AV Geeks @ Hunt Library

switching over now hey everybody everybody hello and welcome to av geeks at the hunt library still not at the hunt library i'm jason evans growth digital media librarian for the learning spaces and services department at nc state university libraries this is our 12th semester of this series that partners nc state folks with raleigh's av geeks to discuss vintage educational and classroom films right now as always founder of av geeks as an nc state alum he has been for the last few decades collecting film made throughout the last century mostly 16 millimeter educational training and other sorts of how-to movies does an incredible job sharing them with the world and currently houses over thirty six thousand such films at the av geeks archive here in raleigh and shares them as stock footage for films and exhibits research material and during public events like this one so tonight's theme is imagination of a black child and we're very excited to welcome our guest professor darrell stover professor stover is a cultural historian science communicator and performance poet his career life has always been an intersection of science and art sifted through history with an emphasis on community and individual empowerment through the same he's on the faculty at nc state university where he teaches black popular culture from the blues to afrofuturism and introduction to science technology and society he studied microbiology and american studies at the university of maryland at college park and acquired his master of arts degree in science writing from johns hopkins his more recent public programs have been the performance lecture the natural history of afrofuturia and the curation of a series on the cultural significance of the black panther film featuring a panel discussion on the science and technology represented on screen and he presented dream steam afrofuturist dances with the sciences at the afrofuturism and indigenous futurities conference held at unc uh chapel unc chapel hill he's also a member of the 2019-2020 southeast cohort of science impactors we're so pleased to have professor stover with us today thank you for being here i am glad to be here jason and skip thank you all right so before we get going uh just a quick reminder over av geeks compilations are available for check out from the libraries you can also visit avgeeks.com or search av geeks on youtube or archive.org to find more but now let me hand things over to professor stover and skip to kick us off thank you jason um all right so uh i'm excited about this because i get to show some of the films uh that are some of my absolute favorites um and uh thematically uh because dr stover you're are you a doctor i can't remember mfa stove is professor snowden yes so um you are often uh talked about being a part of the afrofuturists and or at least you talk about that and about that theory and there's educational films for the most part are lily white there's lots and lots of white children in these films and at some point in the mid 60s they started showing up and this was because of the civil rights movement because it was becoming clear that educational films needed to show some diversity because they were shown to every kid uh and so you started seeing kids but initially they were in the background kids of color were in the background or when they showed up it was them talking about some sort of diversity issue um and so i love these films because they feature uh black kids as main characters and they're just telling a story and and i love that and then each of these uses has a kid using their imagination um which were was happening in white with white students and white kids for forever with educational films but these are films that actually stand out because they actually have kids of color imagining and and we can talk more about that uh this first film is animated uh and it came out i believe in the early 80s and it's based on a book it's called the telescope let's watch it [Music] if there were one thing that jonathan might do more than anything else it was late they would say far too late for a child to be up but what better time was there to see the stars jonah love the way they seem to shimmer and dance about she even had names for some of them her favorites were benjamin beatrice and fred of course harry larry and may were nice too as were boris morris and rita but they all seem to be so very far away if only they were a little closer though janelle she could get to know them much better the next day at school her teacher miss wattle told the class all about the stars and planets of course the stars all had names that were different from the ones jonelle gave them but that didn't matter miss waddle told them all about people called astronomers and how they used telescopes by looking through a telescope she explained the star seemed to be much closer and clearer to the eye the first thing jonelle did upon arriving home that day was to make a telescope it wasn't a real telescope but janelle didn't know that if an astronomer could bring the stars closer by looking through a metal tube she could do just as well looking through a cardboard one and it worked the stars and the planets and even the moon came much closer than before jonelle was so excited that she forgot that she was supposed to be asleep and called her mother and her father look oh look she said to them my telescope works her father looked and then smiled indeed it does he said but now i think it's time for you to put it away for tonight jonell was far too excited to sleep she had to try her telescope once more just to make sure she looked and once again the stars planets and moon moved closer it did work it really worked why she thought if i had a bigger telescope maybe the stars would come even closer the next day jonelle found a larger cardboard tube and that night it worked again the stars moon and planets did come even closer it was a magnificent sight they nearly filled the sky there was benjamin and beatrice and even fred they were all there jonel let out such a whoop of delight that her mother heard her and came into the room the stars planets and moon all moved back see them mama see how close they are you can almost touch them a mother looked through the new telescope i'm going to build an even bigger telescope than this one mama even bigger but it was not easy to find a cardboard tube bigger than the one she had jonell looked everywhere in the storeroom in the basement and in all the closets she asked some of the other people in the building but no one had a large cardboard tube what was she going to do she had to have a bigger telescope if the stars were going to get close enough to touch that night at dinner jonelle mopped and pictured her food her father asked what was wrong and jonelle told him he was certain he could find something down at the store that would do the job but for now the smaller telescope would just have to do the next evening he came home with a great cardboard tube of the type that cloth came rolled on it was the last one at the store so she would have to take care of it jonelle rushed into her room opened the window and looked through her grand new telescope oh my it was a sight she could hardly believe the stars moon and planets had all moved right down next to the building nearly touching it jonelle could reach right out and pat benjamin on one of his points oh what a marvelous thing her new telescope was of course she would keep it forever and each night bring her friends down right to her window no matter where she was night after night sometimes even after her parents were asleep jonelle will look through a telescope and talk happily to her new friends one day jonelle's cousin morty came for a visit the very first thing that morty saw when he walked into jonelle's room was a large cardboard tube leaning against the wall he wanted to know what it was for and jonelle told him and asked if he would like to try it out morty looked at her but then said sure why not now be careful with the journal cautioned morty looked through it for a moment then said ah this would make a better rocket than the telescope and he shot it out the window jonelle was horrified she rushed from the room and took the elevator down to the street maybe she could get to it before but it was too late a truck ran right over her wonderful telescope and smashed it flat that night jonelle lay in bed it was very late and she could not sleep her telescope was gone oh she could go to the window and look at the stars the way she used to but it wouldn't be the same without the telescope they would not come close would they jonelle began to wonder would they there certainly wouldn't be any harm in finding out jonell got out of bed went to the window and looked up into the night sky the stars moon and planets all move down next to the building nearly touching it [Applause] [Music] all right oh hey so what do you think about that film professor stover oh wow well let's let's let's first start with the significant aspect of it's it's the the truly um inspiration it provides to children especially black children relative to um considering astronomy uh you know the scientist in me is loving it especially the science communicator is loving it even more so when we start to look at how this story is built around a young black girl taking an interest in stars and planets never mind the fact that they take an interest in her by the end is is phenomenally rich with all sorts of possibilities so that's that's on the face value what is very significant in regards to it as an educational film nice uh so i i was the date was actually 1977 when this came out what grade were you in in 1977 oh do i really have to say i was in college studying microbiology all right it's excellent was there so was there something that inspired you when you were young that where you're like i want to pursue a science i want to get into science well you know for me you know my parents were already buying me microscopes and chemistry sets as i grew up elementary school of course you know i was able to find affiliation with other nerds in junior high school so that whole notion of even having a science club actually i was i was just querying one of my students whose last name is the same as an eighth grade science teacher i had in prince george's county maryland uh who you know yeah she she really tore into us because we had had the school science fair and we were prepping our projects to participate in the big prince george's county science fair up on the college campus that i eventually went on to attend and um yeah we were joking around and playing she said look you're not taking this seriously yet uh i think that was just to nudge us a little bit more yeah i came back with an honorable mention right in eighth grade you know the the the rest of that might even unfold as we discussed one of the other films but certainly yeah that interest started to take hold and i was always doing projects with microscopes but it also living in the washington dc area there were those outlets to the museums in the places of science in fact in eighth grade with that particular teacher you know every thursday there was a group of us who would be taken out to guarded space flight center nice so this exposure to astronomy to space science was uh highly impactful on our minds and our interests you know there are two of those guys i'm still in touch with one's a chemical engineer and the other went into uh meteorology so uh when i look at the impacts of these experiences of being exposed to science in an educational setting but with these other uh additional experiences it it says a whole lot for what kind of difference it can make on a young child's interest career-wise and this film shares some of that at the same same time i mean we look at the stories behind may jemison and star trek to bring in a sort of afrofuturist discussion and this this has all sorts of other uh layers of uh potential her getting into naming the stars which is what scientists did and do right so yeah it has a whole lot going for it in that regard nice all right so this next film i mentioned to uh professor stover that this was one of my favorite films and um i i'm happy to show it it's i like it because it it deals with a little kid who's just kind of like filled with angst because he's a little kid and what how he aspires and how the teacher kind of brings out what he aspires towards uh this is called who cares [Music] [Music] ah [Music] you [Music] [Music] so [Music] charles charles you come up this instant we're waiting breakfast on you you're going to be late for school [Music] 10 seconds or else you're gonna get it [Music] here [Music] sure you know junior's waiting for me downstairs walk yourself oh and he could tear my jacket might be wandering back sometimes when's the map i'm called [Music] haven't you foreign something my math will work gee thanks mom you just saved my life [Music] [Applause] and do me and yourself a favor today smile just a little bit okay good oh baby [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] was good [Music] who cares who cares anyway [Music] he can have the old broke up stick he could have the whole school you should have got him anyway [Music] hey [Music] charles is that you charles simmons young man i think it's imperative that you finish your education charles yes you come on up i can't accept this not when we both know you can do better who cares i hope i didn't hear what i think i heard you say [Music] let's hope not [Music] class this morning we must finish the tryouts for the leader of our band let's get down to business and see if we can't choose someone before lunchtime hurry up class carol will you be first yes ready cow okay one two stars [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] say how about charles leaving the band ready to 1 2 ready play so [Music] who cares charles you care lots of people care [Music] all right professor stover yes well now that of course appeals to me because i yeah you had vinyl in that and of course many of my students know i teach with vinyl of course in these cover 19 times don't get to show off that vinyl as much but i think it's it's interesting to note you know the excitement that charles brought to the table as a percussionist and i couldn't help but thinking about us here in north carolina where we should embrace and take complete ownership of the fact that one major jazz drummer coming out a new land right out of elizabeth city uh max throach would have been situated and i think what that was were new york streets uh is significant and you notice you know all the instruments that he's seeing in the store windows and everything but a good question to ask is yeah who does some of that earlier soundtrack because there was a lot of jazz going on right uh sometimes they credit them and sometimes they don't which is unfortunate yeah because somebody was thinking appropriately so relative to making this uh a truly immersive experience relative to the soundscape and that was going on um i don't know if the marching band sounds were coming off of that album in that as you are and av geek you know how you cats in the school get to bring it and y'all get to bring the durian turntables in too many albums when you're helping the teachers yes um yeah that this film i it resonates with me because you know you as a kid i was kind of aimless until the teacher helped me kind of find what i was interested in and again you know like the first film it was a teacher that recognized this kid is interested in this and i should help help them i should help you know give them support and make them like examine what that interest is more further and more fully yeah i like the transition of his peers you know who you laughed at him when he said who cares and then you had other kids maybe not necessarily in his classroom who both bullied him among other things you got the three girls laughing and all and those are challenges to a young kid you know so being able to find yourself in school is important and certainly him finding himself definitely was facilitated by the teacher uh allowing him to take on that role of their band can't necessarily say george clinton or james brown would be too pleased because i don't think all of them were on one but for the most part it was one big happy classroom who truly enjoyed having him direct them at the end so i enjoyed also seeing that that that closure that was given relative to his classmates accepting him as uh as the drum leader nice um so the next film we're going to watch was uh it's part of a series called inside out and it was as it says in the film sponsored by exxon but it was on public television and uh in the 70s and it was made by different public television uh studios across usually the eastern seaboard and this one might have been in virginia or maryland i'm not absolutely sure it'll say in the credits but what they what this did is it kind of talked about emotional aspects of being a kid and it also didn't always give answers like it would show a situation and then just kind of leave you as the student to kind of figure out like well what am i supposed to do you know what what's the next situation and it's like a provocative to create kind of a discussion points and so this film resonated with me and um professor stover supposedly resonated with you too which is great uh this is called [Laughter] yeah we'll toss that question out to everybody yeah i think that's a good question to ask so this is called someone special under the supervision of nit instructional television slowly up and over let your head drop that's his all the way to the floor and can everyone see david's position i used to think about the pretty clothes miss simpson war with all the pretty colors she looked like pictures in magazines there was one store where i used to look in the winter and make believe she was there i tried as hard as i could to show her how smart i was [Music] oh we only have a few minutes left david i don't need less bones in the movie i'm sure you can't oh who wants and i okay to fold mine straight too now don't forget as soon as you finish one then you you take your two colors and you [Music] oh to be about 30 or 40 years old he's six months old look at the colors in that bird i'm so beautiful what color do you see green red red look at his eyes the simpsons yesterday come on your distance won't get knocked over sure you certainly mad all day i kept hanging around that desk acting like i wanted to look at the time i was born in february that's all you get out of me okay what day okay well then we'll have secrets together be careful now where do you live uh a couple blocks away baby what street i knew she lived with her mother and father but i didn't know where five five five six seven seven six hello every weekend i ran my bike past a house i kept hoping she might come out and i was scared she might come out just in case you did come out i always acted like i just happened to be going back one time i got my nerve up and i figure out a way i could go knock on the door pta and what are they raffling cameras tv well don't be nervous i'd like to have one homicide what up well now just relax now just relax lift your head up straight up relaxing now open your eyes open your eyes everyone's eyes wide open fine okay now i'm going in here i dream that miss simpson fell in love with me and i thought if i just dreamed hard enough i could make it come true i used to look at it real hard and it was like i could take her picture in my head i kept it a secret how i felt but i had to tell somebody so i talked a little bit to my best friend chris you know it's really pretty i acted like i didn't care but i watched her after school to see if it was true it was true i made up my mind i was going to work harder and do even better in everything i try to look real good all the time david are you about finished in here i haven't finished with some tips and i haven't called my hair yet you're looking good son but your dad has to go to work so he has to get in here okay i may believe her boyfriend got fired from his job and start robbing people and one day he tried to rob her and i gave him a kick and he ran off [Music] i got it in my head that i could still get miss simpson to fall in love with me if i gave her some presents i left my best rock on the desk but i didn't say it was from me yesterday i'm finished all right fine for those of you who have finished place your pencils on your desk hold your hands sit back in your chairs and relax dearly beloved we met together in the presence of god to join this man in this woman in [Music] marriage [Music] david david are you with us today collect the papers in your row will you please chris my friends start telling everybody i like miss simpson and a bunch of girls start to tease me [Music] david if you'll erase the blackboard for me that'll be fine i didn't care about being teased but i had to find out if miss simpson really like me what is it david do you like me running brothers class no she said she liked everybody but the way she said no one looked at me made me feel stupid about all the things i've been thinking [Music] is steven i figured out a way to make everybody laugh at her but the janitor erased it that's right all right now lift your left hand tuck your thumb under the bar all right class can you tell what we're holding on to yes good all what right that mean to you i did more and more bad things but she wouldn't pay any attention to me so i made up my mind to really fix her and called i hate you in her desk i acted like i forgot my lunchbox so i could go back after school david what are you doing with those scissors do you have to say one word david suppose the two of us taught just a man-to-man talk between the two of us what about the two of you and simpson how do you feel about a talk between the two of you hey look at me i'll understand you can tell me oh come on oh i didn't mean that david i do like you i like the other kids too you're very special to me you know that don't you yes the principal told me to smooth down the desk ms simpson got married we were friends and later she moved inside out is a series of programs and related materials developed and supported by 32 educational agencies in the united states and canada with additional support from exxon corporation this program was produced by ketc st louis missouri under the supervision of nit national instructional television so professor stover [Laughter] is this the time that we own up oh hey yeah yeah it it stands to bear that all of us have had uh a crush on a teacher you know my crush or first crush was in third grade uh this is was growing up in washington d.c at what was charles young elementary school named after a what was the third major military uh uh general in the force and charles young was the important figure we had big portrait in the school but third grade miss miss miss well i'm not going to mention her last name but she she was quite stylish just like the teacher that we had here she related very well with all of us and i always thought that she related to me in a special way so yeah she was special in that regard and yeah that was my first crush my hmm dara uh i don't know where your audio went your audio just disappeared oh hold up there we go is it is it back yes so yeah high school crush yeah microbiology teacher in high school oh interesting microbiology teacher yeah which which that's why i went off to study microbiology in college uh but i was already interested in the sciences but this really narrowed it down for me and got to serve as her teacher's assistant as well so yeah that was that was important and yeah we're talking about you know in the 70s one of the important things visually about this film uh his high water bell bottoms striped ones much akin to the self same ones that the jackson 5 wore at one time yeah i wore some of those too with an afro but that relationship was significant and i thought it was interesting how it how it played uh to uh again imagination and more importantly this this relationship and but he took that imagination even further with dreaming about rescuing her dreaming about getting married to her oh man my man's imagination was running and that's the thing is i think that most uh most kids have that it's in their heads and to see it actually kind of played out in a film is really is really great um so um you know you you go by sci psi poet tell us about what you do um when you do your uh uh poet poetry performances like tell us more about about that yeah yeah well you know i was able to include a couple of poems in my thesis master's thesis that were science poetry in fact in them weighing judgment you know the the note initially on it was i can weigh judgment on this science communication in writing but the science poetry i'm gonna have to defer to someone else in the department and uh and shortly after graduating from johns hopkins university and moving here to north carolina i decided wow wow science portrait science poet so uh i decided yeah i'm gonna put that on my license plate nice so i've had that on my license plate on my north carolina tag here in north carolina ever since i moved here uh but within the context of writing poetry previous to moving here as well as after moving here that uh celebrates scientists in some way shape and form in fact one of those greatest hits i guess you could say actually is a poem i wrote before moving here that's called mad baby but it actually celebrates a north carolina state university scientist joanne burkholder who was who is an aquatic bio botanist who studies harmful algae and discovered a new toxic algae called fisteria which was which was a rage and a challenge back in the late 80s early 90s relative to its connection the fish kills so that point celebrates her environmental science directed at kids it's been recorded with music and and everything so yeah so that's that's one clear example of uh the sorts of uh science that i do that actually i did a whole presentation back earlier this year i was able to squeeze it in before i covet 19 transition uh relative to uh the tuesday noon colloquia that the genetic engineering and society center puts on and so they asked me to give a presentation so i did it on uh science poetry and shared souther several other examples there's a major collection of poems written by marilyn nelson who's the poet laureate of connecticut who did a whole collection of poems on george washington carver who was a chemist a botanist yeah everybody talks about him in the peanut but he was truly an amazing scientist so i opened with that but one of the other key features of that was leading up to a poem two readers which looks at rita dove the poet laureate of the united states in the early 90s and rita colwell one of my mentors and former professors in microbiology at the university of maryland college park you had these two women one black one white were at the pinnacle of their fields one in the arts and one in the sciences and so what was the universe saying to us with that happening simultaneously well that poem the two readers examines that so yeah there there are all sorts of ways and means that i engage science and its examination and celebration through poetry i even give that as an outlet for my students in my introduction to science technology and society relative to the weekly reading assignments that they have so we have a lot of non-students who are kind of tuning in on this do you have any recommendations recommended readings or things that people can watch that you you say like oh this is a really great thing uh that deals with what your interests are and uh maybe even deals with that the africa futurism uh well there's there's there's there's several uh lectures online i mean i hate saying this but yeah you google my name and no telling what comes up but i'm willing to wager that if you google sci-poet your problem and and the two readers you're gonna probably get that presentation that i did for genetic engineering uh and society center uh especially if you go to their website you might have to search further through it but they've archived all of their uh tuesday colloquia that have been going on for several many years now and of course this was just recently this year back in february uh certainly there are other presentations certainly there was a presentation i gave at the museum of natural science north carolina museum of natural sciences on environmental science uh and the black panther which is an interesting one uh because i use it to also examine uh who are the environmental scientists out there of african descent both on this and the other side of the that creek called the atlantic ocean and so that's a whole other interesting immersion in what i examine and what i do with afrofuturism that environmental science piece ties into that because of the tie-in with the black panther there's a yeah i'm putting together with a colleague on the west coast a whole discussion series that'll happen over three months october november december and that first one will be uh in october october 11th 2 o'clock stay tuned nice well thank you so much for joining us uh and watching these films and talking about them um it's it's like i said i've been wanting to show these films for a while and uh i'm happy that they resonated in some way with with you well no you you you selected some really good ones out of what i hear the hundreds and hundreds of films that you have available to you that again tens of thousands actually well see oh man i'm way off the mark huh but but yeah this this this whole selection of the theme you chose this uh you know the imagination of a black kid was very well represented in the films that were shared uh today and i i think when we look at when those films were being shown uh versus who knows i can't vouch for what's being shown to our kids these days and times but you know of course they'll have to be shown through this mechanism now primarily but um are there still films even being produced in the manner that they were back in those ages right it's uh it's a hard bet to say that in many regards they aren't um not in the thousands upon thousands not the carl sagan billions upon billions and billions you know now there might be 10 to 20 but who knows what sort of films or audio visuals teachers are using now um so we didn't need to do it but everybody named who they had a crush on what teachers they had to crush out in the world i wish i could have heard some of those responses we got ms barnes we got in this roth we got uh who else there's a couple of other people the people are are kind of we're kind of proud to to talk about it so it definitely did resonate that's good as long as nobody names any of my teachers yeah i get it i get it oh and uh some uh marion actually had a question uh and then we'll let um jason talk but um she said so uh skip and professor stover you often talk about why these films were made in the audiences so why do you think this film was made and the purpose and i'm guessing that she's she's talking about someone special like why why was that film made well i mean this the the film's important because it's it's it's dealing with the notions there's several things here that you could you could examine with this film but one of them is when you start to look at his behavior changed because he felt that he wasn't loved or liked by his teacher and so when you start to get to the heart of the matter with even the challenges that some students might uh express with change behavior and more disruptive and the sort of thing it could be as simple a matter as that and you know going to the principal's office which way back then you go to the principal's office you get a paddling but here you see no paddling you see there was a discussion that got to the bottom to the root of the problem and so i think it's interesting to note that that film uh gives a whole nother insight into how mis understanding can be connected to changed behavior of the nature that david uh shared that uh was easily corrected in some way shape and form i i i imagine through that discussion that they had in her communicating to him yeah you know and what's interesting is somebody uh realized in the comments they said oh this is like it's an adult narrator who's looking back so the idea is like he survived it yeah yeah assuming that he is now living a successful life and and all that but it's yeah that narration is important because even actually going back to the first film the animated one the narrator sounded like morgan freeman yeah but it turns out no a guy by the name of christopher brooks at least as as the credits roll uh but yeah the narration does set set set or or put a put a age to who the storyteller is and yeah this looking back aspect of the story says a whole lot about uh perspective in regards to the film nice all right jason you want to play us out yeah i do so professor stover thank you so much for joining us tonight yeah this was this was really cool i mean i it did these three days and i'm in the middle of a third day of three days of online engagement uh believe it or not tomorrow it's in the morning with a discussion of from batman to black lives matter so i thank you for this because this is this was really a wonderful experience both seeing the films but more importantly discussing them well we we really appreciate it and maybe we can convince you to come and do it with us again sometime yeah yeah for sure keep your email open um or don't you can decide off camera if you want okay thank you so much professor stover and thank you skip remember everybody to visit avgeeks.com for more info about av geeks if you're interested in the 36 000 films what skip and the team over there does and you can remember if you are an nc state person you can check out dvd compilations from the library reserve them online come pick them up wear your mask if you want to explore more from black artists and authors i would like to tell you that you can also join us at two upcoming book discussions led by graduate students at nc state one discussion on in west bend a beautiful first novel about a black community in north carolina and one on kindred octavia butler's classic sci-fi historical novel and you can pre-register for both you can do that at our library events page lib.ncsu.edu events or just search events at the home page or watch this rerun and look for a cool title that we can put along the bottom um our next show is on friday october 9th at six and it's called the germs you spread um and it's going to be all about the transmission of diseases uh and a discussion of what we've learned in the years since we made the movies that we'll watch uh so tune in and until then um we hope you have a great couple of weeks and uh we'd love to see you see you soon thanks everybody thanks everybody bye you