MFA thesis "Follow the Threads" wins award ( 4 / 2001 )

A program produced by the one of the department's most recent MFA graduates has won an award for editing at the Making Waves Film and Video Festival , taking place May 4-5, 2001 at Hunter College, CUNY.

"Follow the Threads" is described by its director, Melissa Scott (MFA, Seq.32) as a suggestive reconstruction of what her Jewish immigrant relatives experienced before they immigrated to the United States and Canada. Threads link Klezmer music to the fragments of family history that were left behind. It is the director's speculation of why her relatives preferred to forget events from the past, exposing the fears that lead to the abandonment of traditions in the hopes of starting anew.

The program will be presented on Saturday, May 5th, during a screening session of award winners from 12 noon to 8.30pm in Hunter College's Lang Recital Hall (4th floor, North Building, 68th Street and Lexington Avenue.)

In addition, the Department's Professor Irene Sosa will present a half-hour program of short videos made by undergraduate and graduate students of the Department of Television and Radio, Friday May 4th from 12 noon to 4pm.

Admission to both programs is free. In addition to programs from Brooklyn College, the festival will feature award-winners from across the country, including UCLA, University of Austin, Texas, and San Francisco State University. Further details of the festival and its screenings may be found at their website , or by calling (212) 772-4846.

Robert Viscusi's "Oration" premieres on CUNY TV in April (3/01)

Robert Viscusi's "Oration Upon the Most Recent Death of Christopher Columbus" premieres on CUNY TV Saturday April 14 and April 21, 2001

In December, 2000, the Brooklyn College Television Center, in conjunction with the Department of Television and Radio, taped "An Oration Upon the Most Recent Death of Christopher Columbus" by Professor Robert Viscusi, director of Brooklyn College's Wolfe Institute .

While Professor Viscusi has performed the work in front of live audiences many times since in the nine years since its inception, this is the first time the work will be seen on the small screen. Students from the Department's MFA program crewed two day shoot.

The program will air in two parts on successive Saturday evenings, April 14 and 21, 2001, at 6.30pm in the regular "Brooklyn College Presents" timeslot on CUNY TV, the City University's cable television station.

Professor Viscusi writes in his preface to the poem:

"This poem was written in the wake of Columbus Day at Brooklyn College. Here is how it happened. Familia Latina, an umbrella group of all the Latino associations on campus, planned a speak-out for October 14, 1992, to protest the celebration of the Columbian Quincentenary. Some members of the Italian American community on campus asked to take part in this speak-out, and I wrote this Oration to express some of our feelings on the occasion."

He explains, "Italians in America have been celebrating Columbus Day since 1866, and so we found the attack on our old hero very hard to bear. Still, hearing the pain of the many peoples who suffered in the European expansion into the western hemisphere, we were not only sympathetic, but we also recognized the sound of our own history. We did not feel ourselves to be conquistadores. Rather, we remembered the bitterness of the Italian revolution. . . . According to one estimate, the population of Italy at the triumph of the Risorgimento in 1861 stood at about 25 million. Between 1876 and 1985, just about that same number, 25 million, Italians were to leave Italy to live elsewhere in the world. When Italians parade in New York, they are remembering these dispossessed ancestors of theirs.

"We paraded in the name of Columbus. Tomorrow we may use some other name. But the history of need and of courage we celebrate will continue to march. And the burden of ancient sorrows that we remember we will carry for many generations. This burden, along with so many others, belongs to the history of the many peoples in this hemisphere, as it belongs to us."

Brooklyn 2001: Television and Radio events

The Television and Radio Department is participating in the Brooklyn College Arts Council 's Brooklyn 2001 festival this semester with a number of events:

Brooklyn on the Small Screen:
How Television Imagined Brooklyn
Wednesday, April 25, 12.15-1.45pm
007 Whitehead Hall (Studio B) - Admission free

Professor Susan Murray curates a presentation of clips from television shows and early short films, and moderates the panel discussion that follows.

They Were Giants - Walt Whitman
Wednesday, May 9, 6pm
Levenson Recital Hall - Admission free

A live radio play by the legendary radio drama producer Himan Brown, '34. Professor Martin Spinelli , executive producer.

Americans in Brooklyn:
A Celebration of Brooklyn through the Arts
Wednesday, May 9, 8pm
Gershwin Theatre - call (718) 951-4600, ext. 25 or see the festival Web site for more details

A multimedia evening of song, drama, and moving image by the Brooklyn College arts departments and the new program in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA). Directed by Thomas A. Bullard (Department of Theater.)

The Brooklyn College Student Radio Festival
Tuesday, May 15, beginning at 2pm
On the web at www.bctvr.org

Coverage of the Arts Festival will be available in streaming RealAudio. The festival is coordinated by Professor Martin Spinelli.

New equipment for studio and editing work

Over the last few months, staff have been working hard to install several new pieces of equipment that the Department has acquired.

A Mackie Digital 8 Bus is installed in our new, dedicated audio room, adjoining the main control room and MCR areas (see left). This computer-controlled, fully digital mixing console will greatly enhance our audio production capability, particularly for projects produced in conjunction with our colleagues in the Conservatory of Music.

In our video non-linear editing suite, we now have a total of seven G4 editing systems running Final Cut Pro, and a variety of other multimedia software applications (see left, below.) This facility is in almost constant use by undergraduate and graduate classes.

In addition, studio B's control room now houses a new Chyron Max!> for character generation (not pictured), which replaces our aging Chyron 4200 which was approaching its 15th birthday when it finally gave up the ghost last year.