The Land
(1942)
45 mins | Documentary | 1942
Cast:
Robert J. Flaherty [ More ]Director:
Robert J. FlahertyProduction Company:
U.S. Department of AgricultureAlthough the viewed film contained a 1941 copyright statement by Robert J. Flaherty and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the title was not included in the Catalog of U.S. Copyright entries. A Sep 1947 NYT article stated that The Land was filmed over an area of 25,000 miles in the South, West and Southwest portions of the United States. The Var review noted that the film, which the Agricultural Adjustment Administration of the Department of Agriculture had commissioned Flaherty to make in 1939, was already outdated by the time it was first shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in Apr 1942. Var called the film "confused" in part because it was initially intended to promote the underdevelopment of American fields at a time when American agricultural needs were beginning to require the opposite to supply the war effort. According to the Var review, the completed film was shelved for months by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration because it did not convey the proper message. Only after Flaherty re-edited The Land "with a concept entirely different from that with which he shot it" did the film have its first public showing. Although an Oct 1941 NYT article on Flaherty states that the filmmaker was "summoned by [documentary filmmaker] Pare Lorentz and the then existing United States Film Service to make The Land," the extent of Lorentz's participation in the film has not been determined. Production on the picture began in the summer of 1939, and by the time it was ready for editing, Flaherty had shot ...
Although the viewed film contained a 1941 copyright statement by Robert J. Flaherty and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the title was not included in the Catalog of U.S. Copyright entries. A Sep 1947 NYT article stated that The Land was filmed over an area of 25,000 miles in the South, West and Southwest portions of the United States. The Var review noted that the film, which the Agricultural Adjustment Administration of the Department of Agriculture had commissioned Flaherty to make in 1939, was already outdated by the time it was first shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in Apr 1942. Var called the film "confused" in part because it was initially intended to promote the underdevelopment of American fields at a time when American agricultural needs were beginning to require the opposite to supply the war effort. According to the Var review, the completed film was shelved for months by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration because it did not convey the proper message. Only after Flaherty re-edited The Land "with a concept entirely different from that with which he shot it" did the film have its first public showing. Although an Oct 1941 NYT article on Flaherty states that the filmmaker was "summoned by [documentary filmmaker] Pare Lorentz and the then existing United States Film Service to make The Land," the extent of Lorentz's participation in the film has not been determined. Production on the picture began in the summer of 1939, and by the time it was ready for editing, Flaherty had shot 100,000 feet film. The article also quotes Flaherty as having said of the film, "the most amazing thing about it [was] that could be made at all. It shows that democracy can face itself in the mirror without flinching." The film, according to Flaherty, was begun without a preconceived story: "They gave me a camera and threw me out into the field to make a film about the land and the people that live by it." According to the Var review, 16mm and 35mm prints of the film were made available by the United States Department of Agriculture, free of charge.
The impact of soil erosion and modern technology on North American agriculture can be devastating. The discussion of soil erosion and its effects dates back three hundred years, when a group of Pennsylvania farmers tried to find ways to slow the effects of the changes occurring on their land. In Tennessee, a state once covered with indigenous tall trees, there are large areas that have been washed away of soil. In Arkansas, a river that once flowed freely is now covered with so much topsoil that a person could walk across it. The most dangerous type of soil erosion is sheet erosion, a gradual erosion that accounts for nearly half of the naturally occurring erosion of cultivated land in the United States. Soil erosion has been blamed for the abandonment of the farming town of Goforth, Texas, where jobless migrant field workers were left to forage for food. Many of the nation's one million transients have fallen on hard times as a result, directly or indirectly, of soil erosion and its impact, as well as the advent of modern technology on agriculture employment. Modern technology, which has replaced the Mexican cotton-picker with a machine that can do in twenty minutes what a laborer could accomplish in two days, is equally responsible for displacing many field workers. In Iowa, where horses have been replaced by heavy machinery, cornpickers have been made ...
The impact of soil erosion and modern technology on North American agriculture can be devastating. The discussion of soil erosion and its effects dates back three hundred years, when a group of Pennsylvania farmers tried to find ways to slow the effects of the changes occurring on their land. In Tennessee, a state once covered with indigenous tall trees, there are large areas that have been washed away of soil. In Arkansas, a river that once flowed freely is now covered with so much topsoil that a person could walk across it. The most dangerous type of soil erosion is sheet erosion, a gradual erosion that accounts for nearly half of the naturally occurring erosion of cultivated land in the United States. Soil erosion has been blamed for the abandonment of the farming town of Goforth, Texas, where jobless migrant field workers were left to forage for food. Many of the nation's one million transients have fallen on hard times as a result, directly or indirectly, of soil erosion and its impact, as well as the advent of modern technology on agriculture employment. Modern technology, which has replaced the Mexican cotton-picker with a machine that can do in twenty minutes what a laborer could accomplish in two days, is equally responsible for displacing many field workers. In Iowa, where horses have been replaced by heavy machinery, cornpickers have been made absolete.
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Partially Viewed
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AFI Life Achievement AwardTOP SEARCHES
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