The Dryden will screen Here at the Water's Edge (Leo Hurwitz and Charles Pratt, U.S. 1961, 60 min., 16mm), and An Essay on Death: A Memorial to John F. Kennedy (Leo Hurwitz, U.S. 1964, 76 min., 16mm) as part of the Leo Hurwitz series.

Hurwitz's visual poem of the sights and sounds of New York Harbor in the late 1950s, Here at the Water's Edge is a time capsule of when Manhattan's waterways were vibrant and bustling. Critic Prairie Miller called it "the most haunting film I have ever seen. The film's poetry is utter visual—such wonder at the ordinary, such mastery of the natural." National Educational Television (NET), the precursor to PBS, sought to make a memorial to the late President John F. Kennedy for the first anniversary of his assassination. Rather than replaying the events of the year before, NET producer Brice Edwards asked Hurwitz to make a program exploring death itself. The film was the first public recognition of Hurwitz's work on television since his blacklisting, and it led to other documentaries for NET later in the decade.

[source: George Eastman Museum calendar, 2018-Nov-26]