Ralph Steiner

The City

A prescient documentary about city planning, which presents idyllic suburbs and nuclear families as a solution to the chaos, poverty and social decay of industrialized inner cities.

People of the Cumberland

The film takes place in rural Tennessee, where communities have experienced economic and environmental devastation created by the coal mining industry. The introduction of the Highlander Folk School in 1931 by educator Myles Horton and the movement to bring labor union representation to the region are shown as means of empowering the population. Efforts are made to stop the union activities with the murder of a local organizer, but eventually the union movement is able to take root with the local workforce.

The Plow That Broke the Plains

A documentary about what happened to the Great Plains of the United States and Canada when uncontrolled farming destroyed the soil and led to the Dust Bowl.

Mechanical Principles

Close up we see pistons move up and down or side to side. Pendulums sway, the small parts of machinery move. Gears drive larger wheels. Gears within gears spin. Shafts turn some mechanism that is out of sight. Screws revolve and move other gears; a bit rotates. More subtle mechanisms move other mechanical parts for unknown purposes. Weights rise and fall. The movements, underscored by sound, are rhythmic. Circles, squares, rods, and teeth are in constant and sometimes asymmetrical motion. These human-made mechanical bits seem benign and reassuring.

Slowdown

A pixillated, time-lapse avant-garde film about the speed with which we conduct our lives, as opposed to the more leisurely pace of natural life, the seasons, the changes in weather, the movement of wind and water.

Panther Woman of the Needle Trades, or The Lovely Life of Little Lisa

The photographer Ralph Steiner, who had been making abstract avant-garde films in the late 1920s, contributed his own parody of American economic life with PANTHER WOMAN OF THE NEEDLE TRADES, OR THE LOVELY LIFE OF LITTLE LISA (1931). The film, which opens with Jehovah (Morris Carnovsky) creating the world out of a test tube, proceeds to present a short history of the universe before the birth of Elizabeth Hawes (1903), the heroine of the film’s title. It then follows her career from childhood seamstress to Parisian designer of haute couture via a college education at Vassar. Reminiscent of Robert Florey’s THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413—A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (1928) in terms of its art direction and elliptical narrative style, PANTHER WOMAN is a parody of the all-American success story, a young woman’s fantasy of a glamorous career in an age of diminishing possibilities. (via: http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/2902/Avant-Garde-Film.html)

H₂O

A cinematic tone poem, showcasing the dynamic nature of water through its various forms.

The World Today: The Black Legion - Shadow of Fascism Over America

“Unhappy with the limited structure of league newsreels, Nykino, a splinter filmmaking collective, produced a MARCH OF TIME-type series under the banner THE WORLD TODAY. Only two episodes were released, the first premiering with Strand’s THE WAVE (1936). This one, like NATIVE LAND, addresses fascism in America.” - Bruce Posner” (via Light Cone). Not to be confused with the similarly titled Black Legion from 1937, directed by Archie Mayo.