Saving Top Value Television: Alternative Documentation of American Cultural History and Politics

FAIN: PW-259048-18

University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)
Lawrence Robert Rinder (Project Director: July 2017 to March 2020)
Susan Oxtoby (Project Director: March 2020 to December 2020)
Julie Rodrigues Widholm (Project Director: December 2020 to October 2022)

The digitization and preservation of 254 hours of video footage and documentaries and related archival materials, created by Top Value Television, an independent collective of video and media artists and documentarians who captured American cultural events and political campaigns in the 1970s.

The two-year project "Saving Top Value Television: Alternative Documentation of American Cultural History and Politics" will preserve and enhance access to the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's distinctive Top Value Television (TVTV) Collection--videotapes and paper materials that document a seminal component of the early history of video, important historical and political events, and an alternative approach to television. This initiative will ensure the longevity of this unique, vulnerable, and socially significant historical collection, and will make it widely available to students, faculty, researchers, scholars, and the general public via the Internet and on site at the BAMPFA Film Library & Study Center.

Media Coverage

Digitization project reveals unseen ‘guerrilla’ footage that revolutionized TV (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Daphne White
Publication: Berkeleyside
Date: 7/18/2018
Abstract: TVTV, short for Top Value Television, was a collective of Bay Area video makers that included about 30 people, mostly in their 20s, and mostly without any formal training in video, film, journalism or documentary-making. The collective’s initial goal was to go behind the scenes of the 1972 Democratic and Republican conventions. They were the equivalent of today’s millennials with cell phones, wanting to tell their story and show their truth about the world. Approximately 400 hours of analog videos are being restored and digitized by the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). The restoration is funded by a recent $220,537 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
URL: https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/07/18/digitization-project-reveals-unseen-guerrilla-footage-that-revolutionized-tv

Associated Products

Preserving Guerrilla Television - Project Website (Web Resource)
Title: Preserving Guerrilla Television - Project Website
Author: Rick Prelinger, archivist, founder of Prelinger Archives, and professor of film and digital media at
Author: Brian L. Frye, filmmaker/producer of Our Nixon (2013) and professor of law at the University of Kent
Author: Deirdre Boyle, professor of media studies and author of Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revi
Author: Steve Seid, former Video Curator at BAMPFA
Author: Jon Winet, intermedia artist and scholar active in exploring artists' relationship to politics and s
Abstract: The project website features interpretive essays and interviews with TVTV members and embedded digitized videos. Paper records are highlighted and linked to, and additional contextual information and images from the paper collection are included on the site.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://guerrillatv.bampfa.berkeley.edu/
Primary URL Description: This links directly to the project website.

Livestream Conversation with TVTV members Megan Williams and Alan Rucker, moderated by Steve Seid (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Livestream Conversation with TVTV members Megan Williams and Alan Rucker, moderated by Steve Seid
Writer: Allen Rucker
Writer: Steve Seid
Writer: Megan Williams
Abstract: A livestream event featuring a conversation with TVTV members was held in October 2020, presented in conjunction with a UC Berkeley undergraduate course. Held for a live audience over Zoom with 91 participants, the event was recorded and is hosted on the project website.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://guerrillatv.bampfa.berkeley.edu/interviews/2020-10-21_seid-rucker-williams.html
Primary URL Description: This links directly to the recorded conversation.
Access Model: The recorded conversation is hosted on youtube and available on the project website for free.
Format: Web

Preserving Guerrilla TV: Providing Access to Top Value Television's Archives (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Preserving Guerrilla TV: Providing Access to Top Value Television's Archives
Author: Michael Campos-Quinn
Abstract: This poster presentation discusses BAMPFA's TVTV digitization project as a means to advocate for future preservation projects documenting alternative and underground American culture.
Date: 11/20/2020
Primary URL: https://archive.org/details/amia-2020_poster-presentation
Primary URL Description: This link directs to the poster on the Internet Archive.
Secondary URL: http://www.amiaconference.net/preliminary-program-6/
Secondary URL Description: This link directs to the complete conference program.
Conference Name: Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)

TV in, TV out (Archival Screening Night) (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: TV in, TV out (Archival Screening Night)
Author: Antonella Bonfanti
Author: Michael Campos-Quinn
Abstract: A highlight from the TVTV collection, "TV in TV out," was assembled by BAMPFA archive staff from outtakes shot during Gerald Ford's America to simulate a two-channel video presentation. It was selected to screen as part of AMIA’s centerpiece event, Archival Screening Night, where it was seen by a global audience of nearly four hundred viewers.
Date: 11/19/2020
Primary URL: https://guerrillatv.bampfa.berkeley.edu/raw-footage/2020-08-06_tv-in-tv-out.html
Primary URL Description: This link directs to the "TV in, TV out" video.
Secondary URL: http://www.amiaconference.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/ASN-2020-Program.pdf
Secondary URL Description: This link directs to the AMIA Archival Screening Night program.
Conference Name: Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)

BAMPFA Python scripts (Computer Program)
Title: BAMPFA Python scripts
Author: Michael Campos-Quinn
Author: Annie Schweikert
Abstract: All Python scripts and software developed during the project are open source.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://github.com/BAM-PFA
Primary URL Description: This links to BAMPFA's github page with open source software.
Access Model: Open source
Source Available?: Yes

---