Chapter 15

On the establishment of the Video Access Centres

Access to the means of production

At the beginning of the production of community activist video in Australia its makers were more in the position of the British activists, particularly TVX. For them each production grew out of the living situation of the video-maker or community activist and their direct neighbours. It took several years for Australia to get to something like the Challenge for Change / Societe Nouvelle model.

Videographe

The first Video Access project Videographe, was set up through the Challenge for Change / Societe Nouvelle program in Montreal, Canada. [and covered in Chapter 3] [1] Videographe was an example that inspired other centres, particularly a network of Australian Video Access Centres (now identified nationally as Screen Development Australia) including

Melbourne Access Video and Media Centre (MAVAM) Carlton, Altona and Footscray

Paddington Video Access Centre, Parramatta, Blacktown and the Liverpool/Fairfield area Video Access Centres

Media Resource Centre (MRC), Adelaide, SA, Whyalla, SA

Film & TV Institute (FTI) in Fremantle, WA

Brisbane Video Access Centre (Queensland)

Ultimately, especially during this period while video art was in its infancy, it was the cost factor that was its most problematic and most limiting characteristic. Much of the early video art existed in a culture of limited means. The ability to record moving pictures (albeit monochrome) and show them to others without having to raise the thousands of dollars necessary to make a film or a television program was, often enough, all that was needed, especially for activist purposes. If you really wanted colour video it was possible to get sponsorship.

1969

Early Equipment and Initiatives

Prior to the more formal (i.e., government supported) access initiative, video equipment had already arrived here in the form of a Sony half-inch Portapak at the University of Sydney, possibly in 1969. According to Albie Thoms, in 1969 Phil Noyce had access to a Portapak at the University, with which he recorded an interview with Albie about his film Marinetti (1969) after a screening at the University Law School. The interview was

“then played through the university's closed circuit [CCTV] system to promote the screening. And it was much better than I’d thought in terms of quality and all that.” [2] [See Albie Thoms on Marinetti in Chapter 7 on Ubu films.]

Thoms does not specify the model, but it may have been the SONY DV-2400 record only machine released in 1967. The DV-2400 “was a two-piece set consisting of a black-and-white composite video camera and a separate record-only helical-scan half-inch video tape recorder (VTR) unit. It required a Sony CV series VTR (such as the CV-2000) to play back the video.” [3]

Fig.1: Sony DV-2400. The first porta-pak.

Fig.2: Sony CV-2000, which you had to use to play back the 2400 video-tapes.

There was also the Akai VT-100, a quarter-inch portable video camera and recorder. There appear to have been several of these around from as early as 1971, (among which was one in Sydney that Roger Foley FOGG had bought around that time.

In a May 1972 article in Rolling Stone, Thoms describes the Akai 1/4” portapak, [4] and then notes:

“The hardware is here now. How long before we enter the video sphere depends on how soon people overcome their fear of machines and start to use them for their own liberation rather than allow them to be used for their own enslavement. Consider this in the light of McLuhan's analysis of print media.” [5]

Fig.3: Akai VT-100 which used 1/4in. videotapes.

McLuhan's argument was that print gave most people access to verbal literacy, and now video will give “the power of visual/aural literacy”.[6] It will offer “accurate reportage [would that that had become true : SJ] and conversely the opportunity for visual synthesis (through computer/laser videography”... [AT]) [7]

Thoms then, rather optimistically, suggested that

“It paves the way for a democratic revolution of unprecedented all pervasiveness. Or rather, democratic evolution: for it relates to a materialist cyberno-technocracy that political revolutionaries don't seem to understand.” [8]

Thoms of course had already started Ubu Films a collective of young film-makers producing highly experimental films about a wide range of ideas, though mostly in an artistic sense.

The first provision for the funding of experimental film came in August 1969 with the announcement of the Experimental Film [and Television] Fund (EFTF) by the then Prime Minister John Gorton. The first call for applications was in April 1970. At that time it was administered by the Australian Film Institute (AFI) with funding from the Film and Television Board [later the Film, Radio and Television Board] of the Australian Council for the Arts. [9]

There then began a complex (and difficult to untangle) series of re-structurings in which a number of bodies charged with supporting the growth of the film and television industry in Australia came and went. One early body was the Australian Film and Television School which was broached in 1969, shelved for several years and then actually established in 1973. [10] The third (February 1972) report of its planning body, the Interim Council for the National Film and Television Training School, notes that it had taken over the programmes initiated by the Australian Council for the Arts.

Prior to the Australian development the National Film Board [NFB] of Canada had been using film to help people in disadvantaged communities to make short representations to the Quebec government regarding what they needed to be able to change in their communities. John Grierson, [covered in Chapter 1] declared “that the purpose of documentary film was to reveal social ills so that they might be corrected. That doesn't mean they don't give a damn for craft, for technique, for cunning and artistry and handsome pictures and imaginative sound. But they aren't about to throw away a badly framed shot if it contains vital actions or words.” [p.1]

Subsequently, the first use of video by the NFB was in the Challenge For Change project [see Chapter 3]. It was started by Colin Low and John Kemeny in 1967 and was directed by George Stoney from April 1970. There was disagreement over the role of craft (production quality) in the films made by CFC. For Stoney “visual power is never expendable” while for Low “the visual elegance of the film is expendable when the purpose is to provide a means of expression for a voiceless community.” But, ideally, they all wanted “to use film for social improvement”, and they “are trying to do it with the people” who are its subject-matter. Stoney's injunction to the film-makers on CFC projects was to “Let the people tell you what they want in a film. Listen to them. The film is going to be their film.” [p.3] [11]

Patrick Watson, Challenge for Change

April 1969

“The National Film Board's three-year-old Challenge For Change program is a way of helping people to move themselves from bad spaces to good spaces: psychic, social or material. Its purpose is not the seduction of the eye and the ear. It is the enlargement of eye, ear and voice, through the film [and later, video] as an instrument for helping people in trouble get out of it. Get themselves out of it. A key qualification.”

“CFC made its first big impact on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, in a film-making process that was intended to “to really involve a community in practical decisions about the contents and style of films about their lives”. These were the first attempts to elaborate “clearly the principle of taking equipment and film and technical skill to a people whose problem was, at least in part, communication with each other and communication with those who governed them, and saying “Here. Use this.”” Or, more broadly, the idea was to take “the camera into a troubled situation to help both those within and without look for the avenues of change.”

“The inherent problem with any of this kind of social/community video-making, especially for those whom it is about, is that they can quickly become embarrassed and the butt of negative criticism if the screening is not handled sensitively. The people who are the subjects of the video must be given the right to control its editing and its presentation to others. The screening needs to start from a “friendly base, where everybody could see that they were doing something, involved in something important.” [p.5]

“But the editing needs something more: a willingness on the part of the film/video-maker to cede authority to the people who are, or become, its content. It is almost requisite that the editing suite be turned inside out and “taken into the community itself so that the participant can keep a running watch on the development of the project.” [p.6] These became guidelines for the job of the video-maker, whether in Canada, or as will be filled out more below, here in Australia.

“Ultimately, using video in this way is a challenge to authority. It requires funding and a willing bureaucracy. It requires “government officials who [are] mature and secure. It is an intelligent way to mobilize social revolution without violence.” [p.7] While the more hardline social revolutionaries argue that “it co-opts” the revolutionary, defeating him by absorption. Putting the tools of change into people's hands is drastic only in a subtle way. Nobody gets killed. But it does constitute what these film-making social activists call “Decentralizing the power of Propaganda.” Another way of saying that is, once the dispossessed and the powerless have access to the means of information they can no longer be misled by Establishment bullshit.” [p.7] [12]

1970: Growing Interest in Activist Video

In the early 1970s, among those interested in activist and community video in Sydney were Jeune Pritchard (who later was to become one of the directors of City Video [13] in Paddington, Sydney) and Megan McMurchy, both of whom were working at the ABC in 1972. As Megan commented in a recent joint interview with them,

“Jeune was the long-standing 'glamour' reporter on GTK, sporting wild afro hair and gunning around on a bloody great motorbike, while I was a trainee at the ABC, attached to GTK for a while, and at the same time becoming interested in alternative media.” [14]

Megan read Michael Shamberg's Guerilla Television [15] at the time, describing it as “a great resource”. However she was frustrated

“with the hierarchical nature of the ABC, its detachment from the audience that it was meant to serve, and a kind of elitist model of broadcasting which I was starting to analyse for myself with the aid of those alternative media tools [such as Radical Software] that were starting to appear.” [16]

While at GTK, Megan did a story on Albie Thoms, who at that stage was working on Yellow TV using Akai 1/4” video. She also had contact with Jane Oehr who had returned from a period in the UK where she was mostly doing community video work with kids. [17]

In late 1972 Jeune suggested that they both go to the US to “explore this whole new alternative realm of community video”. They “applied to the Interim Council of the Australian Film and Television School, for research grants to go to the States, and got a small amount of money” which they used “to buy a Sony Portapak which had just begun to be available. This was getting into the early part of 1973. We took that Portapak up to Nimbin for the Aquarius Festival, and shot some diabolically bad footage up there. Jeune's footage was probably a bit less shaky than mine was.” [18]

Then they went to the U.S. Once there, as Jeune noted:

“There were so many community groups in the U.S. There was a huge resource. I remember Ant Farm, Videofreex, Global_Village, Open Channel [an access service operating from Sterling Manhattan Cable TV in New York], to which Megan adds TVTV, Video Free America, the L.A. Public Access Project and the Washington Community Video Center.

Starting in California, they attended

“a cable television conference in Anaheim, California, the annual convention of the National Cable Television Association [June 1973] which was held at the Disneyland Hotel, I remember.” [19]

The research grant required them to discover what was happening on the political video scene. Along with documenting on video a fruit-worker's strike in Salinas Valley, Megan

“gathered a vast amount of documentation [which I] sent back here” and eventually donated to the Film and Television School. “It was all about the context of cable television, which was regulated to the degree that most of the local cable stations were required to provide facilities for community access. So there was a fundamental basis, an economic basis, for community access in the States that did not exist here.” Jeune notes that there “was a whole structure [the local-community cable companies] had to fit into”, to which Megan adds “and so equipment had to be provided.” [20]

Meanwhile

1971: The Cantrills

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, who had been living in London since 1965, returned to Australia at the end of April, 1969. [21] They had been making films together in London and were drawn back to Australia (where they were both born) when “Nugget” Coombs offered them a Creative Arts Fellowship at the ANU to make experimental films and give talks on the history of avant-garde film. Their first Australian screening was at the 4th Brisbane Film Festival (May 3, 1969) at which they showed Moving Statics (1969). Ten days later they showed a collection of their London films in Sydney “at [a] screening arranged by Ubu Films.”

They then “took up [the] Fellowship in the Creative Arts at the Australian National University, Canberra“. On “June 26, 1969, they screened Robert Klippel's Junk Sculpture (1964), and their own films Kinegraffiti (1963), The Incised Image (1966), Dream (date?), Moving Statics (1969), Red Stone Dancer (1968), and Imprints (1969) at an ANU Film Group screening in the Coombs Lecture Theatre, Canberra. [22]

They also ran several weekend courses on the History of Avant-Garde Film and “began working in Expanded Cinema”, Their first actual Expanded Cinema screening appears to have been “Get Your Eyes Open! - Expanded Cinema”, which premiered White Orange Green as a 3-screen work at the Childers St. Hall, ANU, Canberra, on February 26, 1970. [23]

Their primary work for the fellowship was to be the monumental Harry Hooton, a celebration of the anarcho-technical philosophies of the radical Australian poet (who died in the 60s) which were perhaps best expressed by Hooton as “the application of emotion to matter.” [24]) They worked on Harry Hooton for most of the year and it was premiered along with 4000 Frames (1970) and Earth Message (1970) at the Canberra Film Society and the ANU Film Group at ANU on September 2, 1970.

Along with other films of theirs, Harry Hooton was then toured around the country to tertiary institutions and film societies over that September. There was another screening: “An Evening of Expanded Cinema” at Childers St. Hall, ANU, on October 16, 1970. This included the 3-screen films: Fragments (1971), Gold Fugue (1971), Room (1971), Pink Metronome (1971), The City (1971) and outdoor events like The Burning Screen and Water Projection.” [25] Many of the soundtracks for these films were produced as electronic music by Arthur Cantrill himself.

The Cantrills held a mixed media event called VideoCinemaPoetry at The Maze, 18th April 1971, with Fred Harden on video. It included a Harry Hooton poem read to video images, audience participation with dance by Benny Zable and the creative potential of B&W video distortions being explored by Fred Harden. [26]

Arthur Cantrill & Fred Harden made Video Self-Portrait (6 mins, 1971) on video and film. It consisted in live images from an Akai 1/4-inch Portapak refilmed with colour filters and in-camera superimpositions. Fred Harden describes it as “distorting forms and textures of image through unorthodox wiring” [p.(7)] [27]

Also in Melbourne, Jim Wilson noted that the locked together sound and image of the Portapak gave “an exactly duplicated slice of life” recorded in “slices of real time”, meaning that he could make a video diary of a period of his life. He proposed that it should then be possible to synthesize innumerable different types of images through mixing, enabling one “to see at once the effect of 4 or 5 images superimposed on top of one another, and being able to vary the relative importance of one image or another.” [28]

Roger Foley was a light show producer and did lights for most of the big rock concerts of the early 1970s. He acquired an Akai VT-100 and made video about the Yellow House and the Nimbin Festival in 1973.

Fig 4, Announcement sheet for events at the Yellow House (1956)

1972: Calls for funded Video Access Centres

In Australia, in an article for The Learning Exchange newspaper, titled “What to do with A Greek Bearing Gifts”, John Hughes reports that “Following the restructuring of the Arts Council [the Australian Council for the Arts (ACA)] after the Labor victory in December 1972, the Film and Television Board was formed. Its predecessor was the Interim Council for a Film and Television School. The first meeting of the new Board was held in March 1973 and after eight months a policy emerged.” [29] and was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on 8 November, 1973.

One important section of the policy notes that

“Our financial aid to the Arts has been doubled in a year to $14 million. For the first time artists and writers have a new security of income and a new incentive to exercise their creative talents. We have enlarged and reformed the Australian Council for the Arts, which will be established as a statutory body, with its autonomous boards, to be known as the Australia Council. [30]

There was also independent video production here. Albie Thoms' TVX and the Yellow House made a video called Yellow TV, Roger Foley recorded video of some of his lightshows and at the Yellow House while he was engaged there, Inhibodress and the Cantrill's Video Cinema Poetry]. For example, in Melbourne Bert Deling was working on producing avant-garde film, in particular Dalmas (1973) and the later Pure Shit (1975). With Sasha Trikojus, who was cinema-photographer on Dalmas, Deling had previously recorded a talk given in Melbourne by Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass) who was a colleague of Timothy Leary in the LSD experiments at Harvard University over 1960-62. [31] In the film Deling uses a playback of the recording as a backdrop for an early segment in which we meet an informant for the detective Dalmas, who was the main focus of the film. Alpert appears on 4 monitors in a block (in the foreground) which then recede into the background for a scene in which an actor, the informant who was a police officer seriously injured while on duty, injects what is supposedly LSD. The following scene is in the 'paraplegic' informant's study/library with three or four blank screens lit up and dotted around the place amongst masses of books. [32]

John Hughes was camera operator on Dalmas and gives us a little more detail about one aspect of the Melbourne Film-makers Co-op's programme. He commented in an interview that

“I went to Pinacotheca. I don't know where I saw the invitation, and what I observed was the Baba Ram Dass screening. So, I remember the big grey machine [probably a Sony CV-2000], and I was rather amused by this, having been somebody who... I was a cine-camera person from ABC TV. And so, it was interesting that here was a counter-cultural articulation of what I was having to deal with at the ABC, which was very bureaucratic and authoritarian. So, I welcomed it very much. And I loved the Baba Ram Dass interview. I just thought it was fantastic.” [33]

He also mentions, though in another context, that Deling and Trikojus “had been screening taped conversations with local film makers in the early days of the Co-op at Pinacotheca Galleries” [34]

Another Melbourne film-maker who became interested in video was Joseph Correy (who was an actor in Dalmas and may also have been influenced to start making films by Deling). He later joined the group of media activists who set up the Nimbin Communications Centre and who subsequently formed Bush Video.

1973: Video Access

In January 1973 the then Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, announced that the Australian Council for the Arts would be re-structured as a statutory authority to be known as the Australia Council. The Film and Television Board was established within the Australia Council and took over the administration of three funds: the Experimental Film and Television Fund (EFTF), the Film and Television Development Fund and a General Production Fund. [35] However the EFTF remained under the administrative control of the Australian Film Institute.

April 1973: Video access model at Nimbin

A key experiment in creating a community access facility took place at the 1973 Aquarius Festival run by the Australian Union of Students (AUS). It was held in Nimbin, a small country town in northern NSW over 10 days in May that year. The festival attendees (mostly young University students) pretty much took over the town, running all kinds of events, concerts and meetings covering the possible structure and organisation of a community.

During the early planning stages Johnny Allen and Graeme Dunstan (the two directors of the festival) and Mick Glasheen gathered together a group of artists and others through a call for film-makers to make a record of the festival. They applied to the AUS for funds to buy a few portapaks and establish a festival communications and documentation network. One of the shops on the main street of Nimbin became the first video access centre in Australia, making and delivering video recorded that day around the town. For a week before the festival the core group (Mick Glasheen, Joseph Correy, Melinda Brown, Tom Barber, “Fat Jack” Jacobsen, John Kirk and probably others) found locations in several shopfronts (the Rainbow Cafe, a general store and what became the notional town hall of the Festival ???? (plus the pub?)) at which to set up a monitor to which the video was "transmitted" via cable in a (radial) network. For more on Nimbin see Chapter 19 here.

This cabled network and the social process that went on to get it happening thus formed a model video access network that later became Bush Video (whose members were Mick Glasheen, Joseph Correy, Johnny Lewis, Melinda Brown, John Kirk, Tom Barber, Annie Kelly, Ariel and others). A lot of video was shot, some of which has been rescued. See some Nimbin video

1974: Formal Initiatives

By 1974 there had been several interventions and submissions issuing from film-makers and community activists in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, all lobbying for support in setting up some sort of Video Access centre. These were mainly from activist film-makers including Bert Deling, Sasha Trikojus (??) and John Hughes (Turtle Video) in Melbourne and Tom Zubrycki, Megan McMurchy (Fairfield ?), Susan Varga (Green Valley), Warwick Robbins (?? City Video) and Jeune Pritchard (PVAC) in Sydney.

Tom Zubrycki was at Nimbin when he first came across the video Portapak. He comments:

“Well my memory of it all was [Bush Video] setting up video at Nimbin Aquarius Festival. I remember a bank of monitors with camera Portapaks available, with people who went out and recorded events and then playing back the unedited tapes in the evening. I remember there being a lot of interest in that, it was really fascinating. I remember seeing a video camera then, but not actually using it till maybe a few months later.

“The second time I saw a video camera in operation was when I was squatting in Victoria St, and involved in that whole campaign. [36] Later I wrote an article with Brett Levy where we critiqued some of that early work as being a bit unfocussed and unproductive.

“What I did when the Access Centres properly got going was learn from that experience and actually apply it directly in relation to issues which were at the local level. Video was a medium which allowed content to be made quickly and then shown back to the residents virtually overnight or in a couple of days which was the sort of stuff I was interested in: looking at video as “process”, as a way of gathering people together in one space and then engaging with something which was produced very quickly, immediately, without much editing. It was virtually instantaneous.” [37]

Zubrycki recognises here that video can function usefully within a sociological process, as it did in the Canadian Challenge for Change, of which he was aware at the time.

Most of the community activists using video took a similar approach, derived from Challenge for Change, which meant putting the means of production of the media directly into the hands of the people about whom it was being made, so that they could control their own self-representation. Among the activists was another Sydney-based project put together by Marlene Matteson and Warwick Robbins, which was intended to be

“an open access community project which has been operating a series of pilot programmes in Sydney for the last few months. Its work basically involves the application of video-tape equipment and television techniques to the breaking down of barriers within the community - at all levels.

“The project seeks to give people the ability - both individually and in groups - to communicate more effectively about the problems which involve them. It also provides a medium capable of assisting the community in a more honest and constructive self-assessment of these problems.” [38]

Robbins asserts that while the Canadian programme grew out of “a quest for applications for a medium” [I'm not sure about this claim: given that the Canadian CFC grew out of a single film-maker working with a particular group of Canadian first nations people in what became known as the 'Fogo Process'. [39] The Sydney version has “its base in the awareness of the community's need for improved communication”. [40]

Nevertheless, he argues that the

“application of video-tape facilities and techniques at the simplest level, with high-speed production capabilities and maximum ease of operation has the greatest potential for achievement.” [41]

The Robbins/Matteson project

“saw the need as primarily one of access and has set about initially using equipment borrowed from a number of sources (in particular Bush Video) to make these facilities available to people in a variety of situations.” [42]

Their productions (as at mid-1973) included work with “a community group in South Sydney” in assisting them to produce submissions to Government ministers and “short segments for broadcast on National television”. Other productions included internal interaction in the then nascent Gay Liberation [group] “helping them in understanding their own problems” while also confronting social repression. They are also making “foreign language programmes in both the resident action and education fields”.

Robbins then goes on to spell out his critique of the mass media, noting the “shallow level of its dealings with people and the realities of their day-to-day lives. The result is that the few essays into the real problems of society which do occur are generally buried under the cynical and opportunistic mass of day-by-day so-called “reportage““.

He continues by noting the availability of

“improved methods of communication which are ideally suited to the requirements of proper community dissemination of information and opinion and to the quest for solutions for problems at a minority group and individual level.”

He concludes by quoting [without reference] a Canadian summing-up of their CFC project:

“People may soon understand how the mass-media's power to move information on a national scale, when linked with the potential of voluntary groups for small-group feedback, could be used creatively in the process for social change.” and suggests that “the next few years will see the Robbins/Matteson (Sydney) version “and other allied activities becoming an integral and essential part of the community.” [43]

The Video Exchange

Over a similar period, another of the groups organising around video was a collective [the Video Exchange] that grew out of the Learning Exchange network based in Armadale, Melbourne. John Hughes was a key player in this project. In a conversation with him he told me that

“While I was at the ABC, I subscribed to the Canadian independent film magazine called Take One It was, like, the Canadian equivalent of Jump Cut or something. I subscribed to that and I think through that I learnt about the National Film Board in Canada and the Challenge For Change program, and I subscribed to all those so I was, like, interested in trying to learn about what was going on outside Australia in this alternative media field and I read Guerrilla Television and Radical Software.” [44]

“Then, having left the ABC, I was working as a freelance camera assistant and operator. A striking instance that I recall is finding Paulo Freire's Pedagogy Of The Oppressed in a second-hand... in a remainders shop in Belgrave because I lived at Cockatoo.[45] That was just one of those books that was transforming.

“And for me, there was a connection between my experience at the ABC and the negative dimensions of that experience and an interest in counter-cultural, or what we considered a more democratic form of media, and all of that. I bought into all that very conscientiously. I thought it was a very important project, this whole general idea of “if everyone had a camera, everything would change.” [46]

Hughes became involved with the Learning Exchange which he describes as being

“a wonderful organization, established by John Burke, principally, who later worked for Telecom [now Telstra] in policy. He was one of the first people I'd met who was completely into computers. The Learning Exchange was a fantastic organization, that I had volunteer engagements with.” [47]

At the Learning Exchange, a group of media and community activists

“whose interest in an alternate use of media derived from a variety of sources including educational interests, the counter-culture, e.g., the Big Rock Candy Mountain articles and the Radical Software series from Raindance Corporation, [and those who knew of] the Saul Alinsky series [48] and other films from the Challenge for Change program of the National Film Board of Canada, the Challenge for Change Newsletters or Cineaste articles [which] introduced many people whose fundamental concern was with radical cinema or social change or “who read the Learning Exchange newspaper, [49] began to meet “as a continuing discussion group oriented toward ways and means of humanising one area of the “communications media”.” [50]

It was from these discussions that the Video Exchange emerged.

“And the idea of Video Exchange was to try and build a network among those people who were beginning to want to use video in community-based activist projects. And my hope was that it would be possible to make linkages between the few tertiary institutions that were bringing video equipment into their teaching. I was working at Melbourne State College with Brian Sheedy. And I thought we could do interesting work if we were able to link the community groups who needed access to equipment with the various institutions, particularly, and also individuals who had equipment, Fred Harden among them. And by these means, we would build a network, and it would be an audio-visual version of what the Learning Exchange did in its alternative educational practice. So that's where it started.” [51]

So, effectively, the Learning Exchange provided the model for the idea behind the Video Exchange.

The discussions included those who had come across video in the educational environment, those who had a counter-cultural orientation and had read about video use in magazines like Radical Software, and those who had become familiar with the films, videos and reports produced by the Canadian Challenge For Change project.

“The newspapers of the Learning Exchange, beginning with articles in their second edition of January '73, [also] contained a continuing discussion of [the application of videotape] to community development.”

“The first meeting of the Video Exchange was April 28, 1973 at Regional Parish Hall in Richmond. Around 30 people turned up, Many were meeting each other for the first time, but after an airing of the basic issues it was decided to continue meeting and to include some workshops with portable equipment.”

“The meetings continued and were sometimes supplemented with screenings of Challenge for Change films on 16mm. Between meetings for the first three months we posted a package to a mailing list fortnightly that included selected articles - including Challenge for Change materials.” [52]

They became one of the first collectives engaged in videotape production in Melbourne. Early in their operations, on “May 26 [1973], workshops with both Sony and National porta-paks were held at the Fitzroy Fun Factory.” [53]

The Media Centre at Latrobe University had lent some National equipment,

“to supplement the Akai 1/4" video PortaPak [which is non-J standard equipment] borrowed from Sasha Trikojus.” [54]

“The meetings continued at irregular intervals... [and] newsletters were sent out... with articles copied from Challenge for Change newsletters, Sight and Sound, Radical Software, Network Project and other [film and network culture] publications.” [55]

But, while equipment had been readily available from educational institutions and equipment distributors this soon became a trickle and this halted the real work

“until we could gather a pool of facilities for the groups with whom we had contact.” [56]

“Public statements from both the Department of the Media and the Arts Council suggested their support in principle for the aims we were pursuing.[57] Senator McClelland had made statements to this effect, however it was evident that this new government department was absorbed in developing the agencies directly under its control. Film Australia was engaged on a film project under the control of Film Australia Director Peter Weir and Susan Varga, with some residents of the Green Valley Housing Commission complex in N.S.W. and Senator McClelland had hinted at similar projects involving aboriginal groups in the Northern Territory.[58] The Department of Urban and Regional Development was making enquiries into videotape use as an evaluation tool during the pilot projects of the Australian Assistance Plan. The Department of Social Security was also interested in establishing a videotape facility.” [59]

Hughes observes that

“The Film and Television Board of the Australian Council of the Arts appeared to be the most appropriate place to look for support. The Interim Council for a Film and Television School had supported the video experiments at Nimbin in May with a grant to Aquarius [the cultural arm of the Australian Union of Students (AUS)] of $15,000 for the 10 day festival [see above]. The Interim Council had reacted with promise to a National Video-Network proposal, based on open access, submitted to them in October '72.[60]

“Consequently we decided to investigate the possibilities of building a network of equipment by encouraging the Film and Television Board to support applications for basic video requirements from various community groups such as Tenants' Unions, Residents Associations and so on. It was envisaged that this would decentralise capital equipment, put its control firmly in the hands of the users and eliminate bureaucratic administration. The attitude of the Board to handing over real control of large quantities of hardware was well known after Nimbin. This network plan would have sidestepped that problem.” [61]

He continues:

“Groups in Sydney were working with a different style toward similar aims to the ones we had developed in Melbourne.[62] There was to be a meeting between 'Bush Video', AUS and the Film and Television Board to discuss the future of the ex-Nimbin hardware. This meeting took place on July 12 [1973] at the Futron Building (Bush Video's studio space) in Sydney and was attended by people representing various groups including the Australian Post Office.[63]

“The question of the Bush Video equipment did not seem to be resolved at that meeting. There were however strong indications from several Film and Television Board representatives that they were anxious to receive submissions from Melbourne and Sydney for community access video facilities.[64] The people from Melbourne at the meeting were asked to prepare a submission as soon as possible for a Melbourne 'centre'.” [65]

At a meeting in Melbourne the next evening (July 13, 1973) the Video Exchange collective began to prepare a submission. They considered matters such as open administrative structures, financial administration and equipment compatibilities, suggesting

“that funds could initially be administered through the Australian Film Institute, with the Media Department at La Trobe University taking on continuing research and evaluation.” [66]

By August 10 they had a draft submission and were asked by Tom Jeffrey of the FTB to attend a meeting to discuss the submission. The AUS and Richard Brennan, the director of the AFI, were there as were members of the Board. The response seemed positive but further communications with the Board were not productive. However they were asked to present the completed submission which was posted on August 29.

The submission recommended that there be

“one focal point holding some equipment and providing some particular facilities, e.g. editing, while other equipment may be distributed through other points around the Melbourne metropolitan area. Experienced personnel would be required at these locations, but particularly at the major focus. Our initial intention is to locate equipment at the Fitzroy Fun Factory (282 Queens Parade, Clifton Hill, Vic.), and distribute other portable equipment through locations at Diamond Valley, Hawthorn and in the Western Suburbs.” [67]

The submission was considered by the FTB (Experimental Film Fund ??) over September, 1973. They had previously announced in an industry journal, Show Business, that they were “currently considering giving long term assistance to a number of open access community television projects.” [68]

According to Hughes a meeting was arranged with the FTB to discuss their plans:

“It was at this meeting that we learned the basis for the FTV Board's thinking. The ex-Nimbin equipment was to be returned to Melbourne and become part of the Board funded centre at AUS in Drummond Street, in exchange for rent-free space.” [69]

DURD wanted to set up several video centres under the Australian Assistance Plan, of which the Footscray video centre was to be one. But

“The real differences between the Video Exchange submission and the Board's plans concerned centralised economic control of hardware, locations determined from Canberra, presumably in relation to the Australian Assistance Plan [70] evaluation, and centralised control of staffing, free from local interference.”

Hughes also notes that

“There is an AUS paper prepared in part for the FTV Board and dated August 10, '73, which is presumably part of the basis for the Board's decision. This paper proposed the establishment of a national video facility, the “national focus” of which would be [the AUS office in] Drummond Street in Melbourne. It would be used firstly “as an inter-campus channel of communication” and secondly as “a means of student/community, and community/community interaction through sharing and loan of equipment facilities and by community access to the video network.” [71]

This became the Carlton Video Resource Centre, with Doug Cowen as its Director. While it was housed in the AUS headquarters at 93 Drummond St, Carlton, it was set up independently of the AUS. As John Murray said later “the facility should be maintained and controlled by the Board or its agents so that it could be freely available and effective.” [72] Hughes points out that Murray had said at the same time, “the concept of community access was first discussed by the Board in September [1973]”, but the lack of a Video Project Officer [was this to be Bill Childs ??] meant that it could not be implemented until early 1974.

FTB Video Access Centres Proposal

The public announcement of the video access centres project did not take place until 30 August 1973 and about this time Bush Video published their Bush Video Tharunka with a range of articles about video both as a community activist medium and as an art form.

Stemming from the Nimbin Communications Centre experiment, the Video Exchange Submission (August 1973) and other submissions they had received (probably including the Robbins/Matteson submission for a Challenge For Change style operation in Redfern, Sydney) the FTB established, in (July ??) 1973, a “Video Sub-Committee” which

“was charged with assessing current operations in video and future possibilities, according to the pattern of development established by active participants.” [73]

However limits to the 1973/74 budget meant that

“it was not possible to fund the total of all applications in the manner proposed by applicants.

“The problem was to find ways and means of assisting all individuals and groups to pursue their aims along predetermined lines of development.

“It was therefore decided that the Board fund the setting up of 'Community Access Video Centres' as a pilot scheme over the first twelve months, from which it could assess future trends and ways it could help more concretely in 1974/75” and “That the Board seek the co-operation of the Australian Film Institute to realise its aims.”[74]

They describe the applications as falling “into two broad classifications:-

1) The use of portable 1/2" video tape recording facilities for increasing communication between individuals in localised communities, between diverse groups in a community, and between groups and local authorities, e.g. The Aboriginal community in Redfern could wish to express and visualise its problems, as could the white community. By a transfer of tapes documenting these views, a greater understanding could be realised.

2) Developmental and/or experimental use of video as a visual and communicative medium.[75]

The FTB also argued that:

“Through these centres the Board is also in a position to make facilities available on a more democratic basis to all people in the community who wish to use them, or can be encouraged to do so.

“Since most people in the community who wish to use video equipment have no knowledge or training in the technicalities involved, a small staff at each centre would instruct and guide them. This staff would also stimulate production and usage ideas and techniques.

“It is also planned that the Film and Television Board will conduct video workshops in collaboration with the Australian National Film and Television School.

“The facilities would be used in a non-broadcast, non-commercial situation and the material documented thereby would only be valid in the particular area upon which it has been focussed, excepting that the centre or centres in each State would also provide a means of inter-community information exchange and communications. This would be beneficial to members of all communities.” [76]

Fig 5, The Sony AV-3400 PortaPak.
This is the portable video recorder adopted by the Video Access Centres when they were initially established.

The presence of the second classification suggests that it is likely that the FTB had also intended that both the opportunity to use video in community communications and the opportunity to engage in experimental video using it as an art form should be supported alike. They noted that

“the validity of claims by applicants currently before the Board at the time of determining its “Video Access Policy”, supported the provision of equipment for further developmental use of the medium in a purely visual and multi-media sense.

“This type of applicant has developed in Melbourne and Sydney but not yet in other States. However, this particular line of progression logically develops from the use of portable video in the community access situation.

“As people become more familiar with the medium and develop their skills and knowledge, they will want to utilize the full potential of the medium.”[77]

On this basis the FTB proposed, at its meeting of 26 September 1973,

“that the following expenditure should be committed for the establishment of nationwide video access centres, (staffing and equipment) including a national resource centre which would be established in Sydney. Initial areas would be:

Sydney $150,000 (National centre & 4 satellites) City Video > Paddington, Western Access [Blacktown, Fairfield, Parramatta and Green Valley/Fairfield

Melbourne $44,000 (Carlton & 2 satellites), Altona, Footscray, Melbourne (from Turtle Video to Open Channel)

Adelaide: SA Media Resource Centre

Whyalla $22,000 (1 satellite)

Brisbane: Community Video Centre $22,000 (1 satellite)

Perth: Fremantle access centre (FTI / PIFT ??) $22,000 (1 satellite)

On the condition that the Department of Urban and Regional Development contributes $44,000.” [78]

There was a two step process in getting the City Video (Paddington) VAC established [what does this relate to ??]

Then in February 1974, and having attended an Australia Post seminar on Telecommunications and the Media - 2001, [this should be discussed after Nimbin and Bush Video. There is some video of the meeting of Telecom people and Bush Video on one of the Nimbin tapes.]

Albie Thoms in an article for Living Daylights, 19 February 1974, p.3 predicts something that sounds awfully like the world wide web (the Internet), though accessed via the telephone and Videotex, [79] [see the work of Jeannelle Hurst discussed later] but he doubts its ready availability to the average person simply on the basis of cost. [80] With the Internet, of course, this cost has gone down but the political economy that Thoms envisages is not nearly a possibility.

Thoms does however note that

“The video freaks have been playing with television. [mentioning that] Bush Video has shown some colour tapes at the Film-makers Cinema [Sydney]. They're exploring the new medium tactilely, using the electro-magnetic band as an extension of their own nervous systems. They talk about video bringing people together and enabling greater understanding.” [81]

While all this was going on, a parallel story at the ABC had been happening in the form of “an Underground Music program” called Fusion (directed by Bill Munro) featuring the Australian psychedelic band Tully, lighting by Ubu Films and electronic effects produced on the studio vision mixer. Then in August 1969 the ABC began GTK (Get To Know), its youth oriented program produced by Ric Birch, which included items on current Counter-Cultural events and studio recordings of underground bands. [82]

In February 1974 the Film and Television Board announced that it was about to help launch a series of public access TV centres. A press report by Ian Moffitt in The Australian of 18th February 1974 under the banner “Channel Everyman”, notes that

“The public access concept or compromise copies of it are sparking excitement in the media. A visiting BBC expert lectured on the subject last week. [Was this Rowan Ayers?]

“Bush Video, Sydney's alternative TV group, claims it is making the possible TV of the future when cable TV subscribers select programs from a central computer bank of tapes. It is trail blazing in audio-visual processes.

“The Australian Post Office and the Department of the Media examined the future Australian cable system at their national telecommunications plan seminar last week in Sydney. Sound and vision will connect to homes like gas, electricity and phones.

“The initial blueprint is for storefront videotape centres which will encourage people to use, not merely receive, television.

“No cable networks will screen their images around the nation. They will screen their own efforts in the centres, or before council meetings, government enquiries, community groups or commercial channels which might air them for outsiders. The plan is to establish community access video centres, including a national video resource centre in Sydney which will incorporate a library, cinema, restaurant, editing rooms and community baby health centre. A small staff will guide the amateurs and edit their work.

“Melbourne will have a centre in Carlton (in collaboration with the Australian Union of Students) and further satellite-type centres will spring up in Sydney, Melbourne, Whyalla, Fremantle and Brisbane.

“Sydney's proposed centres, in co-operation with the Department of Urban and Regional Development, will be in the fast growing Parramatta, Blacktown and Liverpool-Fairfield districts. Victoria's will be Altona and Footscray. Groups of individuals will use portable video recorders under the guidance of a centre director.

“It's an exciting prospect. The Australian Film Institute will set up the centres in a 12-month pilot scheme and groups are already clamoring to use them as sociological tools to strengthen their communities.“ [83]

A further proposal was that the FTB

“investigate the immediate possibility of establishing a central video resource centre in Melbourne [with finance] from the State Government, the Community Arts Board and local government funds as well as the Film and Television Board.” [84]

In Sydney the Council of the City of Sydney proposed “That the Paddington Town Hall be re-developed as a centre for community arts” which the FTB determined would make “an ideal venue for the proposed 'National Resource Centre'.” [85]

The FTB then proposed (on 29 November, 1973) [86] that the Paddington Town Hall centre would be jointly financed, developed and renovated by the FTB and the City Council as follows:

1. To house a National Video Resource Centre.

2. To include cinema exhibition facilities

3. To provide administrative and other offices and meeting rooms.

4. To include a light restaurant or coffee bar and reception space.

5. To provide editing rooms and storage facilities as required.

6. To re-house the existing library and include audio/visual facilities.

7. To house an historical collection.

8. To provide a community baby-health service.

The Australian Film Institute was to “become the major tenant and administer the complex with the exception of the library, historical museum and community health centre.”

“The Paddington Centre [would] house a good supply of portable video recorders along with more sophisticated editing and production facilities, including full colour recording and replay.”

Staff at the Paddington Town Hall centre [would] consist of:

(a) An Administrator

(b) The National Technical Adviser who will ensure efficient operation and maintenance of all hardware. He will also carry out equipment modification and research.

(ci) A Secretary. [87]

In Melbourne the FTB proposed establishing a resource centre in conjunction with the Australian Union of Students. The AUS was to provide

1. ground floor accommodation at the AUS Secretariat, 97 Drummond Street, Carlton, namely two adjoining rooms, a small store room and an additional work room. This space to be free of charge for twelve months to the A.F.I., the Australian Council for the Art's agent in the setting up of Community Video Centres.

2. make available its video equipment as supplied by the Board and used mainly by the Nimbin group [by this time Bush Video].

The FTB were to maintain the equipment, carry out such alterations (including lighting and wiring) as to make the centre viable, pay for telephone, electricity and day-to-day running costs and to “supply the centre with either one or two full-time Animateurs”. [88]

“The National Centre's facilities and staff will be available for use by local groups and the 'Satellite Centres' to edit and complete their productions when necessary and for more complex applications and experimental technique”. [89]

The “satellite centres” were to “be established in co-operation with and jointly financed by the Department of Urban and Regional Development (D.U.R.D.).” They were to be at Parramatta, Blacktown and the Liverpool/Fairfield area in Sydney, and Altona and Footscray in Melbourne. There were also to be centres in Whyalla (South Australia), Fremantle (Western Australia) and Brisbane (Queensland).

“These local centres would have more emphasis placed on portable video recorders and less sophisticated editing equipment. They would be staffed by an Animateur who would be responsible for providing access to equipment. He would also guide people in the use of the equipment and generally foster increased and continuing use of the “Video Access Centres.“ [90]

There are two crucially important positions advanced in this proposal:

A: that the video centres should be available to artists and other experimenters. [mentioned on page 1 of the Proposal] .

B: that the equipment made available to “the Nimbin group” [who by this stage had become Bush Video] should be retrieved by AUS for use at the Carlton resource centre. [mentioned on page 6 of the Proposal]

Position A. makes it clear that the FTB intended to continue their support (as previously provided by the Experimental Film and Television Fund) for the production of experimental films and what would become known as “video art”. This also led the way to the provision of equipment from the Resource Centres in Sydney and Melbourne to provide exhibition equipment to various art galleries and similar institutions for the exhibition of “video art” [given that the Sydney and Melbourne Film-makers Co-ops were already handling the exhibition of experimental film.]

Position B. had the effect of closing down Bush Video's production capacity. However given that the initial version of the Paddington video access centre was now operating, Bush Video was able to continue with using other equipment they had otherwise acquired and the equipment that became available at Paddington.

There was some controversy over the provision of equipment for the arts and experimental purposes. This was largely led by community activists who were using the centres.

According to Brian Williams, in his short history of the establishment of the video access centres “Journey through Australian videospace 1973/76”, published in Access VIDEO News, June 1976,

“In late 1973, a number of [FT] Board members had visited Videographe media resource centre in Montreal, funded through Societe Nouvelle, the French Canadian side of Challenge for Change. It was well staffed and equipped, as well as being very selective about which projects it would help undertake.” [91]

The FTB members returned to Australia determined

“to start a national “Video Access” project. Much debate ensued behind closed doors as to the scale and policy of such a project. Finally it was agreed to go for broke on a nationwide level. This decision was largely precipitated by the interest of the Department of Urban and Regional Development in establishing such facilities in regions where they would be involved in funding “area improvement” projects” [92]

After much internal politics and conflict “between Philip Adams, then chairman of the Board, and Doug McLelland, Minister for the Media” [93] control of the Access Centres project was ceded to Adams by the then PM and Minister for the Arts, Gough Whitlam.

[Regarding the Paddington Video Access Centre: the renovations to the Paddington Town Hall [PTH] were supposed to be finished by 30th June, 1974, but they were not. In the interim a shopfront access centre was set up, just up Oxford St from the PTH. This was called City Video and housed the staff who were to become the staff of the National Resource Centre as well as Paddington Video Access. The Paddington Town Hall renovations were not finished until 1976. They included the video centre which had two studios and a control room, as well as the offices of the centre and a technical workshop, a cinema then called the Ozone which became the Chauvel Cinema, offices of the AFI and a restaurant which turned out to be too expensive for users and staff of the video centre and mainly served the middle-class women of Paddington. The original Paddington Public Library was retained and there was also a meeting room available for public use.]

On May 10, 1974 the FTB released an Interim Policy and Operation Statement.

1. Objective: To support or encourage social interaction and community development, using “Community Access Video” as a catalyst and as a creative sociological resource.

2. General: It is the hope of the Film and Television Board and the Australian Film Institute that the Video Access Centres will stimulate and improve communications and in so doing, that community awareness and involvement will increase.

3. The Centres: Each centre will be conducted as autonomously as possible through the Australian Film Institute according to principles established by the Film and Television Board of the Australian Council for the Arts.
This autonomous and independent status is vital to the success of the centres. They should not be part of a rigid, formal structure; rather they should blend into and be of service to the community in which they operate. Ideally, the community will soon recognise and accept the Video Access Centres as a community resource.

4. Director: The “Centre Director” will be totally responsible for the day to day operation of the centre. An important function of the Director will be to animate and activate the community towards the use of the video as an agent of social change.

5. Access: The facilities of the centres will be made available without bias or prejudice to any group or individual in the specified community.

6. Priorities: The priority of access to facilities will be decided by the Director. In deciding priorities related to the booking of equipment the Director should look to the general rule of “First come, First served.” As demand increases and conflict in bookings occurs the Director will:

(a) Discuss the position with the applicants concerned and strive to re-schedule one or the other to achieve satisfaction.

(b) If re-scheduling cannot be achieved the Director will be called upon to make a qualitative judgement based on the merit and community benefits of the project.

(c) Attempt to establish an emergency or back-up pool of equipment by gaining the co-operation of local educational institutions etc.

7. Restrictions (Users): Equipment and facilities will by priority be available to people within the specified community and area surrounding the Centre. This area will be clearly defined and displayed prominently in each Centre. This does not exclude people living outside the area working on productions being made by residents within the area.

8. Restrictions (Use): The purposes for which facilities can be used and subject material of programmes are virtually unrestricted according to the following guidelines.

(a) No person will be allowed to use equipment inside or outside the Centre until they have satisfied the Director of their knowledge of and care and handling of any piece of equipment they wish to use.

(b) The care and responsibility for loss or damage will be vested in the person who signs for the equipment at the commencement of each project before a project is approved by the Director.

(c) The objective and proposed use of the Video Centre facilities will be clearly stated in writing by the person who will sign for the equipment.

(d) A change of objective or use may be viewed as a separate application and will normally join the “First in First Served” queue and be re-assessed by the Director.

9. Bookings: After a project is submitted and approved, bookings may be made in the name of the project by approved users. The duration of booking periods will be restricted as demand dictates, at the Director's discretion. The Director has ultimate control over booking decisions and any abuse of the booking system will result in the 'user' being barred. [Summary]

10. Appeals: No appeals will be accepted. The Director's decision is final. [Summary]

11. Complaints: Where members of the public make a complaint regarding the Centre or any operations or users' activities - the complaint will be immediately documented and investigated and a report submitted to the Director of the Australian Film Institute. But “if a Community Access Video Centre and an experienced Director can't solve the problem by bring all parties together (using video if necessary) who will be able to solve it?”

12. “Self-edit” Rule: Any person recorded by users of the “Access Centre” equipment must be given the opportunity to see and hear themselves and if they so choose, may demand all or part of the material to be edited. This is a general policy and all 'users' must comply. A printed release form will cover this point and 'users' should ensure “subject people” sign them at all times.

13. Videotapes To always remain the property of the Centre and should be returned at the earliest possible time.

14. Retention and Erasure (To be discussed during next meeting of Directors.)

15. Hours of Operation Ideally seven days a week, but this will depend on: Demand and user patterns will vary from Centre to Centre, but where possible given careful planning and the use of part-time staff hours should 10.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m. [Note this is a hell of a demand on regular staff and Directors, and I doubt if it was ever fully adhered to. SJ]

16. Miscellaneous Should a Director be faced with excessive pressure, harassment or threats from any source, the Director of the Australian Film Institute should be informed immediately. [94]

This policy statement led to a submission from the Video Exchange. Based on work by John Hughes and the Video Exchange collective in assisting a diversity of community groups in Melbourne it was one of the first applications for the purchase of video equipment made to the Film and Television Board (FTB) of the ACA for community access facilities. The proposal sought “funding to establish a means through which video tape equipment and experience can be made available to the community, particularly for use in community development projects.” [95]

The Video Exchange “evolved out of a series of meetings and mailings beginning in April 1973”. [96] At that time a group of people in Melbourne had been considering “ways of implementing video tape in community projects.” They had the “continuing co-operation of the Media Centre, La Trobe University Faculty of Education, the Film and Television Department of the Melbourne College of Education, and the Australian Film Institute.” [The then director of the AFI, ??] Richard Brennan had offered that the AFI could function as the “administrator of funds until such time as a formal legal structure has been determined. Both the Media Centre and the Film and Television Department (Melbourne College of Education) are prepared to provide back up studio and editing facilities - in the case of the Media Centre this is provided the Education Faculty students are involved in projects.“ [97]

The objectives of the Video Exchange were

“to establish and maintain an efficient and workable system to allow community access to the process[es] of communications media,” with a focus on video, and “to actively support and participate in projects undertaken by community groups making use of the Exchange's equipment [through the] exchange of information and experiences on diverse aspects of the community use of VTR.” [98]

The preamble to the submission notes: “We see the primary activity of the group as an attempt to determine, on an exploratory basis, effective means of establishing an operation directed towards these ends.” [99]

The submission proposed that while there would be a central administration facility [based in Clifton Hill at the Fitzroy Fun Factory] which would hold editing equipment and several portable recorders, portable equipment would also be decentralised

“through locations at Diamond Valley, Hawthorn and in the Western suburbs” so as to “encourage access to existing facilities at the earliest opportunity. This would develop relationships with other groups over a diverse base and lead to a wider range of people developing interest and expertise with [the] equipment and its application.” [100]

It was intended that the initiative in developing usage of the equipment would come from the community with the Video Exchange providing a supporting role. They recognised that

“the process of determining access to equipment is not simple, and we are determined that other projects should have equal opportunity for obtaining its use”,

and suggested

“that the most effective approach to this problem is to decide on major projects priorities on a group basis, subject to certain conditions on the overall use of equipment and also providing a system for booking on a “first come first served” basis.”

“The equipment [was to] be available to non-commercial users on the basis of open access“

and users would be required to demonstrate some degree of competence with it. Workshops and introductory sessions would be conducted.” [101]

The Video Exchange submission [date ??], along with the work of Tom Zubrycki over 1973-74 and Warwick Robbins over 1972-73 (and others ???) in Sydney, and the community video project at the Aquarius Festival in Nimbin (in northern NSW) of (12th - 23rd May 1973} led the Film and TV Board (FTB) of the Australian Council for the Arts (then chaired by Philip Adams and having the support of the Whitlam government) and the Board's director John Murray, and Bill Childs (a senior project officer for the FTB), to establish a national Video Access project in August 1973. [102] It was modelled on the Challenge for Change project developed in Canada, [103] and the “video centre” that was installed at Nimbin. [104] [CHECK ALL OF THIS]

1974

Regarding the subsequent FTB-driven Video Access project, John Hughes notes that

“In order for the Board to maintain total control of the Video Project it was necessary to include an 'activist' clause in their policy. In a document dated October 5th, 1973 the Board defines its purposes in part as, 'to stimulate the widest variety of film and video activity in Australia, to provide opportunities for using these forms of expression by people in every area of Australian society, in particular to groups hitherto denied such opportunity.” [105]

Hughes continues

“At a seminar in Melbourne on August 19, 1974, John Murray said the objective of the Community Access Video Centres was "to support and encourage social interaction and community development using community access video as a catalyst and as a creative, sociological resource.” [106]

He goes on to point out that:

“By the middle of 1974 most of the centres had been established. The Film and Television Board's Interim Policy for their operation suggests that

“the centres should not be part of a rigid formal structure, but rather they should blend into the community in which they operate so that the community might soon recognise and accept the Community Access Centres as a community resource. The facilities of the centres will be made available without bias or prejudice to any group or individual in the specified community. The priorities of access will be decided by the Director ... should the centre users disagree with the Director's decisions in the area of priorities or bookings the Director's decision is final.” [107]

“Mr Murray has made it clear that the Board does not “want the centres to be regarded as a fruit of Government bureaucracy.” [108] One of the ways the Board intends to avoid that possibility [was] to insist that “we do not want Board members, Australian Film Institute members, staff other than the Senior Project Officer Video, or researchers to be seen physically in the centres.” [109]

The FTB initiative was largely in response to radical film production, community activism, and information about the CFC model from Canada. (How was the news about CFC introduced???? Possibly through John Kirk (of Bush Video) and Radical Software magazine, or through Bill Childs). The first Australian experiments in video are discussed in some detail above and several approaches to video access were explored in Australia.

In consequence, taking CFC as a model, given its apparent success in Canada, several bureaucrats in the Experimental Film Fund ?? of the Australian Council for the Arts co-ordinating with the Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD) began to discuss a means for generating a similar community consultative project in Australia.c, at least one member of the ACA, Bill Childs, was sent to Canada to study Media at McGill University [??] in order to learn as much as possible about the CFC project through the National Film Board of Canada. This led to the initiation of conceptual structures within the ACA and DURD for what became the Video Access project in Australia.

A variety of different activist projects were going on at the time [c.1974??], some of which included some sort of video production activity. Among these were several individual activists already familiar with film production (e.g., Tom Zubrycki) or other media related activities who began to make productions that were modelled on Challenge For Change

Meanwhile...

Tom Zubrycki was a resident of Balmain at a time when there was a great deal of heavy truck movement in the very narrow streets of Birchgrove and Balmain from a coal loading (facility) in Mort Bay up to the main street and then off to other places. His process was to go out into the streets of Balmain and record events as they occurred and gather the opinions of people who were involved or upset by these events. These video sequences would then be edited together into a tape [which became We Have to Live With It ] relating the issues involved in the district. [110] With this video he could then organise a town hall meeting to show it to the people who were affected by the constant stream of trucks.

“The meeting was called, the fact that there was going to be a videotape shown was advertised... [T]he meeting was packed, there were a couple of hundred people there. I managed to get two video monitors. I think that was the week that the videos that were in boxes in Birchgrove were moved to Paddington. The very first week that the video centre was actually functioning, and that's where I met Warwick Robbins that week. He helped me put together the video” [111]

The Video Access Centres project was initiated through the Interim Council for the Film and Television School in late 1973 and developed through the Film and TV Board of the then Australian Council for the Arts (or, since 1975, the Australia Council) over 1974. As in Canada and the UK, in Australia this approach was usually applied to low-income and poorly serviced urban areas which were (and still are) regularly over-run by large developers and city and state politicians wanting to increase their influence, e.g., through slum clearance or highway building. [112] [This repeats something said on p.9] In later years activist media operations such as community television and community radio, which are at least semi-two-way, became a further proposed (but ultimately unsuccessful, at least in Australia) means of expanding the communicative role of the media.

They were set up to enable the people who used them to engage in what was essentially political activity. [113] As with the Canadian CFC project the idea was to shift the “grass roots” (i.e., the people) from a passive to an active role in their government.

The Access project had one basic idea at its core. As McMurchy puts it:

“the notion of ordinary people, community people, being able to get a camera in their hands and shoot live material, to edit it, and to create programming that was genuinely arising from a grass roots basis. That was the engine of the community video... it generated, or helped to support, a whole notion of working away from mainstream broadcasting and media. A whole philosophical plane of activism and community work that was not otherwise conceivable.” [114]

This notion, comes from the ideas of various individuals and grew through the work of Challenge For Change, initiated by John Grierson for the NFB of Canada and which itself came from the concept of documentary held by him. [It was also Grierson who prompted the establishment of the Australian National Film Board (c.1940 ??), which became the Commonwealth Film Unit, then the Australian Film Commission and eventually Screen Australia]. Then in 1969 the concept was continued in Britain through the work of “Hoppy” Hopkins and TVX, and subsequently Hoppy and Sue Hall and their video facility, Fantasy Factory. In the U.S. It developed through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commitment to community time slots on cable television in the U.S., as well as with the Video Freex and other media radicals who were publishing journals like Radical Software. It was cable television that Megan McMurchy and Jeune Pritchard went to the US to explore (in 1972-73).

As Susan Varga noted in mounting a (much later) case for Community Television, the

“Video Access Centres were set up to give access to audio-visual means of production to the community, particularly to those members of the community without other reasonable access to the media. It was also in our charter to transfer expertise in how best to use video equipment, and this meant giving priority to those projects that raised self-consciousness and/or our consciousness of social and community issues. This meant in effect, not revolution, but slow, slow, social change. We are also in the business of helping people enjoy themselves and entertain others, but this was not a priority. [115]

Megan McMurchy points out that

“The Video Access Centres were set up across Australia (excepting Darwin). There were three access centres in the Western suburbs of Sydney: [Fairfield, Parramatta and Blacktown]. There were two in Melbourne [Altona and Footscray], one in Adelaide [Whyalla], one in Brisbane and one in Perth [which later became the Fremantle (FTI) centre]. There had already been another centre set up by Film Australia (or the AFI ??) in Sydney. This was in Green Valley and had been established as a result of a film made for Film Australia by Peter Weir called Whatever Happened to Green Valley?. [116] The Green Valley video centre was somehow loosely incorporated into the DURD-funded system but was funded separately.” [I need to consult Susan Varga.]

In the early stages of the Video Access Centres project (essentially the Whitlam era, c.1974) there were many layers of the political structure that had been dedicated to the development of local communities. Importantly this included developing these communities' capacity to communicate their needs to various strata of the public service, with the Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD), the Department of Health, and the then NSW Department of Main Roads (DMR) among them. Much of the political activity that arose from projects administered by these departments became the backbone for a demonstrated need for new and readily accessible communications forms. A series of tapes about (objecting to) freeway construction projects formed a substantial part of the videotapes that were made in this early period especially covering the DMR in NSW, which was responsible for the development of many of the early Sydney free-ways and consequent destruction of many inner city communities.

As a mechanism to facilitate the development of these new channels of communication between the people and the public service (the government at all its levels), the need for a network of centres that could provide video equipment and support its use in various “disadvantaged” locations became imperative and, ultimately, from this need the access centres were spawned. Community activists from many of the big industrial areas and those opposing such things as

- highway extensions at the cost of low income housing locations (still going on now),

- “slum clearance” for investors to take over historic housing areas (as an example this led to the protests over the takeover of Victoria St in Sydney's King's Cross and the film and video production that was utilised to activate the unions and attempt to communicate existing residents' objections to the local government), and

- the take over of other historic housing areas or clear land for major new high rise apartment building were among the early users of this equipment and made some of the first complete video productions which, in particular, dealt with these sorts of community problems.

For example, the Whitlam government's Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD)'s involvement with the VAC program dates back to 1973/74 when a contribution was made, under the Area Improvement Program, to the establishment costs of five Video Access Centres in Blacktown (whole cost), Fairfield, Parramatta, Altona, Footscray (part cost). [117] [repeated on p.93] Each of these areas were depressed and under stress, particularly from highway building.

In Melbourne,

During the first few months of 1974, the Film and Television Board of the Australian Council for the Arts established 'Community Access Video Centres' to make half‐inch Video tape equipment available to people in specific geographic communities in each state. There are 10 such centres. One in Brisbane (Qld), Parramatta, Fairfield, Green Valley (NSW), Altona, Footscray, Carlton (Vic), Adelaide, Whyalla (S.A.) and Fremantle (W.A.).

The Department of Urban and Regional Development contributed $104,000 towards the cost of several of these centres, the budget for one year for each centre is reported to be $25,000. A member of the Department of Urban and Regional Development joined the Board's Video sub committee in September or October 1973, because D.U.R.D. had a "particular interest in motivating communities to define their own needs". [118]

The centres are administered by the Australian Film Institute.

According to Brian Williams (who at one stage was the director of Footscray VAC and later the FTI in W.A. ???) in describing his experience of the process of “the establishment of [the] “community access video project”, in February 1974 the FTB “arranged public seminars in Sydney and Melbourne to announce the forthcoming establishment of the [Access Centres] project in April.” There was to “be a SINGLE EXPERIENCED ANIMATEUR” to run each centre and “control access to the video equipment”. Each centre would operate “within a well defined community area“. [119] The role of “Animateur” (centre director) in the Australian proposal was a misinterpretation of the CFC model which operated through a team of people hired “for specific projects”, so that the function of keeping everything going didn't fall on the shoulders of one single person. Really the access centres project was of too great a scale even in the circumscribed regions in which they were set up to operate. [120]

“[The FTB] decided that whatever expenditure it made, the facility had to be available to the widest number of people in the community. Secondly, equipment had to be properly maintained in order to gain the most benefit from the Board's investment. It was therefore not possible to fund individuals or groups.

“These considerations implied that the facility should be maintained or controlled by the Board, or its agent so that it could be freely available and effective.“ [121]

There was to be “a 12 month pilot period”, but, of course, this was far too short a time to allow the centres to gain any real foothold within the communities they were set up to service. However DURD went ahead and invested $104,000 into the project “via the Area Improvement Programme” to establish centres in the western suburbs of Sydney (Fairfield, Blacktown and Parramatta) and Melbourne (Footscray and Altona). [122] The Australian Film Institute was given administrative responsibility. [123]

To some it appeared that the whole Access Centre Project had been set up by the two government bodies that took on its funding without any proper consultation with the people of the communities that the centres were intended to serve. Williams claims that only the Green Valley access centre was brought about by the desires of the local community. Susan Varga, Film Australia and the local residents “put a lot of energy and talent into making a film entitled Whatever Happened to Green Valley? [124] [which] led to residents applying to the Board for a video facility in their area.” The film was written and directed by Peter Weir, produced by Anthony Buckley, and released in 1974. Susan Varga and the residents succeeded in their campaign and Varga became the director of the Green Valley Video Access Centre. [125] However, much of the original access policy proposals came about as a result of the work done by the Video Exchange in Melbourne which led to the establishment of the Altona and Footscray centres in Melbourne and of course the Nimbin Communications Centre set up at the Nimbin Aquarius Festival in May 1973.

In Sydney

Megan McMurchy returned to Australia in early 1974 while Jeune stayed on in New York. When Megan got back

“the Film and Television Board (of the then Australian Council for the Arts) was putting out advertisements for a cluster of video access centres [to be set up] broadly under DURD - the Department of Urban and Regional Development of the federal Labor Government under Gough Whitlam. And the AFI (Australian Film Institute) was brought in to administer it. It was actually generated through the Film and Television Board under John Murray.” [126]

One of the staff of the FTB was Bill Childs, who had been in Canada, and had researched the Canadian NFB's Challenge For Change, and so he knew CFC by experience. [He was studying at McGill University in Montreal and may well have been the conduit for bringing actual bureaucratically useful knowledge of CFC back to Australia and the FTB.]

There was quite a bit of criticism of both the FTB's role and the DURD role in the establishment of the Access Centres. Brian Williams argues that “it was the Board's failure to understand the priorities of different parts of the project and an unwillingness to participate in real dialogue about its management that led to the repudiation of its assumptions. Other forces in operation were the political pressure to substantially expand the projects' budget; the lack of communication and feedback from DURD as to expectations and evaluation of its relationship with the video project (quite apart from the questions of co-operative policy formulation); the immature management infrastructure of the Australia Council; the ever changing role definition within the project; confused information as to budgets etc; and the hopelessly overworked AFI administration.” [127] [note: this is still before the sacking of the Whitlam Government in November, 1975] So, in April 1975 the FTB had decided that all the video centres should be independent and self-supporting by August 1976.

McMurchy commented that DURD had to assess “the performance of the [Access] Centres ... from time to time, and I think Max Burke was somehow involved as a representative of DURD, to look in on and assess them. Maybe the Fred Emery thing came via that way, I don't know.” However as Jeune noted “It really was just extraordinary to set it up“. [128]

Fig.2, First issue of City Video the regular magazine from the Paddington branch of the video access network.

There was little attempt to gauge the effectiveness of the project once it was started. So Dorothy Todd Henaut was brought out to Australia from Challenge For Change in Canada (in 1975) to do an evaluation of the Access Project in collaboratioin with Fred Emery and Bruce Abrahams from the Centre for Continuing Education at the Australian National University. She noted in her report

“Because the centre directors were hired for their knowledge and respect for social processes, they have encouraged users to follow their own processes, rather than pushing for finished product. The important thing is to be able to counsel people in identifying their real needs with regard to what video can offer them. As time goes on there will be more and more people capable of making really excellent tapes, but it will still be important to put the accent on process rather than becoming mini production centres. It would be a disaster if people were pushed to produce product, to the detriment of social process.” [129]

Tom Zubrycki was one of the many people (other than the Video Centre directors) to meet with Henaut

“At that time I had a job teaching at the Film School (AFTRS), part-time in the Open Program in Video Production because I was one of the few people who actually knew how to use the equipment. I had been using it day-to-day making my own programs ever since the day the Paddington Video Centre opened a year earlier. And then subsequently at UTS where I was teaching video production in the mid-to-late 70's. But Challenge for Change was something I'd only read about. The National Film Board in the late '60's had the idea of engaging people in under-represented communities to tell their own stories on screen. It was giving voice to the voiceless, and initiating social change and eliminating poverty. The aim was to screen the films to government agencies and getting them to respond to community demands. The first projects started with film in a place called Fogo, an island off Newfoundland, Canada. The transition between film and video then happened pretty seamlessly in the early 70's because the model had already been established with 16mm film. [130]

“I was probably the first person to use it in that context in Sydney. In fact I remember all the cameras were packed in boxes in [Warwick Robbins'] place in Birchgrove and I went there and I was so eager to actually get one that I took one out of the box and started using it and filmed a street corner protest meeting. The reason that meeting had come about was because of a serious accident in Balmain that involved one of the large container trucks. Basically there was a collision between a truck and a small vehicle and two people were killed. There was an issue with the truck's brakes and in Balmain you've got these narrow streets leading up to Darling St. The trucks were actually using those narrow streets. Some poor car got stuck behind a truck whose brakes might have been a bit worn, anyway the car was pushed right into a person's place, broke the fence. I've got a little bit of it here [on the video We Have To Live With It].

“So I filmed the street corner meeting with a view to actually then canvassing some views with the portapak and putting something together to show at a meeting at the town hall later that week.

“That was a residents' meeting. The people who called together the street corner meeting, it was a very spontaneous meeting, and three or four people there decided to call a further meeting at the town hall because they wanted to build up a bit of a campaign to try and get rid of all these container trucks. There they formed a resident action group with the express purpose of closing down the Mort Bay truck terminal. I knew Sandy Halley who set up the action group. She was one of the people from networks that I had established at the University of NSW. The Sociology Department, which is where I was studying and then doing some tutoring in the early 70's, had a number of people there who were very community minded, people like Andrew Jakubowicz and Wendy Bacon. Andrew was actually using video in 1973 in South Sydney with an aboriginal housing group.

“So going back to the Balmain incident: the meeting was called, the fact that there was going to be a videotape shown was advertised. I don't have any of the flyers left, but the meeting was packed, there were a couple of hundred people there. I managed to get two video monitors. I think that was the week that the videos that were in boxes in Birchgrove were moved to Paddington. The very first week that the video centre was actually functioning, and that's where I met Warwick Robbins that week. He helped me put together the video.

“We edited it [in his video truck]. We pasted the title on a monitor as people were doing at that time with Letraset and then filmed it off the monitor and that was how the title for the film was made.

“And we called ourselves a “Community Video Production”. So that was a successful experiment. That process of putting it together: I think we were working probably 14 hours to do it, I think I left it a bit late to actually put it all together. I don't think I had shot more than about three tapes, maybe 75 minutes all up, but that was enough. We had to plan the edit on paper because you couldn't go back on a cut once you’d started compiling. That was very rigorous. We used chinagraph on the videotape. We had two decks, and we wound back each deck and then let them go simultaneously and then pressed the edit point on the record deck.[131] and the hope was always that it would actually work out, and that the edit point would be approximately close to where you wanted it. [But] the picture would often have some kind of interference. Some sort of “glitch” at the edit point. Mostly however the edit would be clean, but plus or minus a few frames.

“Anyway back to that meeting. Warwick Robbins and I brought in a series of large and heavy monitors, and showed the 40 minute videotape which was very warmly received. I was thrilled, as you imagine to get such a reception. I just got the bug after that. I couldn't not keep making videos with people in the community. I saw myself as being a 'social animateur' which was a term coined by Challenge for Change to mean 'facilitating social change using videotape'. And the video about the Balmain campaign I actually re-made several times. You used the master that you'd first made as a source tape. The reason we re-cut it was because there were more events and the program just kept on growing. [132]

“[So we] accumulated the history and the final version incorporated some sort of symbolic funeral - the idea that the Mort Bay container terminal needed to be closed forever, so there was this mock procession of a funeral choreographed by a few friends who had been doing some street theatre at the time. Alec Morgan was involved, and Laurel Quillan. We were all actually sharing a house together.

“We made at least three cuts of the video, and we had a subsequent meeting with the residents and showed them the shorter cut but more up to date. And the very next meeting we actually made an edit especially to present to the State Minister for Transport who had responsibility for the Mort Bay terminal - a Mr Jones. Mr Jones had made an undertaking to come down to Balmain to see what the residents were concerned about. So what I did was I set up a video in the boardroom where they were having this little meeting. It was really just a room in a small community centre and the video was shown to the minister. He was forced to watch it for half and hour even before any discussion started. And I thought that was a real coup to get him to see it: here is a video trying to influence the course of events. In the end - a few months later - the state government forced the company to close the truck terminal in Mort Bay. The residents had a victory.

“There were a number of different videotape actions or different projects happening at the same time, and they all passed through City Video when Warwick Robbins was the first director. Later City Video became the Paddington Video Access Centre.” [133]

Another of Zubrycki's video projects made with Robbins' assistance grew from a campaign to stop an expressway.

“It was titled Fig St Fiasco. Again a few different versions of the video were made. Slightly more sophisticated in content. We put in a Bob Dylan track across the first couple of minutes, and Warwick helped me do that. He seemed to know the equipment reasonably well, a bit better than me anyway, and having a bit of a flair for editing. Anyway he certainly taught me a few things.

“With Fig St, which was part of the campaign to stop the expressway coming though Glebe, I remember showing the edit that we made (it was 40 minutes, it was quite substantial) to a packed Town Hall. We had monitors running around the wall. We had about 6. It was very sophisticated. I think actually Mario Fairlie came and gave us a hand. So that was one of the biggest screenings we had, and I believe the knowledge that a video was to be shown helped draw an even bigger crowd.

“So we did a number of those, but really the people coming in and using the Access Centre were people who simply wanted to get a recording made of their sporting match. And in fact one of the critiques you may have read in some of the reports, was that there wasn't a lot of community development going on. What I was doing, I think, was community development, though it could have been seen as a bit 'agitprop' by the funding agencies. I know that they were a little bit critical of the fact that video was being used by blackfellas, by aboriginal communities in Redfern. In an article I wrote with Brett Levy “Demystifying Video” (1979) we record that Bobbie Sykes (she lived in Redfern at the time) was using video then... to dramatise issues around The Block and what was happening there. She was actually working with Warwick Robbins. Warwick helped her make a few videos, I'm not even sure that they've survived. But that was seen by us as the best and most appropriate uses access video should be put to, though it was possibly a bit more radical than what the funding bodies had in mind. What they would have preferred was video really just communicating people's views without any accompanying political action. However what was actually going on was a process helping people to organise. And that's what I was doing in Balmain, so it had a much more political purpose. And the women's movement used [video] quite a bit as well in that same context.

“But going back to community development, I implemented one fairly classic community development video project, and it happened maybe a year later in Hurstville. I took the video down there. By that stage I'd developed skills in this area and people were contacting me to do various projects. Both down there and also in Marrickville.

“The Hurstville project involved a big open block of land - the Federal government owned the site, but they were making it available to the local community. I think it might have been an army depot at one stage and there were about thirty community groups vying for it. The idea was that I would film with one group and then another, and gradually they would all come to an agreement on the final use of the space. Where there was conflict I would show each one separately the others' viewpoint on video so this forced them to prepare their arguments. And of course they expressed how they felt about whatever they wanted for their group, sometimes strongly. [134]

[Tom mentions meeting Peter Kennedy during this period after I referred to Kennedy's Introductions project. Kennedy was director of the Tin Sheds at this time.]

“Actually he was probably one of the first people who stimulated me about this whole idea of working with video as a 'process'. City Video was about 3 months old at this point, and the National Resource Centre had been activated as well, given that Mario was involved. It was still in the radio shop in Oxford Street. [135]

Tom also mentions that Hoppy was one of his mentors.

It is important to stress that the kind of process being discussed here, is not the actual process of making the videotape programme but the processes involved in the communities' use of video, much of which was oriented to local politics. This orientation largely developed from the Canadian Challenge for Change [CFC] project (which provided the theory base for the Access Centres project). [136]

However, product became the need, due in large part to the push for better funding and for Community Television. This was primarily the process that the Paddington Video Access Centre (PVAC) in Paddington, Sydney, and the Melbourne Access Video and Media Co-op (MAVAM) in Carlton, Melbourne, went through. Paddington Video Access housed the National Resource Centre which, over 1976-77, built a full scale colour video studio, while in Melbourne the Carlton Video Resource Centre (constituted as the MAVAM - Melbourne Access Video and Media Co-op) became Open Channel which also built a colour video production studio. The result of having these two facilities was a serious push for free-to-air community owned television stations. The push for Community Television (as distinct from community access video) had more or less focussed on these two centres and of course the need in Television is that it shows product made up of completed, well edited video programmes.

Importantly, the FTB also saw the need to encourage the development of video as an “art form” [it was, after all, the Film & TV Board of the Australian Council for the Arts] so they established “Resource Centres” (which Williams claims had ill-defined roles) at Paddington and Carlton with more sophisticated equipment and technical staff. [Williams seems to be arguing that the role the Access Centres, particularly Paddington (and Carlton, though to a lesser extent), had in supporting video art was unnecessary or misguided. Later others (among them many of the community activists) took up this view and with the demise of the Paddington Video Access Centre (in mid-1978) and the sacking of its then director Bronwyn Barwell along with its handover to the Western Access group, this attitude became the 'consensus'.] Thus fledgling video art activities in Sydney began to be supported by the Paddington National Resource Centre which began the construction of a quite sophisticated studio space in the Paddington Town Hall and loaned out playback and display equipment to the Art Gallery of NSW for two projects; the Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman tour of Australia in April 1976 (John Kaldor's Art Project no.5) and the 2nd Biennale of Sydney in November 1976. The author was given the role of technical attendant at both of these events.

McMurchy continues

“I don't know the political history that set the whole thing going in that era. It was remarkable, and so we were all appointed. Jeune came to work out at Fairfield first of all, with me, and then [she] was appointed [as one of two directors at City Video]. [137]

Of the people who were appointed as Directors of the Access Centres she comments

“what you got was a whole range of people like... old lefties who were younger lefties at the time. And the push through the Labor Party was extraordinary, because it was the left wing of the Labor Party, that wanted to push something like this, which was going to set up all this community... sort of real resident action...” [138]

Megan responded

“It was involved with the philosophy of regional development, because all those councils, and then the meta-structure of regional councils which drew in the councils in Western Sydney, which was the focus for Labor policy in terms of regional development and outer suburban development, and bringing facilities and community resources to bear, and we were seen as part of that. We were coming from a very different background, and none of us were trained as community organisers, but ... they sort of threw us in at the deep end, and that's what we had to become. All the centres became drop-in centres. The kids, they were all in heavily non-English speaking communities out there. Probably somewhat similar in Melbourne … [at] centres like Altona.” [139]

As Jeune then comments:

“It's something that could never happen now, could it, anything like that.”

To which Megan added:

“No way, no government money would ever do something like that again.”

Jeune:

“It was such a radical move.”

Megan:

“Unique, absolutely unique in its historical time. It couldn't have evolved differently because it had to have that model, Challenge For Change, combined with what we knew of the American community video access system. And there were a few people there who managed to somehow shove it through government and get the money and set the whole thing up. So it was remarkable.

“But video art became... The video centres, once they were established, created a home for video art, which had been coming up through different sources. I mean, if you look at the technical context in which it began to be produced, you've got people like Doug Richardson with his work in computer graphics and computer animation, much of it with the graphic designer Frank Eidlitz.[140] The other main artist-user of Richardson's system was Mick Glasheen and other members of Bush Video around 1973-74.”

1975

Megan left Fairfield VAC in 1975, and its management was then taken over by Chris Sykes and Dianne Powell. “They were local women, which seemed to be a really positive development. I'm not sure how many of the other centres devolved into local management. Probably not all of them anyway.”

The early work of Tom Zubrycki and Russ Hermann comes around the same time as the access centres. ”

Overall, the intended function of the Access Centres was “to support or encourage social interaction and community development using 'Community Access Video' as a catalyst and as a creative sociological resource [that might] stimulate and improve communications” and in so doing, lead to an increase in “community awareness and involvement.” [141]

In 1975 the Labor (Whitlam) Government re-organised everything again: creating the Australian Film Commission (AFC), which was to handle all aspects of government funding for film and television, apart from the Australia Film and Television School. [142] Then, after the dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975, the incoming Fraser government decided that all funding for film (and, by default, video) production, distribution and exhibition would be handled by the AFC. Thus in late 1976 the functions of the Film, Radio and Television Board were transferred from the Australia Council to the AFC including the EFTF, the Australian Film Institute (AFI) and the Video Access Centres.

The video access centres were transferred to the AFC and pretty much told to look after their own funding. The EFTF was transferred to the newly set up Creative Development Branch of the AFC along with the Film Production Fund and the Script Development Fund. [143] But, as Megan McMurchy has noted, this brought a shift in emphasis from creative film-making to the needs of 'industry' despite the act of Parliament that set up the AFC requiring it to give 'special attention to the encouragement of the making of experimental programs and programs of a high degree of creativity'.

1976 this where to discuss the art galleries and, from 1976, the Biennales plus the cosiderable number of dealer galleries across the country. Ewing Gallery, AGNSW,

However, ultimately it was the Film and Television Board of the Australia Council, over the period from 1973-1976 that made the big difference in the possibilities, especially with its establishment of the Video Access Centres in each of the major cities and some of the more culturally impoverished regions where the need for a community voice was seen to be of value. I will discuss the establishment of the Video Access Centres in more detail below, however it is in Video Access that the social feedback potential of video was seen to be of considerable importance.

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Endnotes

1 < a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2012/book-reviews/challenge-for-change-activist-documentary-at-the-national-film-board-of-canada/" >Challenge for Change documentary

2 Albie Thoms, conversation with the author, recorded 18/05/2009

3 Wikipedia on the Portapak

4 Albie Thoms, “Video Explosion: 1972”, Polemics for a New Cinema, Wild & Woolley, Sydney, 1978, pp.286-287. [Originally published in Rolling Stone, Sydney, May 1972.]

5 ibid..

6 ibid..

7 ibid.

7 Official Year Book of Australia, Issue 60, 1974, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra. p.1022.

8 Thoms, op cit, p.288.

9 Alex Gerbaz, “The legacy of the Experimental Film and Television Fund, 1970-78”, a paper given to National Archives of Australia, Canberra, 13 October 2009.

10 See the Press release: Canberra, Sydney, 3 December 1969: Recommendations of the Australian Council for the Arts for 1969/1970, Statement by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton, [in particular p.3]. NAA: A5915, 43.

11 Megan McMurchy, “The Creative Development Fund 1978-88: Breeding Ground for an Industry, or Seed-Bed of Invention?”, in Megan McMurchy and Jennifer Scott (eds), Signs of Independents: Ten Years of the Creative Development Fund, Australian Film Commission, Sydney, December, 1988. p.3.

12 Patrick Watson, “Challenge for Change”, Reprinted from Arts Canada, April, 1970.

“Contemporary incarnations of Challenge for Change's aspiration to embed media in marginalized communities have both been inspired by the NFB's innovative fostering of community media and been carried out with a more developed critical acumen (see Miller, chapter 37, this volume). Challenge for Change needs to be situated within an archaeology of the media radicalism of the 1960s, which includes the solipsistic process-oriented films of Andy Warhol alongside the McLuhanesque visions of media democracy found at Expo '67 : the multi-screen architecture of the NFB's “In the Labyrinth” project, which Colin Low had conceptualized in the early 1960s, is perhaps the ultimate expression of this optimism. From this perspective, we can see that Challenge for Change's experiments with media democracy and social justice activism are important precursors to the diy {do it yourself) aesthetic and the networked cultures of digital media around the world. Such networks are grounded in localized circuits of communication and action that in turn have a global effect. In the context of networked, locative, and distributed media, we can appreciate the importance of the feedback loop that was the basis of the Challenge for Change methodology. Although the critique of liberal ideology found in this chapter continues to be a vital one, the very logic of the feedback loop encompasses a conceptualization of production as always already intrinsically tied to consumption and circulation. That is, as Walter Benjamin put it in 1934, the use of the apparatus in this manner proposes the “author as producer,” which is then the challenge for change.

Once the dispossessed and powerless have access to the means of information they can no longer be misled by Establishment bullshit. And that is in itself a revolution. - Patrick Watson 1970. Preface to Part 4 of Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada by Thomas Waugh, Michael Brendan Baker, Ezra Winton. Montreal,Quebec,Canada, 2010 McGill-Queen's Press [MQUP]. [This was found on Google Books so its direct referencing will be unreliable but that it is in Part 4 of the above book is undoubted. See SCHUGURENSKY: Challenge for Change

13 Which became the Paddington Video Access Centre in the Paddington Town Hall.

14 Recorded conversation with Megan McMurchy and Jeune Pritchard, 11/01/2016

15 Michael Shamberg, Guerilla Television, Holt Reinhardt and Winston, New York, 1971, for the Raindance Corporation,

16 I have three copies of Radical Software magazine with Megan McMurchy's ownership signature on them. Two are also dated Dec 1973 which suggests that she was pursuing this interest strongly by that time.

17 Recorded conversation with Megan McMurchy and Jeune Pritchard, 11/01/2016.

18 ibid.

19 ibid.

20 ibid. McMurchy comments: “But anyway, we've got these souvenir tapes which are now lodged in the National Film and Sound Archives, and they're occasionally accessed for use in various archival programs.”

21 According to their CV at < href=" http://www.arthurandcorinnecantrill.com/Exhibitions.html" >. retrieved 30/01/2017.

22 Cantrill's Exhibitions list retrieved 30/01/2017.

23 ibid.

24 ibid.

25 ibid.

26 Conversation with Fred Harden at his place in Melbourne, recorded 18/01/2017.

27 ibid.

28 Wilson, Jim - paragraphs headed Personal Video and Synaesthetic Video in “The Video Revolution” Cantrill's FilmNotes, no.4, July 1971, pp.(3-4)

Cantrill’s FilmNotes no.3, May 1971, “CinemaPoetry”, p.10-14; Cantrill’s FilmNotes no.4, July 1971, “The Video Revolution”, pp.(6-7)

29 John Hughes, “What to do with A Greek Bearing Gifts.” Learning Exchange newspaper, No 24, December 1974, pp.4-7.

30 See SS 13. Parliamentary decisions transcripts

31 See Harvard Psilocybin Project

32 Dalmas can also be seen on YouTube.

33 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017

34 ibid.

35 Lisa French and Mark Poole, “Passionate amateurs: The experimental film and television fund and modernist film practice in Australia”, Studies in Australasian Cinema, Vol.5, no.2, pp.171-184. < https://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/eserv/rmit:13600/f2006028698.pdf >

36 Victoria St campagign.

37 Conversation with Tom Zubrycki at Huntley St, 4th May, 2015.

38 Warwick Robbins article in Bush Video Tharunka XL-5, August 7, 1973, pp.16-17 [on the right side of the 2 pages at Chapter at Chapter 20].

39 See CFC reference: Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada. Edited by Thomas Waugh, Michael Brendan Baker, and Ezra Winton. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2010.

40 Article by Robbins in Bush Video Tharunka XL-5, August 7, 1973, pp.16-17.

41 ibid.

42 ibid.

43 ibid.

44 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017

45 Both in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne, VIC.

46 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017.

47 ibid.

48 A series of 5 films on the methods of Alinsky. available from the distributors, Educational Media Australia.

49 Learning Exchange Newsletter, Learning Exchange Co-operative, Armadale, Vic. : 1972-1983.

50 See article "Community Use of Video", Learning Exchange Newspaper, No. 5, Apr. 1973, in Learning Exchange Bound Issues, '73.

51 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017.

52 ibid.

53 Learning Exchange newspaper. ['Video', Learning Exchange Newspaper, No.6, p.2.]

54 Akai 1/4" PortaPak. Non-J refers to the pre-EIAJ [Electronic Industries Association of Japan] format of that machine which Akai used. Sasha Trikojus had access to a Sony 1/2-inch DV-2400 portapak which was the machine used in recording the Baba Ram Dass video with Bert Deling. Sony had not yet adopted the standardised 1/2” format known as the EIAJ format which was later used in the Sony AV-3400 and National NV-3085 portapaks. See EIAJ details at Wikipedia

55 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017.

56 ibid.

57 ibid.

58 John Hughes, “What to do with a Greek bearing gifts” Learning Exchange No 24 December 1974.

59 National Archives of Australia [NAA]: C589, AGENDA 14-15 JANUARY 1974 [FTB] Video Proposal - Film and Television Board, Agenda Item 9 - FTB meeting, 14 Jan, 1974. p.1.

60 e.g. 1. Australian Council for the Arts' response to the Aquarius proposal to establish open access video facility at Nimbin. 2. Senator McClelland is quoted as saying, “A community programme can only be a true community programme if it is done by, rather than for, the people, and it cannot really be done by the people unless they have control over its form, content, and the time at which it's aired...everyone in the community should be entitled to use electronic media for the communication of ideas". “Pressure Groups may get air time”, Australian, May 5, 1973.

61 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017.

62 A film called Whatever Happened to Green Valley resulted from this project.

63 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017.

64 'After Nimbin - What?' National U, June 1973.

65 John Hughes, “What to do with a Greek bearing gifts.” Learning Exchange No 24, December 1974. p.4

66 ibid.

67 Video Exchange Submission, General Mode Of Operation (a) Location of Equipment. Quoted in John Hughes, “What to do with a Greek bearing gifts.” Learning Exchange No 24, p.4, 1974. December.

68 Australian Film Institute Broadsheet, reprinted from Show Business, Aug 30, 1973.

69 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017. This centre became the Melbourne Access Video and Media centre (MAVAM), Carlton, and subsequently Open Channel.

70 See “When social policy develops super powers”

71 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017.

72 John Hughes, “What to do with a Greek bearing gifts.” Learning Exchange No 24, December 1974. p.7 referring to John Murray's address to the Public Relations Institute of Australia. Aug. 19, 1974. In a footnote Hughes then critiques the language Murray used: “It is interesting to note John Murray's use of the term 'agent' in this context. Stanley Milgram discusses at length what he calls the 'agentic shift' as being, “specifically, the person entering an authority system no longer views himself as acting out of his own purposes but rather comes to see himself as an agent for carrying out another person's wishes.” S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority, pub. Tavistock, 1974, pp. 132 -134.

73 NAA: C589, AGENDA 14-15 JANUARY 1974 [FTB] Video Proposal - Film and Television Board, Agenda Item 9 - FTB meeting, 14 Jan, 1974. p.1.

74 Ibid., p.1.

75 Ibid., p.2.

76 Ibid., p.2.

77 Ibid., p.4.

78 Ibid., p.4.

79 Albie Thoms, “Visions of Video Village: 1974”, op.cit., p.301.]

79 Albie Thoms, “Visions of Video Village: 1974”. Polemics for a New Cinema, Wild & Woolley, Sydney, 1978, p.298. [Originally published in Living Daylights, Melbourne, February, 1974.]

80 Albie Thoms, “Visions of Video Village: 1974”, op.cit., p.301.

81 Albie Thoms, “Visions of Video Village: 1974”, op.cit., p.301.

82 Albie Thoms, My Generation (manuscript copy, 2008), p.510. See also Tully, Sydney 1968-72 - History. From MILESAGO: Australasian Music & Popular Culture 1964-1975. this page retrieved from < http://www.milesago.com/artists/tully.htm > 09/01/2017. “In June/July 1969 [Tully] got two major breaks that brought them to the forefront of the Australian music scene. One was the commissioning of a series of six half-hour ABC-TV programs starring Tully. Called Fusions, it was the brainchild of former ABC current affairs producer Bill Munro. The series originally featured lighting design by UBU's Aggy Read, although this partnership was terminated due to budget restrictions after the first two episodes. One of Tully and Reid's collaborations for the series was a 15-minute music/image improvisation on Tully's Bicycle (although UBU News reported at the time that the ABC studio crew were less than accommodating, refusing to dim the main studio lights during the filming of a strobe sequence, rendering it largely ineffective). We can only hope that the series has survived, but there is good reason to fear that it has been destroyed during the ABC "economy drives" which resulted in vast amounts of ABC videotaped programs from that era being wantonly destroyed.” The other was that “they were chosen as the 'house band' for the Australian production of the controversial American 'tribal love rock musical' Hair which premiered at the Metro Theatre, Kings Cross, on 4 June 1969.”

83 Ian Moffitt, “Channel Everyman” The Australian, February 18, 1974.

84 NAA: C589, AGENDA 14-15 JANUARY 1974 [FTB] Video Proposal - Film and Television Board, Agenda Item 9 - FTB meeting, 14 Jan, 1974. p.1.

85 Ibid., p.4.

86 Ibid., p.4.

87 Albie Thoms, My Generation (manuscript copy, 2008), p.510. See also Tully, Sydney 1968-72 – History. From MILESAGO: Australasian Music & Popular Culture 1964-1975. this page retrieved from < http://www.milesago.com/artists/tully.htm > 09/01/2017.

88 Ibid., p.6.

89 Ibid., p.5.

90 Ibid., p.7.

91 Brian Williams, “Journey through Australian videospace 1973|76”, Access VIDEO News, vol.2, no.4, June 1976, p.10.

92 Ibid., p.12.

93 Ibid., p.12.

94 Appendix 1: in Bill Brydon, “DURD Discussion Paper - Video Access Centres”, DURD Information Service, December 1975.

95 John Hughes. Submission to The Film and Television Board of the Australian Council for the Arts for the Establishment of a Community Video Exchange, (no date).

96 Ibid., p.7.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid., p.1.

99 Ibid., p.1.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid., p.3.

102

103 Dorothy Henaut who wrote a report on the Access Centres for the FTB in 1975 was a member of the Challenge for Change leadership.

104 Find the Bush Video notes from before Nimbin Festival.

105 John Hughes, “What to do with a Greek bearing gifts.” Learning Exchange No 24, December 1974. John Hughes emphasis.

106 Tape recording of a lecture given by John B. Murray; Executive Director of the Film and Television Board at a seminar organised by the public relations Institute of Australia, August 19th, 1974. Quoted in John Hughes, “What to do with a Greek bearing gifts.” Learning Exchange No 24, December 1974.

107 Ibid.

108 Ibid.

109 Ibid.

110 Poppy De Souza, Curator's notes re: We Have To Live With It (1974), by Tom Zubrycki.

111 Interview with Tom Zubrycky DATE??

112 “Contemporary incarnations of Challenge for Change's aspiration to embed media in marginalized communities have both been inspired by the NFB's innovative fostering of community media and been carried out with a more developed critical acumen (see Miller, chapter 37, this volume). Challenge for Change needs to be situated within an archaeology of the media radicalism of the 1960s, which includes the solipsistic process-oriented films of Andy Warhol alongside the McLuhanesque visions of media democracy found at Expo '67 - the multi-screen architecture of the NFB's “In the Labyrinth” project, which Colin Low had conceptualized in the early 1960s, is perhaps the ultimate expression of this optimism. From this perspective, we can see that Challenge for Change's experiments with media democracy and social justice activism are important precursors to the DIY (do it yourself) aesthetic and the networked cultures of digital media around the world. Such networks are grounded in localized circuits of communication and action that in turn have a global effect. In the context of networked, locative, and distributed media, we can appreciate the importance of the feedback loop that was the basis of the Challenge for Change methodology. Although the critique of liberal ideology found in this chapter continues to be a vital one, the very logic of the feedback loop encompasses a conceptualization of production as always already intrinsically tied to consumption and circulation. That is, as Walter Benjamin put it in 1934, the use of the apparatus in this manner proposes the “author as producer” which is then the challenge for change.”

“Once the dispossessed and powerless have access to the means of information they can no longer be misled by Establishment bullshit. And that is, in itself, a revolution”. - Patrick Watson 1970.

Preface to Part 4 of Challenge for Change: Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada, by Thomas Waugh, Michael Brendan Baker, Ezra Winton. Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2010 McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This was found on Google Books so its direct referencing will be unreliable but that it is in Part 4 of the above book is undoubted. See https://books.google.com.au

113 Zubrycki, Tom, “Video Politic” in City Video Newsletter, No.1, (c.1975), n.p., City Video, 445 Oxford St, Paddington, NSW.

114 Megan McMurchy, conversation recorded 11 January, 2016. Author's emphasis.

115 Varga, Susan, “Video Access as the Logical Case for Community Television”, A paper issued for the Starting Community Television conference, May 29 - June 1, 1980. [4 roneo'd foolscap pages in SJ Archive: Community Television documents]

116 Recorded conversation with Megan McMurchy and Jeune Pritchard, 11/01/2016

117 DURD Discussion Paper - Video Access Centres - Department of Urban and Regional Development Information Service - December 1975 - includes full text of Film and TV Board - VAC Interim Policy and Operational Statement - 10 May 1974. Quote taken from Brian Williams, “How the West Was Won - Reflections on the Western Melbourne Community Video Access Project - Footscray / Turtle Video / Altona - 1974-75”.

118 John Hughes, “What to do with a Greek Bearing Gifts”. Learning Exchange No24, December 1974.

119 Williams, “Journey through Australian videospace, 1973/76“, p.10

120 Williams, op.cit., p.12.

121 Williams, op.cit., p.10.

122 Paraphrasing Williams, op.cit., p.10.

123 Williams, op.cit., p.10. Williams' emphasis.

124 See synopsis at < http://www.ozmovies.com.au/movie/whatever-happened-to-green-valley > and more detail at < http://www.ozmovies.com.au/movie/about/whatever-happened-to-green-valley#about > Uncredited authors. Retrieved 11/02/2017.

125 Williams, op.cit., p.10.

126 Recorded conversation with Megan McMurchy and Jeune Pritchard, 11/01/2016.

127 Williams, op.cit., p.10.

128 Recorded conversation with Megan McMurchy and Jeune Pritchard, 11/01/2016.

129 Dorothy Henaut: Report on the Access Centres for the Film and Television Board, 1975, p.14.

130 Conversation with Tom Zubrycki at Huntley St, 4th May, 2015.

131 This is the technique described in TVX's CATS Video Manual, brought to Australia and reprinted by John Kirk.

132 Conversation with Tom Zubrycki at Huntley St, 4th May, 2015.

133 ibid.

134 ibid.

135 ibid.

136 Radical Software #2: article on Challenge for Change

137 Recorded conversation with Megan McMurchy and Jeune Pritchard, 11/01/2016.

138 ibid.

139 ibid.

140 ibid.

141 ibid.

142 ibid.

[REF 89 x80 Ibid., p.5.] EIAJ details at Wikipedia ‘Video‘, Learning Exchange Newspaper, No. 6. p. 2. Albie Thoms, My Generation (manuscript copy, 2008), p.500. extended] [Is there a Co-op catalog/programme, or FilmNews review of this ??] See Submission to the Film and Television Board for the Establishment of a Community Access Video Exchange, Appendix 1, General Background. [REF 91 x81 Ibid., p.7.] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017 [See Challenge for Change.pdf in drive: Synthetics book 2>Video Art>Video)] Patrick Watson, “Challenge for Change”, Reprinted from Arts Canada, April, 1970. Which subsequently became the Paddington Video Access Centre in the Paddington Town Hall [c.1978]. [REF 89 x78 ibid. p.5] Albie Thoms, “Visions of Video Village: 1974”, op.cit., p.301. sdendnote85anc Lumiere, Sept. 1973. p.40. https://synthetics.video/Synthetics Chapter 15_Video Access.html [REF 88 x77 Ibid., p.4] [REF 89 x77 Ibid., p.4] [REF 90 [REF 91 x79 Ibid., p.6] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Film and TV Board - VAC Interim Policy and Operational Statement - 10 May 1974. [Quote taken from Brian Williams: &ldquo:How the West Was Won - Reflections on the Western Melbourne Community Video Access ”].

See the Press release: Canberra, Sydney, 3 December 1969: Recommendations of the Australian Council for the Arts for 1969/1970, Statement by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton, [in particular p.3]. NAA: A5915, 43

36 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017.

[See Challenge for Change.pdf in drive: Synthetics book 2>Video Art>Video)]

6 Annette Blonski, Barbara Creed, Freda Freiberg, op cit, p.46.

Annette Blonski, Barbara Creed, Freda Freiberg, eds., Don't Shoot Darling!: Women's Independent Filmmaking in Australia, (1987) Greenhouse Publications, Richmond, VIC, Australia. p.45.

56 PortaPak

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4 Annette Blonski, Barbara Creed, Freda Freiberg, eds., Don't Shoot Darling!: Women's Independent Filmmaking in Australia, (1987) Greenhouse Publications, Richmond, VIC, Australia. p.45.

---------------------------- --------------------------------------

8Ian Moffitt, “Channel Everyman”, The Australian, 18 Feb, 1974, p.12.

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9Annette Blonski, Barbara Creed, Freda Freiberg, op cit, p.46.

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10Patrick Watson, “Challenge for Change”, Reprinted from Arts Canada, April, 1970.

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11Patrick Watson, “Challenge for Change”, Reprinted from Arts Canada, April, 1970.

------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------

12 Which became the Paddington Video Access Centre in the Paddington Town Hall.

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13 Recorded conversation with Megan McMurchy and Jeune Pritchard, 11/01/2016

-------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------

14 Michael Shamberg, Guerilla Television, Holt Reinhardt and Winston, New York, 1971, for the Raindance Corporation.

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15 This probably included Radical Software magazine of which I have three copies with Megan McMurchy's ownership signature on them. Two are also dated Dec 1973 which suggests that she was pursuing this interest strongly by that time.

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------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------

30 Cantrill's FilmNotes no.4, July 1971, “The Video Revolution”, pp.(6-7)

30 REF 13 : Millie Stein: Interview with Corinne and Arthur Cantrill available at http://www.theblackmail.com.au/issue/art/moving-statics/ retrieved 11/01/2017

30 REF 15 Cantrill's FilmNotes no.3, May 1971, “CinemaPoetry”, p.10-14; Cantrill's FilmNotes no.4, July 1971, “The Video Revolution”, p.(7)]

30 REF 16: Cantrill's FilmNotes no.4, July 1971, “The Video Revolution”, pp.(6-7)

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33 See the Press release: Canberra, Sydney, 3 December 1969: Recommendations of the Australian Council for the Arts for 1969/1970, Statement by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton, [in particular p.3]. NAA: A5915, 43

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36 Recorded conversation with John Hughes in Melbourne, 24/2/2017.

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37 ibid.

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