The Social Seminar

The Social Seminar is a series of educational films for adults produced by the Extension Media Center of the University of California at Los Angeles in the early 1970s. The series was executive produced by Gary Schlosser, an Oscar-nominated producer of short-subject documentaries. The films were distributed nationally, for example to state educational film offices. The series was produced for the National Institute of Mental Health as a "multi-media training series."

Five episodes of The Social Seminar are known to have been produced: "Bunny," "Guy," "Teddy," "Tom," and "Changing." Each depicted, in a cinema-verite style without voiceover or introduction, aspects of the lives of a selected person or family as they dealt with personal, interpersonal and societal change. The episode "Changing," for example, showed how one man's reevaluation of his life and social standing led to his becoming a "hippie" in the eyes of his family and coworkers; though his home life was enhanced, he found himself increasingly socially isolated.[1]

The films are now part of the Prelinger Archive and are available freely online. In June 2011, "Changing" was featured on the Turner Classic Movies series TCM Underground.

  • Electronic music duo Boards of Canada sampled dialogue from the "Tom" episode of The Social Seminar in their song "Chromakey Dreamcoat", from the album The Campfire Headphase.
  • British rock band Bastille sampled dialogue from the "Changing" episode of The Social Seminar in their song "Fake It", from the album Wild World.

References
  1. "Social Seminar: Changing (1971)" Prelinger Archives, archive.org.


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