Music Video Festival By Matt Kapko News Editor The Lumberjack March 31, 2004 In many ways, this Monday is the culmination of more than five years of a laboring love for Peter Agoston. The debut of his fifth release of the Culturama Video Collection, featuring underground hip hop acts, will be shown then on the opening night of the Humboldt International Short Film Festival at the Minor Theater in Arcata. Agoston has put on the Culturama Music Video Festival in seven different cities before bringing it to Arcata. After parting from film school in Portland, Oregon, Agoston headed down to Arcata to get involved in the historic film festival. The 25 music videos on this release offer a balance between high- and low-budget productions. Most of the featured artists have performed in Humboldt County, so Agoston is excited to “put together artists that people are familiar with. “They might fill up a club,” Agoston says of these artists, but the politics of getting on television are a significant hurdle to getting their videos played. “Since they’re all relatively independent hip hop videos, there’s not too many channels to go through.” It’s because of that that Agoston doesn’t include any commercial videos on his collections. “It would go against the purpose of why I’m doing this,” he explained. Agoston is enthusiastic to show the animated, cartoon-like MF Doom video that opens the collection and a J Rawls video that his brother shot in Thailand. The two hours of hip hop music videos will kick off the Humboldt International Short Film Festival this Monday at 7 p.m. Copies of the Culturama Video Collections are available at the Works and www.culturama.org. Home