The Story of British Video Activism

Explores the impact of portable video recording technology on the development of activism produced by different community groups between the late 1960s and early 1990s.

The coming of videotape, cheaper and more flexible than film, transformed the production and distribution of moving images, and political activists were among the first to recognise its potential. The Story of British Video Activism is the first book-length account of this vitally innovative but unjustly neglected filmmaking. Ed Webb-Ingall traces the democratising impact of portable video recording technology from the late 1960s to the early 21st century. He introduces pioneering and dynamic videomakers from John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins to Liberation Films and Ceddo Film and Video Workshop, showing how video played a powerful role in local and national campaigns on issues including housing, labour struggles and racial justice.

This book reveals the grassroots radicalism of generations of video activists who put cameras in the hands of campaigners and marginalised groups to equip them to challenge authority and fight for tangible change. Close-Ups highlight innovative hardware and campaigns from the miners’ strike to AIDS activism. Webb-Ingall shows that the spirit of analogue videotape lives on in today’s digital video activism.