Discovery in a Landscape

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.

A documentary about the film-maker's wife and co-worker, Peggy Lawson, who died in 1971.

The first production from Frontier Films, the film production collective that was the successor to NYKino and the Workers Film and Photo League, Heart of Spain focuses on the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that became a touchstone of its era and was the most forceful opposition to the rising threat of fascism in Europe. Heart of Spain was begun by Geza Karpathi and Herbert Kline, who ultimately turned their footage over to Paul Strand, Leo Hurwitz, and Ben Maddow to make the film. It is compelling both for its shrewd formal aesthetics and as a sympathetic human document of the war.

1943 Oscar nominated film in the category Best Documentary, Short Subject.

How the art in the Detroit Institute of Art connects to life's experiences and the neighborhood.

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.

The film shows the National Unemployment Council Hunger March of Nov. and Dec. 1931, which set out from disparate parts of the U.S. to represent twelve million unemployed.

Documentary examining the work of sculptor Richard Lippold, particular his sculpture of the sun at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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.

First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival Week of the Angry Arts, the epic compilation film incorporated minute-long segments which were sent from many corners of the country, spliced together and projected. The original presentation of the works was more of an open forum with no curation or selection, and in 2000 Anthology Film Archives preserved a print featuring around 40 films from over 60 submissions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An impressionistic study of the celebrated tap dancer.