4 pm
DOUBLE FEATURE:
The Plow That Broke the Plains
(Lorentz, 1936, 16mm, 27 minutes) and
The Power and the Land
(Ivens, 1940, 16mm, 35 minutes) Admission
$5 at door

A unique double bill of New Deal-financed films by renowned international directors Pare Lorentz and Joris Ivens. Lorentz was arguably the person most responsible for the spurt of nonfiction filmmaking in the U.S. in the 1930s, and, through his friendship with FDR, would later head the U.S. Film Service at its inception in 1938. He would also direct two other landmark documentaries of the era—The River ('37), which chronicled the settling of the Mississippi River basin and the loss of valuable topsoil in the region, and The Fight for Life ('40), which targeted negligence and inadequate training in the delivery rooms and maternity wards of American hospitals.

The Plow That Broke the Plains shares a distinct kinship with two other Dust Bowl works—Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the Walker Evans-James Agee photograph and text collaboration, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.Produced by the U.S. Resettlement Administration, Lorentz traces the history of the Great Plains—from the earliest trappers to the cattle barons and the coming of farmers through the post-WWI boom and the Great Crash, finally to the drought and the disaster of misapplied farming technologies. The film’s strength is in the cutting and its ironic use of sound juxtaposition; Lorentz conceded that the film was indeed born on the editing table and was conceived without a shooting script. Nevertheless it remains an icon in the American documentary canon and also features a magnificent score by the composer Virgil Thomson.

Joris Ivens was best known for The Spanish Earth ('37), a prototype of what film historian Thomas Waugh describes as the “international solidarity” genre, which celebrated the Spanish peasant’s resistance to the Fascists. At Lorentz’s invitation he agreed to direct The Power and the Land for the Rural Electrification Administration on the impact electricity could have on the prosperity of the American farmer. The subject was the Parkinson family, a real family on a non-electrified farm in Ohio. The first half details the tediousness and physicality of their daily chores; the second, the solutions, profits, and satisfaction that electricity brings. Despite its outdated rhetoric, the film exists today as a simple ode to the American farmer, who will survive blight and bureaucrats alike. The narration was written by poet Stephen Vincent Benet, the score by Douglas Moore.

5:30 pm
Burden of Dreams
(Blank, 1982, 16mm, color, 97 minutes) Admission $5 at door

Producer/director Les Blank is best known for his ethnographic short films like The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins ('69) and Garlic Is as Good As Ten Mothers ('80). Working with long-time editor Maureen Gosling, Blank managed to capture the iconoclastic nature of German director Werner Herzog’s creative vision in this documentary on the making of Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo ('82).

In Fitzcarraldo, the title character (played by Klaus Kinski who replaced Jason Robards) dreams of bringing grand opera to the Amazon River basin, but encounters huge setbacks at every turn. Herzog’s script seemingly predicted his own five year struggle to get the movie made—beset by disease, bad weather, desertion, and financial disaster, stuck deep in the jungle for months at a time, the resulting documentary emerges as an amazing testament to Herzog’s unwavering drive. The San Francisco Chronicle called it “an extraordinary portrait of a filmmaker in the grips of an artistic passion that knows no bounds.” (When Mr. Blank visited Richmond as a guest of the 2001 James River Film Festival, this film was not screened; finally, fittingly, it will be. If you haven’t seen Fitzcarraldo, it’s available at the Video Fan.)

7:30 pm
The Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra LIVE with
Nanook of the North
(Flaherty, 1922, 16mm, 82 minutes) Admission $10

Richmond’s own Gourd Orchestra provides a live score to the granddaddy of documentaries, director Robert Flaherty’s beloved classic, Nanook of the North

The Gourd Orchestra was founded in 1992 by Arthur Stephens, who “planted a seed and grew an orchestra.” Member Barry Bless explains their interest in "Nanook of the North" — “(the film) documents human resourcefulness, creativity, adaptability, and humor, and what we see is our commonality as human beings and our interdependence with other living things. And it is this greater sense of belonging, across history and geography, that inspires us to make music."

Flaherty and Nanook the Hunter would become international icons—Flaherty is generally conceded to be the father of American documentary film and Nanook became so popular that ice cream confections world-wide were named for him, here we called it the Eskimo Pie! Flaherty had traveled widely as a youth with his mineralogist father, and knew the Hudson Bay territories well. In the late teens, he spent some time filming the natives of the region but this first attempt was later destroyed. More resolute than ever, Flaherty returned with the idea of centering his film on the daily life of the Inuit, to follow them in their nomadic, never-ending search for food. He found Nanook and his family agreeable subjects, even to the point of removing a few ice blocks from their igloo so there was enough light for his “indoor” filming. According to Flaherty, the charming Nanook never understood the concept of photography, but was adept at disassembling and reassembling his movie camera over and over again.

Like most documentaries, this film owes its seamless structure to selective editing that makes the daily toil merge timelessly with the passing of one season into another. Flaherty went on to make "Man of Aran" ('34), The Land ('42), and Louisiana Story (’48) continuing his preoccupation of man and nature working in harmony, but none is so revered as Nanook of the North.

Please join us for this special screening with live accompaniment by Barry Bless, Arthur Stephens, Christopher Hibben, John Ramsey, and Pippin Barnett — known collectively as the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra, who will release their new recording, Backyard Shangri-La at the performance! Advance $10 tickets this show only sold at Plan 9 and Video Fan (tickets sold at door for remaining seats.)