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'Marvelous,' Erik exclaimed. 'Just what we want -- we
should congratulate ourselves.' Hundreds of Bruce Hardings' photographs chronicling
the Flaherty Seminar were splayed across my rustic wood
dining room table in my home in the woods in upstate New
York. We had finally selected the 75 that would be
published. Ruth Bradley, the editor of the film journal Wide
angle, a Ohio University graduate student, and two
Ithaca College undergraduates huddled around Erik as he
sorted through these pictures and recounted stories of
the filmmakers who spurred cinema into something more
than entertainment: Satyajit Ray, Robert Drew, George
Stoney, Bill Greaves, Joris Ivens, Chris Marker, Julia
Reichert, His impeccable sense of detail and his
masterful storytelling -- his mind was like a CD ROM--
transported us right smack in the middle of an
international documentary film history that lived,
breathed, coursed through us. We felt part of something
larger than ourselves. Erik had conjured up a comraderie
across borders and styles -- an international affinity
group that anyone with passion and a vision beyond
themselves could enlist in. We were editing the special Wide angle issue to
celebrate four decades of the Robert Flaherty Seminars --
a history Erik had shaped through his administrative and
curatorial vision for over four decades. The Flaherty
Seminars are the longest running independent documentary
exhibition in the world, founded by Robert Flaherty's
widow, Frances, in memory of Robert's love of cinema as
an art and his passion for talking about cinema with
those younger than him. We felt lost, overwhelmed by
hundreds of photos, too many decades of material, boxes
of documents, and over one hundred writers ranging from
filmmakers to the most theoretical academics. We were
editing reams and reams of words and documents into some
coherent history that could simultaneously revel in its
incoherences and non-linearities. How to make a history
from this mess? As we shaped and copy edited essays, we quizzed: how
do you edit so fast, so adroitly? He responded: 'well,
always have a running start to a piece, so that the
reader wants to jump on a moving train.' It was early
morning, the sun streaming through the skylights. Our
morning coffee and tea sent little plumes up to meet the
sun's rays. I noticed then that Erik was wearing a
sweater with an insignia on the left side, a pen with
wings. He told us that this was his writer's sweater.
That pen with wings served as an icon of Erik's impact on
our lives: you would learn take flight with ideas and
trust the ride. Erik had noticed Ruth and I hesitating and arguing
over which pictures to select for publication. He
interrupted like an Olympic coach coaxing worn out
athletes on writing, thinking, and clarity. He
interrupted: 'Use your intuition and go with your first
reaction to the material. If you ponder too long, you
beat the life out of the idea and risk making a mistake.'
Never a long lecture, never a criticism, always something
short, to the point, and epiphany-like -- zen koans of
the ethical intellectual life. Erik's editorial vision
was flawless, spontaneous, and always, always
laser-sharp. After one of those long days of editing the Flaherty
issue, my neighbors and long-time Flaherty like-minded
souls Phil Wilde and Ann Michel dropped by for a
barbecue. We started to discuss public health and
educational and engineering media -- my partner teaches
public health, Annie and Phil produce educational media.
Erik noticed that all of our insider documentary gossip
was boring Stewart, my partner. He launched into the
story of a public health campaign for syphilis in the
late 1940s undertaken by Columbia University. Erik worked
on the campaign, penning a ballad for distribution in
jukeboxes across the country called 'That ignorant
cowboy.' You can read the fuller narrative of its
creation in his autobiography, Media marathon, but
what that book won't tell you is this: that night on my
porch in upstate New York, crickets chirping and stars
overhead, Erik sang us -- without hesitation and without
missing a word or a beat -- the entire song. We not only
did not know that Erik wrote lyrics, we did not know he
could sing. I was first introduced to Erik through his path
breaking books, which were required reading in college
and graduate school in the 1970s: Tube of plenty: the
evolution of American television, Documentary,
Indian cinema, The sponsor: notes on a modern
potentate. I underlined, memorized, analyzed, inhaled
these books. They inspired me to work in and write on
documentary. They moved me to become a historian. Erik
once told me that to be a media historian meant joining
that strange monastery of souls who like to find
structures and stories in the chaos of old documents. I first met Erik himself when I was writing my
dissertation. He never remembered this meeting, but I
did. I was at a Flaherty in the early 1980s as a graduate
student. I had received a grant-in-aid to attend this
legendary event. I was in awe: Erik Barnouw, the man who
I had underlined and memorized, had sat beside me at
breakfast with his plate of fried eggs and bacon. I
gushed, 'I am so honored to meet you.' He said, 'Why? Did
you think I was dead?' He must have been around 70
then. He asked questions about my research. I bemoaned the
marginal status of documentary and archival film history.
I complained about how my graduate program often left me
feeling lonely and battered, an outsider to the
disciplines of media and film studies. I grumbled, 'there
is just so much to dig.' He suggested: 'Then start
digging. Get out your shovel. And don't feel so lonely,
you are not alone.' These sentences transformed into my
scholarly mantra. But beyond me, Erik's clear,
persuasive, eye-opening writing inspired hundreds of
other media historians to dig and mine the seams he
opened. A discipline -- media history -- was forged. Just last week, a postcard arrived in my office
mailbox from a colleague from graduate school, a media
historian now a senior faculty member at a western
university. We had spent hours in graduate school
plotting how to make media history more political, more
urgent, more salient in the field. We had shared many
political struggles, walking picket lines when our
teaching assistants union went on strike, marching
against U.S. intervention in El Salvador, agitating for
collectivity among graduate students. It said, 'one of us
has died. Without his books, the field would be lost.
Tube of plenty was the most important book I read
in graduate school.' This card reminded me of the
messages that Erik would sometimes send me. Over the two decades I knew Erik as a scholar,
curator, mentor and friend, I was always honored to
receive his blessing for a piece of writing he deemed
'marvelous.' Often that word appeared handwritten in a
card featuring one of Erik's watercolors of rural
Vermont. He liked to paint watercolors, he said, because,
unlike writing, you can't keep on editing them. Once the
paint dries, the image is done and one moves on. That one
word inscribed in his card signified the piece had passed
Erik's test for urgency, integrity, and writing not
contaminated with jargon. Erik's writing , and his gentlemanly and always
gracious esprit de corps, evoked a sense of joint
purpose and robust community among his readers and his
colleagues. I remember Erik discussing the Flaherty
seminar as a group of 'like-minded souls who gathered
together,' but I also heard him use this same expression
for writers he knew, filmmakers he admired, projects that
impressed him for their guts, moxy and beauty. Everyone
wanted to sit with this master storyteller so they would
not feel alone and vulnerable to the forces that lashed
against them like a tempest: media conglomerates, attacks
against the arts, no funding, no audience, too many
political attacks, commercialization. Like a Zen master,
Erik more often than not mobilized poignant examples from
media history or his own life to prod us to figure out
something for ourselves. Erik served the field as a kind of cardinal giving
blessings and teaching obliquely, a master of the bon
mot and the wittily turned phrase that held deep
epistemological, political, and philosophical truths. He
had the ability to distill and condense and crystalize
thoughts that made being around him feel like the world
-- and documentary -- was not all that overwhelming. At
nearly every Flaherty he attended, he would always give
what he called 'the closing benediction.' He had an
ironic edge to his stature in the field, accrued not only
from many books but from having lived through most of
media and documentary history. He knew media and
documentary film not as movements or theories, but as
people consumed with ideas about the world. At the end of
each seminar, a wrap-up session is held, where
seminarians can process the week of seeing films and
arguing about them. At the end of the session, Erik would
stand up, and tell a story about Chris Marker's time at
the seminar in the 1970s. At this seminar, recalled Erik, a young filmmaking
student, awed by Marker's brilliant, complex editing
structures, asked 'Mr. Marker, how do you edit all of
these disparate materials together?' Marker replied, 'I
get lost and then find my way out.' Erik would then
administer the final blessing to the seminar: 'Now, get
lost.' A short story, a koan of sorts, suggesting that
the only way to really know something and learn anything
was to get lost in the material and invent a new route
out, to trust in not knowing as a way of learning how to
know. Last year (2000), I went to the seminar, and one of
the board members actually told this same story as a
closing missive. It was not plagiarism, or stealing
someone's thunder, as much as it was passing down the
folktales that taught us to let go of our previous
conceptions and continually see anew. I called Erik and
told him that one of the Flaherty board members had done
his story, and he simply replied: 'it's not really my
story or my benediction, these are words to be used when
useful.' In 1995, Erik and I curated the entire history of
documentary film in no less than six programs to
celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Flaherty
Seminar. After the first program, Erik chided me for
excessively lecturing the audience about Robert Flaherty
and his film, Nanook of the north -- that urtext
of documentary. He remarked 'remember, let the films do
their work, let the audience discover on their own. Step
back and it will happen.' Later that week, Somi Roy, the other programmer, Sally
Berger, then the executive director of IFS, and I sensed
a brewing unrest about race among Flaherty seminarians.
We reorganized the screenings to short circuit this
conflict. In a summit meeting over a picnic table, we
consulted Erik and George Stoney. They were stunned: why
would we even contemplate such a reactionary,
anti-democratic tactic? Erik proclaimed, 'absolutely not.
You will not change the program. This is good, we want
things to boil up. Our job is to make things on the edges
rise to the top. Without conflict there is no change.' We
stayed with the original program on political compilation
films. A furious debate about race and representation
erupted -- sparked by the last film, Erik's Hiroshima
Nagasaki 1945 (USA 1970), which ends with an image of
the atomic bomb. Some felt that the film misrepresented
the Japanese as victims. Erik never debated, just told
stories about the film's production and the expose of the
hidden footage of the effects of the bombs. Afterwards,
we figured out a new strategy. Erik congratulated us with
one word: 'Marvelous.' On 19 July, Erik Barnouw died at his home in Vermont.
His wife Betty was at his side. Erik had an inoperable
cancer and had been in hospice. Betty says he was ready
for life's next adventure. He was 93. Erik was a
legendary, foundational presence in our field. He was the
preeminent media historian of the twentieth century. His
scores of books include The international encyclopedia
of communication, Conglomerates and the media,
Tube of plenty: the evolution of American
television, The magician and the cinema,
Documentary, The sponsor: notes on a modern
potentate, and History of broadcasting. His
memoir, a compelling and eye-opening journey through his
amazingly rich and full life, entitled, Media
marathon, was published in 1996 by Duke University
Press. Just a few months ago, Erik published Media
lost and found with Fordham University Press, a
collection of his essays. All of these books constitute
the bricks and mortars of communications. They are
classics. Erik often told me that one can never give away
enough books -- ideas must circulate, they are not to be
hoarded. When I called him a year ago to share the good news
that the Institutional Histories project he co-edited
with Scott MacDonald, Ruth Bradley and myself would
become a book series dedicated to the untold histories of
the international, non-profit media arts sector, he
elatedly confirmed 'marvelous -- this work must be done.'
And then he urged us to always follow our intuition --
and make sure he did not have to plow through thousands
of pages of manuscripts. Erik's life, however, was not confined to the academy.
His film, Hiroshima Nagasaki 1945 is still widely
taught thirty years after it was produced, and rated by
many international film scholars to be the most
significant and far reaching anti-war film ever produced.
It influenced scores of filmmakers around the globe. It
promotes peace. Erik's professional life was as variegated and diverse
as the scholarship, films and videos he championed. He
worked as an ad writer, an actor, a radio writer, a
director, a producer, television writer, a journalist, a
songwriter, a curator, a filmmaker, an archivist, a union
official, a board member of many media organizations, a
consultant on many film projects, a film preservationist.
Erik served as the unofficial ambassador of the
independent media world since the 1950s, way before the
term 'indie' meant anything. Up until his death, he was a
constant advocate for independent media work, in all
genres -- work of heart and guts. He was generous, always
engaged and delighted by new projects and new makers from
all across the globe. In his 90s, he kept watching and
listening, excited about new developments and new
makers. His selections as a curator changed how we think about
media history and media art. He was open to anything, and
everything, as long as it roused the soul. Erik served as
the first President of International Film Seminars as
well as the first chief of the Motion Picture,
Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division at the Library
of Congress. He curated more Flaherty Film seminars over
the course of forty years than anyone can remember. He
carved out space for documentary filmmakers from all over
the globe to engage in dialogue and debate. He thrived on
their polemics. In 1990, the Robert Flaherty Seminar assembled a
documentary summit in Riga, Latvia with Soviet Glasnost
filmmakers and American independent filmmakers. The
revolutions in Eastern Europe were barely a year old. The
Soviet team insisted, contra to Flaherty templates, on
academic presentations in addition to the films. Erik was
approached to deliver the keynote. He graciously replied,
'I would be delighted to listen to other scholars --
younger than me -- deliver papers.' The cinema theater in Riga was freezing -- a serious
fuel shortage plagued Latvia. At that seminar, we watched
Soviet documentary films for eight days, wearing headsets
to hear the English translation. Some Latvian and
Estonian filmmakers surmised a Soviet plot to freeze them
out of independence. Others blamed the bad roads. We all
hauled blankets from our rooms in the Cinematographers
Union Summer House to the theater to stave off the chill.
We brought cognac. We brought cigarettes. Anything to
stay warm as this exciting new documentary cinema
unspooled before us, fresh excavations from the USSR's
recently opened archives and freshly-hewn public sphere.
Erik sat transfixed through miles and miles of Glasnost
documentary films with Betty, whom he introduced as 'his
new bride.' As many scholars, media arts professionals,
archivists, preservationists and makers know, Erik had a
special and unique relationship to emerging scholars and
to expanding the field of film and media history. He
constantly shuttled between writing about the past,
present and future of media, presenting new work, and
archiving old work. He was a scholar who loved makers and
a maker who loved scholars.He co-edited the monograph,
The Flaherty: forty years in the cause of independent
cinema, with me, the first institutional history
published by the journal Wide angle. Two Ithaca
College interns worked side by side with him on that
project, three generations of media scholars typifying
Erik's insistence that the torch for independent,
non-corporate media be passed on to the next generation.
The two students wanted pictures taken of Erik, the two
faculty, and themselves. They asked Erik to sign his
books. Erik's life and writing spanned both the twentieth
century and the history of modern communications. He was
born during the era of primitive cinema and the
nickelodeon, and lived through the rise of radio, the
film studios, the television networks, cable, satellite,
16mm, camcorders, digital video, computers, and the
internet. The day after he died, filmmakers, archivists
and media scholars spread news of his passing on the
internet. Betty told me Erik would have loved that -- a
new communications network to bring news and people
together. Over one hundred emails flooded my inbox:
messages arrived from filmmakers, scholars, curators,
writers, archivists, journalists, editors, ex-students
from all over the United States, England, Australia,
Mexico, Bolivia, Canada, France, India, New Zealand,
Japan, the Netherlands, and South Africa. They reflected
how Erik's writing served as a kind of lighthouse for
their work, beaming out messages of both warning and
comfort. Perhaps the internet, then, was another pen with
wings, convening like-minded souls. Beyond these accomplishments that exceed what one can
imagine finishing in one lifetime, Erik was a
compassionate, ethical, and clear-headed visionary in the
media arts and archival worlds. He was an academic who
spanned the archival, festival, production, and art
worlds. He was a writer whose work knew no boundaries
between professional and amateur, between the commercial
world and the art world, between fiction and non-fiction,
between the experienced and the emerging. Erik's humor
and wit still ring in many of our ears, like the sound of
the ocean in a conch shell. Above all, Erik's legacy resonates to insist that
optimism, generosity, and unbridled enthusiasm and
inquiry for all human effort -- whether in media or life
-- are, finally, the only media that really matters. All
of us in the fields of film, television, video,
communications and new media will miss him. But I suspect
his spirit infuses hope into all of our classrooms, our
archives, our productions, our writing. Like a clear,
cool wind, it clears out the pollen, pushes us to engage
a clearer vision, and reminds us that communication is
truly about connecting with people across any divide. In June, I phoned Erik to discuss some projects. I
cherish this conversation about how to preserve the
memories and histories of international independent media
and scholars, curators, librarians, distributors, and
filmmakers -- those marvelous, like- minded souls whom
Erik championed with his pen with wings. As we said
good-bye, he instructed, 'Patty, well, we must carry on.'
So now, as I pay homage to Erik, I share his last words
with you: 'Carry on'.
Erik Barnouw, Handbook of radio production; an
outline of studio techniques and procedures in the United
States. Illus. by Victor Barnouw. (Boston, Little,
Brown, 1939). Erik Barnouw (ed) Radio drama in action;
twenty-five plays of a changing world. (New York,
Toronto, Farrar & Rinehart, Inc. c1945). Erik Barnouw, Mass communication: television,
radio, film, press: the media and their practice in the
United States of America. (New York: Holt, Rinehart,
and Winston, c.1956). Erik Barnouw, The television writer. (New York,
Hill and Wang, 1962). Erik Barnouw and Subrahmanyam Krishanaswamy, Indian
film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963)
[revised 1980]. Erik Barnouw, A history of broadcasting in the
United States. (New York: Oxford University
Press,1966-70). Erik Barnouw, Documentary: a history of the
non-fiction film (New York: Oxford University Press,
1974) [revised 1976, 1983, 1993]. Erik Barnouw, Tube of plenty: the evolution of
American television (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1975.)[revised 1977, 1982, 1990] Erik Barnouw, The sponsor: notes on a modern
potentate (New York: Oxford University Press,
1978). Erik Barnouw, The magician and the cinema (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1981). International encyclopedia of communications
(New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, c1989). Erik Barnouw and Patricia Zimmermann, eds., The
Flaherty: four decades in the cause of independent
cinema (Wide Angle (17)1-4), (Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1995). Erik Barnouw, The evolution of American television
sound recording (New York: Grolier Educational Corp.
[distributor], 1975). Erik Barnouw, House with a past (Montpelier,
Vt.: Vermont Historical Society, c1992). Erik Barnouw, Media marathon : a twentieth-century
memoir. (Durham: Duke University Press, c1996). Erik Barnouw (et al) Mary Pickford--her times, her
films [sound recording], c1983. Erik Barnouw (et al) Remarks made at the D.W. Griffith
centennial program at the Library of Congress, April 1,
1975 [sound recording]. Recorded in the Coolidge
Auditorium, Library of Congress, April 1, 1975. Philip H. Reisman, interview with Erik Barnouw
[sound recording]. 1968. [Gift given in 1988
to the Library of Congress by Erik Barnouw for inclusion
in the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature.
Recorded Aug. 13, 1968, in Mexico.]
3,302 words
Abstract
Erik Barnouw: a partial listing of works (based on
holdings of the Library of Congress.
[Companion volume to the author's Handbook of radio
writing. "'Sink or swim, or, Harry Raymond's resolve,'
radio sketch by Neill O'Malley and Erik Barnouw, based on
the novel by Horatio Alger, Jr.": p. [261]-293.
[Published October 1939 ... Revised edition published
April 1947, revised 1949]
[Columbus day, by Orson Wells, Robert Meltzer and
Norris Houghton.-Will this earth hold? By P. S. Buck.-The
battle of the Warsaw ghetto, by Morton Wishengrad.-Mister
Ledford and the TVA, by Alan Lomax.-Open letter on race
hatred, by W. N. Robson.-Bretton Woods, by Peter
Lyon.-The last day of the war, by Sgt. Arthur Laurents.-A
child is born, by S. V. Benét.-The halls of
Congress, by Joseph Gottlieb.-Radioman Jack Cooper, by
Hector Chevigny.-Concerning the Red Army, by Norman
Rosten.-Inside a kid's head, by Jerome Lawrence and R. E.
Lee.-London by clipper, by Norman
Corwin.-Japanese-Americans, by Harry Kleiner.-The
lonesome train, by Millard Lampell.-The "Boise", by
Ranald MacDougall.-Grandpa and the statue, by Arthur
Miller.-Booker T. Washington in Atlanta, by Langston
Hughes.-North Atlantic testament, by Father T. J.
Mulvey.-Typhus, by B. V. Dryer.-Pacific task force, by
T/Sgt. Lawrence Lader.-Against the storm, by Sandra
Michael.-The Negro domestic, by Roi Ottley.-Japan's
advance base: the Bonin Islands, by Arnold Marquis.-The
house I live in, by Arch Oboler.]
[Broadcast historian Erik Barnouw, author of Tube of
plenty, discusses the early years of television. He sees
the period of the blacklist as television's darkest hour
and praises Edward R. Murrow for standing up to the
right-wing zealots. Recorded October 20, 1975, in New
York City].
[The author's purchase of a stone house in Vermont, a
former Mormon place of worship, leads him to investigate
its history and that of the Mormon Church.]
[A symposium on the film actress Mary Pickford,
America's sweetheart. Held in conjuction with the
dedication of the Mary Pickford Theater in the Library of
Congress. Includes both morning and afternoon
discussions. Recorded Tuesday May 11, 1983, in the Mary
Pickford Theater, James Madison Memorial Building,
Library of Congress.
