Items tagged with "case studies"

Four decades ago, in a Whitesburg, Kentucky storefront that once held a “tire supermarket,” Herb E. Smith, a seventeen-year-old member of the Appalachian Film Workshop—Appalshop, for short—learned to work the 16-millimeter Arriflex-S camera.

Prague: A glorious summer day.
Today's conflict: PIMAC vs. telephone.

I ve found the perfect apartment to comfortably house three quarters of the operating staff (plus mascot) of a budding media arts center in Prague. The apartment even has a telephone - all for about $450 per month. Since we don t have office space yet, a telephone is essential to us, an American public charity operating in a foreign country.

TILT (Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools) is a nonprofit organization that teaches and promotes intermedia literacy through hands on experience with media making processes. We are unique in that we bridge the gaps between communities, the arts and education in a manner that is intellectually rigorous yet maintains its grassroots integrity. Our programs encourage people to become life long learners who continually challenge perceptions of the media and intervene in its production.

How do you keep the magic alive?

Ten people are squeezed into a small room in a high school on New York City's Lower East Side. The six crew members from Youth Organizers TV (YO-TV) are working on two Media 100 digital editing systems, getting their rough-cut videos ready to show their clients from the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Computer crashes are frustrating the crew's efforts on their documentary about sweat shops and why young people should care about them, but the video about the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its efforts to gain redress for survivors of torture is coming along well.

Everyday occurrences can lead to extraordinary events. Not long ago a polite gentleman visited 911 Media Arts Center and asked me for a tour. This isn't unusual; giving tours is part of my job. However, I was surprised to learn he was the director of a brand new media center in South Korea called MediACT. He told me he was researching different media arts center models and was interested in 911 because he liked our website. As webmaster, I was terribly flattered. I proceeded to show him every last detail of our center, and he dutifully captured it all on video.

A few weeks ago the board of directors of the Boston Film/Video Foundation (BF/VF) announced that they had decided to close the organization. As the organization s former executive director - I served from 1988-2001 - I got a trickle of email and letters, including some interesting comments. From a fellow executive director: "What the hell happened, Anne Marie?" From a local colleague and former staff member: "Think of it this way, maybe you kept it alive longer than it should have been." From a former colleague and board member: "I think BF/VF always had management problems." Hmmm.

In 1996, Thai filmmaker Lawan Jirasuradej, a recent graduate of San Francisco State University s cinema department, wondered how she was going to make her first feature-length film. Needing a place to stay in addition to support for her production, she turned to an unlikely source: artist-in-residence programs.

After six years, the experiment in shared management at Street-Level Youth Media continues to provoke various levels of concern, hope, exasperation, and debate. All players, past and present, agree that it is a noble experiment, an endeavor worthy of their talents and energy and with promising results to date. Even when self-reflection about the program leads to criticism, it is done philosophically, in the service of true learning.

The story so far: LMH leaves BAVC, the media art center he's worked at for 10 years, joining Artists' Television Access as Executive Director. He finds an organization of committed volunteers ready to take on the task of rebuilding some essential systems. He also finds a wicked smell of undetermined origin, possibly related to ritualistic sacrifices rumored to be taking place in the immediate neighborhood.