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L.A. Stories: Community Spotlight

VC's Ghetto-Style Camera Harness

As inelegant as it was inventive, this handmade camera harness was developed by Visual Communications staffers in early 1979 to allow hand-held photography using VC's workhorse motion picture camera, the Eclair NPR — a 16mm camera that, with a 400-foot film magazine, could weigh as much as 40 pounds. This harness was put into service by cinematographers Dale Iwamasa and Takashi Fujii for VC's feature-length drama HITO HATA: RAISE THE BANNER.

This home-made steadicam exemplifies the resourcefulness and invention that characterized Visual Communications' approach to grassroots mediamaking. As an organization operating on a shoestring budget, the need to "make things work" with little money is evidenced in this item and its impact on the organization's work. Since its founding in 1970, Visual Communications has produced films, provided support services for Asian American artists and filmmakers, workshops and trainings for the community, and more presentation opportunities for independent media in Los Angeles.

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Los Angeles has long been multicultural, with peoples of different backgrounds finding a home and a place to create community. The stories told here spotlight communities little featured in traditional narratives of the city and county history. They include activism by the Chumash people, who predate California as a state, seeking to ensure the continuity and visibility of their history in Malibu. It also includes stories of African-American communities, Japanese-American communities, and activists defending the rights of day-laborers and street-vendors.
Contents of this path:
1. The Bank of Finance The Bank of Finance (2651 S. Western Avenue) was the first state-chartered, black-owned commercial bank in Los Angeles. It was established by Onie B. Granville, a local real estate broker who was frustrated by his clients’ difficulties in obtaining home loans and the discriminatory practices they faced when attempting to purchase property west of Western Avenue. Here, vault teller Dolores Anne Alfter is shown assisting a customer at the bank.
2. Christopher St. West The first-ever U.S. gay pride parade was held in Los Angeles in June 1970, on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots on Christopher Street in NYC. It was the only “street closing” gay pride parade held that year. This poster promotes the second Christopher St. West parade held in L.A. No offset printer was willing to print it until organizers contacted Peace Press, a workers’ collective founded by anti-Vietnam War activists in 1967.
3. Cross Burning is Racist Terror-Stop the Klan This poster documents the 1983 burning of three crosses in Kagel Canyon, an ethnically diverse community in Los Angeles County. This was the first known collaboration in U.S. history of the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation and the U.S. Nazis. Fifteen Neo-Nazis and Klan members were initially charged, but only 4 were ultimately tried and convicted in 1991, including Tom Metzger, a former KKK Grand Dragon and founder of the White Aryan Resistance.
4. Happening House: 102 East Indigo Street Front of Happening House: 102 East Indigo Street; white house with a green roof; the sign reads 'Communicative Arts Academy' in front of the house to the right of the front door; a person sitting on a chair under the front door roof; some garbage in the left foreground and a yellow fireplug right of the center foreground; a tree and lawn.
  
  The Compton Communicative Arts Academy was one expression of a vibrant community arts movement that developed in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities during the late 1960s. In L.A., this movement included Self-Help Graphics and the mural program that became SPARC, among other groups. The community arts movement opposed the elite and Eurocentric biases of the City’s dominant artistic institutions and the nearly wholesale exclusion of artists of color from exhibits, galleries, and museums. Participants believed that all people need and deserve expressive outlets, that art can be a powerful force for positive social change, and that the arts are vital to the building of strong communities.
5. Musical performance in courtyard of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Performance in the courtyard of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion fountain; one trumpet player standing; a man playing a maraca; one man playing the flute; other musicians in the background.
  
  The Compton Communicative Arts Academy was one expression of a vibrant community arts movement that developed in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities during the late 1960s. In L.A., this movement included Self-Help Graphics and the mural program that became SPARC, among other groups. The community arts movement opposed the elite and Eurocentric biases of the City’s dominant artistic institutions and the nearly wholesale exclusion of artists of color from exhibits, galleries, and museums. Participants believed that all people need and deserve expressive outlets, that art can be a powerful force for positive social change, and that the arts are vital to the building of strong communities.
6. The Chumash of Malibu Speak Out
7. The Chumash of Malibu Speak Out The Southern California chapter of the American Indian Movement (AIM) filed a lawsuit against the City of Malibu for failing to protect Chumash Native American cultural resources. A Malibu landowner complained that he was being charged too much for an archaeological study to be done prior to development of the land he acquired. The City of Malibu relented and granted reduced mitigation measures for the property. The Chumash, in addition to Malibu City’s Archaeologist, were certain that the land contained artifacts and important burial sites from the large Chumash village of Sumo. Read the article “AIM Sues Malibu for Site Approval” for more details (transcript below).
  
  [title] AIM sues Malibu over site approval
  [author]P.G. O’Malley, Staff Writer
  
  The Southern California Chapter of the American Indian Movement has filed a lawsuit against Malibu, charging the city with failing to protect Native American cultural resources.
  The action is the latest development in an escalating controversy that began in autumn 1994, when Malibu property owner Jack Skene complained he was being charged too much--$46,000—for an in-depth archaeological study by locally based Own Clan Consultants.
  The controversy culminated last month then when Malibu City Council approved reduced mitigation measures for Skene’s property.
  City Attorney Christi Hogin said the city will fight the suit based on the fact that the Statute of Limitations has run on the original City Council action that allowed Skene the reduced measures. AIM attorney Carol Houck says the suit is based on assertions by City Archaeologist Chester King that Skene’s property contains a site that “may represent he last and best of its kind,” with “artifacts and probably burial sites of tremendous cultural significance to Native Americans.”
  In a report to the city, King justified his opinion of the value of the site on research done on other known sites in the area and his own investigation of the site surface.
  King did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story.
  Pepperdine archaeologist Dr. Holly Love, who has been following the Skene conflict since the beginning, said, “The only way (King) can make such a claim would be to dig the site. As far as I know, he hasn’t done that. If he has, that means the city archaeologist has been trespassing on private property.”
  “We do not know about that site in its age or importance,” said Roberta Greenwood, a 30-year veteran of Southern California excavations, including in Malibu and the city archaeologist for San Juan Capistrano. Greenwood maintained there is no way to characterize a potential site without excavating it, despite what anyone might hypothesize from findings of other related or neighboring sites.
  William Bonner, whom Skene sought for a competitive Phase II bid, also challenged King’s assertion of the site as sacred. “There are clearly artifacts on the surface, but nothing that would indicate it’s the last intact site. Dr. King has a different opinion about the historical consequence (of Native American settlement). I don’t know anyone who would back him up.”
  
  [subtitle]‘Got it coming’
  Native American A-lil’koy Lotah, secretary of the Malibu Native American Cultural Resources Study Group, has no doubts about the significance of the site, which she says is the last remaining remnant of the Sumo, a Malibu village that reached as far as Point Dume. “It’s sacred because it’s old,” she said.
  Asked what should be done with the Skene property, Lotah said she didn’t think anyone should be allowed to live on it and that perhaps the city should buy it or Skene should donate it.
  “I think AIM is doing the right thing. Jack Skene has caused a lot of people hurt. He put native people against each other. He’s got it coming,” she said.
8. The Chumash of Malibu Speak Out The Southern California chapter of the American Indian Movement (AIM) filed a lawsuit against the City of Malibu for failing to protect Chumash Native American cultural resources. A Malibu landowner complained that he was being charged too much for an archaeological study to be done prior to development of the land he acquired. The City of Malibu relented and granted reduced mitigation measures for the property. The Chumash, in addition to Malibu City’s Archaeologist, were certain that the land contained artifacts and important burial sites from the large Chumash village of Sumo. Read the article “AIM Sues Malibu for Site Approval” for more details (transcript below).
  
  [title] AIM sues Malibu over site approval
  [author]P.G. O’Malley, Staff Writer
  
  The Southern California Chapter of the American Indian Movement has filed a lawsuit against Malibu, charging the city with failing to protect Native American cultural resources.
  The action is the latest development in an escalating controversy that began in autumn 1994, when Malibu property owner Jack Skene complained he was being charged too much--$46,000—for an in-depth archaeological study by locally based Own Clan Consultants.
  The controversy culminated last month then when Malibu City Council approved reduced mitigation measures for Skene’s property.
  City Attorney Christi Hogin said the city will fight the suit based on the fact that the Statute of Limitations has run on the original City Council action that allowed Skene the reduced measures. AIM attorney Carol Houck says the suit is based on assertions by City Archaeologist Chester King that Skene’s property contains a site that “may represent he last and best of its kind,” with “artifacts and probably burial sites of tremendous cultural significance to Native Americans.”
  In a report to the city, King justified his opinion of the value of the site on research done on other known sites in the area and his own investigation of the site surface.
  King did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this story.
  Pepperdine archaeologist Dr. Holly Love, who has been following the Skene conflict since the beginning, said, “The only way (King) can make such a claim would be to dig the site. As far as I know, he hasn’t done that. If he has, that means the city archaeologist has been trespassing on private property.”
  “We do not know about that site in its age or importance,” said Roberta Greenwood, a 30-year veteran of Southern California excavations, including in Malibu and the city archaeologist for San Juan Capistrano. Greenwood maintained there is no way to characterize a potential site without excavating it, despite what anyone might hypothesize from findings of other related or neighboring sites.
  William Bonner, whom Skene sought for a competitive Phase II bid, also challenged King’s assertion of the site as sacred. “There are clearly artifacts on the surface, but nothing that would indicate it’s the last intact site. Dr. King has a different opinion about the historical consequence (of Native American settlement). I don’t know anyone who would back him up.”
  
  [subtitle]‘Got it coming’
  Native American A-lil’koy Lotah, secretary of the Malibu Native American Cultural Resources Study Group, has no doubts about the significance of the site, which she says is the last remaining remnant of the Sumo, a Malibu village that reached as far as Point Dume. “It’s sacred because it’s old,” she said.
  Asked what should be done with the Skene property, Lotah said she didn’t think anyone should be allowed to live on it and that perhaps the city should buy it or Skene should donate it.
  “I think AIM is doing the right thing. Jack Skene has caused a lot of people hurt. He put native people against each other. He’s got it coming,” she said.
9. Oedipus Motorcycle Club Royal Dinner Members of the Oedipus Motorcycle Club pose in front of club banners at a Royal Dinner to honor the “coronation” of the new leader of the club, called Oedipus Rex. The men are all in their formal club uniforms of white vests and black shirts, some with sashes, medals, or pins. The Oedipus Rex and his court (back row, center) also wear white capes.
  
  The Oedipus Motorcycle Club was founded in 1958 is the second oldest gay motorcycle club in Los Angeles. The club was founded for the purpose of providing a welcoming environment for riders in gay communities, offering them a sanctuary where they could comfortably gather in groups without fear of persecution. Similar clubs continue their tradition to this day with monthly rides, promoting safe riding, and socializing for gay riders.
10. Kicheko Davis Discusses the First Celebration of Kwanzaa In this oral history interview audio clip, Kicheko Davis, a former member of the US organization discusses the why, how, and where of how she and fellow members of the organization created the now-internationally celebrated African American holiday, Kwanzaa.
  
  Kwanzaa is celebrated around the world most people are unaware of its Los Angeles origins. Or that it was created by the members of US, a black Nationalist organization located in Los Angeles.
11. Central Avenue street scene, Los Angeles, circa 1940s One African American man and six boys stand at the corner of Central Avenue and East Vernon Avenue. Across the street is the California Bank building with the dental office of Dr. J. G. Hatcher on the second floor. Central Avenue is a major north-south thoroughfare in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. From 1920 to 1955, it was the heart of the African-American community, with active rhythm and blues and jazz music scenes.
12. Central Avenue African American Couple Dancing, 1938
13. Five Star Liquor Store Central Avenue 1940s The Five Star Liquor Store was located at 4625 Central Avenue in Los Angeles, California. In the picture are (left to right: Leonard Senters, Clara Senters, an unidentified man, and an unidentified woman (possibly Hazel Senters). Central Avenue is a major north-south thoroughfare in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. From 1920 to 1955, it was the heart of the African-American community, with active rhythm and blues and jazz music scenes.
14. Former US member Kicheko Davis
15. Civil engineer Carlos Sebastian Lorente, and sculptor Sergio López-Mesa installing the José Martí monument in Echo Park, at José Martí Square, 1976. Ties between the Cuban community and Echo Park can be traced back more than sixty years. In the early 1960s, 14,000 exiled Cubans moved to Los Angeles and many settled in Echo Park, creating businesses, newspapers, and clubs. Known then as “Little Havana,” it was a gathering place for Cuban émigrés’ celebrations and anti-Castro protests. Still memorializing the cultural heritage of the Cuban community is the monument erected in 1976 of poet and patriot José Martí, by sculptor Sergio Lopez-Mesa (a replica is in USC’s Doheny Library).
16. VC's Ghetto-Style Camera Harness As inelegant as it was inventive, this handmade camera harness was developed by Visual Communications staffers in early 1979 to allow hand-held photography using VC's workhorse motion picture camera, the Eclair NPR — a 16mm camera that, with a 400-foot film magazine, could weigh as much as 40 pounds. This harness was put into service by cinematographers Dale Iwamasa and Takashi Fujii for VC's feature-length drama HITO HATA: RAISE THE BANNER.
  
  This home-made steadicam exemplifies the resourcefulness and invention that characterized Visual Communications' approach to grassroots mediamaking. As an organization operating on a shoestring budget, the need to "make things work" with little money is evidenced in this item and its impact on the organization's work. Since its founding in 1970, Visual Communications has produced films, provided support services for Asian American artists and filmmakers, workshops and trainings for the community, and more presentation opportunities for independent media in Los Angeles.
17. Technal A-I 650 Print Dryer Little-used since its acquisition by Visual Communications in the mid-1980s, the Technal A-I Model 650 sat unused while prints were air-dried on wire racks. However, it proved a valuable asset in 2009, when water damage threatened a recent acquisition — the 85,000-image collection of the late Eddie Oshiro, a photo hobbyist whose collection was inherited by VC in 2007. The Technal 650 proved indispensible as assets were cleaned and preserved from possible loss due to flooding.
  
  While the vast majority of Visual Communications' darkroom photography involved air-drying prints made from negatives and slides, this electric dryer played a little-known but vital role in rescuing a photo collection that was threatened by water damage. Since its founding in 1970, Visual Communications has produced films, provided support services for Asian American artists and filmmakers, workshops and trainings for the community, and more presentation opportunities for independent media in Los Angeles.
18. CWRIC Hearing Tapes 1981 In order to amplify the previously unknown stories of Japanese Americans whose lives were impacted by forced relocation and incarceration during WWII, Visual Communications and the National Coalition for Redress & Reparations made available highlights of the L.A. Hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). The tapes, mastered on uMatic broadcast video, were screened at various community events and helped to win public favor for monetary redress in 1988.
  
  The tapes pictured here went missing from Visual Communications' Archive for many decades, and have only recently been unearthed in San Diego and returned to the organization. Since its founding in 1970, Visual Communications has produced films, provided support services for Asian American artists and filmmakers, workshops and trainings for the community, and more presentation opportunities for independent media in Los Angeles.
19. Hay Milliones de Rostros Como Este This cartoon-like print, whose title translates to “there are millions of faces like this,” depicts a drawing of a “jornalero” or day laborer whose portrait consists of dozens of smaller faces. The faces are men and women, young and old, expressing joy, defeat, and everything in between. The raised fist in the top of the hat places the print in the context of worker and communal solidarity, making the ordinary jornalero a reflection of the unity and alliance among Latino workers throughout the nation.
20. Jornaleros en la Lucha
21. Vendedores En Acción #StreetVendorsDoc As part of Art Rise/WE RISE initiative, Self Help Graphics & Art presents Vendedores en Acción (Vendors in Action or VEA), a short documentary directed by Alvaro Parra, following six street vendors and also leaders of the VEA coalition of Los Angeles. The film highlights the long-term mental and emotional implications caused by their line of work, their fight to legalize street vending, and economic insecurity amplified by COVID-19.
22. New Officers for PV Woman's Club Newly elected club officers for the 1954-1955 season, with retiring president Mrs. Thomas King at center. In addition to a President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary, the Club also noted new representatives for the following sections: Book, Garden, Public Services Workshop, Bridge, Properties, Red Cross, Hospitality, Tea and Press Representative. The Club’s activities ranged from cultural and philanthropic events to church and civic affairs for the developing community.
  
  The Palos Verdes Women's Club, started in 1926, contributed in a number of ways to the development of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
23. California Federation of Women’s Club award luncheon Started in 1960, the Rolling Hills Estates Woman’s Club became part of the California Federation of Women’s Club in 1962. Like the Palos Verdes Women’s Club, it dedicated itself to public welfare, civic engagement and philanthropic projects. It sponsored volunteer service organizations for high school girls and contributed financially to local organizations including Toberman Settlement House, Rainbow Services for Battered Women, South Coast Botanic Gardens, the Norris Theatre Building Fund and Harbor Interfaith Shelter.

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Based in the Little Tokyo area of Downtown Los Angeles, VC was founded in 1970 by a group of pioneering independent filmmakers to record, collect, and preserve a visual record of Asian Pacific American cultural heritage. VC originally worked as a film collective, concentrating on honestly portraying accurate images of Asian Americans and meticulously capturing pivotal social movements. VC produced groundbreaking works about the Asian American experience, including: CHINATOWN 2-STEP, a documentary on the suburbanization of Chinese American community in Los Angeles and the role of the Chinatown Drum and Bugle Corps; MANONG, a film on the first generation Filipino American immigrants; and WATARIDORI, a documentary on early Japanese American immigrant pioneers. VC published three books, In Movement: A Pictorial History of Asian Pacific America, Little Tokyo: One Hundred Years in Pictures, and Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts. Productions were used for education and activism that addressed setting up ethnic studies programs on local campuses, city redevelopment issues, the redress campaign for Japanese Americans interned during World War II, and the declaration of martial law in the Philippines. VC's own past in all media, narrative films, documentaries and educational projects are intertwined with the Asian Pacific American movements of the 1970s, and in itself represents a rich resource for researchers of the Asian Pacific American movements. The Archives' purpose is to document the history of the organization by organizing, preserving, and creating access to a variety of media art and primary materials recording impactful political moments and depicting the Asian Pacific American heritage for staff use, as well as by scholars who are interested in Visual Communications' role in the Asian American communities and history. The holdings include over 300,000 photographic images, 1,500 titles in the Media Resource Library, 100 films and videos produced by Visual Communications, and over 1,000 hours of oral histories of pan-Asian Pacific American content. As a valuable resource of Asian media art representations, The Archives is open to a wide variety of users, and we encourage the public, artists, filmmakers, students, faculty and others to pursue an intercultural understanding of the Asian American heritage. VC's vision for the archives is to accurately reflect and represent the diversity of the American populace and to cement Asian Pacific American experiences in the historical record through the preservation, access, and dissemination of our materials, which provide historical context and insight of Asian Pacific American influence not only for Asian Pacific Americans, but also for all Americans.

https://vcmedia.org/
Contents of this tag:
1. Technal A-I 650 Print Dryer Little-used since its acquisition by Visual Communications in the mid-1980s, the Technal A-I Model 650 sat unused while prints were air-dried on wire racks. However, it proved a valuable asset in 2009, when water damage threatened a recent acquisition — the 85,000-image collection of the late Eddie Oshiro, a photo hobbyist whose collection was inherited by VC in 2007. The Technal 650 proved indispensible as assets were cleaned and preserved from possible loss due to flooding.
  
  While the vast majority of Visual Communications' darkroom photography involved air-drying prints made from negatives and slides, this electric dryer played a little-known but vital role in rescuing a photo collection that was threatened by water damage. Since its founding in 1970, Visual Communications has produced films, provided support services for Asian American artists and filmmakers, workshops and trainings for the community, and more presentation opportunities for independent media in Los Angeles.
2. VC's Ghetto-Style Camera Harness As inelegant as it was inventive, this handmade camera harness was developed by Visual Communications staffers in early 1979 to allow hand-held photography using VC's workhorse motion picture camera, the Eclair NPR — a 16mm camera that, with a 400-foot film magazine, could weigh as much as 40 pounds. This harness was put into service by cinematographers Dale Iwamasa and Takashi Fujii for VC's feature-length drama HITO HATA: RAISE THE BANNER.
  
  This home-made steadicam exemplifies the resourcefulness and invention that characterized Visual Communications' approach to grassroots mediamaking. As an organization operating on a shoestring budget, the need to "make things work" with little money is evidenced in this item and its impact on the organization's work. Since its founding in 1970, Visual Communications has produced films, provided support services for Asian American artists and filmmakers, workshops and trainings for the community, and more presentation opportunities for independent media in Los Angeles.
3. CWRIC Hearing Tapes 1981 In order to amplify the previously unknown stories of Japanese Americans whose lives were impacted by forced relocation and incarceration during WWII, Visual Communications and the National Coalition for Redress & Reparations made available highlights of the L.A. Hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC). The tapes, mastered on uMatic broadcast video, were screened at various community events and helped to win public favor for monetary redress in 1988.
  
  The tapes pictured here went missing from Visual Communications' Archive for many decades, and have only recently been unearthed in San Diego and returned to the organization. Since its founding in 1970, Visual Communications has produced films, provided support services for Asian American artists and filmmakers, workshops and trainings for the community, and more presentation opportunities for independent media in Los Angeles.