SPOTLIGHT: "Guerilla TV" Pioneers: Video-makers Eleanor Boyer & Karen Peugh with Wayne Boyer

Eleanor Boyer, Karen Peugh, and Wayne Boyer documented the Festival with video and photography. Although she was busy helping to run the Festival, photographer and MLEA staffer Diana Solís also took some photos that day.

Festival Video-makers and Photographers

ELEANOR BOYER          

I began making videotapes in the 1970's, shortly after Sony invented the portapak, freeing video from the TV studio and putting it into the hands of people outside the broadcast profession.  My goal was to create personal and institutional change by telling women’s stories, and by showing realistic feminine images, rather than the patriarchal stereotypes that dominated mass media.  These goals informed the FESTIVAL DE MUJERES video, which I made with Karen Peugh, documenting the 1979 women’s street festival organized by Mujeres Latinas en Accion.

In the early 1970's, as a member of the Chicago Videomakers Coalition and later of the Center for New TV, I was active in Chicago’s grassroots “Guerrilla TV” movement dedicated to giving voice to the views and concerns of common people traditionally overlooked by broadcast professionals and established media. From 1977 to 1985 I worked independently or in conjunction with women’s groups, such as the Loop YWCA, Mujeres Latinas en Acción, and Midwest Women’s Center, making tapes about rape, domestic abuse, women’s health, women in sports, and women in the arts.  Since 1987 I have produced videos with my husband, Wayne Boyer, working from our studio in Evanston, IL.

DID YOU KNOW that 1970s video equipment was so bulky that Eleanor Boyer and Karen Peugh wheeled it around in a baby carriage at the Festival?

Here's more information on Eleanor Boyer at mediaburn.org. You can also stream Media Burn Independent Video Archive's collection of her work from 1974-1987.

Watch a virtual talk with Eleanor Boyer with Media Burn from July, 2020.

KAREN PEUGH

Beginning in childhood I felt compelled to make images, and my family and teachers encouraged me. In my adult life I have been fortunate to study art and media, and to be empowered to teach others in K-12 public schools in Chicago, Milwaukee and the surrounding metro areas.

I started recording my life in elementary school using my mom’s Kodak box camera. I have been curious over the decades and learned to use different devices: Polaroid cameras, film and digital cameras - to document others’s lives as well as my own. I am inspired by women creating artwork, leading change in their communities and mentoring folks coming of age. In 1979 Eleanor Boyer and I created the video documentary Festival de Mujeres to reflect women using their power and imagination rooted in their families and in Chicago’s Pilsen Community. -Milwaukee, Wisconsin 2022                                                                                                        https://mag.uchicago.edu/law-policy-society/history-tape

WAYNE BOYER (1937, Chicago) began making animated films as a teenager when he discovered that his father’s 8mm movie camera had a single frame release. He went on to study at the Institute of Design and, along with Larry Janiak, headed the newly formed filmmaking division at Morton Goldsholl Design Associates, an award-winning graphics and industrial design studio. In 1965 he was invited by the University of Illinois at Chicago to establish a photography, film and animation program in the School of Art & Design. During his tenure there, he established his own studio, producing public service, educational, and personal experimental films. He was part of Chicago’s early underground filmmaking community and a member of the Center Cinema Coop, an artist-run distributor for independent films. He is currently Professor Emeritus at UIC.  https://chicagofilmarchives.org/current-events/wayne-boyer-and-larry-janiak-camera-and-line