David Cort

David Cort was a founding member of Videofreex, the pioneering New York video collective formed in 1969 that became one of the earliest experiments in community-controlled television in the United States. Videofreex began by documenting countercultural events and political movements with Sony Portapak cameras, then moved to Lanesville, New York in 1973, where members launched Lanesville TV, broadcasting directly to the surrounding rural community and creating what may have been the first pirate television station in the country. That experiment placed Videofreex at the origin of what would become the public access and community media movement: the idea that a small group of people with portable equipment could produce and broadcast their own television for their own community.

David's work with Videofreex placed him among the practitioners who first demonstrated, in practice rather than policy, that television did not have to come from a network.