Native Land

Inspired by the 1938 report of the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee's investigation into the repression of labor organizing, Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand's biting and beautiful Native Land (1942, though largely shot between '37 and '39) combines documentary footage with staged reenactments to depict the struggle of trade unions against corporations, their spies and contractors. Legendary singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson narrates the film through words and song, lending the work a sense of powerful gravitas. In part a progressive response to the patriotic newsreel series The March of Time , Hurwitz and Strand (alongside their documentary filmmaking collective, Frontier Films) divided the majority of the film into four parts, all based on real events: the murders of a union farmer in Michigan and a labor organizer in Cleveland; the shooting down of two Southern sharecroppers (one black, one white) by deputies; a brutal Ku Klux Klan rally in which members tar and feather progressive political candidates; and the Republic Steel Massacre of 1937. Interwoven with these sequences are dramatizations of the workings of labor union spies, as well as slice-of-life montages meant to illustrate the themes of liberty, freedom and industrial modernization.

• documentary