Film Workers: Leo Hurwitz and American Documentary's Radical Roots
10-19 March 2010
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10003
$9
We've never really explained ourselves for choosing the name "Red Channels"--what it means, its history and connotations, and why we chose it to represent our efforts, now, in the 21st Century. But the occasion of the upcoming Anthology Film Archives series, "Leo Hurwitz and the New York School of Documentary Film," happening March 10-19, seems as good a time as any.
The "blacklist" in Hollywood was, we generally assume, a metonym; but there were a few well-known instances where a black list was literal (and publicly distributed, at that). Probably the best known was the Motion Picture Association of America's 1947 firing of "The Hollywood Ten"--a group of screenwriters and directors including Herbert Biberman, Edward Dmytryk, and Dalton Trumbo. Then there was the 1950 publication of a pamphlet, "Red Channels," by the news journal Counterattack.
"Red Channels" listed 151 individuals in the entertainment industry accused of being communist subversives. Officially sub-titled "The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television," the list included accountants, actors, attorneys, composers, conductors, designers, directors, journalists, lyricists, musicians, playwrights, producers, radio commentators, screenwriters, singers, songwriters, teachers, and writers. Among the 151 named were Stella Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Aaron Copland, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, Alan Lomax, Joseph Losey, Burgess Meredith, Arthur Miller, Zero Mostel, Dorothy Parker, Pete Seeger, Orson Welles, and the focus of this retrospective, Leo Hurwitz.*
We re-appropriated "Red Channels" as a means to preserve in our contemporary memory the legacy of this moment in our country's political and cultural history; but also as a provocation to consider what this mid-century entertainment blacklist means to us now. What is so absorbing about this history is not just that our cultural producers would be openly deprived work for their supposed ideologies; but that the hypothetical ideologies of these cultural workers would be appraised as so imminent and potent a threat as to force the discriminatory and repressive hand of both state and private interests. What was clear then, as it should be now, is what's at stake: the effects and potential of a revolutionary cultural hegemony.
For the organizers of this series, Leo Hurwitz's son Tom* and filmmaker Manfred Kirchheimer*, the motivation was mostly historical--to re-establish the importance and significance of Leo Hurwitz and his collaborators in the development of documentary film. The motivation for us to align ourselves with it is, we hope, obvious. It is a rare opportunity to reconnect with, and reconsider, our country's radical filmmaking history; and by extension consider how it informs engaged media production today. This is, in summation, the essential--and most fundamental--purpose of our Red Channels project.
The films in this series--the first complete Leo Hurwitz retrospective in New York--include work from the Workers Film and Photo League (1930-1935), Nykino (1934-1937), and Frontier Films (1937-1941). Hurwitz's films are placed within a larger context, highlighting, in addition to his own work, the work of his partners and contemporaries--which included Joris Ivens, Lewis Jacobs, Irving Lerner, Jay Leyda, Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers, Leo Seltzer, Ralph Steiner, Paul Strand, and Willard Van Dyke. These films are a time capsule of the U.S. Left between the wars, with subjects including major historical protests and rallies during the Great Depression; documents of organizing struggles in both our cities and small towns; and international reports from China, Mexico, Poland, Spain, etc. They are made in collaboration with Elia Kazan, Richard Leacock, Pare Lorentz, Lewis Mumford, Paul Robeson, and Barney Rosset, among others.
The moment in time at the heart of the series, the period from 1931-1942*, is perhaps second only to 1967-1971 in terms of radically redefining the form and purpose of an American political cinema. As we sit in the beginnings of a new decade and century, and try to come to terms with our post-Bush era--and what feel like increasingly digitally-mediated forms of engagement--it feels like a pretty good time to look back.
Wednesday March 10th 2010 - 7PM
THE WORKERS FILM AND PHOTO LEAGUE, 1931-1934
--Workers Newsreel Unemployment Special - 1931, 7 minutes
--Detroit Workers News Special: Ford Massacre - 1932, 7 minutes
--Hunger: The National Hunger March to Washington - 1932, 18 minutes
--The National Hunger March - 1931, 11 minutes
--America Today and the World in Review - 1932-1934, 11 minutes
--Bonus March - 1932, 12 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 70 minutes | 16mm Projection
Discussion with:
--Tom Hurwitz - son of Leo Hurwitz, cinematographer
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Strange Victory is the final film Leo Hurwitz would make before being included in the "Red Channels" blacklist of 1950. It was the first major film production for Barney Rosset, who later became the publisher of Grove Press in 1951, and founded the Evergreen Review in 1957. Through Grove Press Rosset produced Samuel Beckett's only cinematic effort, Film (1963), as well as Jean-Luc Godard's final Dziga-Vertov Group film, Vladimir and Rosa (1970).
Strange Victory is a bold and self-critical statement calling for closer examination of race relations at home, after the "victory" against fascism abroad. Formally, it is an ambitious experiment in compilation filmmaking, using an enormous amount of archive and newsreel footage from World War 2. The film features editing by Faith Hubley, and uncredited work by Sidney Meyers.
Friday March 12th 2010 - 9PM
THE WAR AT HOME, 1942-1948
--The Bridge - Ben Maddow & Willard Van Dyke, 1944, 30 minutes
--Strange Victory - Leo Hurwitz, 1948, 75 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes | 16mm Projection
Discussion with:
--Tom Hurwitz - son of Leo Hurwitz, cinematographer
--Charles Musser - professor; scholar of early and silent cinema; and director of Before the Nickelodeon (1982).
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Tuesday March 16th 2010 - 7:15PM
FRONTIER FILMS, 1937-1938
--Heart of Spain - Herbert Kline, 1937, 30 minutes
--China Strikes Back - Frontier Films, 1937, 23 minutes
--People of the Cumberland - Jay Leyda & Sidney Meyers, 1938, 20 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 75 minutes | 16mm Projection
Discussion with:
--Manny Kirchheimer - friend and collaborator with Leo Hurwitz; filmmaker, professor
--Juan Salas - scholar from Spain researching the Abraham Lincoln Brigade's films and photographs; PhD candidate at NYU
--David Stirk - co-edited Jay Leyda: A Life's Work (1988); dean at Princeton
For the complete listing of films, programs, and showtimes, visit: Leo Hurwitz and the New York School of Documentary Film
*Many many other artists and entertainers would be blacklisted in the United States because of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the second wave-"Red Scare" often associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Too many to list.
*Tom Hurwitz is an award-winning cinematographer who has worked with closely with Barbara Kopple, and many others.
*Manny Kirchheimer was one of Leo's closest friends and collaborators. He is himself a filmmaker and professor. We have previously screened his film, Stations of the Elevated (1980).
*The series also includes Hurwitz's later films, from 1952-1980.