Film in the Cities (1970–1993) was one of many diverse grassroots media arts centers developing around the country. Together these centers formed an informal movement to support non-commercial media-making, peer education, and leveraging funding to further their development. The informal network of centers created the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) as an umbrella organization to support and develop the field. In 1972 the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) began a grants program for media arts centers. NEA support was a pivotal moment for the field and vetted centers as innovative endeavors for broader foundation and corporate funding. Karon Sherarts, FITC Director of Artist Grants and Youth Education Programs and later Director of Youth and Teacher Media Education Programs (as well as an actor in the FITC film Harold of Orange), discusses the evolution of Film in the Cities and the national arts funding landscape from the 1960s through the 1980s.
REVOLUTION
The 1960s and ’70s was an era of widespread questioning of power relationships and the status quo in every sector—education, gender, the arts, media, business, and government. It was an era of protest, activism, social change, integration, belief in youth, and cultural innovation. There was civil rights action, the Vietnam War, the second wave of feminism, school integration, the American Indian Movement, the Black Panthers, environmental awareness, the United Farm Workers Union, and the Whole Earth Catalog. Some feared television, transistor radios, music, and comics were supplanting the traditional formative roles of family and formal education on youth. The urgency of the 1970s compelled young adults and teens to challenge stagnant approaches and channel new ideas into bold collaborative action. If something seemed necessary and didn’t exist there was ample will and energy to find the resources to create it.
Along with FITC, the 1970s ushered in scores of nonprofit organizations. Locally, University Community Video (Intermedia Arts), Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM), and The Loft Literary Center began. Grassroots alternative media organizations sprung up across the country including Young Filmmakers Foundation (New York), Film Anthology Archives (New York), Women in Film (with local chapters), Appalshop (in Kentucky), Southwest Alternative Media (SWAMP, in Texas), and Pittsburgh Filmmakers. Film exhibition and distribution collaboratives including Canyon Cinema Filmmakers Cooperative and Pacific Film Archives rented experimental, underground, and independent films. Monthly publications such as Canyon Cinema News and the Film and Video Makers Travel Sheet connected media makers around the county with each other and circulated vital information on workshops, touring film programs, competitions and festivals, individual filmmakers’ travel itineraries, resources, and works in progress.
A confluence of changes in education and technology coupled with a spirit of collaboration set the stage for the formation of Film in the Cities. The lockstep pedagogy of the 1950s gave way to experiments with learner-centered and inquiry-based approaches in K-12 and post-secondary education. Desegregation added to the push for more relevant curriculum, content, and strategies to engage youth from diverse backgrounds. Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman (Delta Publishing, 1971), was a seminal book of the era. Simultaneously, new media technologies became relatively affordable, compact, and portable; most significantly the Super 8 film format (in 1965) and the ½-inch video portapak (in 1967). Media was reenvisioned as a democratic and creative process open to new experimental, documentary, political, and imaginative forms.
These cultural currents spurred the formation of FITC as an alternative communications program for St. Paul and Minneapolis Urban Arts junior and senior high school students. FITC’s enduring vision and core values were established in the early years: belief in the imagination of young people and adults, use of media for personal expression, the right to access equipment and studio environments, community outreach, and exhibition of work by youth and artists to public audiences. A learner-centered approach helped youth express themselves and take responsibility for their work. The tenets of this pedagogy were respect for the student and the integrity of her/his ideas, perceiving the student as an artist, and positioning the teacher as a guide to help students realize their ideas. In 1972, FITC moved the education program from a shared space in the Arts and Science Center to a storefront studio on Robert Street in St. Paul.
EVOLUTION: 1976–1989
FITC purchased a three-story building at 2388 University Avenue in St. Paul in 1976. This bold move gave FITC the space and visibility to expand its vision and become a nationally recognized regional media arts center. The first floor opened to a photography gallery, which doubled as a film exhibition space. The second floor had classrooms, editing and recording suites, a lounge area, an equipment access center, and offices. The darkroom was in the basement. The access center and darkroom provided equipment unaffordable to most artists and students. Film and photography exhibitions brought local and nationally recognized visiting artists together in dialogue with students and engaged public audiences. FITC frequently collaborated with other organizations (e.g. Walker Art Center, colleges, and universities) to bring in visiting artists.
Adult education workshops and the two-year filmmaking program designed by FITC developed artists’ skills in and appreciation for filmmaking, screenwriting, sound, and photography. The two-year curriculum written by FITC’s director of education was accredited by the State of Minnesota as an Associate of Arts degree program through Inver Hills Community College. Courses were taught by professionals working in their fields, including artists; documentary makers; technical masters in cinematography, sound recording, and editing; and guest scholars and film curators who taught film history. Besides making their own films, the students also worked on group projects exploring documentary production and dramatic films. Students were placed in credit-bearing internships to gain additional real world experience in their area of interest.
FITC was a vibrant gathering place and home for students, artists, and faculty working in film, audio, screenwriting (initiated by František Daniel), and photography. It was an ecosystem that helped mold a generation of media artists; a filmmaker editing on the 16mm Steinbeck flatbed might call in someone passing by to comment on footage, students and artists mingled together as they checked out equipment for projects, and photographers and students worked in the darkroom. Nationally recognized visiting photographers and film/video makers taught master classes to emerging artists. Informal learning opportunities for unpaid crew, actors, writers for projects, and paid gigs were posted on the bulletin board. Youth and Teacher Education programs were reinvigorated in the 1980s (for more on this, look for Part II of this essay).
A growing community of emerging artists needed new opportunities for artistic development. With funding through the Jerome Foundation, in 1981 FITC established a competitive film/video grant program for emerging Minnesota film- and video-makers to help offset production costs of new work and works in progress—in any genre. The program expanded regionally (to Iowa, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas) with additional financing from the respective state art agencies. Fellowships for Minnesota emerging and established photographers began in 1983, funded by the McKnight Foundation. Nationally recognized artists’ panels selected grant and fellowship recipients and broadened FITC’s national visibility. Burgeoning interest in screenwriting and independent narrative film led to the Minnesota Screen Project. Minnesota writers submitted original screenplays and a panel of national screenwriters selected one for production: Gary Jenneke’s Finders Keepers (1982) and Gerald Viznor’s Harold of Orange (1983). Students in the two-year degree program interned as crew members along side professionals on both productions.
EVOLUTION OF YOUTH & TEACHER EDUCATION
The K–12 educational climate and funding sources dramatically changed in the 1980s. It was the era of outcomes-based education, standards, and school reform. Through Our Eyes, the first youth program in FITC’s new University Avenue space was a yearlong program funded by Minnesota Department of Economic Development Manpower Services Division (1979–1980). Fifteen high school students came in the afternoon to make films and acquire job readiness skills. The program infused the pedagogical approach FITC created in the 1970s. Edie French, a former FITC teen student, co-taught the program, with filmmaker David Dancyger.
In the 1980s schools used computers, graphics programs, video, and other technologies for instruction and computer literacy, not as artistic mediums for student imagination. Resurgent concern about the negative and addictive effects of mass media, video games, and MTV on youth behavior intensified and led schools to incorporate media literacy outcomes into curricula as a mitigating force. Media literacy was defined as the ability to “access, interpret, and evaluate” media messages. Simultaneously, the media arts were recognized now as art forms and arts education was gaining support in K–12 education.
FITC’s program design shifted from the original half-day program to a residency model that reached schools and reservation communities across Minnesota. Residencies in audio, film, video and film/dance included: tailored hands-on production for specific students, teacher workshops, teaching-artist’s work screenings, and community-wide screenings of student work. The model adapted FITC’s philosophy: student-centered emphasis on process over product, student decision-making, and personal expression. Lynn Wadsworth, Danielle Fredrickson, and Paul Auguston, all teen students in FITC’s Robert Street program, were among the first Filmmakers in the Schools teaching-artists. The five- to 20- day residencies were designed to accommodate the community and age of students. The approach integrated media arts and media literacy, while emphasizing the creative, imaginative potential of media. Residencies increased the geographic reach of FITC from youth in cities (e.g. Rochester, Twin Cities, Duluth, Moorhead) to rural areas (e.g. Long Prairie, Maynard, Frazee) and Native American communities (Leech Lake, Red Lake, Bois Forte Nations). Summer Media Arts Camps (10 days each) in Ely, Bois Forte Reservation, and FITC provided intensive learning experiences for youth.
In the mid-1980s, FITC collaborated with specialists to adapt equipment and teaching methods to help youth with disabilities create and share their stories through media. The initiative began with semester-long workshops in video and audio for middle school youth with physical, low vision, and intellectual disabilities. Learning from these projects led to adapting the pedagogy and tools for teens with severe physical disabilities. Quadriplegic youth who relied on Bliss symbols or a speech synthesizer used customized input devises to create self-portraits with text (in Bliss and English) and computer animated stories about their experiences and hopes.
With multi-year funding the Minnesota Media Arts Project (MAP) developed yearlong media arts partnerships with educators in Spring Lake Park, Hutchison, and Minneapolis (1986 to 1988). An interdisciplinary media arts curriculum (with outcomes and assessments) was developed by artists and teachers and included examples of student work.
K–12 educators were increasingly eager to integrate media literacy and media arts into their teaching, but there were few opportunities to acquire the skills. The in-service component of Filmmakers in the Schools residencies introduced concepts. However, teachers wanted a longer, in-depth experience. FITC developed weeklong teacher institutes, Teaching Humanistic Technology (1984) and Summer Video Workshops (1986–1988) at 16 locations around the state. In these institutes educators gained hands-on knowledge and strategies to integrate media arts and media literacy with follow-up sessions during the school year. The workshops, taught by local and established national artists (e. g. Ed Emshwiller, František Daniel, Skip Blumberg, George Stoney, Tami Gold) and college interns, featured community screenings of the national artists’ work.
FITC’s overarching vision was to collaborate and create a statewide Media Education Working Group of teachers, artists, post-secondary institutions, and organizations to further the growth of K–12 media arts education. As interest grew, FITC spearheaded two Perspectives on Media Arts Education Conferences in partnership with educators, organizations and post-secondary institutions.
IN PROGRESS: FITC’S VISION FOR YOUTH VOICES CONTINUES
In Progress, a nonprofit co-founded by Kris Sorenson in 1996, carries forward and expands FITC’s founding vision and values. Operating out of a small studio in North Saint Paul, it teaches youth from diverse local and statewide communities. Sorenson took courses in FITC’s film degree program, interned in the Youth and Teacher Education program, and became the program’s director in 1991. She says that in the film courses she “fell in love with the art of storytelling and complexity of media making.” The education internship sparked a “fascination with the ways youth see media and use it to tell their stories.” In Progress adopted FITC’s philosophy and methods for working with diverse youth and partnering with communities.
She states, “FITC taught me the value of working with communities that don’t have access to media; that stories from rural Minnesota and work from tribal communities are critical to understanding what it is to be a Minnesotan.” Rather than teaching media in a prescribed way, “FITC taught me that no one learner is the same in their approach to creating media, so rather than saying this is how to [do it], we adapt the learning process and tools in front of them to what they need to succeed.”
In Progress has continued the work FITC began on Leech Lake, Red Lake, and Nett Lake Village on Bois Forte Nation in the 1980s. Today these communities have a tradition of media making and the rare gift of a 30-year archive of stories that began with FITC. In Progress “pulls on the archive to this day.”
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