Media Burn Archive

Media Burn Board member Prof. Antoine Haywood reflects on the impact of Michael Zinzun and the rich, varied, and woefully under appreciated history of Black creators of Public Access Television. https://mediaburn.org/celebrating-the-black-history-of-public-access-tv/

Be part of our team! Media Burn is hiring our first ever development staff person. Read on if you'd like to work with our growing nonprofit and this is your skill set! https://loom.ly/MDof9X0

Join us at the Music Box on Feb 1 for "In Another Light: Cinema of Memory." It is in partnership with @allarvickfund.bsky.social and @chicagofilmarchives.org and curated by Agata Zborowska.

Tickets: https://loom.ly/IS5DsLQ

We are so excited to be the newest member of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium! This group of 29 Chicago-based archives, libraries, and museums connects all who seek to document, share, understand and preserve Black experiences. Read more at: https://loom.ly/2WYYySA

Dec 18, 7pm CT, online! In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Cook County Hospital doctors strike, join Media Burn and Kartemquin Films for a virtual screening of the doc HSA Strike ’75 + a discussion with filmmaker Judy Hoffman and doctor/activist Howard Ehrman.

Tickets: https://loom.ly/-i_CypU

John Lewis from the doc "Mississippi America"
True change needs everyday courage, not just heroic moments. Freedom Summer’s legacy shows us this: a lifelong fight in streets, courts, and memory against injustice, a blueprint for today’s struggles.
More: https://loom.ly/MDLnUp4

SOLD OUT!
"Siskel & Ebert at 50" Live Show!
Nov 22 Chicago Cultural Center
A live event by Pocket Guide to Hell exploring the iconic TV show that changed film criticism. Post-show moderated by Geoffrey Baer w/ Thea Flaum, Michelle McKenzie-Voigt, and Rick Kogan.
Event Info: https://loom.ly/v0TOhEI

On Nov 19, 12 PM, join us at UIC: 909 S. Wolcott, Room 585. We're marking the 50th anniversary of the Cook County Hospital doctors' strike with a free screening of "HSA Strike '75" and a discussion on its legacy for healthcare and labor.
Event info:https://loom.ly/IhTLmVI

Excited to announce we got an FY26 IAC grant! We are so grateful to the Illinois Arts Council for supporting arts across our state.

RIP Tony Adler. Here's a lovely video of him teaching poetry to senior citizens from the 1970s.

YouTube video by Media Burn Archive Sleater Kinney interviewed by Ratso the puppet on Chic-A Go-Go! (From July 2000)

Ratso the puppet interviews Sleater-Kinney for Chic-A-Go-Go, from July 2000. Carrie and Janet (aka "Mitzi") show off their juggling skills. Talk of favorite foods, their new album, and how many Grammys the band would win if Ratso joined.

Studs’ Place: The Lost Sitcom That Put Working-Class Life on TV. Our latest blog post by scholar and guest author Jason J. Nebergall offers an analysis of how Studs Terkel's radical, working-class ethos was translated into the emerging television medium. Read more at: https://loom.ly/JDD26kA

Watch the full episode of Chic-A-Go-Go's "Monster Party" Halloween episode here!

mediaburn.org/videos/chic-...

YouTube video by Media Burn Archive Chic-A-Go-Go Monster Party musical performance by Hoodoo Hoedown of "Graveyard Stroll"

AND a performance by the amazing rockabilly band Hoodoo Hoedown of their spookiest song, "Graveyard Stroll."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa_G...

The episode also features an introduction from the great Forrest J. Ackerman, of Famous Monsters of Filmland fame!

YouTube video by Media Burn Archive Chic-A-Go-Go Monster Party musical performance by Team Satan!

Spooky Halloween music from the legendary Chic-A-Go-Go. Dance along with Miss Mia and Ratso to Chicago's Team Satan!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfm6...

This Nov, celebrate Siskel & Ebert's 50th!
See their favorite "hidden gem" films each Wednesday (Nov 5, 12, 19, 25).
Don't miss a live "Sneak Previews" performance on Nov 22
Location: Chicago Cultural Center 78 E. Washington St. Chicago, IL 60602

TICKETS: https://loom.ly/V2_oo_s

The world lost a special person this week. Read Media Burn founder Tom Weinberg's tribute to artist, poet, actor, and Chicagoan, Tony Fitzpatrick, “a roisterer, a prodigious giant with gigantic appetites.” https://loom.ly/CTAFD28

Don’t miss this special 20th anniversary screening of Forgiving Dr. Mengele with Media Burn board member Bob Hercules in person.
Event Details:
 [October 16th ] [7:00 PM]
 Wayfarer Theater, Highland Park
Tickets: $15 | FREE for Wayfarer Unlimited Members
More info: https://loom.ly/Ib_NkuY

We're so excited to be part of this special trivia night at the Hideout, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Sneak Previews, the legendary TV show that paired newspaper critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert to talk (and argue) about the movies. October 15, 7:30pm! https://loom.ly/IjsJPVQ

Throughout Media Burn’s recordings of performance art, few performers stand out as much as the untouchable Gurlene and Gurlette Hussey (Randy Esslinger and Doug Stapleton). Their drag is, in Gurlene’s words, 'Hairy, horny, tattooed, shameless, saucy, mischievous.” Read more: https://loom.ly/g40Hb1I

YouTube video by Media Burn Archive Ryne Sandberg on what makes Wrigley Field so great

RIP Ryno

Stephen Colbert in the Media Burn archive - Media Burn Archive Stephen Colbert has been on TV since the 1990s, when he, Amy Sedaris, and Paul Dinello showed up on Comedy Central with the sketch show Exit 57 and the revered skewering of...

Last week, CBS announced that it would be canceling The Late Show, the ratings leader by a large margin. Its host, Stephen Colbert, had used his platform to criticize CBS’s “big fat bribe.”

Like so many other famous Chicagoans, Colbert shows up in Media Burn’s archive: https://loom.ly/WjJM5oY

New American Cinema #19: P. Adams Sitney - Media Burn Archive An interview with critic P. Adams Sitney about the American avant-garde cinema and Sitney's new book "Visionary Film."

Watch the full interview here: mediaburn.org/videos/new-a...

YouTube video by Media Burn Archive P. Adams Sitney on the avant-garde cinema and poetry in film, 1974

Last month we lost P. Adams Sitney, unquestionably the most important and influential scholar of avant-garde film.

Here is a remarkable interview with him, recorded in 1974 just after the publication of "Visionary Film," on what makes avant-garde films unique.

YouTube video by Media Burn Archive Act Up Goes Shopping

ACT UP Goes Shopping!

Judith Binder follows ACT UP activists to the Sherman Oaks Galleria, where they pass out pamphlets about safe sex and HIV/AIDS, and condoms, until security kicks them out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UteQ...

While my grandfather suffered from being incarcerated without charges or evidence after Pearl Harbor, I hope to honor him by telling his story so that the courts will exercise their duty to check the Trump Administration’s overreach in their deportation zealotry.

YouTube video by Media Burn Archive Japanese-American internment survivor and activist Frank S. Emi discusses life at Heart Mountain

Featuring clips from a newly digitized interview with Frank S. Emi, a civil rights hero who helped lead a protest movement while imprisoned in the Heart Mountain internment camp.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=af6G...

The Incarceration of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and the Alien Enemies Act - Media Burn Archive Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attacks, the United States Government invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify the imprisonment of thousands of American immigrants of Japanese descent. Later, under a.....

Read this moving and infuriating blog post from Daniel Mayeda about the US government's shameful history of employing the Alien Enemies Act against immigrants and minorities, including his own family.

“People stop me on the street and say, ‘Jesus Christ, I read your book, Working, and I’ll never talk to a telephone operator that same way. I’ll never treat a waitress the same way, or look at a truck driver the same way. You’ve changed the way I think.’”--Studs Terkel. More: https://loom.ly/5b2_nhY