EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Scenes of Protest From ‘Here Come the Videofreex’

This clip from the forthcoming documentary “Here Come the Videofreex” — the second one made available exclusively to Truthdig — features original footage taken by Videofreex, the guerrilla media collective of anti-Vietnam War activists, after police dispersed a Washington, D.C., encampment occupied by some 40,000 people.

View the earlier clip — of activist Abbie Hoffman discussing the trial of the Chicago Eight — here.

Directed by Jon Nealon (“Goodbye Hungaria”) and Jenny Raskin (“Our Nixon,” “Web Junkie”) and presented by Long Shot Factory, “Here Come the Videofreex” follows “a group of renegade journalists” in the 1960s who “democratized the future of the media, armed with the first hand-held video cameras and the conviction to observe and report on the world around them,” the film’s press release states.

The film offers a glimpse at the first generation of Americans who used hand-held cameras to chronicle their experiences and engage the issues of their time.

“Jon Nealon and Jenny Raskin tap into a treasure chest of restored tapes shot by the Freex, including interviews with icons like murdered Black Panther Fred Hampton and legendary activist Abbie Hoffman, to chart the path of the underground video collective, from their first assignment on the counterculture beat for CBS News to their rupture with the network and creation of a radical pirate television station in upstate New York,” the press release continues.

The film opens in select theaters on March 9. View the trailer below.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.