers and photographs; 3 16mm
films.
●
Otisville Division for Youth, NY State Division for
Youth- one banker box of documents, photographs,
notebooks; super 8 films,16mm films created by youth.
●
Deep Dish West Harlem-One box with proposals,
photographs, posters and video from video and web site making workshops on
Harlem history and the environment.
Alternative and community media in New York: 1970’s
●
Shirley Clarke and the Teepee Video Space Troupe- one folder of photographs, flyers, notes and
articles.
●
Live Arts
- Three folders of proposals, flyers, newspaper clippings, and photographs. 1
16 mm film and 20 super 8mm films from an arts center Halleck created in
Middletown, NY and at migrant camps in Florida, NY in the mid 1970s.
●
Videofreex-
one folder of black and white photographs from their pirate radio events.
●
Image Union- two folders from 1976 experimental national convention
coverage by a collective of video artists and activists: 5 Day Bicycle Race and Mock
Turtle Soup.
Material from Collaborations with Other Artists: 1973-2013
• Liza Bear’s Communications Update- 3
folders of photographs, brochures, 10 video programs.
• Correspondence, photographs, flyers and
posters from Nancy Holt, Jean Dupuy, Sari Dienes and Richard Serra. Two banker boxes. (Halleck shot and edited several
films for these artists.)
Media advocacy and activism in the US:
1970’s-2000’s
●
Association of Independent Film and Videomakers- two banker boxes of brochures, posters, minutes,
correspondence and publications about the campaign to democratize public
television with the Coalition to Make Public Television Public (1977-1982).
Material related to independent films from the 60’s-90’s.
●
Public access television- Three banker box of flyers, reports, proposals,
surveys about public access around the US. Notes and programs from the national
conferences of the Alliance for Community Media. Photographs and
display material. Video material: edited tapes and some mini DV tapes of
meetings.
●
Satellite access television- two banker boxes of organizational proposals,
correspondence, fliers, numerous proposals and examples of satellite networks: Deep
Dish TV, The Ad Hoc New Network, The Green Channel, SUN (Satellite University
Network), The 90’s, Free Speech TV, Labor Link TV, The Youth Channel and others.
●
The minutes, notes,
proposals, plans and financial records of the Instructional Telecommunications Foundation – 4 banker boxes. Halleck
was a board member for 19 years of this organization which started two PBS
stations (Philadelphia, Boulder), satellite delivery of educational material to
9 school systems (Philadelphia, Denver, Chicago and others), Free Speech TV and
enabled the delivery of Democracy Now to over 1000 community television and
radio stations.
Media advocacy and activism, international: 1990’s-2000’s
• Network Building During the 1980s and 1990s, Halleck worked with many organizations to articulate the need and search for funding for creating an alternative network for independent work.
• Network Building During the 1980s and 1990s, Halleck worked with many organizations to articulate the need and search for funding for creating an alternative network for independent work.
●
Videazimut & international
community/alternative media- three
banker boxes of fliers, articles, correspondence, magazines and organizational
papers, and documentation from Videazimut and community media organizations
based in and outside the US. Documentation of meetings are on hi-8 cassettes.
●
World Summit on the Information Society- one banker box of flyers, meeting notes,
correspondence, promotional materials related to the two WSIS events: in Geneva
in 2003 and in Tunisia in 2005. Video recordings of meetings and
demonstrations, including an historic use of activist projection on the walls
of the WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva.
●
Indymedia-
one banker box of original proposals and correspondence relating to the initial
Indymedia media center in Seattle and the follow-up work to spread the IMC
movement worldwide, indymedia
● Archival materials
from Latin America (1898-1940)-
5 boxes rare books gathered for research for the film Gringo in Mañanaland, including photographs, slides, antique books,
reproductions of cartoons.
● The Gringo in Mañanaland- 5 boxes of research video (35mm and 16mm film,
video, about U.S. intervention in Latin America and stereotypical
representations of Latin American culture.
● NEA
censorship- Articles and
correspondence. The project was one of the first art projects censored during the culture wars of the
1980’s. Included are legal correspondence regarding that NEA censorship and the
response to this.
● One banker box of Nicaraguan magazines, flyers and
newsletters. Schedules and lists of X-Change
TV programming.
● One box with a collection of examples of the
Nicaraguan press: Barricada, Nuevo Diario and La Prensa in the years 1983-1989.
● 30 VHS video from Nicaraguan producing groups and
15 Umatic recordings of Nicaraguan culture and activism.
University of California, San Diego: 1986-2001
● One banker box of materials related to courses
taught, syllabi, student
writings, print materials produced by campus activists, correspondence, and
departmental organizational papers.
Rough Inventory of Network Box
Graphics for possible use as openings for TV Postcards:To and From America.
Rough Inventory of Network Box
Network Initiatives:
Planning and Dreaming of a Network for Independent Media
This is a collection of proposals and ephemera from several initiatives
that Halleck was closely involved with for creating new sources of programming
for US television. Artists and activists
had long chafed at the spread of corporate media, (and that includes PBS), making
it difficult for other points of view and more adventurous creative forms to be
seen on broadcast television. Halleck was an active leader in many efforts to
create independent infrastructure that would distribute alternative media to a
wide public. This box is a collection of records of those efforts.
• IMAGE UNION, 1976
In June 1976, DeeDee Halleck was part of a group of video
activists to document the Democratic Convention in NYC live on cable access.
Video makers included the Videofreex, Tom Weinberg, Eddie Becker, Maxie Cohen,
Joel Gold and many others. The 5 nights (@ 3 hour programs) were called The 5
Day Bicycle Race.
This effort was considered a successful use of cable
resources to show independent views of a national event—the Democratic and
Republican Conventions. The group also created a 3 hour program on election night
in November, entitled Mock Turtle Soup. Although a program on local cable
channel, it included media makers from across the US and was seen as a test of
collaborative television for possible national transmission in the future.
The name Image Union and the varying formats of independent
media became the a weekly show on Chicago,’s WTTW, now recognized as the
longest running independent media series on public television.
The Image Union folder includes a NYTimes review and photographs
of the convention production, a Chicago Sun article about the local version of
eclectic work and a proposal for a continuing series that would be distributed
to public television stations throughout the US.
Image: a page from the
proposal for the 1980 version of Image Union
• ALTERNATIVE VIEWS: THE
ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION NETWORK, 1978
Doug Kellner and Frank Morrow started a public access show
in Austin, Texas, which they distributed on cassette (bicycled via US mail) to
eventually 80 public access channels around the country.
• TV
POSTCARDS/SATELLITE PICTURES, 1979
After the Image Union election experiments, several of the
producers, especially Halleck and Weinberg wanted to continue producing
collectively to create a series as a national independent program service,
drawing up plans for a programming that would be distributed via satellite from
cities around the US to a maverick network of PBS stations.
Graphics for possible use as openings for TV Postcards:To and From America.
TV Postcards folder
includes proposal for a national series and a sample programs (i.e. Detroit:
the Voice of Labor). Postcards from various locations around the US were
proposed for visual openings:
Included are outline of possible weekly episodes (from
Minneapolis, Houston, Puerto Rico, Santa Fe, Yakima, Atlantic City, etc.; an
issue of the newsletter of the Center for Southern Folklore, a potential video
contributor, and individual producer resumes. The series morphed into Satellite
Pictures: Show and Tell Postcards. The folder contains a prospectus for variations
of the series.
List of team members with bios and a map of the locations
for the first series and rough sketches of first twenty programs and 13
alternative possibilities.
A confidential memo critiquing public television and hoping
to enlist programmers within the system for support for a maverick
series/programming network. Lists (marked
confidential) leaked from within PBS of those stations that were willing to
play alternative video series such as
The Police Tapes and a program called Bad Boys (not the one later
syndicated on commercial TV.)
• PUBLIC INTEREST
VIDEO NETWORK, 1979
A consortium of video and radio producers including Arlen
Swoboda, Kim Spencer, Evelyn Messinger. created programs on nuclear power after
the Three Mile Island nuclear incident. They also pioneered a union sponsored satellite
feed to Poland, while the Solidarity movement was active in that country.
• THE CHICAGO EDITING
CENTER EDUCATIONAL CHANNEL 1980
This initiative started by the Chicago Editing Center. Founder
Weinberg became aware of an underused Chicago educational UHF channel and drew
up plans to have it become a possible outlet for independent programming, which
would also be made available to other educational stations in other cities.
Folder includes history and rationale for channel, proposal
and time line, and a full budget, including capital costs, for implementation.
• WINDOW/THE OPEN EYE
Article from Scan magazine about a “Conclave” in Boulder
Colorado a group proposed to provide a channel for the “first post literate
generation” and those who want an electronic version of Mother Jones,
Co-Evolution Quarterly, MAD Magazine; New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal. A
conclave in Boulder brought together producers, activists and several who had attended
the Alternate Media Center. Included John Schwartz, Doug Cruickshank.
• LIVE BROADCAST FROM
DISARMAMENT PEACE MARCH IN CENTRAL PARK, NYC, 1982
This collaborative program brought together over 100
independent video makers for a 5 hour broadcast via PBS satellite. Videos from
early morning marches in barrios and suburbs were played as an introduction to
the final live broadcast of the music and speeches on the park stage.
• GRASS ROOTS
TELEVISION NETWORK 1984
This initiative started from Cedar, Michigan: syndicated
programs to local origination and access channels. This effort was not limited
to non-profit channels. There would be multiple options—one would carry local
bartered or commissioned commercials, It would also be available in a
non-profit format.
The folder includes a manual for producers, a form to apply,
a contact list of producers who are interested and a copy of a letter from
Paper Tiger Television, promoting use of their programming.
• DEEP DISH TV, 1986
See 2 Deep Dish Boxes for Information
• UNION PRODUCERS AND
PROGRAMMERS NETWORK—UPPNET, 1986
Newsletters and printouts of emails. Program lists and
agenda from organizing conferences. Program
guide from Labor Link, San Diego based public access program.
• LEFT STAR, 1989
Draft of a proposal for a openly left satellite network that
would work with non-profit left organizations such as MADRE, Center for Defense
Information, Green Peace, Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty
International etc. It would also work with the National Association of College
Broadcasters and media watchdogs such as Paper Tiger, FAIR and the Institute
for Media Analysis, Media Alliance. There is a long list of potential
“downlinkers” and a list of potential funders.
• THE NINETIES, 1989
This started as a series for WTTW, the public television
channel of Chicago, offered to public television stations. In addition to being
a series it was the main programming on nine 24 hour channels that were the
result of the negotiations of the Instructional Telecommunications Foundation
and the cable providers. (See the ITF box for details of this organization of
which DeeDee Halleck was a founding director). DeeDee actively worked to
develop the series and also contributed video and was given the title of
“Outreach Producer”.
One folder with various lists of programming and several
lists of “downlinkers” and a collection
of the newsletters which were sent to producers, downlink programmers and
interested viewers. The folder contains a catalog of nineties tapes that were
for sale in an effort to generate income.
One folder has a research study, a survey of 90’s channels
viewers; includes the survey cross tabulations results and a sample of the
questions. There is also a print out of viewer comments, press comments. One
comment is that the 90s are “Commie Liberal Cancer!”
A folder has correspondence relating to the formation and
continued funding of The 90’s. These include copies of letters to William
Kirby, Chair of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, letters
between Tom Weinberg, DeeDee Halleck and John Schwartz on the plans for
sustaining the programming and the channels.
•THE AD HOC COMMITTEE
FOR A NEW NETWORK, 1989
With the many initiatives happening in the 1980s, there was
an attempt to combine these efforts for a national programming network. This
was enthusiastically supported by William Kirby, Chair of the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This folder contains memos and a variety of
communications between the foundation and the various members of the project: Jon
Alpert (Downtown Community TV), Ada Griffin (Third World Newsreel), DeeDee
Halleck and Steve Pierce (Deep Dish TV), Lillian Jimenez (National Association
of Latino Independent Producers), Tom Weinberg (Image Union and the Chicago
Editing Center). Dee Davis (Appalshop), and others.
The folder has several reports by DeeDee Halleck, including
a “call to arms” (Time for New Television) and a “Memo to the Field” to enlist
other organizations to join the project. Included is “Report on the August 1990
Meeting” which was held in Willow, New York, outlining the structure and
administration to be proposed. Also
included is a completed Proposal for a Pilot for a New Programming Service and an article mentioning the
initiative from Current, the public broadcasting newsletter.
• SATELLITE
UNIVERSITY NETWORK-- S.U.N., 1993
The Center for Puerto Rican Studies wanted to build
connections with other Latino oriented university programs and collaborated
with Deep Dish Network to create 6 programs on the subject of Latinos in the
United States. This folder consists of proposals for the programming, list of
the centers in various universities that were target to downlink. Also are
press releases which were distributed at conferences and sent to a variety of
lists—Latino Studies departments, and public access and public television
stations that are in communities with large Latino populations. There is a flyer with an owl sitting on a
satellite dish promoting the series. One of the station lists has notations of
past maverick programming that the stations were willing to play.
Reports: Over 40 public television stations agreed to run
the series. These were mostly in border states. Included are fax printouts of
listener comments from the public TV stations.
One element is a paper for segment producers, explaining the series and
giving the terms of carriage.
There is also a final report by DeeDee Halleck, coordinator
of the series, discussing the outreach by herself and Cynthia Lopez, program
associate. Included are some of the transmission problems which Deep Dish
encountered. There is a list of the stations with hand written information
pertaining to their reception—both technically and in terms of content.
• THE GREEN NETWORK
(JAY LEVIN)
Jay Levin was the founder and owner of the LA Weekly. By the
mid 90s he had sold his stake and wanted to spend time (and some of the lucrative
resources from the sale) to initiate a television network that would be a
television equivalent to the LA Weekly.
Folder includes lists and information about participants in
Green Network meetings: Jo Menell (journalist); Arlene Bowman (native
producer); Paul McIsaac (radio producer and theater director/actor); DeeDee
Halleck (Deep Dish TV and the 90’s) ;Paula Goss, video maker; John Schwartz
(spectrum maven); Sylvia Morales, Latina producer; Cheng Sim Lim, (UCLA film
archives); Jeff Nightbyrd (SDS and Yippie leader); Andra Akers(“new age”
Synergy Institute) Shauna Garr (LA producer); Yanique Joseph (Haitian
producer); Beverly Naidus (Professor of Art, Long Beach) and others. Included
are correspondence and proposals for implementing the network with fundraising
plans, budgets and timelines. Articles about television and channel initiatives
and press releases about this network idea.
There are DeeDee’s extensive notes, a folder of potential
programming sources—Appalshop brochure, Native American Film Festival, etc. and
lists: of downlink contacts, of environment organizations and of programming
sources. There are extensive budget proposals.
