Friday, January 23, 2015

THIS IS NOT A GUN


I recently reconnected with a friend from days of activism
in Film, Video and Photography...
(on location in Central Park holding a camera stand)
...causing me to excavate deep into closets and boxes where my
production work of the Seventies and Eighties has been resting for decades

"When the Bough Breaks", "Ritual", "Packaged for Resale", "Life and Death",
"Women's Work", "Porno-Graphics", "The Nuclear Family Photo Series"
Besides 8mm and 16mm film reels and outtakes,
there is also a box of 3/4 video, three carousels of slides,
ten slide sheets, about twenty boxes of slides,
and another box of large prints I haven't found yet
Unfortunately I no longer own a slide projector, slide viewer or photo loop
so I'm using an improvised means to review the slide outtakes
--clothes pinning or holding them up to one bright light to sample--
these are mostly outtakes with the best shots on the slide carousels

Women's Pentagon Action
Washington D.C. 1981




Joan Braderman
Teacher at SVA Film






Women weave the Pentagon closed with yarn












Nuclear Disarmament
United Nations to Central Park
June 12 1982




Joan Baez










Women's Peace Camp
Seneca New York
Summer Fall 1983

Video from The Women's Peace Camp
An interview with Katherine Allport from the Encampment Archives









 
~*~
As I reviewed this material I remembered joy and terror, commitment and courage, a golden time when it seemed possible to invest in hope.  Now massive forces world wide are gathered to fight against that possibility.  We are still at war, still incapable of peaceful coexistence and still disastrously wrong for the planet and all sentient life.  So, what can sustain me but the love of friends, the knowledge that there are still people who care, and that nothing material lasts forever?  What can I do but keep on stepping truthfully and peacefully every day upon the path in front of me?
Meanwhile I'm looking for an archive for this material.
***

5 comments:

Mo Crow said...

love the photograph of the women weaving the Pentagon closed with yarn!

Marti said...

A freeze frame of time: you have so movingly written of how it was Michelle.

For me, it was 1966, Cesar Chavez was making his march to Sacramento to protest conditions for farm workers, to strike against picking lettuce and grapes until better conditions were met. Many small towns along the way gathered food, arranged accommodations for Cesar and his followers. Modesto was one of the towns along the route to Sacramento and I was a college student at the junior college in Modesto. We arranged for a community potluck for Cesar and his movement, people donated food and we set up tables. A crinkled black and white photo bears witness of that gathering; me lifting a lid off of a huge pot of frijoles, Cesar spooning them onto his plate and I'm telling him in Spanish what he meant to the world...HOPE in capital letters.

Now at the age of 67, hope is spelled in small letters and I grow my own lettuce and grapes...would I undertake a march again? No, but the heartbeat of hope, even though small still drums in me...

Yvette said...

http://www.isgeschiedenis.nl/toen/november/demonstratie_tegen_de_plaatsing_van_kernwapens/

my memory of big big march
so big the trains didn't reach the stations so we walked besides the railroads

those were the times of togetherness
now there is more war than during ww 2
life sucks
disbalance

michelle
i hope storm is not bothering you too much
thinking about you and the storm....it seems to become a historical storm

lovelovelove

Ms. said...

Yvette Marti and Mo...what wonderful comments and how I love that everyone was on the move then, that so many of us cared, still car, that we are passing along memories to others, that nothing is ever static, that life gives life. Living sucks the life out of us and still breathes love and as long as we breathe there is life and love. Vote with your intention, with devotion, with telling stories and singing songs. Love without condition and in whatever condition exists. Throw light.

Velma Bolyard said...

michelle, you might check with the book arts list serv administrator peter verheyan. he may have a good idea of a home for your archive.