The story in David Shadrack Smith’s movie opens in 1971, back when the “Big Three” networks held a psychological and cultural monopoly on the American living room. New York City required cable companies to provide airtime to ordinary citizens as a condition of their utility licenses. Manhattan Cable Television followed. The result reads like a digital “commons” long before “digital” carried any weight in everyday speech.
The project’s animating spirit comes through Charlotte Schiff-Jones, a Time Inc. executive who branded herself a “First Amendment lunatic.” She works from a tidy premise: give people a soapbox and they start building a community around it. The film treats this as the “democratization of the airwaves” in a raw state. A fifty-dollar fee bought a slice of the sky, and the city’s residents filled it with whatever they had.
Gritty, pre-gentrification New York makes a fitting stage. The city looks crumbling and alive at the same time. Channel C and Channel J act as mirrors for urban decay and creative rebirth. The impulse is a grab for power away from corporate giants. The intent stays high-minded. Reality keeps pushing back.
A Symphony of Archival Static
Director David Shadrack Smith removes himself from the present tense. The frame holds no modern talking heads. We hear voices from the past, and the faces stay locked in their time. This “all-archival” method turns the film into sensory overload, like freebasing fifty years of television history. The “visual cacophony” demands full attention.
The technical heavy lifting belongs to archival producer Anne-Marcelle Ngabirano and editor Geoff Gruetzmacher. They take a “slagh-heap” of footage and stitch it into something that resembles a story, seams included. Freeze frames on recreated TV screens introduce speakers, a small anchoring device that keeps the viewer grounded in the era. The pace refuses to ease up.
It mimics channel surfing inside a fever dream. The image quality runs rough and grainy. That texture carries meaning. It holds the “unfilteredness” (my own term for this flavor of raw honesty) of a medium that had little interest in lighting, focus, or polish. The glitches become part of the argument, and part of the punchline, since the film treats technical failure like an aesthetic signature.
Most historical documentaries play polished and distant. This one puts you in the booth. The hiccups stay in. The film also catches moments where participants seem to sense history forming in real time, and then keep talking anyway.
From Basquiat to the Blue Room
The programming on Manhattan Cable comes across as a “clusterfuck of ideas.” Early shows such as Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party let Jean-Michel Basquiat and Debbie Harry exist on camera with no need to explain themselves. The mood plays like a downtown art scene playground. These segments hit as a “time capsule of strangeness,” where the avant-garde registers as the baseline.
Then pornography arrives as the “shiny object.” The move from community art to the “leased” access of Channel J shifts the terrain. The film frames this stretch as the “Wild West” of the airwaves. Al Goldstein and his show Midnight Blue keep pressing against what the public can tolerate, and the channel turns into a frontline for the free-speech fight.
The legal battles of the 1980s appear as a precursor to modern censorship debates. Conservative pushback leads to court cases and attempts to impose “opt-in” requirements. Goldstein and his peers answer with a kind of “unfettered sleaze” that still serves a higher legal purpose. They win. The film’s takeaway lands plainly: the First Amendment covers the uncomfortable and the sublime. The atmosphere feels permissive, almost giddy.
People test limits of taste because the machinery allows it. The film calls this era “mediated narcissism,” with the camera acting like a magnet for eccentrics, opportunists, and true believers.
The Ancestry of the Influencer
Beyond the nudity and the art, public access functions as social utility. Lou Maletta and the Gay Cable Network use the platform to circulate safe-sex information during the bleakest stretch of the AIDS epidemic. Mainstream media keeps its distance from the topic. Public access carries it into homes. The film calls it a “lifeline” for marginalized people.
Other “underground voices” appear through groups such as Paper Tiger Television, offering a critique of corporate media from inside the same broadcast system. They use the tool of the enemy to take the enemy apart. The film labels this “artistic democracy” in action. It also slips in a dry aside: volume does not guarantee insight. A microphone in quieter hands changes the conversation.
The thread of Jake Fogelnest and Squirt TV forms the bridge to the present. At fourteen, he becomes a star in his bedroom. The film treats that as a blueprint for the “creator economy.” His later move to MTV, and the personal struggles that follow, bring out the “cautionary tale” side of early fame.
The film points toward a direct lineage running to TikTok, YouTube, and OnlyFans. Manhattan Cable predicts a “populist smorgasbord” of self-made programming. Human behavior stays consistent. Bandwidth expands. We remain a species of voyeurs and exhibitionists, forever hunting for a camera and a crowd.
Public Access premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2026. The film chronicles the wild history of Manhattan Cable Television and its role as a precursor to modern digital media. Viewers were able to watch the film during its festival run in Park City or through the Sundance digital platform until February 1, 2026. A wider release on streaming platforms is expected later this year through its production partners.
Full Credits
Title: Public Access
Distributor: Part2 Filmworks, Olive Productions, Sundance Institute
Release date: January 23, 2026
Rating: TV-MA
Running time: 107 minutes
Director: David Shadrack Smith
Writers: David Shadrack Smith
Producers and Executive Producers: Sara Crow, Anne-Marcelle Ngabirano, Wren Arthur, Steve Buscemi, Benny Safdie
Cast: Jake Fogelnest, Charlotte Schiff-Jones, Debbie Harry, Al Goldstein, Glenn O’Brien, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lou Maletta, Steve Gruberg
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): David Shadrack Smith
Editors: Geoff Gruetzmacher, Maya Tippett, Craig Rinkerman
Composer: adore, Olivier Spencer
The Review
Public Access
Public Access is a dizzying, "all-archival" excavation of a media revolution that predicted our current digital narcissism. By eschewing modern interviews for a "visual cacophony" of the past, the film forces the viewer to experience the "unfilteredness" of New York’s creative fringe. While the structure occasionally lacks momentum, its commitment to the raw history of free speech and community utility is undeniable. It is an essential, albeit messy, time capsule.
PROS
- Incredible, rare archival footage of 1970s-90s NYC.
- Immersive voiceover format preserves the era's energy.
- Powerful exploration of free speech and social utility.
- Connects historical media to modern social platforms.
CONS
- The "chaotic" editing can feel overwhelming or disjointed.
- Lack of chronological structure may frustrate some viewers.
- Some segments "dwell" too long on repetitive adult content.
- Missing deeper analysis of voyeurism and exhibitionism.
