Girbe Eefsting - WKTV Journal

By Victoria Mullen, WKTV

June is Gay Pride Month, and to commemorate the end of the June 1969 Stonewall riots, WKTV will air a special documentary, People’s History: LGBTQ in Grand Rapids on WKTV 25 on Wednesday, June 14 at 12 p.m. and Saturday, June 17 at 6:30 p.m.

The Stonewall Riots precipitated the gay rights movement around the world.

Produced by Girbe Eefsting and Thomas Henry in 2011, People’s History: LGBTQ in Grand Rapids runs 1 hour, 42 minutes and includes material culled from over 70 interviews conducted by Jeff Smith. The full interviews are archived at the Milt Ford LGBT Center at Grand Valley State University.

“I can’t say that the documentary will do this for everyone, but it changed my life,” said Eefsting, who was inspired by the stories shared by the interviewees. “It changed my consciousness.

“The first question we asked each person was, ‘How did you come to terms with your sexuality?’ Eefsting said. “And it occurred to me that I never had to ask myself that question.”

The Grand Rapids People’s History Project was inspired by radical historian and author of A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, who passed away in 2010. It uses the insurgent and radical people’s history approach that Zinn developed and is being continued through the Zinn Education Project.

The first Pride Celebration took place in 1988 in downtown Grand Rapids at the Monroe Amphitheater (now Rosa Parks Circle). Watch footage of that event here.

“I make documentaries to remind people that we have the power to make social change,” said Eesting. “This is evident throughout history.”

The Grand Rapids People’s History Project’s goal is to research and create media that gives voice to the people and movements in Grand Rapids that are often marginalized or ignored by “official” history. It also seeks to provide a context for the struggles against systems of oppression that have denied people basic rights and the opportunity for collective liberation.

I am about to take a very special journey into the past thanks to the new WKTV Digital Cinema Guild that launches at the WKTV Community Media Center on September 29, 2015 and continues every second Tuesday thereafter at 7:00 pm at the station on 5261 Clyde Park Avenue SW in Wyoming. This will be a very personal journey despite the fact that I have worked as a Citizen Journalist Editor for the station, and have shared a number of articles on this website. But the Digital Cinema Guild is an all-new experience.

I’ve always known that WKTV offered everyone in the community access to a vast array of equipment. However, the key word there is “vast,” and it seemed way too complicated to me to get the hang of all that gear. Ironically, for someone in the media business, I actually dreaded to even try making my own film – and by the way, when I use the word “film” I’m really talking digital media in various storytelling formats from long form narratives or shorts, and/or documentaries.

But that was then.

Grandpa — Lyman Adelbert “Del” Havens, age 16, Eighth Grade Graduation, White Creek School, Cedar Springs, MI

A secret about my grandfather came to light a few years ago, several years after his death, and suddenly the WKTV Digital Media Guild was right here, as though the Universe was saying to me, “Do this!” I have the perfect opportunity to actually create a documentary film project exploring this secret and it’s impact on our family with my sister Lynette. We’re going to work/play on this together, but the cool thing is we are not on our own!

For just $20 apiece, we are going to be guided through the film making process under the direction of successful digital film experts and industry leaders using WKTV’s state-of-the-art digital cinema equipment with coaches standing by! Even better, there are three different programs that deal with various aspects of film making:

1) Pre-production & Script writing (developing the story and figuring out how to tell it)
2) Production (using the WKTV gear to shoot the project)
3) Post-production (editing!)

At the end, WKTV will broadcast our finished project to the area communities. WOW!

Helping us along the way are two of the area’s most experienced filmmakers:

Barbara Roos, founder of Grand Valley State University’s Film & Video Program, brings more than 40 years’ experience as a scriptwriter, film maker and professor of film. She joined academia from an award-winning career in public broadcasting, both television and radio.

Girbe Eefsting, film producer for advertising agencies, corporations, governmental agencies, NGOs and NPOs, including ten years with Grand Rapids Community Media Center. In 1996, Girbe founded the Grand Valley Summer Film Program. In 2010, he founded Film Farm, specializing in media production, education and preservation.

Barbara, Girbe and WKTV will also engage established local and national filmmakers to bring their expertise to the program. I can’t wait!

I’ll be sharing my experience with the Digital Cinema Guild as Lynette and I go through the film making experience. But why not join us? We need all the brainstorming buddies we can find as we start imagining how to tell this story…and I’ll let you in on the secret as we go along.

Hope to see you there!

For more information and to register go to WKTV Digital Cinema Guild.