The Criterion Collection

The conventional narrative of American documentary filmmaking generally jumps from 1922’s Nanook of the North to such exemplars of the sixties vérité revolution as the Maysles’s Salesman. Starting this week, Manhattan’s Anthology Film Archives attempts to fill in some of that gap with the retrospective Leo Hurwitz and the New York School of Documentary Film, which will shine a light on important nonfiction films made between 1931 and 1942 by a
group of radical New York artists. Hurwitz was the most influential of these; one of his films
that Anthology will be showcasing is the socially and politically charged 1942 semi-documentary Native Land, photographed by Paul Strand and narrated by Paul Robeson, which, as the program notes point out, “is finally being recognized as the crowning work in the early period of the American documentary.” Rarely screened, the lacerating exposé of everyday injustices in America is currently available from Criterion as part of the deluxe box set Paul Robeson: Portraits of The Artist. Leo Hurwitz and the New York School of Documentary Film runs now through March 19, with Native Land screening on March 12 and 16.