Workers Film and Photo League
Encyclopedia
The Workers Film and Photo League was an organization of filmmakers in the United States initially affiliated with the Workers International Relief. The WIR was led by the German communist-propagandist Willi Münzenberg
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Although the best known chapter of the WFPL was in New York, groups in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities created and screened documentaries under the "Film and Photo League" moniker.
Much has been made of the assumed association of the Workers Film and Photo League with the Communist Party; both in the US and abroad. While many members were self identified Marxists and party members, the group often functioned independently. The group was largely composed of idealists who saw the documentary film as an vital element of the movement for radical social change.
Nationally, the Film & Photo Leagues emerged as a loosely knit alliance of local organizations that provided left-wing visual propaganda. Their efforts during the years of the early Depression helped to define social documentary film and photography as a genre, while advancing media practices that survive today.
In 1933 "Workers" was dropped from the title and the organization became the Film and Photo League. The FPL survived for another year in New York, where its photographers formed the Photo League. Some filmmakers formed an independent private production company, others founded Nykino and some, later, the Frontier Film Group.
Willi Münzenberg
Willi Münzenberg was a communist political activist. Münzenberg was the first head of the Young Communist International in 1919-20 and established the famine-relief and propaganda organization Workers International Relief in 1921...
.
Although the best known chapter of the WFPL was in New York, groups in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities created and screened documentaries under the "Film and Photo League" moniker.
Much has been made of the assumed association of the Workers Film and Photo League with the Communist Party; both in the US and abroad. While many members were self identified Marxists and party members, the group often functioned independently. The group was largely composed of idealists who saw the documentary film as an vital element of the movement for radical social change.
History
Founded in 1930, the WFPL produced documentaries of U.S. Labor Movement including the National Hunger marches of 1931 and 1932 and the Bonus March 1932. These newsreels were generally not distributed to theaters, but shown at party or trade union events. In New York, the “Harry Alan Potamkin Film School” was established by the Workers Film and Photo League to train working-class filmmakers.Nationally, the Film & Photo Leagues emerged as a loosely knit alliance of local organizations that provided left-wing visual propaganda. Their efforts during the years of the early Depression helped to define social documentary film and photography as a genre, while advancing media practices that survive today.
In 1933 "Workers" was dropped from the title and the organization became the Film and Photo League. The FPL survived for another year in New York, where its photographers formed the Photo League. Some filmmakers formed an independent private production company, others founded Nykino and some, later, the Frontier Film Group.
New York
- Lester BalogLester BalogLester Balog was a labor activist and founding member of the Workers' Film & Photo LeagueBorn in Hungary, he immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s. A soccer player in Budapest, after immigrating to the U.S. with his family as a teen, he joined the Labor Sports Union in New York. From...
- Tom Brandon
- Sam Brody
- Robert Del Duca
- Arnold Eagle
- Leo T. Hurwitz
- Lewis JacobsLewis JacobsLewis Jacobs was an American author, director and publisher. Jacobs attended art school in Philadelphia and soon moved from an interest in photography to a deep interest in cinema...
- Vic Kandel
- Irving LernerIrving LernerIrving Lerner Before becoming a filmmaker, Lerner was a research editor for Columbia University's Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, getting his start in film by making documentaries for the anthropology department. In the early 1930s, he was a member of the Workers Film and Photo League, and later,...
- Jay LeydaJay LeydaJay Leyda was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film historian, noted for his work on U.S, Soviet and Chinese Cinema. His The Melville Log was a day to day compilation of documents which he had painstakingly collected on the life of Herman Melville. He was a member of the Workers Film and...
- Nancy Naumberg
- David Platt
- Harry Alan Potamkin
- Julian Roffman
- Leo SeltzerLeo Seltzer (filmmaker)Leo Seltzer was an American social-documentary filmmaker whose career spanned overhalf a century, having made more than sixty films. One of thefounders of the Workers' Film & Photo League, Seltzer received many international...
- Ralph SteinerRalph SteinerRalph Steiner was an American photographer, pioneer documentarian and a key figure among avant-garde filmmakers in the 1930s.-Biography:...
Chicago
- Maurice Baillen
- Conrad Friberg, aka C.O. Nelson
- John FreitagJohn FreitagJohn W. Freitag was an American rower who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics.He died in St. Louis, Missouri.In 1904 he was part of the American boat, which won the bronze medal in the coxless fours....
- Gordon Koster
- William Kruck
- John Masek
- Dr. William J. Twig
Film and Photo League Films
Although many of the films produced by the Film and Photo Leagues were destroyed in a 1935 storage fire in New York, some surviving films can be found at the Museum of Modern Art Film Study Center, New York; Film Center, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. A filmography was created by researchers in the 1970s.- National Hunger March
- Bonus March
- Detroit Ford MassacreFord Hunger MarchThe Ford Hunger March was a demonstration of unemployed workers starting in Detroit and ending in Dearborn, Michigan, that took place on March 7, 1932. The march resulted in four workers being shot to death by the Dearborn Police Department and security guards employed by the Ford Motor Company....
- Workers Newsreels
- Halsted Street
- The Great Depression
- Century of Progress
- Berry Strike
Further reading
- Campbell, Russell. Film and Photo League: Radical cinema in the 30s. Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 14, 1977, pp. 23–25. Retrieved August 24, 2006.
- Campbell, Russell. Cinema Strikes Back: Radical Filmmaking in the United States 1930-1942. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982
- Campbell, Russell. Film and Photo League: Radical cinema in the 30s Jump Cut, no. 14, 1977, pp. 23–25 http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC14folder/FilmPhotoIntro.html
- Brandon, Tom "Survival List: Films of the Great Depression" in Platt, David, ed. Celluloid Power: Social Film Criticism from "The Birth of a Nation" to "Judgment at Nuremberg" Metuchen, N.J: Scarecrow Press, 1992.
- Fred Sweet, Eugene Rosow and Allan Francovich, "Pioneers: An Interview with Tom Brandon" Film Quarterly 27: 1 (Fall, 1973): 12.
- Seltzer, Leo. Documenting the Depression of the 1930s: The Work of the Film and Photo League in Platt, David, ed. Celluloid Power: Social Film Criticism from the “Birth of a Nation” to “Judgment at Nuremberg Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press: 1992
- Leshne, Carla. The Film & Photo League of San Francisco. Film History: An International Journal - Volume 18, Number 4, 2006, pp. 361–373. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/film_history/v018/18.4leshne.html
- www.sambrody.com
- Alexander, William. Film on the Left: American Documentary Film From 1931 to 1942. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981
- Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. Verso, 1997
- Daniel Frontino Elash. Exploring New Sources on the Workers Film and Photo League, in Overcoming Silence 9 June 2010 http://redchannels.org/writings/RC003/RC003_WFPL.html