Groups like ACT-UP (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power), Queer Nation-Minnesota, Radical Faeries, and the DFL (Democratic Farmer Labor Party) Gay and Lesbian Caucus successfully brought controversial sexual issues to public attention and succeeded in gaining new legal rights for sexual orientation and for protecting people with AIDS.  

The Emma Anarchist Center and a group called Up and Out of Poverty also brought the public’s attention to the needs of homeless youth.  All of these groups used non-violent actions, which are events that attract the attention of the public and the mass media, to get action on their issues--and they produced these events with little or no cost.  

As I participated in brainstorming sessions, discussion groups, conventions, and non-violent actions, I felt that I should document the look and the feel of the period of political change.  I felt that a video about AIDS and homeless youth would reflect the period of change with the greatest accuracy--but I was unsure how I would organize and produce the program.

From Queer Nation--Minnesota, I became aware of how easily a group seeking social change can attract the attention of the public and the media in the United States, encouraged by the U. S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights--providing a free press, free speech, and free public assembly.   All of theses rights give American community groups the opportunity to express themselves, and putting them into action does not have to be expensive or dangerous. 

These rights extend to American independent film makers--encouraging my interest in producing a film about AIDS and homeless youth.

In the United States, a group of young adults can freely attract the attention of the print, television and radio media at almost no cost, and if they act non-violently and satisfy community regulations, without fear of arrest.  

Queer Nation--Minnesota may be an outstanding example of a public affairs and media co-productions group that attempted to capture the attention of the public in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota.  Each of the sustaining volunteers in Queer Nation--Minnesota were also accomplished independent media producers.  

One, a young college freshman who spoke freely for gay rights and was elected as an official of the Minnesota Student Association, also produced an educational videotape for the Youth and AIDS Project.  A young lesbian woman--who later joined the staff of the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and founded a new world-wide-web site for streaming gay and lesbian films--and her young gay male companion-- were the organizers of the local gay and lesbian film festival in Minneapolis and St. Paul.   A fourth member, who also moved to San Francisco,  published a lively and humorous erotic arts and literature magazine in Minnesota and coordinated the outstanding local film society’s events with his companion from the Radical Faeries group.  And I had attended seminars at the American Film Institute and produced technical films about male impotence treatments. 

The combination of these talents created Queer Nation--Minnesota, a collective media group that came visible in communities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.  As the group gained influence,  the public became more concerned about the violent deaths of gay men, AIDS, and AIDS-related violence, and about extending rights of non-discrimination to people who are gay, lesbian, and bisexual.  Queer nation--Minnesota produced approximately 25 non-violent actions that television, radio, and newspapers recorded.  The events came at almost no cost to the groups, but involved the multi-million dollar media technology of local television, radio, and newspapers.

I felt that I should produce my AIDS film with a style, technique, and budget that would complement the actions of Queer Nation--Minnesota.  

Queer Nation’s actions started as the group visited local bars and stores, showing its pride in being openly queer with T-shirts, signs, and dancing.  At one bar, called Hoops, the group members rotated fluorescent colored hoops around their hips, after the media alleged that a young man murdered a local political official who was thought to be gay.

To attract public attention to the need for a sexual orientation clause in the Minnesota human rights ordinance and for the same rights in the University of Minnesota’s Reserve Officer’s Training Corp (ROTC) , Queer Nation-Minnesota and the Progressive Students Organization dropped a colorful and radically designed 25-foot banner from the roof the University of Minnesota President’s office, while the participating group members were dressed in uniforms---in the sight of the major Twin Cities media.   

To again protest the reported shooting of another gay city administrator in a city park, the group cooperated with a consortium of activists to stage a march on the Minneapolis City Hall--1,500 people participated in the march, which had a cost of just $150.00, to pay for a black and fluorescent green banner, an advertisement on a progressive radio station, and a permit to use the street and the city hall.  This brought the attention of all of the television stations and the newspapers.  

To respond to the University of Minnesota reducing the impact of gay activism, Queer Nation produced fluorescent red stickers that told students to stop discrimination against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.  And for just a few dollars, Queer Nation produced dozens of different humorous stickers in a sans-serif  black-and-white type that young adults could attach to walls, lamp posts, books, and windows.   The group distributed thousands of these stickers and sold them at the local gay and lesbian festivals.  And again to remind the public of the violent death of another gay citizen, the group gathered in a city park to mourn a body in a black body  bag--in the presence of television cameras and newspaper photographers.

I wanted my video about AIDS and homeless youth to reflect the color, safety, and economy of Queer Nation--Minnesota’s radical actions and to use the inexpensive resources of the local electronic media to reach thousands of members of the public with my message about AIDS.

I wrote a complete proposal with a red cover for an AIDS documentary television series for ITVS (Independent Television Services) and PBS (Public Broadcasting System).   I personally delivered a copy of the proposal to the Congressional sponsors of ITVS in Washington, DC. 

While I was leaving the House of Representative’s Office Building in Washington, DC, I saw a black limousine parked on the street between the office building and the Capital building.  A young woman was waiting on the side walk beside me.  I asked her if she knew where I  could go to eat lunch. She seemed busy, and she wasn’t nice when she said no to me.  I decided to wait because the woman and other people were beginning to gather around the limousine.  A dark-skinned man, who seemed to be a secret service agent,  holding a hearing aid in his ear, walked onto the side walk.  I waited as the doors of the office building where I had just visited opened.  Mikhail Gorbachev, Rasa, and a man who appeared to be Slobodan Milosevic, and their aides walked out the door of the building. They waited quietly on the side walk. Finally they entered black and silver limousines that had been waiting, and a handful of people leaned over the windshield of the black limousine to wave to the occupants. I don’t know why they were in Washington, DC, that day, but now a few years later we’ve had a war with Milosovic.

I received a letter from ITVS that said another producer, AIDS Films, received the grant to produce the AIDS television series for ITVS.       

After I attended a series of ACT UP meetings, where I mentioned that I would like to produce an AIDS film, an ACT UP member referred another producer to my attention. He was Steve Schumacher, a Dan-Rather-like film maker.  He was also a student at the local art college, Minneapolis College of Art and Design.  He told ACT UP the he was also interested in producing a film about AIDS.  He telephoned me and asked me how I could help him produce his film, which he would complete as a final project for his graduation from the college.  

I explained that I had produced several medical technical films about sexual dysfunction treatments, and that I could help to write, produce, and sponsor an AIDS film with my own savings.  He said that he had excellent film direction experience, but no money--so our cooperation seemed ideal. Steve, a senior student, had already produced one black-and-white AIDS video for  a local AIDS hospice, which used interviews with the hospice members and excerpts from other producer’s films, and he was excited to embark on another project--his final project at the art college.   

I said that I would like to use all original material in the video that we would produce together.  

For one month we met one afternoon a week to discuss our plans.  I would write the script, the student and his friend, an experienced video editor, would help shoot the video and produce an off-line (rough-cut) edit, and I would supervise the on-line edit.

We choose to seek the support of the Youth and AIDS Project, an agency of the University of Minnesota that educated homeless youth.  I

Together, Steve and I identified groups the would provide the testimonials of homeless youth.  I contacted the groups and scheduled personal interviews with their volunteer speakers, who were also homeless and disadvantaged youth or young adults.  We scheduled the interviews for two evening shooting sessions.

I wrote the interview questions and the dialogue for a couple who would disagree with each other about using a condom. I had been reading plays by David Mamet, so I wrote a simple dialogue in the style of Mamet.     

Steve finished animation of colorful condoms falling down the screen-- like rain--in his animation class.  His animation instructor explained how to finish the animation.  

Steve scheduled time for our shoot at his college’s video studio, a large sound studio with a seamless background and overhead lighting. The studio was free.  His film teacher assisted him as he planned the interview sessions, blocking the shots for the interviews. 

We studied the studio a few days before we set up.  I suggested that we should use a black background behind the interview subjects and project a red triangle and a white triangle using scrims.  I had made a successful drawing at the University of Minnesota that imitated animation using black triangles in a yellow grid. We decided to change the positions of the triangles in the background of the studio for each interview. We also decided to shoot the interviews as head and shoulders shots.     

I rented my broadcast quality beta cam video equipment, lights, camera operator, and grip from my favored production company for half price--$400.00, and the student producer also planned to bring his camera. 

The afternoon we started to set up the studio, I left to go to the bank to pick up cash to pay the interview subjects ($25.00 each) and to pay for the crew.  I left Steve to finish the set.  His teacher and other students were in the studio.  When I returned about an hour later, he had set up the scrims and 6-foot high diffusing panels that would diffuse the light on the interview subjects' faces.  I was surprised the Steve had considered the soft look of diffused light. 

Now six years later, I realized that using the black background and head-and-shoulders shots reduced the band width of the video, so Reel Mind, the video’s web host, could satisfactorily digitize the program.  In 1994 I wasn’t thinking about the requirements of the world wide web.  Maybe I satisfied them with intuition.   

In two nights, we recorded interviews with the AIDS outreach speakers who volunteered to participate in the videotape.  They had never met as a group, and we had never met them before the interviews began.  The volunteers waited in the studio hallway, eating low-sugar beverages and food. 

I interviewed the volunteers alone or in pairs.   Steve, Steve’s room-mate and video-editor Phil, the grip from my video service, and the camera operators from video service were in the studio during the interviews.  

At the American Film Institute’s documentary video seminar in Los Angeles I had learned to use an interview technique that produces close-ups of personal responses from the interview subjects.  I was not on camera, because the camera lens was nearly touching my cheek as I spoke to the volunteer in front of me. 

A few days after we finished the interviews,  we rented space in a city park, where we would record student actors, a man and woman, from the University of Minnesota Drama Department, as they negotiated using condoms before their marriage.   I thought we should create this misenscene segment to provide a break from the interview shots, and to give Steve more experience in shooting soap-opera-style scenes.  But it was April, and the temperature outside was still below zero. 

I chose to shoot in an indoor park, a unique building with trees, stone- paved walking paths, rocky grottos, a water fall, a skating rink, a swimming pool, and a wired stage at the Edinborough Park in Edina, Minnesota.  The shooting permit cost $100.00 per hour, but we shot the scene in about 30 minutes.  

The day we arrived at the indoor park was the same day that hundreds of children also arrived at the usually quiet park for their Easter vacation fun.  Nevertheless in front of the water falls, Steve recorded each actors’ dialogue in separate close ups and used a medium shot to record the complete dialogue from both actors.  By the time I cashed a check to pay the actors at the adjoining hotel’s desk, Steve and Phil were finished shooting the scene. 

In the video, the actors in front of the water falls, portraying homeless youth, decide to go for a walk instead of becoming more sexually involved with each other.  They decide to delay sex until marriage.  The two actors that Steve found at the University of Minnesota, his friends, were engaged.  Three  days after we shot the scene they got married. 

I logged the shots for the video and created an editing script, using window burn time codes on 1/2” VHS tapes.  Logging the shots required about 6 hours using my home video tape player.   Steve and Phil had to moved to Wisconsin, because Steve got a video production job there, and he had finished his school work, except for the final video project.  I sent the tapes and the editing script to Steve in Wisconsin, and Steve and Phil made the off line edit of the program at a television station in there.  Steve came back to Minneapolis with the off line edit, which we reviewed together. 

We discussed the title of the film at the same time we reviewed the off line edit.  I wanted to emphasize a single concept, so I started with the title "Condoms or Not?"  But I thought  the title was too negative, so I suggested "Talking about Condoms, " saying the the show was really just that-- a discussion about condoms with out  sexual pictures.  I thought we could write a song too. 

Steve suggested that we should use the name "Dickering..."        

I supervised the on-line beta cam edit at my video service in St. Paul, Minnesota.  The online editor and I finished the on-line edit in about 5 hours, using the editing codes that Steve and Phil provided. 

I delivered a U-matic copy of the finished show to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for Steve’s senior show.  I had to bring a second copy to the show, because I credited Steve as Steven.  I learned that Steve hates the name Steven. 

The graduating students, their parents, and the staff viewed the show along with other excellent student films on a Friday and Saturday night during the student show. Talking about Condoms was more timely and news-like than the other shows, which were humorous or more abstract.  Steve preferred the documentary news style in his films.

After the senior show, I mailed copies of the program to local community groups, and theYouth and AIDS Project, which was the group that we intended would use the video for homeless youth without charge.

I also mailed a copy of Talking about Condoms to the American Film Institute, because I had attended their courses in Los Angeles and in New York, in addition to having film and broadcast production training at the University of Minnesota, where I received a master of arts degree in mass communication, and set design training at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. 

A few weeks later I scheduled the video on the cable-television community-access channel in my neighborhood.  The access channel had an office in the city hall, in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.  The access channel manager recommended scheduling the video for a late night time slot, so we played the videotape on Saturday and Sunday night over the Memorial Day weekend, four times each night, starting at 10:00 PM .   I received no complaints about subject of the video tape from the viewers in St. Louis Park.

We started planning Talking about Condoms  in late 1993 and finished in May of 1994. Now in the year 2000, Reel Mind has provided the opportunity to show independent films on the world wide web. 

As soon as my web cinema list serve announced that that Reel Mind was looking for films, I sent my beta cam master tape to a local video studio to make a beta cam dub master.  Having a new safety copy, I sent the original beta cam master to Reel Mind, and a week later, the video was on the world wide web at http://www.ReelMind.com.  On the first day, 46 people downloaded the video, and the number of viewers has continued to increase every day.  At the time I’m writing this story in mid-May, 2000, I’ve has 226 viewers. I’ve had a request to purchase a copy of the program, and I’ve received several messages about the show on the Reel Mind message board.  I am also writing a news release that announces Talking about Condoms  showing on Reel Mind.  I will mail the news release to interested community groups around the United Sates.    

Producing Talking about Condoms  proved that independent producers, including student producers, can produce interesting video documentaries for a low cost in the United States using school and community resources, get cooperation from community groups,  and find arts and community audiences for them.

Being able to show a documentary video on community access cable television and more recently on the world wide web greatly increases the impact that an independent documentary can have in any American community. 

The Man Who Died

From Corporate Report Minnesota, October, November, 1992

"When police found the man shot dead near the Mississippi River, his Rolex watch was the only hint that he once controlled almost a billion dollars with just a flick of the wrist.

"More than a few people probably breathed a sigh of relief when they found out the victim was John Chenoweth, former state senator and executive director of the Minneapolis Employees Retirement Fund (MERF).  Although his death was tragic, it was emblematic of how he lived.  Reports that he was HIV-positive may help to explain the personal risks he took, but Chenoweth's improvement tenure at MERF was girded with the explicit or tacit approval of politicians and officials who should have known him better." 1 

"The movie MERF funded, Return to the River Kwai, has never had a U. S. release because of litigation threatened over the name of the film.  But

the MERF staff did get a screening of the film--which was brought to them by Jack Summers of ATL--one afternoon at the Skyway Theater.

"It was awful, "recalls [former MERF accountant Bruce]Nolan. "It starred Sean Penn's fatter brother, Chris, and he was runnning around with his shirt off for most of the movie.   It was all we could do keep from laughing out loud.  I mean, the movie was supposed to be taking place in the '40s and in one of the scenes near the end, there was one of those big, modern supertankers clearly visible.

"Perhaps the best thing about the Return to the River Kwai is that, uncharacteristically, MERF has been able to recover all of its $2 million investment in the project." 2

Quotations used with out permission. Do not reproduce without the permision of Corporate Report Minnesota.

1. Carr D: "Over the edge," Corporate Report Minnesota, October 1992, pages 28-35;

2. ibid, part II, November 1992, pages 57-65