New documentary looks back at Minneapolis’ 1970s-era experimental arts program

A new documentary produced by Daniel Bergin with Miranda Harincar, called “Film in the Cities: Radical Roots of Youth Media,” explores an experimental arts program begun in Minneapolis in the 1970s. Through footage of student films and interviews with former participants and teachers of the program, the film investigates what happens when young people are given the power to create in an environment of freedom, experimentation, and imagination. 

Produced by TPT with support from the Walker Art Center’s Moving Image program, the documentary is part of the “Minnesota Experience” series, and will be broadcast live and available for streaming on TPT2 starting February 21. 

FITC began as a program offered through the Minneapolis Public Schools, under the umbrella of the Urban Arts Program. Begun in 1970, the Urban Arts program allowed students to learn for part of the day at arts institutions around Minneapolis — like the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota Dance Theatre, and the Minnesota Orchestra. (Among the notable alumni of the Urban Arts program was none other than Prince himself.) 

In its beginnings, FITC taught Super-8 filmmaking to high school students, but it quickly expanded to include photography and video. The program would grow, become its own nonprofit organization, and eventually offer college-level courses through partnerships with local colleges. FITC also administered grants regionally, rented out media equipment to local filmmakers and photographers, presented film screenings, and provided media services to local nonprofits. The organization closed in 1993 due to funding issues. 

The TPT documentary, conceived by Bergin, centers on FITC’s early days. It came together in part because of a retrospective the Walker Art Center presented in 2019 about FITC. The Walker digitized many of the films for the retrospective, using materials drawn from the physical archive housed at the Minnesota Historical Society. 

The Walker’s film curator at the time, Sheryl Mousley (who had previously been FITC’s education director), organized for TPT to have access to a conference room at the museum to interview former students and filmmakers of the program who came to the FITC events at the Walker during the retrospective, according to Bergin.

After recording interviews, Bergin sat with the material for a while, as he completed other projects. “Then the pandemic hit. But it was great to come back to it finally and kind of bring it forward,” Bergin says. Working on the documentary reminded him of the power of media and journalism for democracy. “I feel like it’s as urgent as ever,” he says. 

Bergin is an FITC alumnus himself, having taken classes through the program when he was a student at the University of Minnesota in the 1980s.

“The U has a pretty solid multimedia, mass comm, journalism, filmmaking kind of infrastructure now, but didn’t then,” Bergin says. “You had to go to Film in the Cities and take those classes. I designed my own major and brought those credits back to the U.” 

Speaking with me at a coffee shop, Bergin holds out a small reel from his pocket. “In fact, I have the artifact,” he says, laying the object on the table. “This is my first documentary. Our assignment was to tell a story about a place. It’s just kind of a very esoteric, artsy, film school view of Powderhorn Park.” 

“Film in the Cities: Radical Roots of Youth Media,” offers glimpses of some of the films students made during the program’s early years, when it was primarily a program offered in the high schools. One film, “A Day at Oxford,” by Alex Jackson, documents a slice of life at the Oxford Community Center in St. Paul in the Selby-Dale neighborhood. 

“That felt very stereotype-breaking,” Bergin says of the film. “A news story on that neighborhood in the mid-1970s would have been very different.” 

One of the most memorable films featured is by Tim Leonard, filmed inside of the now-closed Roller Garden in St. Louis Park. “It’s such a great time capsule and snapshot of that place,” Bergin says. The Roller Garden had announced its closure when Bergin was making the film, reminding the filmmaker of how important those kinds of stories are. 

Edie French is another former student featured in the film. When French was a high school student in the 1970s, she was what she calls a “self-curator of boutique educational experiences.” French went to the Southeast Free School, an alternative school where she remembers her and others saying, “We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do,” which then became, for her, “The world is my oyster, I can do anything I want to do.”  

Eventually, she’d make her way to Film in the Cities. A budding young photographer, French had hoped to enroll in FITC’s photography program, but it was all full up. “So they said, would you be interested in filmmaking? I said sure! Why not?” she tells me in a phone interview.

The program ended up being a foundational one for the rest of her life. “It was the basis for lifelong friendships and an entree into an entire world of adventure,” she says. “Putting cameras in my hand was an opportunity to basically go everywhere and do anything.”

French met the person that she’d eventually marry through the program— Paul Auguston, who now runs a media and production company with French, and who is also featured in the documentary. Auguston was a student turned teacher in the program. French says she was immediately smitten from the day she applied to the program, and they started dating after she had moved on from the program. The experience of FITC, she says, changed the course of her life. 

Being a part of a documentary about FITC has been like having “the best filmmaker you can imagine do you home movies for you,” French says. “It was like having your life flashing before your eyes.” 

“Film in the Cities: Radical Roots of Youth Media,” will premiere at 8pm on Feb 21. More information here.