Saturday, September 08, 2012

1968 DNC Organizing

‎44 years ago, Bob Fass, Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner and many others stormed Chicago during the DNC. Here's excerpts from a powerful film by Newsreel documenting those events:

Saturday, April 28, 2012

When America Burned By The Sea

Ski Gajewski has done a fine documentary on the student unrest and burning of the Bank of America branch bank at Isla Vista in 1970. It is located here: https://vimeo.com/36123261


Ski wrote about his "rough cut," in 2012:

Hello All,

I realize that many of you have not heard from me since I interviewed you or tried to interview you for my documentary about the IV riots I was working on in 08. For this I would first like to apologize. The reality is life, school, and a mishap got in the way of me sending you a copy of the film which in various ways all participated in. Sadly when I was moving from one apartment to another in NY my friends car which contained my media drive, caught fire do to what seems to be from an oil leak in the engine. At the time I had though the fire had destroyed the only copies of the film. Though about two months ago I found a very early rough cut of the film and posted it to vimeo.com (I have attached the link below) as part of my body of work in post production. And to be honest largely forgot about it as it was in essence an incomplete version.

But about two weeks ago I joined the UCSB alumni linked in group and thought maybe someone would enjoy it. I figured that a few people would watch it and that would be the end of it. But the response, even though it is very rough and still contains place holder graphics and titles, has been very positive from both alumni and current students alike. The topic itself remains one of the top topics in the alumni forum, so i would assume the number of people that seen it will continue to grow for the near future.

This coupled with the fact that I have spent the last year working freelance got me thinking maybe now is the time to pick the project back up again and actually make it into a feature. Obviously I would have to raise money and apply for grants, but with the rise of crowd sourced funding such as kickstarter and I hope some private funding I think I could realistically raise the money in which to make the film. Now in order for me to do this I would have to ask those of you that have interviewed in the past to sit down with me again on camera. And those that I could not meet the first time to be interviewed for the first time. Obviously I do not have a time frame for when this would happen but I would hope if I could raise the money all of you would be interested in being interviewed again. As I do not think it would be possible to move forward with this if you feel the time for this has passed and you are no longer interested in being a part of this project.

Obviously, there is no pressure to commit to this as I do not know if I will be able to raise the money which would be required produce a film which is up to not only my standards but yours as well. But obviously I hope to find the financial support and have your support too. Below you will find the the link to the video which has a runtime of just over 30 minutes. Feel free to share it with whom ever you like. And I would also like to hear your feed back on things that could be improved upon. Though please keep in mind that this was a very early version so the titles and graphics are nearly all place holders which were replaced in the final version I handed in for grading. It also has not been color corrected and a few of the cuts are abrupt. So just keep that in mind.

I hope you enjoy it and I hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Matthew M "Ski" Gajewski.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Birth of The Environmental Movement

A nice video about the birth of the Environmental Movement that began with the Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969, which was a backdrop to the Isla Vista Bank Burning: