Frontier Films
Sat 02.11.
20:00
Cinema
Arsenal 1
Dovzhenko’s film AEROGRAD would give its name to a group of filmmakers who split off from the WFPL in 1935 and counted Leyda among their number: they initially called themselves Nykino (based on New York) before changing their name to Frontier Films in 1937, inspired by the title under which AEROGRAD was distributed in America. The group regarded themselves as the political filmmaking avant-garde in the US, with Leyda contributing what he had learnt in Moscow as an editor and co-director.
Director
Paul Strand, Leo Hurwitz, Harry Dunham, Irving Lerner
USA / 1937
37 min.
/ 16 mm
/ Original version
Original language
English
Together with Irving Lerner, Ben Maddow and Sidney Meyers, he edited CHINA STRIKES BACK, for which the group drew on the 16mm footage that cinematographer Harry Dunham had shot behind the frontlines of the armed conflict between the Nanking government and the Communist guerillas in northwestern China.
Director
Sidney Meyers, Jay Leyda
USA / 1937
18 min.
/ 16 mm
/ Original version
Original language
English
For THE PEOPLE OF THE CUMBERLAND, a Frontier team traveled to Tennessee, where the coal industry had ravaged the lands and left the people hungry, to depict the founding of a local trade union office and the work of the progressive Highlander Folk School as a means of opposition to it.
Director
Joris Ivens
USSR / 1932
50 min.
/ 35 mm
/ Original version with English subtitles
Original language
Russian
In their visual language and commentary texts, the Frontier films reveal just how much their militant film work was inspired by their far-reaching international network. This is made clear by PESN O GEROJACH, which is about the steelworks in Magnitorgorsk. Ivens was able to take his pick from an embarrassment of riches from the era in putting together the film: he extolled the timeless beauty of the landscape of the southern Urals together with the construction achievements of Soviet modernity, wove together documentary footage with a fictional plot surrounding a Konsomol member and put together a symphony of industrial sounds, medialized voices and a specially composed score by Hanns Eisler on the soundtrack.
CHINA STRIKES BACK and THE PEOPLE OF THE CUMBERLAND were made available by the Museum of Modern Art. PESN O GEROJACH will be shown with a print from the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv.
Funded by:
