Life on the breadline in the 1930s was hard enough, but times were desperate when you fell beneath it. Hunger marches organised by the National Unemployed Workers' Movement drew attention to the cause, but this left-wing collective picked up a cine-camera. The fictional story at the heart of the film is somewhat melodramatic, but the authentic surroundings give its message realism and weight.
Bearing witness to the wretched living conditions of Harlem’s black population during the Great Depression, this short film was shot in the same year as the first race riot in that neighbourhood, now regarded as a distant ancestor of the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
Alf Garrard, carpenter and amateur filmmaker, shot this film, combining undercover footage of men working on a building site with a re-enactment of a strike which took place there in October 1934. Garrard’s maintenance job on the building site allowed him to move about easily with his camera concealed behind his apron - into which he had cut a hole. This ingenious shooting style results in images combining imaginative angles with a not infrequent lack of focus.
