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I n 1968, as international socio-politicalmovements thrived, the San Francisco BayArea characterized the epitome of counter-

cultural revolutions. Berkeley was rife with CivilRights sit-ins, the Free Speech movement andanti-war protests. The Black Panther Party,founded in Oakland by Huey P. Newton andBobby Seale, struggled to promote civil rightsand self-defense as it fed, clothed and educatedunderprivileged children. Across the Bay, alengthy student strike erupted at San FranciscoState, led by the Third World Liberation Front,which demanded an ethnic studies program and anend to the Vietnam War. Other escalating socialissues included women’s rights, gay and lesbianrights and nascent environmental concerns.

During these agitated times, CaliforniaNewsreel emerged.

“A lot of people who were filmmakers atthat time wanted to be part of the movement,”says Larry Daressa, one of Newsreel’s three co-directors (along with Cornelius Moore and LarryAdelman). “And so they formed collectives in variouscities across the country in order to produce films,newsreels of the events of those times.” Thesefilms and newsreels were then self-distributed,mostly to college campuses, organizations andactivists.

From the beginning, the Newsreel groupwas highly political and went through the ideo-logical struggles characteristic of the period. Butafter the end of the Vietnam War and the Black

Liberation movement, without events to photo-graph or events at which to screen the films, theorganization swiftly dwindled to just four people.In 1974, “the two Larrys (as they are referred toin the Bay Area),” Daressa and Adelman, arrived. “Ithink the gross revenues were around $16,000,”recalls Daressa. “It wasn’t self-sufficient or servingany substantial social goal. So it was obvious thatthe organization needed to reinvent itself becauseit couldn’t continue on the same model.”

For four decades, while surviving fluctuatingsociopolitical climates and exponential techno-logical advancements, and despite what Daressacalls “the great disillusionment of late 20thcentury progressive politics,” Newsreel has con-tinued to reinvent itself and, indeed, flourish asthe quintessential paradigm of the social changemedia distributor.

The Newsreel Nonprofit Today, Newsreel (www.newsreel.org) remains thelargest nonprofit, social-issue documentary filmcenter in the country, and it was the first to marrymedia production with contemporary socialmovements. Newsreel produces and distributescutting-edge, social justice films that inspire,educate and engage audiences. The distributionbranches include academic, theatrical and homeDVD. However, Daressa admits, “We’re not terriblyinterested in theatrical releases. Black Goldscreened at 35 theaters, but only grossed$80,000. It’s doing much better on DVD. But

still, not many home video consumers saw ittheatrically, so they don’t know to buy it.”

Newsreel’s African-American Perspectivescollection is a leading resource center for theadvancement of racial justice and diversity andthe study of African-American life, history andpolitics. The current catalogue of African-American titles includes Black Panther (SanFrancisco Newsreel, prod.; 1969); biographies ofblack writers and intellectuals W.E.B. Du Bois, IdaB. Wells, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin;February One (Rebecca Cerese, prod.; 2004),about the first lunch counter sit-ins of the CivilRights movement; and a tenth anniversarycommemorative DVD release of documentaryfilmmaker Marlon Riggs’ trilogy: Ethnic Notions,Color Adjustment and Black is…Black Ain’t.

The Library of African Cinema stimulatescross-cultural dialogue and political engagement,and includes 130 films from over 30 sub-Saharancountries, representing themes on women’sissues, civil war, politics, anthropology, etc.Catalogue titles include Afrique, je te plumerai,by Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno,about the ongoing impact of neocolonialism ontraditional African societies; Faat Kine, by masterSenegalese director Ousmane Sembene, thestory of a successful businesswoman who over-comes a lifetime of betrayal by men in her life; andEveryone’s Child, from Zimbabwe’s TsitsiDangarembga, which addresses the issue of the 10million AIDS orphans on the African continent today.

Documenting the MovementCALIFORNIA NEWSREELREMAINS AT THE CENTER OF SOCIAL CHANGE

BY CATHLEEN ROUNTREE

From Mark Kitchell’s Berkeley in the Sixties, which is distributed by California Newsreel. Courtesy of California Newsreel

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Newsreel’s educational initiatives include aseries of study and facilitator guides for many ofthe titles, which can help contextualize a topic,provide approaches for teaching and inform theviewing of a film.

With an emphasis on the international divisionof labor, Newsreel recently launched its globaleconomy initiative with Black Gold (Marc Francisand Nick Francis, dirs./prods.), about the unjustconditions under which coffee is produced, andMaquilapolis (Vicki Funari, Sergio De La Torre,dirs./prods.), about women in Mexico who workin factories owned by transnational corporationsand become grassroots activists. According toDaressa, Maquilapolis is doing very well in DVDsales to schools with courses in women’s and Latinostudies, business labor and international studies.

Universities and institutions are the primarymarkets for these films. It is worth noting thatNewsreel, without subsidies from foundations,offers all of its titles to high schools, publiclibraries, community organizations and historicallyblack colleges and universities at a 75 percentdiscount off the regular college price. Naturally,this allows Newsreel to reach a larger audience,but, as Daressa emphasizes, true to the company’spolitical core, this productive structured atmo-sphere “is a more conducive context to actuallydoing something about these problems, ratherthan just empathizing, which is what happenswith TV and home video; you’re not looking atthem in a context that’s associated with anyongoing political activity. We always make thepoint that TV is not conducive to serious, or whatwe call ‘active,’ viewing.”

California Newsreel at 40Mark Kitchell, producer and director of theAcademy Award-nominated Berkeley in theSixties, notes about Newsreel, “I tend to think ofthem as a collective.” After running into Kitchellat Sundance in 1989, Daressa and Adlemanoffered him $30,000 to cover post-productioncosts. “Trust was a major factor in my choice,”remembers Kitchell. Two years later, after hisadvance had been repaid, he was especiallyimpressed that Newsreel had “estimated exactlywhat the market in the educational world wouldbe for Berkeley. These guys really know how tomarket a film, and they don’t waste money.”

“The reason we’ve survived is because wemake 90 percent of our income from earnedincome,” asserts Daressa. Unlike most filmorganizations or nonprofits, which are mostlydependent on government organizations or foun-dations, “our market has remained fairly stable

over the years, because there is an establishedbusiness in the sale of educational films. Ourshappen to have political content, but they’re alsoeducational. They’re not propaganda films.”

Gail Silva, former director of Film ArtsFoundation, who now advises arts organizationsand filmmakers, agrees: “California Newsreel hasanticipated the needs of their primary collegeand university markets, creating niche initiativesfor the particular time. And they have never losttheir activist roots.”

Daressa also credits Newsreel’s longevity toits being situated in the Bay Area. “Being at thecenter of social ferment has allowed us to antic-ipate social movements, to begin to understandthem and to have access to people who understoodthem. Also, the wonderful community of indepen-dent documentarians in the Bay Area has suppliedmore than a fair share of our catalogue titles.”

Keeping Up with TechnologyTechnology is something that any social changegroup or media group has to keep up with. AsDaressa points out, “The problem is, tech changeis something which will always be led by thecommercial media, of which we will have to fit in onthe margins as we’ve always fit in on the margins. Ihave no question that we will be marginal on theInternet, as we are presently in the world of DVD.So technological changes are something that youcontinually adjust to. It’s not that difficult.”

The real issue, as Daressa sees it, isultimately the market size. “And the market sizeis not so much determined by technology, but by

the socio-economic environment, by which I meanthe politicization of the public at a particular periodaround a particular issue. So if the country were tosuddenly become much more politicized than it isat present, our market would be much larger.”

In terms of how the digital age has affectedNewsreel, Daressa supposes that VOD willenable the company to develop a less limitedconsumer market, in addition to integrating itsproduct more effectively into activist networkslike blogs and print magazines online, e-zinesand the websites of various organizations––all ofwhich will increase sales. “But the question is,What is a sale? Is it a download? I mean, wecan’t sell it for free, unless someone subsidizesus. There has to be some way of charging people.”Daressa foresees different charges for streamingand downloading, for example, “A class of 300should pay more than if it’s downloaded by astudent as a reading assignment, where theprice could be as low as $1.98.”

The Changing Form of DocsFinally, as a distributor, Newsreel encourages andsupports the work of emerging producers andfilmmakers, and can provide helpful advice aboutthe inside world of educational distribution. Everanticipating the evolution of both the creative andbusiness sides of documentary filmmaking anddistribution, Daressa offers insights into shiftingthe “static” form of current documentaries thatare “stylistically indistinguishable from the filmsthat we first acquired in the early ’70s.”

Daressa believes that the Internet necessitates

From Maquilapolis (Vicki Funari, Sergio De La Torre, dirs./prods.), which is part of California Newsreel’s Global Economy intiative. Courtesy

of California Newsreel.

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nonfiction filmmakers to “start exploring newpossibilities and developing some radically newforms,” which he already sees happening there.The long-form doc will continue on television and

in theaters, he predicts, but films will be shorter,primarily due to “the attention-span issue; morefilms will be serialized and carried on from weekto week, like a blog entry. Films will also need to

be cheaper, because they’ll be appealing tosmaller markets.

“You have to ask yourself,” Daressa continues,“when you see a link on a Website, how long willyou stay at the link until you return to the homepage, or move on to the next link? Perhaps 20minutes. So the films will need to be much moreembedded in the new environments in whichthey’re shown. And I think there will be a lot morePSA films as discussion starters and opportunitiesfor people to become aware of issues and thenmove beyond the film to actual politicalinvolvement.”

Vivian Kleiman, a veteran independentfilmmaker whose work includes Maquilapolis,First Person Plural and Color Adjustment,reminds socially conscious filmmakers, “Whileit’s easy to create a website and sell a video tothose who happen upon it, it’s an entirelydifferent matter to use media to play a strategicrole in social change, and to earn money for thefilmmaker. The folks at California Newsreel areamong the best in the field.” yy

Cathleen Rountree is the author of nine books,including The Movie Lovers’ Club: How to StartYour Own Film Group (2006). She interviewsdirectors and covers film festivals for Documentaryand other publications, and teaches writing andmulticultural studies at University of California,Santa Cruz.

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From Black Gold (Marc Francis and Nick Francis, dirs./prods.), which is part of California Newsreel’s Global Economy Initiative. Courtesy of California Newsreel.

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