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about pan left  Support Pan Left, Engage with the Issues and Mediamakers of the Times I came to the University of Arizona fresh out of film school and seriously fired up about alternative, oppositional, activist media. My teachers had come of age in the political ferment of the 60s and 70s, when the new technologies of portable synch-sound 16mm cameras and video portapaks took media-making into the streets to document (and instigate) social change as it happened. Film and video collectives—Newsreel, TVTV, Ant Farm, Paper Tiger TV—were key participants in the Civil Rights, anti-war, women’s liberation, gay rights and other countercultural movements that defined the years between JFK and Reagan. When I started teaching at the U of A in 1991, I naively assumed that this new generation of college students would direct the same activist spirit to the political issues of their own era. I soon discovered, however, that most of them were hooked on Hollywood and pretty much indifferent to the likes of Marlon Riggs’ groundbreaking “Tongues Untied” or Ellen Spiro’s AIDS education video “DiAna’s Hair Ego.” These students had grown up with Reagan and Bush the Elder in the White House, and the country had lurched far to the right since my own college days in the 70s. But one semester, very early in my UA Media Arts career, something incredible happened. To my delight and amazement, two of my smartest and most talented video production students were marvelously out of step with their apolitical Gen X cohorts. Not only did Pan Left co-founders Lisa Wise and Jeff Imig connect with the progressive media collectives of the 20s and 30s and 60s and 70s—they decided to create one themselves! When Pan Left was born, back in 1994, I was thrilled to pieces. But given the short lifespans of so many media collectives that went before them, and the fickle enthusiasms of young 20-somethings, I would never have imagined that Pan Left might still exist even two or three years later, let alone fifteen. But it turns out there were prospective Pan Lefties in nearly every class since: Vikki Dempsey (their Media Arts forbear, actually), Robert Luna, Heather Lares, Michelle Brown, Jason Aragon, Lenay Dunn, Jason Gallegos, Daniela Ontiveros, Jody Yazzie, Roxanna Porter. (And of course other terrific members whom I have not had the pleasure of teaching.) I am so impressed with how Pan Left has grown and flourished and partnered with so many other community organizations. They have done exactly as I had hoped my students might do, in those early years as a young professor: engaged passionately with the issues of their/our own time, in their/our own community and beyond. Immigration rights and border politics, LGBT experience, the imperiled Sonoran desert ecosystem, labor struggles, the peace movement. The fact that Pan Left is going stronger than ever, after fifteen years, is nothing short of historic. My former students have become teachers and community leaders. I am proud to support this vibrant organization that they have created and nurtured. Please join me and other supporters in celebrating Pan Left's achievements: Make a donation today. Looking forward to the 25th anniversary,
P.S. If you have already made your donation, thank you! If not, please make a donation today; your support helps Pan Left to support innovative projects, like Across the Tracks, produced by youth from the Dunbar Spring and Barrio Anita neighborhoods. No donation is too small...or too large. You can make a donation through PayPal, or by sending your check to: Pan Left Productions, 631 S. 6th Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85701 |
