The Newsreel

This article is about filmmaking collective. For the type of film using news footage, see Newsreel.
The Newsreel film collective logo

The Newsreel, most frequently called Newsreel, was an American filmmaking collective founded in New York City in late 1967. In keeping with the radical student/youth, antiwar and Black power movements of the time, the group explicitly described its purpose as using "films and other propaganda in aiding the revolutionary movement." The organization quickly established other chapters in San Francisco, Boston, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and Puerto Rico, and soon claimed "150 full time activists in its 9 regional offices." Co-founder Robert Kramer called for "films that unnerve, that shake people's assumptions…[that] explode like grenades in people’s faces, or open minds like a good can opener."[1] Their film's production logo was a flashing graphic of The Newsreel moving in and out violently in cadence with the staccato sounds of a machine gun (see animated clip at right). A contemporary issue of Film Quarterly described it as "the cinematic equivalent of Leroi Jones's line 'I want poems that can shoot bullets.'"[2]: p.18  The films produced by Newsreel soon became regular viewing at leftwing political gatherings during the late 1960s and early 1970s; seen in "parks, church basements, on the walls of buildings, in union halls, even at Woodstock."[2]: p.10  This history has been largely ignored by film and academic historians causing the academic Nathan Rosenberger to remark: "it is curious that Newsreel only occasionally shows up in historical studies of the decade."[3]: p.1 [4]: 70 [5][6]

The Newsreel logo—animated clip with the staccato sounds of a machine gun

While the political left, Western intellectuals and cinephiles[7] of those times often appreciated Newsreel's films, some critics also recognized their quality and the talent involved. An investigator for the House Committee on Internal Security observed during Congressional hearings: "although they are very peculiarly dressed and look rather peculiar...they do have some film-making talent because many of those films are quality films although they are extremely propagandistic and distorted. They are well put together."[8]: p.2315 

  1. ^ Young, Cynthia A. (3 January 2007). Soul Power: Culture, Radicalism, and the Making of a U.S. Third World Left. Duke University Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0822336792.
  2. ^ a b "Reflections on Progressive Media Since 1968" (PDF). twn.org. Retrieved 2022-07-21.
  3. ^ Rosenberger, Nathan. "Fighting With Film". academia.edu. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  4. ^ Sherman, Jake Noah (2014). The American New Left and its 'New Media' (BA). The University of British Columbia, The Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences.
  5. ^ Fruchter, Norm; Buck, Marilyn; Ross, Karen; Robert, Kramer (Winter 1968). "Newsreel on Newsreel". Film Quarterly. 22 (2). University of California Press: 43. doi:10.2307/4621425. JSTOR 4621425.
  6. ^ Cook, David A. (2002). Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. p. 426. ISBN 978-0684804637.
  7. ^ WR, Sex, and the Art of Radical Juxtaposition|Current|The Criterion Collection
  8. ^ Investigation of Students for a Democratic Society Hearings, Ninety-first Congress, First Session · Part 7. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1970. Retrieved 2022-08-05.