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Franklin Commune, Vermont, August 1970

Videofreex

1970 00:59:50 United StatesEnglishB&WMono4:31/2" open reel video
Tags:
Consumer culture, Environment, Family, Labor, Landscape, Youth/Childhood, Nature, Art Collective, Food, Animals

Description

A two-part study of the self-sustaining lifestyle of a communal farm in Vermont. 

In Part One, commune members talk about growing, picking and eating tomatoes.  The Videofreex ask about the economics of the tomato crop, and how they compare to growing other crops, such as squash.  The commune members speak about which crop will feed the most people, with a large squash feeding the entire community for several meals.  There is a discussion about how to store vegetables in the winter.  We see group members come home with the tomato harvest, and provide a wonderful lesson in canning tomatoes. 

Part Two takes place in the stables, where two farm horses are harnessed before ploughing the fields and sowing seeds.  One farmer explains why they use horses instead of a tractor, and the long term impact on the environment.  Older farming methods are described, as well as how to treat the farm animals.  The pigs and ducks are fed, and the atmosphere is bucolic.

 

VDB Videofreex

Videofreex, one of the first video collectives, was founded in 1969 by David Cort, Mary Curtis Ratcliff and Parry Teasdale, after David and Parry met each other, video cameras in hand, at the Woodstock Music Festival. Working out of a loft in lower Manhattan, the group's first major project was producing a live and tape TV presentation for the CBS network, The Now Show, for which they traveled the country, interviewing countercultural figures such as Abbie Hoffman and Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

The group soon grew to ten full-time members--including Chuck Kennedy, Nancy Cain, Skip Blumberg, Davidson Gigliotti, Carol Vontobel, Bart Friedman and Ann Woodward--and produced tapes, installations and multimedia events. The Videofreex trained hundreds of makers in this brand new medium though the group's Media Bus project.

In 1971 the Freex moved to a 27-room, former boarding house called Maple Tree Farm in Lanesville, NY, operating one of the earliest media centers. Their innovative programming ranged from artists' tapes and performances to behind-the-scenes coverage of national politics and alternate culture. They also covered their Catskill Mountain hamlet, and in early 1972 they launched the first pirate TV station, Lanesville TV. An exuberant experiment with two-way, interactive broadcasting, it used live phone-ins and stretched cameras to the highway, transmitting whatever the active minds of the Freex coupled with their early video gear could share with their rural viewers.

During the decade that the Freex were together, this pioneer video group amassed an archive of 1,500+ raw tapes and edits.

In 2001, the Video Data Bank began assembling this unique archive of original 1/2-inch open-reel videos, collecting them from basements and attics where the tapes were stored. A restoration plan was hammered out in 2007 and a distribution contract was signed between VDB and the newly formalized Videofreex Partnership (administered by Skip Blumberg).

The Videofreex Archive, now housed at VDB, chronicles the countercultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The  titles listed here are the first wave of an ongoing project to preserve and digitize important examples of this early video.

More About the Videofreex Archive Preservation

Also see:

Parry Teasdale: An Interview

Videofreex Official Website