‘TV at Large’: Big Screen, Small Vision : Video reviews: The brief shelf life of topical, political works makes an event like the latest L.A. Freewaves festival a very risky strategy.

In previous years, the L.A. Freewaves video festival required a Thomas Bros. guide to track it. Where other festivals prove unwieldy by a sheer mass of programming, L.A. Freewaves’ challenge was driving from one video venue to another--and even finding them.

For the latest edition, though, all you have to do is take the 101 into Cahuenga Pass. Saturday night, at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, L.A. Freewaves will get concentrated down to “TV at Large,” a 90-minute video program presented on a cinema-scale screen. The idea is to present the collectively curated video program to a collective, an audience far larger than anything a living room can contain.

Good idea, but what they’ll be watching is another matter.

It’s very fortuitous that the Saturday program includes guest appearances by such potent, charismatic performers as Amy Hill and Roger Guenveur Smith. It will need all the human boosting it can get, because the majority of video works on display is trite agit-prop stuff past the expiration date.

A good deal of the work, chosen by a group headed by JoAnn Hanley, date as far back as 1990 and 1991. One, Jeanne C. Finley’s “Involuntary Conversion,” which plays on cold war euphemisms, identifies one “Dan Quale” as U.S. Vice President. (Is the misspelling deliberate?) Another, Matthew McDaniel’s “Media Killa,” suggests that the investigation into Michael Jackson’s alleged pedophilia was just another case of white America putting blacks “back in their place.” Since “Media Killa” was made, of course, Jackson has become the Comeback Kid with Lisa Marie.

This is cutting edge? The brief shelf life of such topical, (invariably left) political video makes such a public unveiling as “TV at Large” a very risky strategy. As cleverly edited and designed as a work like Phil Patiris’ “The Iraq Campaign: A Television History” is (catch the perfectly designed graphics, such as “CBS Evening Lies With Dan Rather”), its message that “Operation Desert Storm” was a TV show has the familiarity of a cliche. No less than two videos (“Media Killa” and Daniel Mason’s initially startling “Targeting Audiences”) clumsily employ L.A. riot footage.

This has all been done before, in works at earlier video festivals, and much more effectively. In this context, the less anchored a piece is to the news, the stronger it becomes: Bruce Pollack’s “Tuned In” is a nicely woozy information highway hallucination; Paula Levine’s “Mirror” turns macho preening into something hypnotically disturbing; Takahiko Iimura’s “Six Features” uses computer manipulation for the program’s only truly funny video; Ray Bravo’s “Eye” displays fine craft--sorely missed in most of this collection--with the Harry Paintbox video tool.

Of the more issue-based videos, only Y. David Chung’s thoughtful “Turtle Boat Head” blends original imagery, mixed media and memory into a potent video essay on Asian immigrants.

A final note: L.A. Freewaves is also coordinating a five-part series of videos on topics such as race, sexuality and multiculturalism airing on 27 Los Angeles County public-access channels through mid-October.

* “TV at Large” plays at 8 p.m. Saturday, John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood. $3-$6. (213) 466-1767.