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Following his use of art, painting and sculpture, in his work of the previous decades, Hurwitz took on a project for the American Foundation of the Arts aimed on deepening and enriching, for art students, the way in which we see. Working with his second wife, the editor Peggy Lawson, he made four short films comprising The Art of Seeing Series. The films, made without words, are beautiful poems to the pleasure of sight. This is the second part of his series.
How the art in the Detroit Institute of Art connects to life's experiences and the neighborhood.
Following his use of art, painting and sculpture, in his work of the previous decades, Hurwitz took on a project for the American Foundation of the Arts aimed at deepening and enriching, for art students, the way in which we see. Working with his second wife, the editor Peggy Lawson, he made four short films comprising The Art of Seeing Series. The films, made without words, are beautiful poems to the pleasure of sight. This film came as a challenge that Hurwitz made for himself, to replicate in film his experience of seeing a work of art — in this case Césanne’s Still Life with Apples, 1895-98, that hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Although he finished the visual part of the film, he was stymied by the soundtrack in which he wanted no narration. About 45 years later, his colleague, Manfred Kirchheimer, created a sound track and produced the finished film.
The only known film record of the mass march and meeting held in Detroit on Feb. 4, 1932, against hunger and unemployment. Also shows the dramatic demonstration by workers at the Ford auto plant in River Rouge, Michigan in March of 1932, which ended with a violent attack by Dearborn police and Ford Company guards on the crowd with clubs, tear gas and guns which killed four young men. These deaths set off a wave of protest across the country.
In 1964, National Educational Television decided to make a program as a memorial to President Kennedy. Since he had been assassinated just a year before, it seemed unnecessary to recite the events of his death again. Executive Producer, Brice Howard, discussed with Hurwitz the possibility of making a film for television that, instead of engaging the assassination head on, would deal with the inevitablity of mortality and its trauma. Essay On Death uses a story of a camping trip by a father and son to weave the thoughts about death that intercede in our everyday affairs. The commentary is made up of writings, ancient and modern, on the life and death. Beautifully realized, it succeeds at a task that mainstream television rarely attempts.
Strange Victory" is about racial bias in post World War II America. Following "Native Land" in Leo Hurwitz' filmography, it uses some of the same techniques: dramatized scenes interspersed with scenes of compilation news reel footage, and scenes of evocative imagery.
By the start of World War II, Paul Robeson had given up his lucrative mainstream work to participate in more socially progressive film and stage productions. Robeson committed his support to Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz’s political semidocumentary Native Land. With Robeson’s narration and songs, this beautifully shot and edited film exposes violations of Americans’ civil liberties and is a call to action for exploited workers around the country. Scarcely shown since its debut, Native Land represents Robeson’s shift from narrative cinema to the leftist documentaries that would define the final chapter of his controversial film career.
Rodgers’ friends and colleagues pay tribute to him. Among the original Broadway cast members reprising the songs they introduced are Vivienne Segal (“Bewitched” from “Pal Joey”) and Alfred Drake (“People Will Say We’re in Love” from “Oklahoma!”). Vera Zorina dances “Rodgers in Three Quarter Time,” a ballet created expressly for the show set to three Rodgers waltzes, and Mary Martin sings “Wonderful Guy” as Rodgers himself accompanies her on piano.
A documentary about the film-maker's wife and co-worker, Peggy Lawson, who died in 1971.
From the perspective of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, documentary material, amongst this the freeing of the camp and the Nuremberg Trials with clips from films which were produced shortly after the war, and pictures of museum visitors are assembled into an essay about memory.