KCET-TV Pioneers: Los Angeles Documentary in the 1970s

good evening and welcome to the UCLA film and television archives virtual screening room I'm Mark Quigley John H Mitchell television curator for the archive joining us for this special screening event and panel discussion KCET TV Pioneers Los Angeles documentary in the 1970s before we begin is a land grant institution the film and television archive at UCLA would like to acknowledge our presence on the traditional ancestral and unseated territory of the Gabrielino and tangava peoples we are humbled to do work in this community tonight's program is made possible thanks to the invaluable support of the John H Mitchell television programming endowment please note that this online screening is presented for educational purposes only and keeping with UCLA's mission to serve the public and Academia no portion of the screening may be reproduced or redistributed in any manner whatsoever this evening we are extremely honored to have four highly esteemed guests with us I'll start by introducing just one of them our moderator Dr Joshua Glick Dr Glick is a visiting associate professor of film and Electronic Arts at Bard College and the author of The Essential book Los Angeles documentary and the production of public history published by the University of California press Dr glick's articles and reviews have appeared in numerous journals including film quarterly jump cut and the moving image he recently co-created an exhibition at the Museum of the moving image titled deep fake unstable evidence on screen and his current Book Project explores how the rising interest and non-fiction on both sides of the political Spectrum has transformed the relationship between Hollywood Silicon Valley and Washington DC we have an excellent program in store for you tonight with important television films and our highly gifted makers waiting in the wings so without further delay I hand the reins over to Dr Glick thank you very much for joining us Dr Glick this virtual broadcast is now yours thank you Mark Quigley for that kind introduction for curing the lineup of programs and for convening this important event and a special note of gratitude goes to the UCLA film and television archive for their dedication to preserving and making available so many TV series and Standalone films from KCET Los Angeles's public media affiliate it's really an honor and a pleasure to be participating in this screening and TalkBack we're about to view three documentaries from the 1970s by three Visionary filmmakers Jesus Trevino when Littman and the Reverend Dr tandeka for the time of making films for KCT went by the name Sue Booker I should note that these individuals will be joining us for a conversation after the films Trevino Littman and tandeka shared the idea that Cinema in general and documentary in particular could serve as both an Artful form of social advocacy and have a community building function their documentaries aim to give voice to marginalized angelinos whose very identities were severely distorted or ignored within the mainstream media so too these filmmakers align their non-fiction projects with the social movements sweeping Los Angeles and reverberating around the country the city was at once the site of severe racial segregation and class stratification and a hotbed of activism as the African-American civil rights movement gave way to the black Chicano women and Asian American Liberation movements as well as calls to attend to the city's underserved elderly population as we will see Trevino littmann and tendeka all work together at kcet's human Affairs Department the department which was created in 1970 and the larger launch of public television emerged by way of a constellation of social pressures and the progressive actions of individuals there are four significant factors that I want to highlight first the Grassroots labor by citizen groups and advocacy organizations demanding increased access to the means of media production for marginalized communities a major critique was that for-profit Network broadcasting had failed to address the concerns of the nation's diverse populace and there needed to be new inclusive Outlets with the reinvigorated social mandate second the release of Linda B Johnson's Kerner Commission report which is in it in its attempt to better understand the wave of urban uprisings throughout the 1960s discovered that Minority communities found mass media alienating deeply racist and felt profoundly frustrated by an egregious lack of representation on screen on the airwaves and in electoral politics third there were the crucial efforts of them of the filmmakers themselves who were eager to make their own projects they're motivated less by the prospects of commercial success or fame and by the Urgent social utility of Cinema they drew on a burgeoning global film culture while never losing sight of the specificity of the socio-political struggles with which they were engaged and fourth there was the work of KCET Personnel this included programming director Charles Allen who was instrumental in pulling resources together to create the human Affairs Department Alan was able to use his position of power within the public media infrastructure to help make space for bold and incisive filmmaking and now for our triple feature of short films that we're going to watch first up is an episode from 10 day because doing it at the storefront broadcast from the KCET satellite studio in Watts the series constituted a brilliant experiment in community media as the show was embedded within one of his City's most vibrant African-American neighborhoods everyone on staff from the intern to the office administrator plays an on-screen role in the production doing it at a storefront looked at such pressing issues as housing health care and the Black Arts Movement on a local and National level in our featured episode we see tendeka interview Tony Brown executive director of the national PBS series Black Journal the two enjoy a spirited discussion about the important past present and anxious future of black-centric programming our second film is Jesus Trevino's America tropical the documentary explores the history and contemporary efforts to preserve the Mexican artist Alfred securus's famous Olvera Street mural in downtown Los Angeles created in 1932 as a statement about U.S imperialism and the oppression of indigenous peoples across the Americas the mural was quickly whitewashed through interviews sepia toned archival photographs and striking views of America tropical itself Trevino's documentary excavates The murals past the legacy of sikaris's revolutionary Fresco practice and reflects on the importance of the visual arts to present day jaconics culture and political consciousness we'll conclude with Lynn lipman's number our days a poignant portrait of the elderly Jewish population residing in Venice working in partnership with Anthropologist Barbara Meyerhoff littmann embraced a cinema Veritas style of observational cinematography and intimate interviews to capture the daily rituals and routines of the Aging Venice residence in the film The Israel 11 senior Adult Center located right on the boardwalk serves as the Social Hub for everything from high holy day meals to birthday celebrations and funeral ceremonies not simply a romantic take on old age remember our days highlight the efforts of Center members to make themselves visible to each other in a city that so often neglects their very existence as the prospects of displacement due to Rising gentrification is a constant threat collectively these three documentaries and the larger body of work by tandeka Trevino and Littman transformed private memories into public history helping residents to talk to themselves about themselves and bolstering feelings of Pride and dignity their documentaries mobilize support against systemic forces of Injustice connecting local struggles within Los Angeles to broader social movements within and even beyond the US please stay with us after the screening as we'll have a zoom conversation with the filmmakers it promises to be a vibrant dialogue so we just saw a powerful Trio of films and it's really a privilege to be here right now with the filmmakers uh Reverend Dr tandeka Jesus Trevino and Lynn Littman and we're excited to discuss your important work um perhaps we could begin by hearing from each of the filmmakers about the projects that that we just saw um tandeka uh you and Tony Brown were having an extended dialogue about the world of black broadcasting um in your thoughts did doing it at the storefront share some of the same hopes and challenges as black Journal um and if you could maybe just reflect on what were some of the essential aims of doing it at the storefront well yes thank you I'm so glad to be with you the storefront was a communications center for the liberation of black people it functioned as a news and public affairs Bureau for South Central Los Angeles it was also the staging area for remote interviews and always the goal was to transform Consciousness so that we could transform the world Tony said that his program wasn't really about black people but people who had a chance to be people who happen to be black I felt the same way about the storefront my parents after all had their grandparents were enslaved persons so being in front of television a television camera without blackface and with all of our dignity and discovering what's new was a revolution in itself and as Gil Scott Herron said the revolution will not be televised it will be live and my task was to get the camera there so that we could watch it unfold in real time thank you for that um Jesus America tropical it intertwines a cultural history of the Securus mural with a contemporary account of the chiconics art movement um I'm curious what was the origin of the documentary I mean how did you come to the project in the first place well I had heard from a friend of mine who was an art historian Dr Schiffer Goldman had told me uh that there was this mural in downtown Los Angeles on Olvera Street that had been painted in 1932 by the Mexican neuralist David Alfaro cicados and I couldn't believe it I wanted to go see it so she and I climbed up on the roof and there it was and of course the mural had been whitewashed in 1932 because of this controversial uh nature it depicted a Native American crucified on a double cross and on top of the Cross was the eagle from the United States currency so it was cicados's commentary on U.S imperialism uh and it like I said it lasted for about a week or two in Los Angeles after it's unveiling and then it was whitewashed and when I heard about it I thought geez I got a new story about this at the time I didn't have the skills so a couple of years had to pass and then I was working at KCET and I took the station manager Chuck Allen uh one evening after dinner to to go visit and view the mural and once he saw the mural he said my gosh you you should do a movie about this and I said well that's why we're here I want your approval and in those days kcd was a very exciting Place uh because uh you could do that you you'd come up with an idea you were a producer and you came up with an idea and if it had legs you'd get the go ahead the green light and you could go forward and do that I'm very proud about America tropical because it wound up starting uh save the mural committee and from that committee another 40 years later the Getty museum wound up spending 10 million dollars to refurbish that mural all originating from this documentary oh wow fantastic and and Lynn Littman will will go to you and then maybe I have some follow-up questions for for each of you as well um because what you're saying is I think pointing a number of different directions about these fabulous films um but for Lynn I mean one could imagine a kind of expository documentary about the history of the elderly Jewish Community but you really opted for a kind of Cinema verite uh portrait um of this community in in the present there's interviews there's uh you know observational sequences um and I'm curious how you gained access um to the community and and how did you decide what to focus on for this film well thank you number our days was sort of an accident because we were we had full-time jobs the three of us we had to get reports or stories or films on the air every week and that means that we we were we were pretty busy in the middle of doing a weekly show or however often every two weeks I think I got a film on the air every two weeks it was and I look at it now and it's absolutely extraordinary that that happened yeah we worked we worked full time we were very young and undistracted and that was quite handy anyway back to number our days I met Barbara Meyerhoff at a conference at the women's building and I heard her talking about her work um in Venice with the old Jews um because she basically had been kicked out of Mexico because it was a period of time perhaps it's happening again now where you basically had to do academic work about the community that you were part of and Outsiders were not welcome so she left left her Latin American studies and went to Venice Beach and found the old Jews and her her research she hadn't written her book yet she wrote her book after we finished filming her research was quite extensive so that filming the selected I I almost picked from a menu of scenes that she had already researched people spoke spontaneously it wasn't and besides which they were old enough not to remember what they'd said before anyway so um um we had quite a wonderful time we had different backgrounds Dr Maya for myself she came from the from I think from Chicago and not a very not a very Jewish Family at all and I came from New York with the with the yiddish-speaking grandmother so I had all the inside stuff and she had all the outside stuff and it was a very wonderful collaboration completely wonderful collaboration how lucky and And We snuck it in We snuck it in between the weekly reports that we're doing at KCET so it was it was quite a schizophrenic period but it was wonderful I'm so jealous of us nah I I'm jealous as well I mean it's such a vibrant time um I mean a number of you have already sort of mentioned you know what it was like to work in KCT and a little bit about how you came um to work at the station we'll get to that in one minute but I just thought I'm just given everything that you said if I could ask maybe just a couple of follow-up questions so for for Lynn uh were they ever resistant I mean were the subjects in the film The individuals that you talked to were any of them resistant to being on camera or you know or or did any of our you know perhaps quite the opposite you know did they really you know take to the stage yeah quite the opposite they were delighted to be on camera in fact it kept them I think it kept them awake although a contentious group that was quite familiar to me um so I wasn't intimidated by them because they they were an intimidating crowd they were absolutely not shy very anxious to be photographed and um and not they were performing themselves it wasn't it wasn't anything fake they were performing themselves amazing wow and for Jesus um for American tropical I mean it combines so many different approaches to cinema I mean there are there are moments of archival documents there's flashes of voice over um there's you know on location shots of the mural itself and I'm just curious how you thought about a a cinematic approach um to that project and what to do I mean how to bring and braid all of those different techniques together well I I wanted to tell not just the story of something that had happened in 1932 but also what was happening in 1969 and 70 Chicano Community which was there was a Revolution going on and um and uh for me the the fact that this whitewashed wall was emerging once more that the sun and the elements had worn away the the whitewash and this image was emerging to me was uh emblematic of what was going on in the Chicano Community where our own history that had been oblit and occluded was now emerging as we Chicano activists were making it emerge and manifesting who we were so to me it was very metaphoric in that sense and that's what inspired me to do it and technically um you know I'd done a lot a lot of documentary type work on um okay at KCT um with a program called aorta and I knew the history and I felt that had to be a part of it but more importantly we had to tell a story of what was going on now yeah I mean this is maybe just a question for for each of you I mean we're there um particular cinematic influences or media influences that you found inspirational that you brought to these projects in particular or your filmmaking practice more generally I mean I I know it was it was such an intense expansive time um you know for for film culture were there any yeah directors programs or other folks you look to yeah I mean this is maybe just a question for for each of you I mean we're there um particular cinematic influences or media influences that you found inspirational that you brought to these projects in particular or your filmmaking practice more generally I mean I I know it was it was such an intense expansive time um you know for for film culture were there any yeah directors programs or other folks you look to for me it was all about camera placement where was I going to place the camera I went to I graduated from the Columbia University graduate school of Journalism in 1968 and the Revolution was already underway to ask the man who was on the street with the police officer standing over him to put the microphone in front of the man on the street and ask him to tell us his story so that was the placement of the camera was already an issue and thus in the storefront you never knew from one week to another what kind of show you were going to see sometimes it was drama documentary theater dance whatever was going on we would figure out a way to enhance it and broadcast it so that you could in this way have a sense of the Revolution unfolding before you so in terms of camera placement this story comes to mind there was a young lady named a little girl actually named Gloria Griffith who was perhaps 12 years old she was quite petite she had a baseball bat and two Los Angeles police officers assumed that she was trying to attack them so they shot her 28 times the black community was incensed that 28 different organizations came together some of the organizations didn't like the others organizations but this was such an outrageous act that the 28 organizations decided they were going to work together and March on the precinct to the man Justice this was a huge news event so the cameras from all the stations were there and all of them except mine were on the other side of the street so the camera's perspective said what an odd looking bunch of people where are they going what's going on huh let's try to figure out what's happening I place my cameraman in the middle of the March so that already through camera placement you were angry upset and demanding Justice so the key for me was perspective yeah I mean if I could just ask one quick follow-up question about that 10 days I mean you mentioned camera placement which seems absolutely crucial but it's also it seems like the placement in the position of of the studio I mean you you had the storefront you know operating as a kind of a satellite you know studio um in South Central and I'm just curious if you could say maybe a word or two about about that you know about having a studio that was separate from the main facility if I imagine that was not common at the time that's right I asked Chuck Allen if a d like it set up a bureau because I wanted black LA to have its own Bureau as a invitation or perhaps a forerunner of a black Network my dream was to create such fabulous television programming and surprising programming with commercials from Street Theater companies and the rest that would go really big we would get backers and then once the storefront in Los Angeles was going very well I would move to another city do it over again so that perhaps in five or ten years there would be 10 or 15 storefronts and then all of us would pull back from the mothership link up together and we'd have our first black Network why that didn't happen is part of the story perhaps we will get into later in this discussion because I discovered that there were two other kinds of things I had to focus on in order to completely tell the story about the people who have been distressed and are seeking Liberation through love and compassion yeah if I could just add one of the points Erica makes is at the time and she and I would have these long conversations um as she and I shaped each other's outlook on what we needed to do as black and brown people for our community and one of the things that we hit on was that the television the the station had a way of relegating us to one corner and they had uh there had they had programs that were musical programs we weren't usually a part of that who there was programs that were news there were programs that were cultural and then there were black shows her show and my show the Chicano show action Chicano but what both tandek and I hit on was wait a minute our community isn't bifurcated that way isn't separated that way our community has musicians has culture has all these things and we need to do shows that reflect all of our community all aspects of it yes I'd like to add something here I never ever felt relegated at KCET ever and the department we were in was called the human Affairs Department which I thought was magnificent but there was an extraordinary Freedom here God bless Chuck Allen so that I could do whatever I wanted to do to get the message across which is why for the storefront we were all over the place drama theater you know documentaries whatever was going on we could do so perhaps two of you felt relegated I never felt relegated what did I meant neither did I neither do I what I meant was that the station had departments and they didn't have until we created it they didn't have a department for you or a department for me personally put us in human Affairs which was magnificent yeah and trying to get out of it we wanted to create our own stuff remember as human beings I'm sorry Lynn Lynn were you gonna say something I saw your well the old shoes for me were family and my camera placement was loving um they were in their 80s and 90s um they were stubborn and intense and very often pain pains in the ass or pain in the asses or whatever um but I wanted to make them as they were to me they were sympathetic they were my grandparents and the irony is I brought my mother down there once to visit and they didn't get along so well with her because she was their daughter it skipped a generation the affection and the ease and the openness skipped a definition um so she wasn't enormously sympathetic until the film came out of course um but most of the work I did at KCET was about the women's movement and it was um full nobody was competitive with me for the subject um it it um each each piece was a was a sort of a put down of of the abuse or the in what's what's the word the ignorance about women and women's art women's culture women's emotional stuff one piece of filming I did at the women's building was so offensive to our crew that they took their names off the show which was quite amazing um the piece was called woman House Is Not a Home and they objected to Judy Chicago's artwork and Rick benowitz removed his name from the credits and I was stunned I was stunned that that my my people would be so alienated by the subject it was extraordinary actually it was a very good lesson I have to add something here um for the series that preceded the storefront called um doing it which was a 10-part series for K CET That Was Then broadcast over PBS one of the series was a drama one program was a drama of the evolution of four African-American men in their individual cells one next to each other in a prison and so you watch gradually over the progress of the hour and a half the evolution of each of these men because the question I wanted to ask was why are so many of our revolutionaries coming from emerging from prisons so and the once the what's uh poets or the voiceovers and they played part of the some of the characters I mean he's really quite a powerful piece and at the very end the four men EX stick their hands Between the Bars and they say together victory victory victory will be my moan and then you have the credits okay so the crew goes to Casey to to Chuck Allen I said do you know what she's done we can't air this Chuck loved it TBS loved it but several stations refused to broadcast that particular episode oh wow and on that note can you all maybe speak a little bit more about the reception um of perhaps these programs as well as you work more generally I mean I know there was such an intense local Focus but your programs your films were really resonating across the country well you know but one thing that candieka says uh brings to mind um we did a show of you know concurrent as as Lynn was saying concurrent with our regular output of doing this report of something that was going on in Los Angeles um we each had our own you know tandeka had the storefront and uh and I had Axion Chicano we had now we were producing a weekly show and the weekly shows were often Talking Heads but a lot of times there were drama or whatever we had one show that was a theater company from Mexico City that had come to Los Angeles and they did a performance and some of the songs were so revolutionary a la Che Guevara that what aired the KCT phone lines lit up like a Christmas tree and it was all very very irate conservative Cubans who were outraged we were doing these revolutionary songs on public television and it was just hilarious to see this uh outcome of of this but only to say that we had to juggle as as Lynn was saying we had to juggle between our our personal assignments that we wanted to do and and then what we had to do for the station because it was at Beyond this Friday and we had to edit it and all of that but by then and going back just for a moment and what you were asking about you know San Diego talking about placement or camera to me another huge aspect was the editing and we had great we had we had uh you know dick Davies and Barry Nye and these great uh editor cameraman that would go out on an assignment with Lynn or with tandek or with myself and would and would come back and they'd put these shows you know we'd look over their shoulders and we'd work together but there was great great creativity going on there so I must say that I think all of us owe them a great deal of credit as well there was a it was a very there was a a a situation a mood um an ex I don't even know what to call it at the station that was so amazing um we respected each other um it was a group of people we were we were good and we respected each other we we the unusualness of that only became clear to me as I in later years as I left and worked in places where where I felt like the only person of the world I mean um there was a there was an amazing it is Chuck Allen's responsibility he put together an extraordinary group of people and I'm not shooting our horns although we deserve to be tooted but um but we respected each other and that's an that's a really important thing well one thing I have to mention about Chuck um my interview and I think this may apply to others uh with Chuck Allen for just for the job was he asked me what are you reading now I got into a long discussion about literature and he wanted to know these things about us in order to be able to determine whether we were going to be able to do good programming with and that to me was I have a story about shot oh go ahead Lynn excuse me well I have a funny story I got hired by threatening his secretary I I had met him once and he seemed quite interested in hiring me and a couple of months later I tried to get in touch with him and couldn't get through and I knew he valued his secretary because I'd met her and I've called her up and threatened her and said I'm going to call you every 15 minutes until Chuck gets on the phone and I did I probably went on for about three or four hours and finally he got on the phone and hired me but my God you I think of who that person was me and I think of who that the craziness of our of our braveness we were we were young and silly and brave and and how amazing here's my favorite Chuck Allen story storefront was when you know a half hour show maybe an hour I can't remember I guess it was about half a yes a half hour show so anyway if a huge event took place in the community and I felt the Revolution was going to be televised I had to go there and I had a strict budget but I told Barry Nye the filmmaker to bring all the cans of film on hand and I covered a three and a half hour news event in which the gangs were there all the organizations were there they were all making speeches they were all trying to figure out what to do Angela Davis was there everyone was there and fighting and most of the people had left and the gangs now took over they came on stage because they hadn't been invited so there we were still filming right Barry ran out so I went back to the studio Chuck called me into the front office screaming how can you do this you're way over budget you didn't have a budget for this you didn't ask me if you could do this so I started screaming back at him I said this is a black Revolution how dare you object to this oh we went back and forth for about five minutes and then he said go away before the whole three and a half hours aired that's Chuck out that was Chuck Allen another time um early on there was a big discussion about whether um I would be just a staff producer for KCT as part of their I think it was called The Alley Collective at the time or whether I could own show and at the time I was very adamant that we had to have we Chicanos had to have our own show and at one point uh and Chuck disagreed and then I had to make my point that I really felt strongly about this so I walked in with a letter and the letter was signed by every Latino at KCET and the letter said that unless we had our own show all of us were going to resign in mass and we would pick at the station and Chuck Allen's response was I don't like to have a gun put to my head you'll have your damn show ah it looks like the three of us the three of us threatened our way into the into work it was effective for sure I mean you're describing such a a special place such a vibrant place at a really crucial moment and and Chuck Allen is you know is definitely part of this I'm curious how each of you came to KCET you know you had been working in in film or around film or broadcasting um in years prior and I'm curious if you could just each reflect on um you know how you found your way essentially to KCET and to the human Affairs Department yes I love my story I was the production assistant to the producers who created Sesame Street and uh the electric company but I knew that I wanted to do documentaries to create documentaries on the history of the black experience in this country so I ended up working as a producer and director for TPS series called the black Frontier huh and everyone uh based in uh Nebraska Lincoln Nebraska k-u-o-n-tv it got in the grand from PBS to do the show so Chuck Allen had been hired by the executive producer who was white and a football player and perhaps this was the first program you'd ever really produced so Larry was his name had hired Chuck as an advisor so Larry and I flew out to California to KCET and met Chuck in his office to get his advice because this was going to be a docudrama for docudramas on the history of The Blacklist so Larry went on and on and on and on making absolutely no sense whatsoever Chuck and I began to communicate uh silently saying things like Chucky is this guy for real and I said no not at all this went back and forth for 10 or 15 minutes then Larry had to go to the bathroom and Chuck said to me while he was gone stay in touch keep in touch so when the one you know year gig was over and the shows were broadcast I wrote to Chuck saying okay now I'm free and he said come on to LA and be a television producer and that's when I met uh tandeka um I had worked with KCT they had a uh what is a test program called um aorta and we did I think what 60 uh half hour live shows and then Chuck Allen we had a satellite studio in East L.A when that program ended Chuck hired me and I think our first meeting uh as my new position as associate producer was to meet tandeka and we both we both walked into Chuck Allen's office he introduced us to to one another and little did we know that um we we had a really good discussion with him and we're walking outside of KCT and there are these two brown vws 1969 vws parked next to each other on Vine Street and one belonged to me and one belonged to tandeka and we knew from then on that we would be long time friends plus one more thing even though I'm quite a bit older than Jesus where I was born today before Chewie were broken twins that was the moment of bonding when we said my God we're born a day apart too wow wow wow I didn't know that wow well I came there because I spent a good deal of time at net in New York and loved it and worked worked as an associate producer peon whatever and anything jack of all trades there for several years and worked on several wonderful documentaries um a follow-up to Edward R murders what Harvest for the Reaper um we did we did wonderful work and so I when I got to California um it was natural I wanted to be in public television also I wasn't quite aware of it because I'd never really worked in any commercial organization but public television allowed women to work in the same way men did as a matter of fact at net in New York there were many more powerful women than men and I didn't I wasn't attuned to it until quite later when I went to work at ABC for 364 days that that is an unbelievable gift it shouldn't be but it is and it was and and and and and we all we all thrived there for our different reasons in our different styles we thrived what it was like it was it was like a fictional movie we we said we we could we could go and pick up a camera crew and go out and shoot it was there was nothing like it there's been nothing like it in my life since then that's for sure and if each of you could maybe reflect on to go back to that that question of of feedback of resonance of reception I do want to make sure we have time for you all to reflect on your more recent work but if there is um a sense and and I'm hearing this in in each of your Reflections right now that the projects you worked on their Standalone programs they were on KCET their broadcast locally as well as and in some cases nationally what kind of feedback were you getting um from the communities you were representing I mean you mentioned maybe phone calls were there letters did you hear directly my all-time favorite letter was from a woman a black Muslim who watched the movie I told you about the drama Victory will be my moan and she wrote the letter saying I do not know whether you are black or white but Allah will bless you thank you oh I think we picked up Emmys every year the three of us working on on joint shows I mean we I I have three local Emmys and I'm and you must have them too because we all got them for this for these these group shows that we did um so we were very well received within the professional Community um we didn't I don't know that we had anything to do with anybody we were just working like animals um I mean the the old Jews um wound up getting out into the world and winning an oscar but it had it came from local love I never worked on the magazine show so I have one Emmy and five nominations and a citation when Victory will be my mom was nominated for an Emmy one of the judges came up to me before the ceremony and said I loved your program but you don't have a snowball chance in hell oh wow wow unbelievable who said it was such love and affection there was just you know they were almost tears in his eyes yeah I mean there's definitely I mean just from looking back over the Press reports and the coverage I mean so many local Awards national awards and even how it was being reported um in Publications at the time I mean there were reviews there were accounts there were interviews I mean it was something that was sort of resonating um you know within Los Angeles and and in Publications um both per se um you know the African-American Community the Chicanos Community but also just mainstream news periodicals you know we're covering this stuff as well which was a really you know a pretty extraordinary effort just uh just that um you know I I I I was of course getting feedback from the Latino Community but uh for for example we patterned our shows around what was going on in the community so if anything are we all for the most part I got was a reinforcement that we were doing the right thing that we were reporting on the issues and concerns that that Community wanted to to know about so I felt very good about that um and of course um on on a broader scale I think we were fulfilling uh Chuck Allen's mandate I remember early on um tandik and I asked him well what kind of show should we be doing this was very early on uh in our association or in human Affairs and he said I don't care what you do because we said you know this is going to be a weekly show a monthly show what kind of show do you and he said I don't care what it is as long as it wins Awards and that was our man win Awards you see I heard something else which was I heard him say do what you want to do I don't know just do what you want to do that's what I heard that was my takeaway okay it sounds like a supportive producer yeah I mean across multiple fronts it was fabulous he's fabulous and each of us loved him in our own respective ways I mean it was just fabulous yeah I have one very funny um Community involvement story which you must feel free to cut away to cut out and that is that I had done a film I was doing a film about the feminist Women's Health Center and it went on the air and it was quite well received and about a month after the film was on the air I found myself at the feminist Women's Health Center getting an abortion from exactly the person whom I had filmed two months earlier and it was quite an amazing experience thank you for that story that's powerful man it was very powerful thank you and that goes back to your Ode to the Venice Jews which was as Barbara said I'm interviewing myself I now know who I will be when I grow old and the tragedy is that she died at 49. oh yeah I did a film about her dying called in her own time I saw it was it was that was a very difficult thing to do gosh that's trusted me so completely um she she lived just long enough to see a final cut she didn't see it on the air but she saw the Final Cut yeah that that is a powerful film for sure sorry Lynn were you gonna say you look like you're right on the cusp about this no it was about it was about a follow-up study she had done about the Orthodox Jews on Fairfax and Fairfax it was mixing up her work and her life which was her gift she was quite scolded by the anthropology on the anthropology the anthropology Community um because she didn't follow strict objective rules indeed she was completely immersed with her subject and that's where her poetry came from yeah I was I mean definitely a powerful Anthropologist author artist I mean really worked across media and I think when you you know came together to work with her in really incredible ways I mean in a number of our days was I think a powerful film and then um in her own time as well I want to give a little bit of space in this conversation right now um for you all to reflect on some of your more contemporary projects I know you each in your own way whereas from draw you know taking things that you worked on um at this moment forward across other forms of media intersecting with other institutions and just an opportunity right now if you want to share anything you've been working on um lately or um in the years of following KCET I'd like to share what I'm working on now as a link to the storefront and the work that I did at KCET and the work that brought me into television and production to begin with one of the things I do believe is that if you're a good journalist the world starts falling apart for you because you can no longer separate the good guys to the bad guys anymore us and them just kind of breaks down as you begin to see the nuance and the the compromises people have to make in order to stay sane or to go insane with dignity and so I went back to school because I realized that there was something that I did not yet understand about human beings that I must understand in order to be a better journalist which was how was it that people hurt each other even when they don't want to how do we lose our empathy and compassion and how do we get it back and so three books later and a PhD and the rest I've finally arrived at some answers and working with brain scientists as well the founder of the brain signs of emotions I've created a series called Universal connections which if you go to the YouTube channel and just Google in Universe YouTube Universal connections season one you'll have a sense of where I'm working now to make sense of how emotions are lost and how we get them back and how this works transforms us and our communities so that together we can heal and transform the world and that's one final Point here who was it that said um you only need the Anthropologist who said Margaret Mead a small group of people can change the world whoever said a small group of people can't change the world is the only thing that can I simply add one phrase to that which is that you need more than one group so the work that I'm doing now is to create small groups that they'll Network together to heal and transform the world it makes me think of when you're talking about a sort of individual station sort of networked together you know to form um you know a larger kind of constellation that can bring about forms of social change and heightened Consciousness and things like that yes yes how wonderful how wonderful wow and anyone else um you know since since KCT um at KCET I I wanted to to uh become a narrative director in addition to the documentary side and over the past 45 50 years I've been able to do both um the the episodic work I've done um is satisfying in a certain way uh but in terms of uh wanting to do something for my community I found that it's not that practical to think of a commercial way of doing it and I've been doing it more on my own so I continued doing documentaries on my own and the latest manifestation since I've retired from TV directing uh has been my website latinopia.com and what I do with latinopia is a a video driven website on Latino art literature Music Theater Cinema food and basically I do interviews and showcase Latino artists and musicians and Poets and actors and and directors and I've got more than 600 videos on there and this is my way of giving back to the Latino community and uh and still keeping my hand in the in the medium so mention your novels okay and also I just I've been writing and uh I've got uh you know three collections of short stories a memoir and a novel uh and so um I've been I've been busy well Jesus just blew my my my excuse I was gonna say I haven't been active in the community what I did learn after KCET because I did five dramatic films um one especially Testament about the end of the world due to nuclear nuclear Holocaust um what I learned as much as I was enjoyed doing them I learned that for me what happens with the dramatic film is that you empty out you give everything and what happens with the documentary is that you fill up that you're being given and it's quite it's quite hugely different and the documentary for me was far more rewarding um far more rewarding um I've just been doing I've been collecting writings that I've done for the last 30 years and seeing if I was a person then okay and I'm not sure definitely a person I I'm pretty sure yeah no those those writings were great and I mean that's a really I mean insightful eloquent sort of way of thinking about documentary in its relation to fiction and sort of what what it means to sort of work in each of those practices um I'm curious oh yeah go for it yes go for it please the day after is still it in my mind all these years later it's a magnificent document the day after wasn't mine mine was called Testament oh I saw yours though interesting I've combined the two because they came down at exactly the same time the day after was done commercially for for um ABC okay and mine was done for public television Bravo again public television two American American Playhouse wonderful okay and there's you know there's so much I think Rich Work from you know each of you and whether it's working in the short form documentary this theories the long-form project the writings that each of you were doing for mainstream Publications and small journals and I just want to take this opportunity I mean really to to thank you each of you for your contributions I encourage everybody viewing and listening um to check out you know not just the you know to re-watch the films that we just saw but also the larger body of work I think it's just such an extraordinary range and breadth of projects that it is at once a document of Los Angeles and Southern California at a particular moment but really of sort of the US and the world and really just a moment in history that um was was was so rich um and complex and has so many lessons and things that teach us for our current moment so thank you all um for joining in this conversation this dialogue and thank you again to Mark Quigley and the UCLA film and television archive um for convening this event for preserving this work um and thanks everybody for tuning in thank you thank you thank you Josh thank you for your skull ship your great book and um for moderating this for us amen it was a pleasure and an honor and a privilege thank you great and how lovely for the three of us to see each other oh yes foreign