Paul Strand

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.

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A Mexican fisherman, whose son has died because he could not afford necessary medical care out of his meagre wages, becomes aware of how badly exploited he and his many fellow fisherman are by the one greedy man for whom they work and the corrupt politician who makes the laws to benefit him.

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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.

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The Great Maranelli, a stunting circus clown, falls instantly in love when he sees Dorothy Langdon, who does not think too much of him and lets him know it. He is so smitten that his works suffers to the extent that he is soon just a hobo drifting along the open road. When he again encounters Dorothy, she gets him a job as a salesman with her father's light-and-power company, and proves to be a a real "live-wire" salesman. He is then put in charge of the lighting in an amusement park being built under Dorothy's supervision, and trouble comes many directions, guided by Dorothy's cad fiancée who wants to make the stock in the project worthless so he can buy it cheaply.

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Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall St. or stroll more languorously through a cemetery. Ranks of skyscrapers extrude columns of smoke and steam. In plain view. Or framed, as through a balustrade. A crane promotes the city's upward progress, as an ironworker balances on a high beam. A locomotive in a railway yard prepares to depart, while an arriving ocean liner jostles with attentive tugboats. Fading sunlight is reflected in the waters of the harbor. The imagery is interspersed with quotations from Walt Whitman, who is left unnamed.

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