Photo by Bette Sharpe / CouryGraph Productions

Ed Sharpe, Media Archivist from the SMECC Media Preservation Laboratory located at the Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation in Glendale Arizona Holding the BVFF 2011 Grand Festival Pioneer in Television Award.

Sharpe is holding a 1972 Sony Portapak camera AC-3400  with the AV-3400 recorder behind the  award he is holding. These units are identical with those used in Miami for  the video work in 1972 by Barbara Kopple, Laurence Storch and Marc N. Weiss at the Republican National Convention.

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A newly designated award this year at the Berkeley Video and Film Festival is  the Grand Festival Pioneer in Television Award, for distinguished service in the medium of TV. It was also a special event as it  was the BVFF's 20 year birthday!

From the BVFF Program - "Marc N. Weiss, Barbara Kopple, Laurence Storch, and Ed Sharpe received the Grand Festival Pioneer in Television Award for their early work in reel to reel video, capturing the Miami Republican Convention in 1972; with a whimsical short document of Allen Ginsberg, providing an extemporaneous song poem, Bagels, Borscht, and Brotherhood, aptly restored and preserved by engineer and broadcast journalist Ed Sharpe of Glendale, Arizona."

On the scene in Miami doing the video and production work in 1972 were Barbara Kopple, Laurence Storch and Marc N. Weiss.

The tapes sat… and sat for close to 40 years. It is not good for early videotape to sit. "Many time drastic measures must be taken to recover images and audio from old magnetic tape," stated Ed Sharpe, Media Archivist from the SMECC Media Preservation Laboratory located at the Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation in Glendale Arizona.

Sharpe was the person responsible for restoring this segment that screened at the Berkeley Video and Film Festival Friday, Oct 30. 2011. He explains, "it is a delicate process of chemistry, heat and utilizing a mechanical burnishing process to force the magnetic material layer to  properly adhere with the existing binder to the Mylar carrier material." He continues, "It is necessary to use just the right amount of any of these techniques… too much and it becomes like a jeweler  that blows it when splitting diamonds… Well… you will wind up with junk if you make the wrong choices carrying out the processes."

Allen Ginsberg, considered the most famous Beat Poet, who transitioned into a major figure in the Flower Power era, was also very opposed to violence and the Vietnam War. He attended the 1972 Republican Convention in 1972 along with Ron Kovic, of “Born of the Fourth of July” movie fame, and his band of Vietnam Veterans Against War (also known as the 'Last Patrol') In attendance also were Yuppies  with Rene Davis and  Abbie Hoffman in attendance. Many other groups including a large group from the Woman's Liberation movement were present also.

Once the tape was treated to the point it had physical integrity then the audio and video was changed into digital format for long-term preservation and editing. The Ginsberg piece is 12 minutes roughly out of 8 hours of video. To make it interesting, Ed Sharpe cut in a few scenes of the various groups protesting, getting tear-gassed and Marc N. Weiss interviewing and even a brief glimpse of  Richard M. Nixon addressing the Young Republicans. Bette Sharpe of CouryGraph Productions assisted with Titles some Art Direction.

"A new era it was", exclaims Sharpe, "This was the first election the 18 year olds were allowed to vote so the Republicans organized and effort to get a large number of the younger people involved.

Contained in the eight hours of video are interviews with some of these younger voters and an ongoing effort will be made to make more of this material available. Sharpe states "most of what you see in the interviews and close up video segments, you will see no where else. Kopple, Storch and Weiss were highly mobile with their Sony ½ inch portapak video tape system and were right on with the questions they asked of the young people."

In addition to this material Weiss interviews   Henry Kissinger, Walter Cronkite, and other notables.

Sharpe states, " It  was Mel Vapour , the Director, Berkeley Video and Film Festival who suggested  we  select the Ginsberg footage and bring it to life  for a world premiere at the 2011 BVFF.  to our knowledge this visual record captured of Ginsberg  by Kopple, Storch and Weiss is the only one in existence. "

So for now…. You get 12 minutes of Ginsberg… in the future?  A wide array of players and events will play out. In the future some of this material will be offered on the museum's website in the video activist section.

-          Mel Vapour , Director, Berkeley Video and Film Festival stated  "As the director of BVFF,  I was thrilled to have filmmakers and pioneers of this caliber be presented to our Berkeley audience, at the Berkeley Video & Film Festival 2011." He  continues " It was an honour to present the Grand Festival Award - Pioneers in Television, to these producers and filmmakers, as they brought a new dimension to our festival, of poignant documentary footage, of events that transformed our nation, with the literary and performance genius of Allen Ginsberg. BVFF salutes these great pioneers in television".    

"It was amazing to be screened this year with other esteemed pioneers" Sharpe exclaimed. Receiving  the Grand Festival Pioneer in Television Award, was also  Andrew Stern, professor Emeritus, and founder of the UC Berkeley School of Broadcast Journalism and the  BVFF screened his 1964 classic broadcast video, Brunswick, Quiet Conflict.

A newly designated award this year at the Berkeley Video and Film Festival is the for distinguished service in the medium of TV.

The third Grand Festival Pioneer in Television Award recipient was the notable Chip Lord, one of the founders of ANT FARM a radical media consortium from the S.F. bay area in the 1960's and 1970's famous for their Cadillac Ranch in Texas and the S. F. Media Burn, receives a Pioneer in Television Award, for his dedication and production of avante garde media, in the last half of the 20th century. BVFF will be screening his short homage to Jean Luc Godard, Un Ville de I'Avenir.

(Photo Courtesy SMECC) Allen Ginsberg Working a harmonium to accompany his words of peace...
 

ABOUT BVFF –

Founded by award winning independent filmmakers who were involved with the "independent underground cinema revolution" in the early and mid-1960's, THE BERKELEY VIDEO + FILM FESTIVAL was created in 1991 to provide a venue for independent film and videomakers creating works that challenge and confront our notions of "Electronic Cinema."

The EAST BAY MEDIA CENTER, (EMBC), located in Downtown Berkeley's Arts District, was founded by Mel Vapour and Paul Kealoha Blake. Out of the EBMC the BVFF was born... This is the 20th event...Mel reminiscences, "With the support of George Manupelli (director of Ann Arbor Film Festival), who had met Vapour at the Ann Arbor film festival in the late 60’s, BVFF would become a festival of international acclaim showing unusual, off-beat as well as mainstream documentaries and short film. More importantly, the BVFF grew quickly in popularity because of its willingness to promote highly experimental as well as politically conscious film that would always include the development of highly advanced technical refinement and skill."

Every BVFF as a fantastic event but this year is extra-special due to the 20 year birthday!

BVFF screened over 50 remarkable new films and videos by Independent Producers. Their  films range from documentaries, shorts, student films, ethnographic, animation, machinima and art films. were Friday evening  and continued Saturday and Sunday.  This  year the event was  held September 30, October 1 & 2, 2011 at the Landmark Shattuck Cinemas - 2230 Shattuck Avenue - Downtown Berkeley.

To see a brief description of the great movies... go to the BVFF website for a complete program. This link will navigate you to the program schedule:  http://www.berkeleyvideofilmfest.org/BVFF%202011%20Selections.html

Some  1972 Miami history of the event. http://www.miamibeach411.com/news/1972-conventions