On Broadway: A New Haven Streetscape
"Convergence" and Other Rituals of the New Haven Green
American Beat
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"We would never have been able to start American Beat without the help of the people and resources of the Digital Media Center for the Arts. As Fellows of the DMCA, we not only learned the technical skills necessary to run a documentary production company but were given the opportunity to become part of a vibrant community of media-makers. The technical resources of the DMCA were invaluable to us and allowed us to produce two documentaries during our time there; but it was mostly the people -- Lee Faulkner and the rest of the staff, as well as the community of students and artists -- that made our fellowship year such a productive and rewarding experience."
American Beat is a collective of documentary video-makers interested in telling local stories about American places and people. AB began in 1999, when Elihu Rubin and Elena Oxman collaborated on Ryder Park, a short documentary that told the story of a mobile home park in Milford, CT facing demolition to make way for a strip mall. In the fall of 1999, Elihu and Elena were jointly awarded the first "Emerging Artist Fellowship" at the Yale Digital Media Center for the Arts, where they produced two more documentaries: On Broadway: a New Haven Streetscape, which documented the redevelopment of a historic main street, and "Convergence" and Other Rituals of the New Haven Green, which told the story the one of the oldest town squares in America and its role in an ambitious musical production staged in 2001 by composer Neely Bruce. "Convergence" marked the beginning of American Beat's collaboration with New Haven's International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Among the documentaries that AB produced with the Festival was Next Question: the May Day 1970 Oral history Project, which documented a group of high school students as they explored the legacy of the Black Panther Party and the trial of Bobby Seale in New Haven.
In 2001, Steve Taylor and Maggie Clark joined the American Beat team, which continued to produce documentaries in collaboration with a variety of organizations, including the Yale School of Architecture, American Youth Hostels, and Youth Rights Media -- a New Haven based non profit devoted to teaching video to youth in order to make them aware of their rights.
While Elihu and Elena pursue their graduate degrees in Architecture and English respectively, Steve Taylor has been running the AB studio out of New Haven, where he has continued working with Youth Rights Media. Currently, Elihu, Elena, Steve, and Maggie are planning a multi-media web site devoted to distributing American Beat productions, as well as sharing and soliciting new work about American places and people.
American Beat productions have appeared on Connecticut Public Television and in festivals across the country.
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