History
Undercurrents is an alternative news agency which came into being in 1994 with a VHS videocassette of news which the founders (Jamie Hartzell, Paul O'Connor, Zoe Broughton,and Thomas Harding (publisher)) felt were not being addressed by the mainstream media. One of the issues covered was the introduction of the Criminal Justice Bill, whose varied measures included attempts to curtail large gatherings both of travelers and raves and make direct action protest a criminal offense. A second video compilation was released before the end of the year. Bands such as the Levellers included Undercurrents references on their CD sleeves. Radiohead have donated funds and Comedian Mark Thomas allowed undercurrents to produce and distribute his first DVD to raise funds.Undercurrents was amongst the first groups which coined the phrase 'video activism'- the use of camcorders for social change. A co-founder, Thomas Harding, wrote the video activist handbook published by Pluto Press. Undercurrents now distribute films via DVD and in 2009 they launched visionOntv - a Peer to Peer TV channel over internet.
Many of the video activists who worked at Undercurrents went on to work at Oxford Channel including Roddy Mansfield, Jason Torrance, Thomas Harding and Debora Harding. But they found that TV was not the way forward and Undercurrents continued to distribute via DVD and community screenings. They host the annual BeyondTV international Film festival in Swansea and tour the Summer festivals with a compilation of radical and empowering films.In 2009 they launched The Sol Cinema a micro touring cinema powered by lithium batteries and designed by Jo Furlong. Undercurrents has won a number of awards including Digital Hero awards 2011, as well as film festivals in Germany, Tokyo, France, USA, UK and Czech republic.
Read more about this topic: Undercurrents (news)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)