It seems quaint now to remember that there was a time when not everyone had immediate access to, not only the ability to create content, but also a platform to put themselves and their ideas out into the world.
Cable television arrived on the scene in the 1970s, becoming a small but significant threat to the major networks, who in many states kept cable out of cities, and even news, by encouraging regulatory barriers via the Federal Communications Commission and a suite of restrictions known as “The Freeze.”
New York City was the first, as with so many things, to try and get over this hump, managing to get the Federal Communications Commission to relax certain geographical monopolies; their stipulation in the arrangement was that there must be direct community programming – what became known as Public Access TV. The fact that there was a time when public interests could be placed squarely against corporate ones, is maybe even more whimsical and nostalgic than remembering that there was a time before smartphones.
Having maybe started out as a deal, Public Access TV turned into a first-of-its-kind media experiment, which had more than a touch of revolutionary zeal and an ‘eat the rich’ mentality at the beginning. Programmers and enlightened executives saw a utopia of wild artistic expression and free speech, straight from the grass-roots, and the breaking down of class and cultural barriers, both within the media industry and without. They tried to impress as much on a general public that was having its first blinking glimpses of hand- held video cameras, and to whom the notion that anyone could make anything was as new and destabilising as the societal changes happening at large all around them.
Premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2026
U.S. Documentary Competition
Directed by: David Shadrack Smith
Produced by: Sara Crow, Anne-Marcelle Ngabirano
Executive Produced by: Wren Arthur, Steve Buscemi, Benny Safdie
Original Music by: adore
Edited by: Geoff Gruetzmacher
Cinematography by: David Shadrack Smith
Starring: Emily Armstrong Bob Gruen Alex Bennett Dee Dee Halleck Richard Berkowitz Debbie Harry Mark Berridge William Hohauser Steve Bie Andy Humm Rich Brown Patricia Ivers John Burke Steve Lawrence Barbara Burns Chi-Tien Lui Nora Burns Michael Musto Jean Carlomusto Anton Perich Earl Chin Tristan Perich Jim Chladek Amos Poe Paul Dougherty Paul Schiff Jake Fogelnest Charlotte Schiff-Booker Josh Alan Friedman Chris Stein Stuart Gold Claudia Summers Adrienne Gruberg Tom Zafian
David Shadrack Smith has directed a number of TV documentaries, and with this film makes his directorial debit. He remembers first coming across the Pubic Access channels in his childhood. He said, “For three decades, New York’s Public Access channels showcased the greatest cornucopia of outsiders and misfits ever beamed into unsuspecting people’s homes. When I first encountered it as a kid, watching at my grandmother’s uptown apartment, my hand froze on the cable box set. Stunned, my eyes wide, I wondered: what had I just witnessed? But that’s the thing about Public Access, it was ephemeral, strange moments that flickered and then were gone. But the world they opened up was like nothing I’d seen before, full of boundary-pushers from New York’s underground and marginal. Most of all, it gave a kid like me the idea that anyone could do it. Creativity was not this distant, unreachable, top-down enterprise. It could bubble up from the edges and, thanks to PublicAccess, find its way to you.”
The film Public Access feels very Sundance and good fit for the festival’s last year in Park City. It’s completely archival, with footage from the home-spun feeling cable channels both seeming student-y and outrageous. Interviews with those who were around at the time complement a who’s was who of New York’s underground arts scene, with a few notable names popping up, like Debbie Harry, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and future Ramones manager Danny Fields. These amongst others did not only go on to swim in much bigger ponds, it wasn’t long till they had much firmer PR people around them curating their on – screen presence.
The film chops and changes between clips, flitting between the everyday people getting their moment in the dingy sun, to the punk music chat- show type formula that spawned copycats all over the world, and serious moments, like the reggae community coming together with a visiting Bob Marley. Inevitably porn is covered a lot, much as Public Access TV ended up swimming in it, and the large blue dots the censors imposed to cover up peoples privates seem funny and somehow charming.
A series of overlayed interviews come in with quips about the old days, and its possible that these were too numerous and ended up merging together, but it seems the point was to make the film as random and flitting about as the channels themselves were.
The interesting historical reference points are woven through the material, such as the very long and arguably important First Amendment legal battle that took place between the authorities and some of porn kingpins, clashing with a much younger Rudy Giuliani’s campaign to clean up NYC, and how Public Access TV became somewhat of an information lifeline for the LGBTQ community in the confusing early days of the AIDS epidemic.
The thru-line to more commercial TV is also examined. A teenage Jake Fogelnest began his career at 14 with “Squirt TV,” the Public Access show he created in his bedroom that later became a cult MTV series. We see the arc of his success and then drug- fuelled booting off the channel, but we know he went on great writing and great things, and he is at Sundance all grown- up for the press calls.
The cultural phenomenon that was the 1992 film Waynes World which parodies Public Access TV is seen as both the direct descendent of the success of the experiment and something that gave the whole project a boost- people went back to or discovered or even created Public Access TV as a response.
Overall its a timely reminder, especially to younger generations, that people have always wanted to be famous, whether they had any particular skillset or not, but that talent often finds a way to breakthrough to the top. In a world where everyone has a channel, will the need for gatekeepers become crucial once again, or will we continue to live in the gazillion channel universe that social media has given us?
Most of the creators on Public Access were doing it to make a point, or because they had nothing to lose. Brand endorsements didn’t come into it, and things were wild, not polished, the behind- and front of- camera spectacle was irreverent, democratic and often, crazy.
The early days of podcasting now have a similar feel- the anything- goes, is anyone actually listening vibe. Now that they have turned into on- camera chat shows and hosts have to think about hair and make-up, will the kind of free thinking edge we see all over Public Access be lost again.
Of course it’s easy to say the film could do with a bit of an edit, but Shadrack Smith may be having the last laugh, that might just be exactly the point.
