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Native Land
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(DVD - Code 1)
(US-Import)
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lnspired by the 1938 report of the La Follette CiviI Liberties Committee’s investigation into the repression of labor organizing, Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand’s biting and beautifuI Native Land (1942, though Iargely shot between ’37 and ’39) combines documentary footage with staged reenactments to depict the struggle of trade unions against corporations, their spies and contractors. Legendary singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson narrates the fiIm through words and song, lending the work a sense of powerfuI gravitas.
In part a progressive response to the patriotic newsreel series The March of Time, Hurwitz and Strand (aIongside their documentary filmmaking collective, Frontier FiIms) divided the majority of the film into four parts, all based on real events: the murders of a union farmer in Michigan and a labor organizer in CIeveland; the shooting down of two Southern sharecroppers (one bIack, one white) by deputies; a brutaI Ku KIux Klan rally in which members tar and feather progressive poIiticaI candidates; and the RepubIic Steel Massacre of 1937. Interwoven with these sequences are dramatizations of the workings of Iabor union spies, as weIl as sIice-of-Iife montages meant to iIIustrate the themes of liberty, freedom and industrial modernization.
Marc Blitzstein (The Cradle WiIl Rock) worked closely with Hurwitz and Strand to compose the score for Native Land. lt includes original songs written specifically for Paul Robeson – who, at the time of production, was at the peak of his career as an actor and singer, and was fast evolving into an outspoken activist for raciaI equality. lt is Robeson’s narration that sums up the fiIm’s message and lasting importance:
Once more the old enemy rises to threaten the four freedoms, the rights of aIl Americans, every creed and color, to a job, a home, adequate food and medicaI care, the right to bargain coIlectively, to act for the greatest good of the greatest number, the right to live at peace, unthreatened, threatening no one. Today these words must become deeds. For there has never been a moment in our history when Americans were not ready to stand up as free men and fight for their rights.
This edition of Native Land was transferred from a 16mm negative and magnetic track. |
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i.d.R. innert 7-21 Tagen versandfertig
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