An underground docudrama of the Depression, and rare surviving film from Chicago’s WFPL. The protagonist looks in vain for work, only to find ‘no help wanted’. Acerbic editing transforms his plight into a guide to the brutal contrasts of the era.
The film shows the National Unemployment Council Hunger March of Nov. and Dec. 1931, which set out from disparate parts of the U.S. to represent twelve million unemployed.
One of the key works in creating the American social documentary film, this 1934 newsreel compilation crams a lot of information into just 11 minutes. Skillfully edited, the picture captures a panorama of international events centered on the labor movement. Scenes include Mussolini, Hitler and FDR preparing for war, Nazi soldiers persecuting German Jews, a political strike in Paris, the Scottsboro demonstration in Washington, DC, police violence against striking steelworkers in Pennsylvania and union members stopping scab workers from delivering milk during a dairy farmers strike in Wisconsin. Under the direction of pioneering documentarian Leo Hurwitz, the images are edited together to create a powerful image of a world that, in his view, desperately needed radical change.
A newsreel that documented widespread hunger and protests against government policy.
Bonus March shows unemployed WWI veterans marching on Washington, D.C., demanding their bonus money, and being forcefully evicted.
The only known film record of the mass march and meeting held in Detroit on Feb. 4, 1932, against hunger and unemployment. Also shows the dramatic demonstration by workers at the Ford auto plant in River Rouge, Michigan in March of 1932, which ended with a violent attack by Dearborn police and Ford Company guards on the crowd with clubs, tear gas and guns which killed four young men. These deaths set off a wave of protest across the country.
A document of the 1932 national hunger march on Washington produced by the Workers Film and Photo League.
