Quote:
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.

Quote:
I visual ode to the city that never sleeps. In Manhatta, the vertical landscapes framed by the countless buildings, the machinery and the electrical wires create a poetic and thoughtful look at one of the biggest creations of mankind. The industrialisation is captured by the way the people look lost in this world of concrete and metal they have created themselves. Humans and machines are tightly intertwined, but the immensity of the city swallows its habitants, devouring every touch of individuality. The emphasis on the textures of water, steam, rust and dirt reminds us of the humanity peaking through this sea of modernity. This “city film” is a visual poem dedicated to the colossal and mesmerizing New York, while commenting on the questionnable impact modernity has had on humanity.

Manhatta (1921, Charles Sheeler & Paul Strand) [576p].mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	10 min 46 s
Size: 	207 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	752x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	16.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 681 kb/s
BPP: 	0.387
Audio

https://nitro.download/view/EBFCDBA607FF0D2/Manhatta_(1921,_Charles_Sheeler_&_Paul_Strand)__576p_.mkv

Language(s):None
Subtitles:None

The post Charles Sheeler & Paul Strand – Manhatta (1921) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Paul Robeson narrates a mix of dramatizations and archival footage about the bill of rights being under attack during the 1930s by union busting corporations, their spies and contractors. In dramatizations, we see a Michigan farmer beaten for speaking up at a meeting, a union man murdered in an apartment in Cleveland, two sharecroppers near Fort Smith Arkansas shot by men deputized by the local sheriff, a spy stealing the names of union members, and a dead Chicago union man eulogized. In archival footage we witness police and goons beating lawfully assembled union organizers, and we see men at work and union families at play. The narration celebrates patriotism and democracy.

Criterion wrote:
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.

Quote:
In an intriguing documentary that wants to trace the notion of liberty and its application and abuse over the course of American history, actor/singer Paul Robeson lends his distinctive voice over narration. We see stories involving the murder of sharecroppers, the torture of men by the Ku Klux Klan, and the incredibly incendiary activities of an anti-union corporate spy. While all of these sequences are dramatic recreations, they are based on actual fact. Indeed, these incidents were reported to the Senate Civil Liberties Committee in 1938. Throughout it all, Robeson sings, and suggests ways to avoid this obvious “fascism” at home.

Extra: “The Story of Native Land,” a video interview with cinematographer Tom Hurwitz, son of Frontier Films cofounder and Native Land codirector Leo Hurwitz. In English with no subtitles. Framerate is the best possible constant framerate, as all the new sections are shot in pure NTSC video.

1.83GB | 1h 28m | 720×540 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/9ECFAA6983560CE/Native.Land.1942.DVDRip.mkv https://nitro.download/view/2B976C12935CD0D/The.Story.of.Native.Land.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, English HOH

The post Leo Hurwitz & Paul Strand – Native Land [+Extra] (1942) first appeared on Cinema of the World.