The Videofreex were a pioneering video collective who used the Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 Portapak

Portapak

A Portapak is a battery powered self-contained video tape analog recording system that can be carried by one person. Earlier television cameras were large and relatively immovable, but the Portapak made it possible to record television images while moving around...

 for countercultural video projects from 1969 to 1978. They were founded in 1969 by David Cort, Curtis Ratcliff and Parry Teasdale, after Cort and Teasdale met each other at the Woodstock Music Festival. They were based out of a 17 bedroom house in the Catskill Mountains

Catskill Mountains

The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau...

 named the Maple Tree Farm.

Michael Shamberg

Michael Shamberg

Michael Shamberg is an American former Time-Life correspondent and current film producer.-Life and career:His credits include Erin Brockovich, A Fish Called Wanda, Garden State, Gattaca, Pulp Fiction and The Big Chill...

, author of Guerrilla Television

Guerrilla Television

Guerrilla television is a term coined in 1971 by Michael Shamberg, one of the founders of the Raindance Foundation; the Raindance Foundation has been one of the counter-culture video collectives that in the 1960s and 1970s extended the role of the underground press to new communication...

 and founding member of TVTV

TVTV

TVTV was a San Francisco-based pioneering video collective founded in 1972 by Allen Rucker, Michael Shamberg, Tom Weinberg, Hudson Marquez and Megan Williams. Shamberg was author of the 1971 "do-it-yourself" video production manual Guerrilla Television. Over the years, more than thirty "guerrilla...

 remarked that “The Freex are the most production oriented of the video groups […] in terms of finished, cleanly edited, high quality tape, which is generally quite entertaining, the Videofreex are clearly the best.”

Mirroring the beliefs outlined in Guerrilla Television

Guerrilla Television

Guerrilla television is a term coined in 1971 by Michael Shamberg, one of the founders of the Raindance Foundation; the Raindance Foundation has been one of the counter-culture video collectives that in the 1960s and 1970s extended the role of the underground press to new communication...

 they believed they could turn the medium of television, at the time dominated by The "Big Three" Television Networks

Big Three Television Networks

The Big Three Television Networks are the three traditional commercial broadcast television networks in the United States: ABC, CBS and NBC...

, into a more democratic medium and in 1972 they launched the first pirate TV station, Lanesville TV, using a transmitter given to them by Abbie Hoffman

Abbie Hoffman

Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party ....

.

Samples of the group's work is available on the Videofreex YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/videofreex)

Members

• Skip Blumberg
  Skip Blumberg
  Skip Blumberg is one of the original camcorder-for-broadcast TV producers, and among the first wave of video artists in the 1970s. His early work reflects the era's emphasis on guerilla tactics and medium-specific graphics, but his more recent work takes on more global issues. His work has screened...
  
  
• David Cort
• Curtis Ratcliff
• Parry Teasdale
• Chuck Kennedy
• Nancy Cain
• Davidson Gigliotti
• Carol Vontobel
• Bart Friedman
• Ann Woodward