The Dryden will screen Native Land (Leo Hurwitz, Paul Strand, U.S. 1942, 89 min., 35mm).

Nearly four years in the making, filmmaker Leo Hurwitz and photographer Paul Strand's searing indictment of anti-labor practices was completed shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor—a time when concerns about national unity easily trumped internal class struggle. Consequently, this innovative semi-documentary was largely overlooked, if not deliberately ignored, but nevertheless remains a high point of the social-documentary movement and a masterpiece of independent filmmaking. Inspired by the book The Labor Spy Racket, which was itself based on the reports of the La Follette Senate Civil Liberties Committee, Native Land synthesizes documentary footage and dramatic re-creations to expose the infiltration of union meetings by spies sent to gather information on members who dared exercise their Constitutional right to free association. Hurwitz and Strand's eloquent reminder of the inviolability of the Bill of Rights—never timelier than during an era of fascism and war—uses Strand's stunning documentary cinematography and Paul Robeson's powerful voice-over narration to ground the film in the day-to-day realities of the American working class. The scripted dramatic re-creations, meanwhile, show the high human cost of betrayal from both sides and propel the film forward with unforgettable emotional force.

[source: George Eastman Museum website, 2016-Mar-7]