This film opens in 1969 in an America experiencing seismic cultural and political shifts, but not on television. When a CBS executive decides to start a pilot program to tell the stories of the counterculture, the Videofreex are born. This collective of men and women takes their then brand-new portable video cameras out into the streets and across the country. They document anti-war, black power, and women’s rights protests, and interview activists like Abbie Hoffman and Fred Hampton. In Here Come the Videofreex we see what happens when CBS executives watch the pilot, and how the radical Videofreex forge their own path, as if taking advice from Hoffman’s Steal This Book. Built from the recently restored archive of Videofreex tapes, the film captures the optimism and energy of the times through the collective’s innovative footage and tells a surprising and inspiring story of the beginnings of independent media—a low-resolution prologue to today’s universal ability to self-broadcast via the web.  ST