Quotes from the documentary

“The TV LAB was an environment conducive to creativity. Literally one where an artist could put their hands on a camera without the union saying you’re not qualified.” — Howard Klein, The Rockefeller Foundation, TV LAB funder   “There was a genuine excitement in the medium of broadcast television because it was unsettled. And one really believed that it could be changed.” — David Loxton, executive director, TV LAB    “...made video art accessible to the public...comparable to putting the paintings in the Guggenheim on subway walls.” — John Godfrey, supervising editor, TV LAB   “...this mecca that people came to from all over the world, to worship at John Godfrey’s feet and say, ‘How have you managed to accomplish all this.’”  — Carol Brandenburg, Associate Director, Artists-in-Residence, TV LAB    “...not just a flash in the pan, a genuine phenomenon, it has broadened everyone’s vision.” — Russell Connor, host of Video Television Review, TV LAB   “The idea that you could take this equipment and apply it to journalism and do your own mainstream television, that was the radical idea.”  — Michael Shamberg, Co-founder, TVTV    “The American public became aware that there was a different way of thinking about what not only television but a documentary could be. This changed the face of television news. It changed the face of documentaries. No one else in television at that time would have given independent video makers that space.”  — Deirdre Boyle, video historian   “There’d be no MTV without video art. There’d be no digital video on your desktop without video art.”  — John Sanborn, video artist, TV LAB   “In those days we approached television as an artistic medium.” — Don Mischer, Director, Making Television Dance, TV LAB   “We had fun. In those days I loved coming to work. I couldn’t sleep all night until it’s morning so I could go to work! It was wonderful!”  — Girish Bhargava, Editor, Making Television Dance, TV LAB   “...teams of disparate people with like minds aimed at changing the public’s consciousness in some way…a group of people whose very object in life was not to do the same thing twice, whereas now it seems like to do the same thing twice, three times, a hundred times is the aim.”  — David Silver, host and producer, TV LAB   “Working with Nam June Paik really taught me a lot about how to edit. I loved how Nam June would say, ‘A mistake is not a mistake; even if something looks like a mistake, hold on! Don’t erase it. Maybe something good is going to come out of it.’”  — Dimitri Devyatkin, video artist and documentarian, TV LAB   “The TV LAB was...a place for artists to bump into each other...for television broadcasters to be in regular conversation with serious documentarians and artists...and to be a part of that dialogue throughout the world was very significant.”  — Kit Fitzgerald, video artist, TV LAB   “...Tom Hanks...said that something that had changed his life and made him want to be an actor was this particular thing that he saw on public television: ...The Lathe of Heaven. I said, “I co-wrote The Lathe of Heaven.” He couldn’t believe it; so I made a copy of it and gave it to him, and he was like, just thrilled.”  — Diane English, Screenwriter, The Lathe of Heaven, TV LAB