http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,1195847,00.html Alternative view
Five years after it ceased production, Undercurrents is back. Paul Kingsnorth reports on the rebirth of the video activists
Wednesday April 21, 2004
The Guardian
Just over 10 years ago, when affordable camcorders were still a novelty, a small group of people - describing themselves as "a couple of frustrated TV producers and a handful of environmental activists" - set up an experimental media project from a bedroom in north London. Calling themselves Small World Media, they wanted to use their film skills to capture stories they believed mainstream media was missing.
To do so, they began to "embed" film-makers among Britain's burgeoning direct action scene. Back came coverage of the campaigns to prevent the building of the M11 link road and the Salisbury bypass, including footage of evictions and illegal arrests. Other reports covered the opposition to the criminal justice bill, police clampdowns on open-air raves, and villagers trying to stop their common land being turned into a golf course.
From 1993 to 1999, Small World produced 10 video compilations, which they called "Undercurrents". The project was born out of a frustration that, despite a huge upswelling of direct action and radical politics in Britain throughout the 1990s, very little of it seemed to be covered adequately on television news or in the press.
Undercurrents created a network of camcorder activists, providing support and media training, setting up a "grassroots protest video archive" with more than 1,000 hours of footage, printing its own "video activist handbook", and releasing video after video of alternative news. Within a few years of its inception, it was getting glowing reviews in the very mainstream press it scorned, winning international awards for its videos and blazing a trail for alternative news reporting that continues to this day.
In 1999, Small World stopped production of its compilation videos and concentrated instead on its website, media training, community projects and producing specialist documentaries. Now, though, its alternative news video is back, in the form of the newly-founded Undercurrents News Network (UNN), which was launched at the beginning of this month.
With political dissent and accompanying protest more widespread now than at any time since Undercurrents' heyday in the mid-1990s, it seems a timely relaunch. Zoe Broughton, one of UNN's co-producers, says: "There are a huge number of little video activist cells and alternative film-makers out there, many of them doing a very professional job. The quality of film is stunning, but the problem is the distribution of it. That's where we come in."
The media world into which UNN arrives is very different from that of a decade ago. A plethora of "alternative" news sources has sprung up, prompted by the growth of the internet. The most widespread is Indymedia, an international network of almost 100 websites that showcases the kind of activist writing, filming and reporting pioneered by Undercurrents. In other words, the marketplace for "alternative news" is a crowded one.
Perhaps this is one reason why the revamped Undercurrents looks much slicker than it used to. Gone are the shaky cameras, poor sound quality and dubious editing; instead, the new Undercurrents is a slick mix of news reportage, short films, cartoons and even songs. From The Meatrix, an anti-factory farming cartoon, to the story of how Harvard students ran a successful campaign of direct action against their own university to force it to increase the wages paid to its cleaning staff, Undercurrents seems to have lost none of its verve for telling stories that you won't see on TV. It is also clear that, as before, this is partisan journalism, with its head held high.
Undercurrents plans to produce three video compilations a year and show them at a rolling programme of public screenings, as well as selling videos directly through its website. Ninety per cent of the material on the first video has been made and sent in by film collectives around the world - outfits as varied as a Croatian feminist collective and an American student body - and this is the way its creators intend it to continue. How successful the project is now will depend on how much of an appetite there is out there for alternative news.
For more information, see
http://www.undercurrents.org/unn
Homepage:
Comments
Hide the following 8 comments
old news...
21.04.2004 12:03
chris b
Load of old crap
21.04.2004 23:32
undercurrents, guardian, alternative news= weak lefty-liberal outdated shit
get off the stage
"Weak lefty=liberal"
22.04.2004 01:25
non-anarchist
Exactly
22.04.2004 10:56
Glad to clear it up, sheepy.
an anarchist, surprisingly
undercurrents goes beyond the boundaries
22.04.2004 19:44
Just because YOU happened to catch one of our screenings? try thinking beyond your tiny circles..there is a whole load of people out there seeking inspiration and our tour is showing that people are telling us that it is all new to them.
love and rage
from the lefty liberal guardian reader with a pipe and slippers from Undercurrents
paulo
Beyond the boundries of the lefist ghetto-
23.04.2004 14:16
-What, like the tiny circles you show your overpriced videos in? Out of date, superficial critique- you think ´normal´people some how can't come up with radical ideas on their own?
I must be an extremist if i don't think it goes far enough- The Guardian? - really alternative news. you've let all your own PR go to your head Paulo, go back to bed- oh, you're already in it.
independent media activist
God people are negative (;
24.04.2004 19:01
Alt-media projects such as Indymedia are wonderful and yet they can lose there edge. We sometimes forget that we must reach out rather than going round in cercals with our activism. The majority of the world has no contact with our culture. Indymedia is a fine news services for the direct action crew but talk to the majority of people including many who would benefit from our service, academia and journalism, who share similar interests and almost none use it and few have herd of it. This re-occurring theme is what the new undercurrents is attempting to change. Our “production values”, our use of humour and sheer power to move people is enlivening and outreaching – you can show it to your gran.
In this UNN isn’t a news sources for YOU it is a news resources for YOU to use to reach out to the wider world. And in this it is a very powerful tool – get a copy and setup a local screening (:
It’s out on VHS now and DVD at the end of the month.
Hamish Campbell
www.undercurrents.org
www.oxford.indymedia.org.uk
hamish Campbell
e-mail:
hamish@riseup.net
Guardian Of The Crossroads
26.04.2004 00:49
Careful not to shoot yourselves and your allies in the foot, dear anarchists.
And please remember, not everyone can be nor should be on the front line.
Sean