This Saturday, August 22, Loren Sonnenberg will be at the Waypost in Portland to screen URFest, a 97-minute program of activist-inspired documentaries from Buffalo, NY. The films highlight Buffalo’s urban issues such as sustainable housing, community building projects, cooperative ownership models and community food sharing.
I’ve seen much of the work before. Several pieces were submissions for Tough Stuff from the Buff, a program I co-curated and toured less than a month ago (we chose not to include many of these pieces due to the length — some works were created for Squeaky Wheel’s fantastic Channels cable access show).
URFest, while however loose in its curatorial vision, looks to be a timely and relevant show. The program presents a nice complement to Tough Stuff, with more of a documentary/ activist take on contemporary media practice in Buffalo. For more info, check out the site blog here.
Getting ready/ planning for “Tough Stuff From the Buff,” a summer bike film tour, July 17-August 2. Fellow filmmaker David Gracon and I are teaming up to put the rubber to the road, showing experimental and activist films about Buffalo, NY, at theaters, all ages venues and barns throughout the Pacific NW. A diverse collection of work, ranging from Tony Conrad and Critical Art Ensemble to youth-produced videos from Squeaky Wheel, the program highlights the city’s little-known Do-It-Yourself media arts community and reflects the city’s public spaces, political struggles and perseverance under late capitalism.
Visit the show’s blog, which will be regularly updated from the road. If you can help set up a show in your town, drop a line!
Have a short piece coming out in Squeaky Wheel’s new issue of the media arts journal The Squealer. Thought I’d post it!
We can learn a great deal about the culture and politics that we live under by looking at our public spaces. While Celino and Barnes billboards and corporate logos dominate Buffalo, NY’s landscape, we can infer an equal amount from our shared histories by recognizing what is not memorialized and given prominence. Lost in this telling of history is the story of people’s movements, including the campaign to end child labor, the right to collective bargaining and the right to the forty-hour work week.
For instance, little is left to remember the Buffalo Street Car Strike of 1913, in which 2300 national guardsmen quelled protesters being forced to work 18 hour days. Or Thomas Low Nichols, editor of The Buffalonian, Buffalo’s first underground newspaper, who was jailed in 1837 for printing back-room deals by the city’s elite businessmen. Or, for that matter, the numerous suffragist and abolitionist leaders from upstate New York, who were instrumental in winning equality and the right for all to vote.
One story I thought should be given greater prominence in our urban memory is that of Martin Sostre, who in 1966 opened the Afro-Asian Bookstore on Jefferson Avenue, near Utica. The store sold radical literature and soul records and provided a community meeting and organizing space.
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