See You at the Next Conference
The first NAMAC Conference I attended was in 1993. That year the Conference was held in my hometown, Chicago. At the time, I was the program director at the Community Film Workshop, the conference host, and so was very busy working with interns; I also served on a panel and spoke at one of the plenary sessions. I cannot tell you what the panel was, or the topic of the plenary. I do remember the people I met—John Butler, Ruby Lerner, Linda Mabalot, Mimi Pickering, Jackie Tshaka, and Gail Silva—all of whom kept their promises, as did my family at the Community Film Workshop, not to forget about me when I went into exile as Filmmaker-in-Residence at Florida State University. They called; they submitted my name for panels; they invited me to serve on panels such as the NEA Regional Fellowships, AFI, and P.O.V. I am sure it was with their support that I was elected to the NAMAC Board in 1994.
I’ve been to every NAMAC Conference since Chicago (and to a Congress or two). By now I’ve come to see these events as opportunities to catch up with people I haven’t seen since the last Conference, and to see what everyone is doing individually and within their organizations. As with the Chicago Conference, I usually have to refer to the programs to recall what panels had been held, but I can remember, almost word for word, the conversations (sometimes heated) that I participated in, the new people I met, and the work I saw.
The Taking Liberties Conference was the first time I attended a NAMAC conference as something other than a media artist, NAMAC Board member, or representative of the Community Film Workshop. I’ve just started a new job at the University of Chicago as the project director of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, which is an effort to organize and make accessible archives and collections pertinent to African American culture and history in the city of Chicago. (Our planning group consists of representatives from Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research, the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the HistoryMakers, and the University of Chicago Library’s Special Collections and Chicago Jazz Archives.) At past Conferences, I usually attended panels dealing with production or youth media. This year, I primarily attended panels in the Content and Commentary track, because they dealt with archives, fair use and copyright, and curating areas reflecting my current interests. For my new job, I attended the panel called “Taking the Plunge: Strategic Planning,” because strategic planning is a process I am embarking on with a start-up organization.
Before we left for Philadelphia, Margaret Caples, executive director of the Community Film Workshop, asked me if I had received an invitation from NAMAC’s co-director, Jack Walsh, to attend what would be, in Margaret’s words, an “old-timers’ meeting.” I quickly dismissed any notion that I was an old-timer—never asking myself what was so bad about being thought of that way.
Once in Philadelphia, I focused on getting as much information as would be useful in my new job. I was impressed with how well integrated the panels were. Even panels heavy on digital media were accessible to experts and technophobes alike. The first panel I attended was “Broadband, Net-based, and HDTV Distribution Alternatives.” A few years ago a discussion of peer-to-peer bit-torrent technology or the development of open source software might have scared me away. This did not turn out to be the case, because the discussion was couched in familiar NAMAC terminology: access, alliances, and communities. During the “Digital Creativity” panel, Michael Verdi spoke not only about sharing content but also about providing free and easy access to the tools needed to create videoblogs. Michael talked about the educational uses of videoblogging, particularly in the area of media literacy, which brought approving nods from the old-timers in the audience. This was the first time I didn’t have one of those moments where my eyes glazed over as I wondered if I would ever understand enough about digital media not to embarrass myself in post-panel conversations. At “Digital Creativity,” Nettrice Gaskins said, “It’s the message, not the tool, that’s becoming important.” In the panels I attended, the message was conveyed in ways everyone could understand.
When I finally asked Margaret how the old-timers’ meeting went, she told me it was actually set up for locations where there had been no NAMAC roundtable meetings, saying, “We just all happened to be old-timers.” Before leaving Philadelphia I began to feel as though I had missed out on an opportunity to make contact with those new to NAMAC. I spent most of my time with people I had known for years, and although I tried to convince myself that being at Joanna Rudnick’s (Kartemquin Films) screening of her work-in-progress was a way of reaching out to a first-timer, in all honesty it was more about solidarity for a Chicago homegirl. So for me, the Conference vis-à-vis content was more than I had hoped for. It was also notable as the first time I could have donned the mantle of old-timer and reached out to a first-timer, but didn’t. I promise I won’t drop the ball at the next Conference.
VERA L. DAVIS, in addition to her work with the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, is co-directing (with Stephen Winter) Black AIDS Rising, a documentary on the rise of HIV and AIDS among African American women. She has taught film and video at Florida State University Graduate Conservatory, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ithaca College, and the University of Chicago.
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