The Variety Show is a video vaudeville experience curated from remix videos, found footage and documentary shorts loosely based around a theme.
Variety #6: RzUP: The Cure-All to Electile Dysfunction
November 15, 2012
No matter who’s elected, the system wins, so we may as well die bold (laughing).
Electile Dysfunction is 45 minutes of remix video art bringing you the best political gaffes and education money can’t buy: The damned lies of Margaret Thatcher, communities resisting foreclosure and gentrification by taking back their homes, candidates like Vermin Supreme who are not, unfortunately, on your ballot, the scary history of the 14th Amendment and how it brought us corporate personhood, and breaking news about the Post Office’s new proposal to deliver mail by F16s.
The latest installment of B Media’s Variety Show, a collaborative piece of video vaudeville for the masses, Electile Dysfunction rises to the occasion, even if our nationhood can’t.
Variety #5: Occupation Nation
March 30, 2012
An hour-long movie of remixed shorts that explore the philosophical roots of the recent movement of the 99%. As zombie banksters threaten to consume all that’s left of our spectacular society, B Media’s fifth video variety show showcases the mycelia network of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Deeply rooted in historical and international precedents that have the potential to turn toxic assets and discarded derivatives into new communities where shared vision and collective decision making empowers us all.
The film calls on our collective conscience to remember the Oaxacan teacher strikes and the Bonus Army, and it explores this new technological globalrevolution by riffing on the work of video ninjas everywhere. Darryl Mitchell and David Graeber’s dialectics break down the bricks of Wall Street, PeeWee Herman interviews Emma Goldman about the black bloc, Mr. Bean gets peppersprayed, and Obama is mic-checked in his Disney World as the police protect the smart ALEC’s running the show.
Special halftime appearance by Clint Eastwood, and Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction.
Variety #4: Freedumb Fries
September 16, 2011
This stupor-sized serving of Freedumb Fries is a comedy of terrors featuring Beyoncé home videos gone wrong, homeless camp ins at the the famous rose-petals-covering-horse-poop Rose Parade, the story of anti-war veteran Brian Willson, and an animated guide to counterinsurgency by a budding scholar. We decided to Super-size this edition to include spotlights on In Other Words’ lending library, a visionary community effort by the last non-profit feminist bookstore in the country, and a feature on the recent crackdown on public art murals in Portland, and the artists who just keep on painting.
Variety Tree: Earth Day, Inc.
June 17, 2011
This episode mixes and mashes indigenous and environmental rights struggles against the Alberta Tar Sands project in Hood River, the Bank of America’s financing of dirty coal, City Repair’s Earth Day festival, the economic justice rally in solidarity with Wisconsin, and ties it together with Slingshot’s radical history of April (the cruelest month), an unexpected visit by a cadre of Unemployed Superheros… and YouTube cat videos.
Variety Too: “A Day Called X”
April 12, 2011
Portland Day “X” – Reigning bombs on Libya – Remembering 8 years of invasion (and many more) – Terrorist organizations at City Hall – Men behind curtains – Bradley Manning in the clink – Biomass action – Nuclear tea – Atomic animation – Outsourcing to Korea – Oli North – Rayguns and assassins – Drive in theaters.
Verité # 1: Solidarity 4-Ever!
March 16, 2011
The first of a monthly media mash of forgotten histories, breaking stories and beautified b-roll. Includes drive-in theater, student wave of global action, wheels and levers of the machine at Berkeley, walking like Egyptians, wobbly pickets, scared shitless, captured capitols, John Wayne, bootleggun, oranges and endtrails.