New York State Council on the Arts Annual Report 1969-70

https://arts.ny.gov/sites/default/files/Annual%20Report%201969%20-%2070.pdf

Young filmmakers at Albany South End workshop, sponsored by Upper Hudson Library Federation. Photo: Kingsley Fairbridge

Ed Emshwiller at filmmakers conference for elementary and high school teachers at Huntington, LI. Photo: Andree L. Abecassis

Aldo Tambellini works with elementary school students at a television studio. Photo: WNYE-TV Channel 25 “Giving out old methods of information in this new media does not give us the possibility to discover its basic potential. We must consider that TV is audiovisual information at the speed of light. It is a light-sound instrument able to freely create and improvise its own forms. The immediacy of its audiovisual information makes possible spontaneous expression.”

High school students screen their own films in Yorktown. Photo: Vincent Clarkin “We got things done fast because we wanted to see the results, not because some teacher said we ought to do it fast. Since we were trusted to take equipment out of the building whenever we needed to, I think we were more careful of it, because we cared what happened to it. We were allowed to experiment with the cameras, trying different effects, different ways of filming things…”

“I learned more about composition – written, oral and visual – than I learned in my two past years of High School English.”

“For anyone even vaguely interested in film-making this course was a dreamer’s dream.”

Elaine Summers’ Electric Kinetic Gymnasium at C.W. Post College on Long Island. “The plan is to immerse the walls in colliding superimposed images, intensifying the experience of movement as it occurs in athletics. There will be multitape bombardment, strobe light, and live music, and twenty-four projectors will be used to dissolve the gym.”

Young Filmmakers. The Film Club on Rivington Street on location. The Young Filmmakers Foundation, which has guided the Film Club program, is one of three organizations chosen by the Council for pilot work in financial assistance.

“Though public interest in the arts has increased markedly, the base of financial support has not broadened significantly. Because costs for labor and materials have risen, the gap between expenditures and income has widened. The new money needed to make up this difference has not been forthcoming, either in private contributions or government subsidy.” – Howard Taubman, The New York Times.

“A climate of anticipation – of more financial resources, of a more normal place in the economy, of wider public acceptance – has been engendered, and this climate on the one hand had made the search for funds more desperate and on the other has led the managers of artistic enterprises into unattainable plans for development.” – W. McNeil Lowry

High school students screen their own films in Yorktown. Photo: Vincent Clarkin
"We got things done fast because we wanted to see the results, not because some teacher said we ought to do it fast. Since we were trusted to take equipment out of the building whenever we needed to, I think we were more careful of it, because we cared what happened to it. We were allowed to experiment with the cameras, trying different effects, different ways of filming things…"

"I learned more about composition – written, oral and visual – than I learned in my two past years of High School English."

"For anyone even vaguely interested in film-making this course was a dreamer's dream."

"Though public interest in the arts has increased markedly, the base of financial support has not broadened significantly. Because costs for labor and materials have risen, the gap between expenditures and income has widened. The new money needed to make up this difference has not been forthcoming, either in private contributions, or government subsidy." – Howard Taubman, The New York Times.

"A climate of anticipation – of more financial resources, of a more normal place in the economy, of wider public acceptance – has been engendered, and this climate on the one hand had made the search for funds more desperate and on the other has led the managers of artistic enterprises into unattainable plans for development." – W. McNeil Lowry

NYSCA Film Program Funding
Funding for Film and Media by Other NYSCA Programs

Film Program

A shift of focus in the past year gave more prominence to Council aid to the making of films than in any of the Film Program's three previous years. While school and community requests for assistance that would expand opportunities for seeing good movies continued to receive high priority, a widening variety of filmmaking ventures was supported by Council grants. Such activities involved both young people and adults, and Council assistance ranged from a two-week residency for a film teacher at a Queens high school to continuing support for the year-round Channel of Soul film workshop at the Buffalo YWCA. In 1969-70 the Film Program also extended its area of activity to inspire students and adults to look more closely at television and to produce new images and sounds for the TV medium. Renewal of a substantial grant to the

Young Filmakers Foundation (now directed by Lynne Hofer, Rodger Larson, and Jaime Barrios) enabled the Foundation to continue its administration of the Film Club on Rivington Street in New York's Lower East Side and to provide advisory services in support of new and established film workshops in communities throughout the State. The Foundation's work with teen-age filmmakers included the production of such interpretative materials as film study guides for schools and institutions, television programs on the Icenage film, and a book. Young Filmmakers, by Rodger Larson. The Foundation has also been instrumental in setting up a Youth Film Distribution Center to enable films made by young people to reach a wider audience. Films distributed by the Center have now been seen by audiences of all ages in all The End by Alfonso Sanchez, Jr.- has been screened at the Cannes Film Amsterdam.  he is meeting with students and teachers to discuss the unique properties of television and with station personnel to challenge prevailing concepts of what constitutes "proper" television. In each city students and station engineers will ultimately cooperate in the production of videotapes that conceivably-in their use of patterns, sounds, and images-may influence television in much the same way that underground films have affected ideas of what is "acceptable" in the motion picture. Horace Mann School in the Bronx was also supported by the Council. In Tuckahoe, the Loft Film and Theatre Center of Bronxville sponsored a summer film workshop for young people that is continuing as a year-round storefront film studio. In Albany's South End, grammar school girls and boys as well as some teen-agers learned the fundamentals of filmmaking in a project sponsored by the Council and the Upper Hudson Library Federation. summer months of 1969. The Suffolk County Regional Center sponsored workshops in film for teachers, school administrators, and curriculum specialists in which the opportunity to meet with filmmakers was a primary consideration. The Council also aided a second in-service course for teachers sponsored by the Rochester Area English Council, and has helped an ambitious film festival including appearances by filmmakers and film critics at Niagara University.

Burnt Hills High School in Saratoga County. Here, on each of six evenings, 350 students and 350 adults gathered to look at movies and talk about them afterward. In 1969-70 the program has been expanded to nine evenings. Similar series supported by the Council were sponsored in other parts of the State by the Columbia County Council on the Arts, the Bay Area Friends of the Fine Arts in Bayport, L.I., the Hoosick Falls Central School District, Peekskill City School District, Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts and the Konan Center in Lockport. In general, grants to schools and colleges to increase the number of films shown in film courses and to help toward appearances by film specialists showed a growth over previous years. At New York City's Phoenix House, a rehabilitative center for narcotics addicts, a series of films was followed by discussions with film critic Susan Rice. A likely outgrowth would be a filmmaking course in the center's arts program.

New York City. The premise--which the exuberant reactions of the audiences supported-was that older action films like The Adventures of Robin Hood, Broken Arrow, and The Day the Earth Stood Still are more appealing and engaging to children than many of the mechanical million-dollar studio productions of today. Whether film companies can be induced to re-release such older films commercially so that they can be seen by new audiences of school-age children remains to be seen.

Peter Bradley

Four-year comparison of the Film Program's aid to community film series, film courses, and film speakers' appearances
Council Support
Local Support
Sponsors
1969-70 *
$ 20,000
$ 47,200
71
1968-69 **
17,100
32,700
62
1967-68
11,600
21,840
32
1966-68
8,600
8,000
5

**Revised after the previous annual report.

Grants for film rentals to schools and colleges in 1969
Parenthetical numbers refer to multiple grants. An asterisk (*) indicates a grant supported by 1968-69 funds.  

Community
Alfred Alfred University
Annandale-on-Hudson Bard College
Bronx Horace Mann School
Brooklyn Brooklyn College of Ihe City University of New York (2)*, Grover Cleveland High School
Burnt Hills Hills-Ballston Lake High School
CanandaiguaCanandaigua Academy
Cooperstown New York State Historical Association
EllenvilleEllenville High School
Great NeckNorth Shore Community Arts Center
Hempstead Hofstra University
Lockport Kenan Center
Long Beach Long Beach High School
New Rochelle
New York CityElizabeth Irwin High School
Ossining Ossining High School
PatchoguePatchogue-Medford High School*
Peekskill Peekskill High School
Scarsdale Scarsdale High School*
SparkillSt. Thomas Aquinas College*
Stone RidgeUlster County Community College
Yorktown Heights Yorktown High School*

Speakers' appearances arranged by the Film Program in 1969.
Parenthetical numbers refer to multiple appearances. An asterisk (*) indicates a grant supported by 1968-69 funds. 
Community
Annandale-on-Hudson
Briarcliff Manor
Brightwaters
Canandaigua
Ellenville
Farmingdale
Garden CityCarson Davidson, Gordon Hitchens, Sidney Meyers
Great Neck
Guilderland
Highland Falls
HuntingtonRodger Larson, Frederick Wiseman
New York City Carson Davidson*, Martin Dworkin (2), Rodger Larson*,A. D. Malmfelt, Adrienne Mancia, William Sloan
Niagara Falls
Rochester
Smithtown Community Sponsor
Alfred Alfred University 
Annandale-on-Hudson Bard College
Bronx Horace Mann School
Brooklyn Brooklyn College of Ihe City University of New York (2)*, Crover Cleveland High School
Burnt Hills Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake High School
Canandaigua Canandaigua Academy
Cooperstown New York State Historical Association
Elenville Ellenville High School
Great Neck North Shore Community Arts Center
Hempstead Hofstra University
Lockport Kenan Center
Long Beach Long Beach High School
New Rochelle College of New Rochelle, Iona College
New York City Convent of the Sacred Heart, Elizabeth Irwin High School
Ossining Ossining High School
Patchogue Patchogue-Medford High School*
Peekskill Peekskill High School
Scarsdale Scarsdale High School*
Sparkill St. Thomas Aquinas College* 
Stone Ridge Ulster County Community College
Yorktown Heights Yorktown High School*

1969-1970 Funding for film, television and multimedia by other programs

The listings under each program area are selected from the NYSCA final report. We have not included projects where it was not clear that media was integrated into the project, or where media was used as an informational or documentary technique or a transmission medium for another art form. Some of the descriptions have been excerpted, indicated by brackets, if the supported activities were not media-related. 

-  Constance Eiseman

Ghetto Arts Program
The Ghetto Arts Program provides artists in ghetto communities with the opportunity to develop their talents and present their work, and acts generally to encourage activities that relate art to the everyday life of the ghetto. It aims at involving in its work professional minority artists who recognize a stake in the communities in which they themselves developed and in which they continue to live. placed new emphasis on upstate communities and -  Donald Harper and Barbara Lawrence

Dance   Performing Arts - Festival Program
New York State probably has a greater range of festivals than any other state in the country, and a visitor can seek out a festival of rock music, rural folk craft, contemporary American jazz or street theatre at almost any time. In its second year the Council's Festival Program has continued to provide assistance with the special problems festivals face because of lack of permanent staff and shortness of season. An attempt has been made to aid festivals that represent outstanding artistic excellence and strong community involvement.- Phillip Hyde  
   Museum Aid
of Rochester Museum ScienceCenter – Staff supplementation with an assistant curator of history (second and third year) and with a curator of technology (second year).

Traveling Exhibitions
  urban renewal agency troubled with evaluation of The continuing need for the Council's Technical Assistance program is evident from the number of letters requesting authoritative advice on an- Rudolph Nashan ScarsdaleHigh School – setting up film course for curriculum

Elaine Summers, of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, to explore the aesthetics of sports and demonstrate aesthetic utilization of non-artistic environments by creating a "total environment" or structured performance, using the techniques of intermedia in the gymnasium of C.W. Post College on Long Island.

The Film and