Erasing Memory on Archaeology Channel

Erasing Memory: The Cultural Destruction of Iraq, a half-hour piece from our series "Shocking and Awful: A Grassroots Response to War and Occupation" is airing on the Archaeology Channel. This film in very shocking fashion details the horrendous destruction of the oldest treasures of human civilization held in the museums and archives of Iraq in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion. At that time, millennia of history were bombed, looted and destroyed. With them went a large part of our precious memory and knowledge of Iraq as a cradle of human civilization. Much of the footage shown is from the time and place of the destruction, which stands as a prime example of the loss of treasured cultural patrimony that often is caused by war.

To get a copy for your library click here.
To view a sample click here.
To see feedback on the film on another blog click here.

13 Years Before "Sicko"

In the spring of 1994, Deep Dish Television produced a 17-part series about the national healthcare crisis called "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired." This series brings you a grassroots perspective on health care from across the nation. You've heard from the policy makers, the insurance agents and the drug manufacturers. Now it's time to hear from the people. This series presents the voices and visions of those most affected by health care reform, the people themselves.
"Healthcare Jeopardy" is just one piece included in the half-hour program, "National Health Emergency: An Activist Survey." This program presents a timely analysis of health care reform in the United States. Video segments from around the country illustrate successful models for a comprehensive health care plan and local news reports on continuing strategies and organizing events are featured. The program also highlights the work of national and regional organizations, such as the Health Care! We Gotta Have It Campaign, Physicians for a National Health Program, Nurses for National Health Care, the Universal Care Action Network (UHCAN), ACT-UP, the Older Women's League, Single Payer Across the Nation (SPAN) and Georgians for a Common Sense Health Plan. Additionally, National Health Emergency ... examines the primary financiers and forces opposed to reform: hospital chains, insurance agencies and pharmaceutical companies. (28:00) Coordinating Producer:Cindy Nelson (San Diego, CA).
Visit www.deepdishtv.org for more information or to see the full program.

DEEP DISH TV ROCKS!!!

This is an excerpt from the Deep Dish TV program "Give Peace A Channel." The office staff at DDTV has been updating descriptions of our programs from the 1980s. When we caught a glimpse of this segment from our first series, we knew this was too good not to share. Enjoy!

Description of "Give Peace a Channel":
This segment shows poet Anne Waldman rapping about Plutonium. From Vietnam Veterans blasting the Rambo myth, to activists raising money for local peace groups, to regular folks getting arrested on the steps of a weapons factory, this show is a testament to the level of public concern around issues of militarism and disarmament. Voices of city teenagers talking about spending money for bombs instead of helping to rebuild their neighborhood while viewing footage of abandoned buildings brings the discussion of "budget priorities" out of the realm of the abstract and into our daily lives, where it belongs. (58:00)
Produced by Caryn Rogoff and Kirk Ruebenson (NY, NY)
Paper Tiger Television Collective, a New York based public access producers' group known for their imaginative and low-tech media critiques produced the pilot series of Deep Dish TV in 1985-86. Each program was made up of excerpts from tapes made by community TV producers from around the country. The series was offered free of charge to access stations that wanted to record it off the satellite. The Paper Tiger collective formed ten production teams including some people who were new- comers to access production. Over 186 stations down-linked the first series.

Featured Video From the Archive: No Place Like Home

Here at Deep Dish TV, we find that some of our programming has been ahead of its time. In New York it seems that you hear the term "gentrified" or "gentrification" everyday, and used to describe almost ever neighborhood in the five boroughs. Our program "There's No Place Like Home" tackled the issues of gentrification, homelessness, and housing crisis back in 1986. Please take the time to check out this unique and startling program. You can view here:




http://www.archive.org/details/ddtv_4_theres_no_place_like_home

The following is a description of the show:
All kinds of people nationwide are suffering from the severe shortage of affordable housing. A unifying thread connecting the tapes in this show is that the producers allowed people to speak for themselves. Squatters in "Gentrification On the Lower East Side", neighborhood people forced out of their homes by General Motors in Poletown Lives!, and community organizers in "Take Back the Hill: The Rebirth of a Neighborhood" articulates their anger and frustration about the housing crisis.
Paper Tiger TV’s Fiona Boneham is a modern day Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, clicking her heels as a voice over reads apartment listings. She and others repeat that memorable phrase, “there’s no place like home” as Deep Dish TV investigates the housing crisis facing tenets and homeless alike.

Features the segments:
"Not the American Dream" by Tami Gold, Jersey City, NJ. Discusses the vacancy rate at the time, rent increases, and landlords controlling the housing market. Includes interview with William Kincaid Newman, former chair of the Housing Advisory Committee, for the Town of Montclair, NJ and many others.
"Gentrification on the Lower East Side" by Sachiko Hamada and Scott Sinkler. Interviews with people who are homeless, shows them building tents to try and protect themselves from the rain. "Room" by David Wald, New York City. Opens on Avenue C in New York City, a great video montage of how the neighborhood called "Alphabet City" looked during the 1980s. Shows people being forced out of their neighborhoods in favor of more expensive apartments. "Justiceville" by Gary Glaser, Hollywood, CA. Shows homelessness in California, asks for justice for the Americans living below the poverty line. Justiceville was created in an effort to unite and organize these Americans. "Homeless in Philadelphia" by Dirk Eitzen, Philadelphia, PA. Interviews with homeless people provide a back stories that show the difficulties the individual faces in overcoming homelessness. “St. Francis Residence” by Julie Keydel, New York City. Includes interviews with residents and staff at the St. Francis ResidJohn Luence. “We Are the City TV” by John Luvender, Jamaica Plain, MA. Curtis Davis and Andrew Jones, founders of Greater Roxbury Incorporation Project are interviewed about the town of Roxbury, and wanting to secede from the city of Boston. “Take Back the Hill: The Rebirth of a Neighborhood” by Kendall Hale, Roxbury, MA. Describes the fight to convert former hospital buildings into affordable housing. Despite work within the community to create the housing the hospital demolished the buildings to create a parking lot. “Poletown Lives!” by Information Factory, Detroit, MI. The story of Poletown, a neighborhood of 1,500 homes, that was set to be destroyed in order to make way for one of the world’s wealthiest corporations, General Motors. Poletown lost all of their appeals while organized arson and theft drove out many residents of Poletown. Residents watch the demolition crews tear down the neighborhood they have lived their entire lives in. “Mayor Bernard Sanders” by Nat Ayer, Burlington, VT. Sanders speaks about the housing problems facing the state of Vermont.

Erasing Memory in Upcoming Film Festival

"Erasing Memory" has been selected to partecipate at the 18th International Festival of Archaeological Film, taking place in Rovereto from the 1st to the 6th October 2007. It will be shown the 3rd October in the evening, and it will compete for the “Città di Rovereto-Archeologia Viva” Prize, given by the public to the most appreciated film.

About Erasing Memory:
Erasing Memory is on of the half-hour programs from our 12-part series on the Iraq War called, "Shocking & Awful: A Grassroots Response to War and Occupation." This program describes the horrendous destruction of the museums and archives of Iraq, the oldest treasures of human civilization, in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Millennia of history were bombed, looted and destroyed, and with them the memory and culture of Iraq. It was also selected for the 2006 Icronos International Archaeology Film Festival in Bordeaux, France. The series "Shocking & Awful" has been shown in many festivals, and notably, was featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art's 2006 Biennial. The review of the Biennial in the Financial Times in London said that our series "is a sobering indictment of global democracy at gunpoint and on its own makes the Biennial essential viewing."

About the Film Festival
The Civic Museum of Rovereto, in conjunction with the magazine "Archeologia Viva", is organizing the XVIII International Festival of Archaeological Film, which will take place on 1st, 2nd 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th October 2007. The Festival is open to any film in the fields of archaeological, historical, palethnological and anthropological research and to any documentary aimed at preserving and valuing the cultural heritage. A special section will include films on ancient civilizations which have alternated on the territories of the today's Iran. This Festival, in conjunction with the magazine Archeologia Viva, promotes and values the documentaries through a variety of cultural, scientific and educational events. The theme of this year's competition is: " Archaeology of the Americas".

Rerelease of Mumia Compilation Announced on WBAI

Deep Dish TV's Brian Drolet was on the Wake Up Call show with Mario Murillo on Friday. You can here this segment from WBAI here.

Rerelease of Mumia Abu-Jamal Programming

Click To Play

Deep Dish TV and Paper Tiger TV are uniting to rerelease three of our programs from our broadcast titled Emergency Programming Mumia Abu Jamal from Summer 1995.

Starting in May, 1995, Deep Dish TV began a series of programs to draw attention to his case and to the rapidly rising list of Death Row executions in the United States. Mumia Abu Jamal, Philadelphia radio journalist and former Black Panther, at the time of the broadcast Mumia Abu Jamal was scheduled to be executed on August 12. Then District Judge William Yohn overturned Mumia Abu-Jamal's death sentence on December 18, 2001 citing irregularities in the original sentencing process. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit heard oral arguments in Abu-Jamal's appeal on May 17, 2007, at the United States Courthouse in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Abu-Jamal's attorneys are attempting to obtain a new trial, while the Government is seeking the reversal of United States District Judge William Yohn's overturning of Abu-Jamal's death sentence

The three programs to be rereleased on the DVD are:
Mumia Abu Jamal: Giving a Face to the Death Penalty
Convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman in a trial that most observers say was a gross miscarriage of justice, filled with blatant racism and misconduct by the judge and prosecution, Mumia Abu-Jamal had been on Death Row for over twelve years in 1995. This tape has interviews with Ramona Africa, Rachel Wolkenstein and others who have come to Mumia's defense.(28:00)
Produced by Paper Tiger (NY, NY)

Death Row Notebook
This program is a look at the background of Mumia and the case against him. It describes his youth as an organizer with the Black Panther Party and the events surrounding the Move tragedy, intercut with an interview with Mumia from prison. (28:00)
Produced by Chris Bratton and Lamar Williams (Chicago, IL/Harrisburg PA)

The Killing State
This program puts Mumia's case in perspective, beginning with a montage of all the African American leaders who have been silenced, exiled or murdered. It also discusses the rising prison industry in the United States. It includes a section from Mumia's censored NPR programs and a statement about that censorship by William Kunstler. (28:00)
Produced by Cathy Scott, Paper Tiger TV and the Peoples Video Network (NY NY)

To obtain your copy, contact us at deepdish@igc.org

And be sure to check out the brand new Paper Tiger TV vlog at http://papertigertv.blogspot.com/

That's Women's Work: TV by and about Women

Paper Tiger Television Collective, a New York based public access producers' group known for their imaginative and low-tech media critiques, in conjunction with the Boston Film and Video Foundation, produced the pilot series of Deep Dish TV in 1985-86. Each program was made up of excerpts from tapes made by community TV producers from around the country. The series was offered free of charge to access stations that wanted to record it off the satellite. The Paper Tiger collective formed ten production teams including some people who were new- comers to access production. Over 186 stations down-linked the first series.

One of the shows from this groundbreaking series was "That's Women's Work: TV by and about Women." Women's work in public access exposes viewers to alternative images of women's lives and helps audiences see how insidiously sexist most network TV is. This show includes work from three women's cable groups: Videowomen in Pittsburgh, Women's Video Collective in Boston and The Women's Cable Consortium in Tucson. (58:00)
Produced by Martha Wallner and Adriene Jenik (NY, NY)
You can view this video online at:
http://www.archive.org/details/ddtv_9_thats_womans_work

Going through the archives...

Last week, when going through some of our archived promotional materials, I found this little comic. I thought it was fabulous in that it is cheeky, and it has that artistic and yet rough and gritty quality to it that I love about Deep Dish TV.

Who Is the Deep Dish TV community?

Deep Dish TV is part of an expanding and increasingly significant network of independent media.

At the heart of this network have been the public access television stations, and now the public interest channels on satellite networks. Deep Dish TV and other program producers have reached millions of people through the public access channels that cable companies are required to provide. Cable corporations have pushed to eliminate these channels. Though constantly embattled, these channels for free expression and community communication have continued to expand. As technology improves and cable television is slowly being replaced by newer technology, these public access channels may be lost. It is essential that as the technology advances, commercial use of public spectrum and municipal rights-of-way provide the public with access to that technology and the means to communicate with it.

Collaboration among independent media organizations is building a rapidly growing audience that depends on this network as a vital source of information and inspiration. Deep Dish TV helped the Pacifica Radio program Democracy Now! develop its daily television format. Free Speech TV and Link TV air Deep Dish TV programs; Democracy Now!, Paper Tiger TV, and INN World Report and dozens of media groups provide programs to public access television. They all rely on the global network of over 100 Independent Media Centers for stories. They all worked together to provide live radio and television coverage of events left out of the mainstream media, such as anti-Iraq war protests conducted worldwide. This vital network demonstrates that people can build powerful ways to communicate, even with minimal resources. They depend on the support of the communities they serve.
To find out how you can help protect this network, or even just to tune in, visit: saveaccess.org