Youth Filmmakers interview people about their journeys and experiences of migrating from one country to another. Through animation and experimental shorts, they explore what it means to be “at home” or to be an “outsider”. This short film was created by youth filmmakers, Xia Ou Huang, Uyen Le, Ling Lin, Duong Nghe Ly, Steven Ngo, Loc Nguyen, Christopher Pham, Annie Seng, Nancy Tat, Hao Truong, Xiu Fen Wang, Xiu Juan Wang under the guidance of teaching artist Anula Shetty. Funded in part by the Pennsylvania Arts in Education Partnership and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. View excerpt below.

Funded in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and individual donors, the collective has created a massive body of work over the years, with thousands of videos in its archive. These days, Termite TV is actively engaged in multiple projects. As technology has changed since the early 1990s, Termite has changed its methods of collecting, editing and displaying work.

Termite’s Walk Philly project involves the use of iPods as mobile video viewing devices. As of this writing, there are 25 videotaped walking tours, and the database continues to grow. “Each Walk Philly video tour is a personal interpretation evoking different moods, memories and histories ranging from the playful to the experimental to the informative,” according to Walk Philly brochure. One tour follows an urban forager while others feature historic sites. According to Termite Mike O’Reilly, the collective’s experimental techniques generate a lot of useless stuff, but also some unexpected gems within, creating moments of profound depth.

Termite’s Laura Deutch is in charge of Termite’s Messages in Motion project, which “works with neighborhood programs and community-based organizations to produce, distribute and exhibit short-form documentary videos as a way to support and enhance existing community organizing work.” A van containing handheld Flip video digital recorders, laptops, internet access and a viewing monitor travels throughout the city, offering writing and video training, multiple distribution platforms and groundbreaking teaching models.

Deutch parks the van at a branch library and conducts a one-hour workshop for five to ten young people, who learn how to gather images and do voiceovers. She wants to help kids understand how to use media to create a message that can be personal or political. The results are striking. In neighborhoods that normally only see a video crew covering a murder or fire, young people create poignant video postcards that portray everyday lives, sometimes using poetry as narrative.

Messages in Motion recently received a grant for its upcoming Securing Spaces tour, with a mission to “rethink what it means to be secure by looking at how communities address the interconnected issues of physical well-being, water safety and food safety to create safe spaces in their neighborhoods.” Another upcoming project is Water Food Shelter, also known as The Basics Trilogy. Three 29-minute episodes, addressing basic human needs in poetic and political terms, are set to broadcast in mid-May on PhillyCAM.

Mike O’Reilly wishes he could be more flexible at WHYY, but decisions about programming come from the top down at the venerated public TV station, and new initiatives take a lot of time, much like changing course on a giant ship. Termite TV, by contrast, is able to make decisions from the bottom up, by collective action, and the resulting work is spontaneous, playful and experimental, blending personal and political, able to be limber, light and distributed.

Read the Entire Report here

“HAPPINESS” (2011, HD, 27 minutes)
Featuring work by Jerome Carolfi,  Laura Deutch, Bruce JamesValerie Keller,
Michael Kuetemeyer, Gail Lloyd, Debbie Rudman, & Anula Shetty
Termite TV Collective’s latest
half hour show explores a myriad of different interpretations of happiness .  Find out how a
beekeeper and his bees experience the emotion.  Hear what the concept means to different people.
See abstractions of happiness visualized.  Can happiness be found online?
This collection of video and motion media will leave you … dare we say it? … happy!

October 17 – December 2, 2011

International House Video Lounge
3701 Chestnut Street, first floor, Philadelphia, PA
Opening reception: Thursday, October 20, 2011, 6 – 7:30 pm

InLiquid at International House presents Indian Kaleidoscope, a video series by Termite TV at the International House Video Lounge. The exhibition will be on view from October 17 through December 2, 2011. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday, October 20, 2011 from 6 to 7:30 pm. This exhibition will coincide with a month of Indian programming presented by International House Philadelphia.

Artists from Termite TV Collective explore sounds and images of India through a blend of experimental, documentary and narrative work. The films explore a range of topics, from whimsical travelogues and journeys (India), issues of migration and diaspora (Telekinetics), oral traditions and rituals (Paddana, Song of the Ancestors), and personal expressions and memories (American Past – Le Temps Perdu et Oublie).

Indian Kaleidoscope features the experimental video works by collective artists: Anula Shetty, Caroline Savage, Dorothea Braemer, Francesca Soans, Karen Lefkovitz, Matthew Fisher, Michael Kuetemeyer, and Wendy Surinsky.

See Inliquid for more details

Walk an augmented termite reality today!

This is the story of the City Harvest program, a collaborative partnership in gardening addressing institutional rehabilitation, community integration and improved nutrition. Through cycles of change and growth, prison inmates taking part in the “roots of re-entry” greenhouse program, network with neighborhood gardens to grow produce to be distributed to local food cupboards across Philadelphia. The documentary is an uplifting look at a radical social program changing people’s lives for the better. A Termite TV Community Collaboration by Deborah Rudman, Anula Shetty and Michael Kuetemeyer

Do you have a family member or friend who has been incarcerated? How is your life affected by it?
Termite TV Collective explores life stories that surround incarceration in Philadelphia.
These are the faces that are often invisible and the voices we rarely hear.

Prison Life Stories will challenge perceptions of what kind of people are in prison today and why.

Prison Life Stories by Termite TV Collective’s Deborah Rudman, Anula Shetty & Michael Kuetemeyer
featuring: Patrick Middleton, Julia Lopez, Judith Trustone, Cameron Holmes, Brenda Robinson, Deborah Rider,
Thomas Gallagher, Damani Lopez, Antoinette Hannibal, John Bell, Naima Black, Charlie Patterson
photographs from Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives
(30 min., © 2008)

Guests to this event will meet the producers of Friday Arts, will watch the full 30-minute January episode before it premieres on WHYY TV that evening, and will be able to meet highlighted restaurants and organizations from January’s episode.

For January, learn about the Termite TV Collective’s Walk Philly Project, get a closer look at The Morris Arboretum while hearing firsthand from Museum Without Walls Audio, and try beer samples from Victory Brewing Company as they discuss their involvement with the Bike Fresh Bike Local campaign.

Afterwards, enjoy a short walk to the nearby Old City galleries for Philadelphia’s First Friday events.

See the website for more details

Watch the Termite TV segment here

Watch the full episode. See more Friday Arts.