In conjunction with BAMPFA’s Fall 2020 Alternative Visions series, Kathy Geritz, Steve Seid, and Michael Campos-Quinn organized a streaming program featuring TVTV’s documentary on the 1972 Republican National Convention, Four More Years (1972). Also included in the program was a livestreamed conversation between Seid, BAMPFA’s former video curator, and TVTV members Allen Rucker and Megan Williams. The audience asked questions live as Williams and Rucker talked about the origins of TVTV, the challenges and thrills of working on the ground at a contentious milestone in American history, and what it felt like to be “the future” of media (young, technically adept, politically engaged, gender inclusive) at a convention dominated by the Big Three television networks.

Because the Alternative Visions series is presented alongside UC Berkeley’s undergraduate course in experimental cinema, the audience included a strong cohort of the next generation in media production and criticism. This context became especially fitting as Williams and Rucker looked back at excerpts from the raw footage preserved by BAMPFA (unseen since 1972 until our digitization project!) and gave their first hand accounts of the state of media and politics at the time.

Watch the recorded event here: