Strand: under the dark cloth

Canada, 1989

Film
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Documentary about modernist photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976), one of the seminal figures in the history of photography. Strand broke with the romantic pictorialist tradition to create a direct, dynamic photographic aesthetic. He was one of the first American artists to fully understand cubism, translating its vocabulary to the medium of photography. From 1914 onwards, Strand’s groundbreaking work encompassed abstract compositions, candid portraits, extreme close-ups of nature and documentation of social conditions. He was also a filmmaker and in 1921 he made America’s first avant-garde film, “Manhatta”, with painter Charles Sheeler. His growing political commitment, especially during and after the Great Depression, led him to embrace filmmaking as a means of political expression. In 1934 he became involved with a group of radical New York filmmakers, collaborating with Pare Lorentz on “The Plow that broke the plains” in 1936 and with Leo Hurwitz on “Native land”, a visually remarkable indictment of American civil rights abuses in 1941. The documentary contains interviews with Georgia O’Keefe, Milton Brown, Fred Zinnemann, Leo Hurwitz, Virginia Stevens, Hazel Strand, Cesare Zavattini, Blanche Brown and Walter Rosenblum. The titles “Native land” and “The plow that broke the plains” available on VHS.

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Credits

producer/director

John Walker

production company

John Walker Productions

Telefilm Canada

Duration

01:20:00:00

Production places
Canada
Production dates
1989

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If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/94146--strand-under-the-dark-cloth/ |title=Strand: under the dark cloth |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=17 June 2024 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}