Orphan Film Symposium: All-Television Edition | Harry Gamboa Jr.

Harry you have some splaining to do um yeah well thank you Chun thank you everyone particularly thank you Umberto sandal who's here um we've known each other for more than 50 years so and this is uh the 40th uh anniversary I guess of the broadcast of this uh yeah absolutely video um maybe a little bit about uh imperfecto how it all started uh yeah say a little bit about that because uh so um uh I guess uh uh imperfecto in 1982 would have been 10 years after um I co-founded Osco and Osco had been uh primarily performance-based uh utilizing photography the other artists that were painters um and um an incredible violent history in East um kind of produced um an alternate way to respond to um police shooting at you um all my friends uh being drafted and killed in Vietnam um many other kinds of things that normally send people into a dark corner um my Approach has always been to laugh in the face of U of danger in fact I've always encouraged my friends to have fun in dystopia and so um uh this piece um uh uh was uh sort of a first attempt to deal with video um very much like the previous it was shot in the early beta uh and then bumped up to 3/4 and then um and then broadcast through Public Access Falcon cable had a particular uh uh subscribership and it was all along the coast of Southern California I from Santa Barbara to San Diego which of course is um uh the least ethnically diverse and the wealthiest uh neighborhoods um uh bringing East LA directly to Malibu and so um uh and and again part of this also includes um U the inherent uh sense of um humor that comes from being Mexican Cho uh and uh and really uh kind of a with some of the the pop uh cultural aspects um again as as is mentioned it's the purposeful I mean just the overall degradation of the imagery in a way and sort of the straight cuts uh uh kind of were a rejection of of sort of broadcast television uh also the need to arrive at um Superior funding to uh uh create imagery which of course which was oscal in the first place was uh to create images um no movies as it were uh which was to create instead of making a movie to basically make the single frame uh that would be remembered as we all remember most films was just sort of a a brief flickering frame now what's interesting about Osco and about this uh the videos that you did in this time is a lot of the media being produced by scos at that time was really documentary based U historically framed it was tied to C certain key moments uh or forms in terms of Heritage from Mexico yeah this is all about downtown LA this is all about the 80s and and the fashion the the the stroke of Genius is that Umberto's finding a really wild set of clothing there on the street um say what your think your experience at that time or your thinking was in terms of um breaking from that sense of an obligatory anchoring in the Aztec through the Mexican Revolution well um again uh I think when I started Elementary School I spoke only um the chico dialect known as Koo which emerged out of the Mexican Revolution in the first place and of course the Aztecs runs through all of our veins and so no need to really discuss that and um and of course growing up in Los Angeles during the the atomic age um uh being very imbued with hold the microphone up a little being imbued with the uh sort of pop culture and i' I've mentioned before from any rooftop and boil Heights you can see the Hollywood sign but it's like looking at Mars in terms of its proximity and and accessibility so uh it was always a matter of um creating something that would U uh utilize the urban scape as it were uh and environment to which we're suit suitably adapted and uh and to have fun to have fun in the midst of the milu of U of the dispossessed and what did downtown mean to you at that time um um well um for me it was my University it was my education I actually never attended school at all I um graduated with a 0.0 GPA uh was quite wonderful um my diplomas and still clinging to some Al uh but um uh uh downtown Los Angeles of course has undergone great transition at this point in time it was still a place where people would shop and wander and hang out and of course U now it's kind of a cross between uh uh sort of uh uh gentrified and yet uh drug drugged in so uh back then people actually used downtown and uh uh and of course it's um it's uh uh um I don't know I guess um it was again instead of a playground it was um much better to play in the Wasteland now my right is is when Barbara carasco kind of retrieves imperfecto and do they end up in Philips is that yeah they wind up in felipi so it's um uh and of course Barbara carasco um is my wife and looks very much like my daughter now so but um uh the many of the of the performers in in this piece were um uh what some people refer to as the B Osco and so this would have been additional people that join Osco in the 80s just before it U it imploded exploded and um and then actually concurrently today they're having a big event about Osco today for some movie they're making about Osco I have no idea what it's going to be like but they're taking you there by helicopter yeah you know so but um but uh uh you know this was a sort of a a culmination of I would say of what uh the end of a particular era which more or less would have been my youth transitioning into something else in a whole different kind of uh thinking and relationship so it it um it would be like reading maybe the first two novels by dovi and you've still got to get through the other six so it's so so it was you know sort of a a a a countdown as it were uh towards the end of the 20th century um and of course when we all were in in engulfed with 20th century angst that we might actually live into the 21st century indeed and what really struck me this time is the the one the nature of the photography of shooting through uh downtown but also the way in which uh Umberto's character really fits in yeah yeah yeah um and that you're capturing that sense of a a transition the the kind of Mercantile dimension of it uh um you know the they're kind of homeless and kind of what the frame of the story alludes to is uh in some ways the de institutionalizing of people under the Reagan Era right of course and and again sort of the breakdown of the safety net sort of the privatization the elimination and of course I took a a driveth through downtown yesterday and all the places that were brand new and shiny at that moment in time 40 years later they're all boarded up and uh windows are painted black and and so it's and again it's sort of a commentary in Los Angeles being a place of eraser and Amnesia as opposed to one that uh pays respect to history now you're from East LA and uh during this time I believe Philips was your office yeah I've um had a few places that I've always done things and I guess that's the connection with with Chon noran and I was at um I would often have people meet me at Philip's but of course people get stuck in traffic and it's got free parking and and when they didn't show up I'd be scribbling a few lines or two and um uh one day Chan U managed to come across some of these scribblings and it turned out he once had it typed and um turned into like a 2,000 page manuscript and she wound up becoming the editor of my book called Urban Exile which is um kind of an expansion of imperfecto which I I don't think has been appreciated enough as the literary intervention it it uh it is uh it's a maybe it's too long it's doeski link but uh you shared you you used Philip S office because they had those wooden phone booths yeah and of course back then there was no such thing as um as cell phones or mobile phones and there was a bank of public phones in which many many familiar uh uh bit actors and sometimes very famous actors uh would be using the phones receiving their so it was not just me that was using this place but um um pH also was a place where um many politicians and different kind of people that would eventually run for office and win and so it became sort of this sort of public space for a very long time um and uh uh and I think that kind of ended when uh the day that Michael Jackson was acquitted and a riot broke out there Michael Jackson yeah yeah Michael Jackson was acquitted from whatever they had charged them with they Neverland yeah yeah so um and people throwing sandwiches in each other and I decided that I would have to change offices I remember we met I met you there for the first time uh in 91 oh yeah and you were telling me about this nervous little guy that was kind of flitting around and going to the phone nervously and it turned out to be Paul rubin's yeah of course it was peew Herman was one of them yeah so before peewee's uh yeah yeah Playhouse yeah so it's um uh and uh again many of the places in in in this space it was also Bunker Hill of course which many of the locations were at and and of course Bunker Hill is um recognized as being the financial district but actually it was um the place for one of the great last battles of the Mexican-American War and I was born a hundred years after that but uh the The Bunker Hill of course was overtaken uh by a battalion uh that was paid $5 ahead for every Mexican and so um you know I've actually have offered hund $5 per head to show up in Bunker Hill so it's the opposite and so so it's and of course it's been leveled now and uh and of course there's there's mocha and currently some of my workers hanging there so it's all kind of very strange kind of J positions of things so money's always been an issue here and and one the other reason you uh your office was at Philips was um besides the wood chips on the floor the coffee was only a dime and it only ever been a dime right yeah coffee was a dime and it lasted all day long and so it was one of these places that that was uh probably safer than the library so there you go but it seems to me a lot of your aesthetic is driven by the finances you you you talked about the you know the kind of uh the conceptual work was obviously the least expensive um but working in video and even though it was home video um or you were using public access there were still costs and it it limited um but your real passion has been photography right and that you got to pay for and you you you largely shot slides like a lot of photographers at that time because it was easier to show them than to make prints and I I remember asking you um so what do you do when you don't have the money I WR yeah so yeah and um you know the thing about the photography of course I um actually Umberto sandol was with me when I purchased my first camera and uh I had done a little bit of research were you both running or no no no no no it um it wasto 101 and uh this is way back in the 70s and there was a sort of an an engagement between Japanese Austrian and German manufacturers coming up with a new way to deal with 35 millimeter and uh and so it turned out to be and then I realized that in Hollywood Kodak actually produced a very specific form of ector Chrome film and it was the same stock that was used by paramont Studios MGM and so the whole idea was to create imagery that looked very cinematic and in effect and uh and actually that's exactly what happened yeah and I think a lot of people don't don't realize uh certainly your photographs are very compelling um they're often confused with the performance right um but the fact that down to the material the the nature of the stock that you've used uh the wide-angled lens use the the positions you shoot they really create this very compelling counterpart to Hollywood Center in the classical sense right and so again um uh for many many years the photographs actually had not been printed U and um and when they were printed against it also dealt with the language institutional language trying to Define uh what was it that was being seen but you know again in the art Cannon the photograph is the art and and that was all was the intention that the photograph is the art and the whatever was taking place in front of it whenever I directed imagery to be formed it really is the decision of when you shoot what you shoot and understanding the physics and the social interactions um and pictures don't make themselves and so you know that's well having worked with you for three and over three decades um there are a lot of outakes there are a lot of images that were not selected for either projecting or or making prints um and those represent kind of loosely a documentation of an effort yeah uh then there's the work that represents a kind of U an idea that's trying to be conveyed relative to the medium photography right and and I I would have to say that the same thing happened with the video it was um very specific to try to construct something as you mentioned most of the videos I made were a shot written and shot in a single day edited the next day and then I would make duplicate copies and send them to other places but particularly show them on um on uh on public access one of the things that's not mentioned is that they had very few people contributing so that for instance uh imperfect I believe must have showed five times a day for several years and I'm sure there's some people that maybe drinking beer wouldn't change the channel and so it it became quite uh you know I'm not sure people in the somewhere maybe in in the you know the South Bay were walking like s ofal but it became very infectious in a way and uh and again some of the other uh uh uh videos which by the way are going to be screened at the Museum of the of the academy Museum of Motion Pictures in May um uh that um uh you know very few actually survived uh for instance because uh most of them were then left at the studios and things would get stolen get erased um and again that was sort of the whole um and that and I think that was kind of the built-in fail safe for much of the work so much of the early Oso Works were um created on let's see the physical objects were made with butcher paper and things that would disintegrate and many of the objects were left behind and even maybe some of in the writings I would just leave them on the tables they would blow away some people would memorize them and use them uh stand on their own street corners and preach that and so it was always this idea of what you know what is it that actually survives the the event of being an LA and it's very very small amount actually then it's sort of a of a distillation of what is it that's was endurance and what actually can survive um the condition that we're in you've been this paradoxical figure as the archist of the ephemera of an invisible population and when I first met Harry I was trying I was very much in the archival mode I'd kind of uh been trained in you know in archiving and archival description uh as a graduate student at Stanford and I kept pushing you and you kept denying the existence of anything right uh until we sat down to go through and actually uh deposit you know the materials at Stanford yeah and that's when I realized just how much you had written um but the other part were the videos as well uh they and and the Super Eight which I think a lot of it just was eaten up in the projectors as as part of installation based work in the 70s um but to gather those materials together and it's been about almost 20 years since uh we worked together and and I had those kind of remastered on beta at at bayac just because uh in general television was you know re you know reusing uh taping over uh things uh and but you you left you took the tics you you kept those but they had been recycled many times yeah in the process so it was really an urgent uh issue to kind of be able to preserve those yeah when I would transfer from the beta to the three quarter I mean there were completely degraded tapes to be so yeah now I know we've gone past the time should we wrap up here and uh yes I want to thank Harry uh for the conversation for sharing this work they will be showing other works um the other works uh at the at the Academy and definitely want to thank U um Umberto for uh showing up mind standing up Umberto yeah Umberto is in a lot of uh Harry's videos and Harry always pairs them with his wife and they're kind of uh an onscreen couple that is really interesting to trace the trajectory of that from this film through what La Familia actually the first time Barbara met Umberto was when he was under the Palm frons she had no idea who was there so it's uh now of course we're really good friends but of course it you know I met that she's someone that can handle anybody anywhere yeah well she seemed to take care of it yeah by the way she's a uclm so that's that's kind of the categor well thank you Harry thank you so much Mar