Radical Broadcasts: Theory on TV (Part One)

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 radical uprising across Europe, the Whitechapel Gallery presents Radical Broadcasts: Theory On TV, an archive television season which brings together an exciting and provocative combination of documentary, archive footage and drama. Radical Broadcasts draws attention to an era of British television where public intellectuals and provocative ideas were never far from our screens.

This opening event of the season features a screening of The Yippies on David Frost (1970) which incorporates never-seen-before super 8 footage shot by The Yippies themselves as they stormed and gleefully disrupted the Frost Show. This is followed by Why Culture? (1973) as literary and social critic Richard Hoggart travels the globe from working men’s clubs in northern England to folkloric ghettos in Tunisia to explore the presentation and exploitation of ‘culture’, in a ground-breaking documentary, never screened since its broadcast. The final screening, It Ain’t Half Racist, Mum (1979) features Stuart Hall and Maggie Steed from Campaign Against Racism in the Media debating the ways in which racist ideas were disseminated through and facilitated by popular culture – television news, sitcoms and documentaries.

Radical Broadcasts: Theory On TV continues throughout April and May 2018. Details of other screenings here.

In association with Verso Books.