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2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEDate: 2009-09-24
Contact: Ginger Lever
Director, Marketing & Community Relations
The University of New Hampshire, Manchester
400 Commercial Street
Manchester, NH 03101
Phone: (603) 641-4122
Fax: (603) 641-4192
E-Mail: ginger.lever@unh.edu
PARE LORENTZ Films Screened at UNH Manchester this Fall
Manchester, NH – The University of New Hampshire at Manchester’s Communication Arts program invites the public to view selected films from the Pare Lorentz Film Festival. The films will be screened at 7 PM in the Auditorium at UNH Manchester in conjunction with Professor Anthony Tenczar’s course on documentary film. The program is coordinated by Tenczar who is an Associate Professor and documentary film maker. The films in the series address issues of social justice, societal problems and environmental or "green" themes.
The series includes four films from documentary pioneer Pare Lorentz and three films identified by the International Documentary Association (IDA) as the best documentaries from the last few years. Pare Lorentz, a pioneering documentary filmmaker, worked for Roosevelt's New Deal producing classic documentary films describing environmental and social problems in the 1930s and 1940s. Pare Lorentz work is considered as a touchstone for the modern documentary movement. The IDA is the leading documentary association in North America. The films in the series hosted at UNH Manchester have been recognized as significant contributors in the evolution of the documentary form and some have been named IDA/Pare Lorentz Award winners.
The films will be screened in the UNH Manchester Auditorium, 400 Commercial Street, Manchester beginning at 7 PM on Wednesdays according to the schedule below. For more information about the films or UNH Manchester Communication Arts program, please contact Anthony Tenczar at 603-641-4316 or by email at atenczar@unh.edu.
Selected Films from THE PARE LORENTZ Festival screened this fall at UNH Manchester
Wednesday, October 7
THE RIVER (1938)
Pare Lorentz; 31 minutes
In The River, Pare Lorentz deploys powerful images, a poetic Pulitzer Prize-nominated script and another score by Virgil Thomson to illustrate the problems of flood control on the Mississippi River and the efforts to correct it. While arguing that the building of dams would put an end to the destruction of crops and property brought about by the havoc of annual floods, Lorentz reveals the ways the river has been misused, and presents a stirring paean to America’s natural landscape, and the proud history with which it is imbued.
THE FIGHT FOR LIFE (1941)
Pare Lorentz; 69 minutes
In this short feature, based on a book by Paul De Kruit, Lorentz presents a staged re-enactment of an emergency childbirth in an urban hospital. As the story of the mother’s difficult delivery and death in spite of valiant efforts by the doctors to save her unfolds, The Fight For Life reveals the crisis of health and pre-natal care among the urban poor of the period, and explores the impoverished lives of the working people of the cities, who live in slums and tenements where they are forced to suffer from the disabling diseases endemic in such environments. 69 minutes
Wednesday, October 14
Pare Lorentz; 25 minutes
THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS (1936)
With The Plow That Broke the Plains, his first film and the first US Government-sponsored documentary, Pare Lorentz won praise and wide recognition for using sensitive photography, dramatic editing and a beautiful score by composer Virgil Thomson to illuminate a local problem of national importance – the challenges faced by wheat farmers and cattle ranchers in the Great Plains. As the film climaxes in a vivid portrait of the record drought that produced the dust bowl and the plight of the "blown out, baked and broke" people who felt its impact, it becomes clear that a new master of the documentary form has found his voice.
NUREMBERG - ITS LESSON FOR TODAY (1948)
Writer/Producer/Director Stuart Schulberg, Editor Joseph Zigman, Producer/Executive Producer Pare Lorentz 75 minutes
Nuremberg is a grim, unflinching account of the Nuremberg trials, and of the war crimes that made them necessary, told almost entirely without editorial comment. During the trials, the courtroom was dominated by a large motion picture screen upon which the prosecution showed films of Nazi atrocities. Much of this footage was confiscated from the private libraries of high Nazi officials and, ironically, proved to be the most damning evidence against them. Working with more than a million feet of film, and intercutting excerpts from these films with sequences from the trial, Lorentz and his staff created an absorbing historical narrative showing the rise of Hitler, the subjugation of most of Europe--and the systematic murder of millions of innocent people.
Wednesday, October 28
BURNING THE FUTURE: COAL IN AMERICA
Directed by David Novack; 89 Minutes; Award Winner 2008
Burning the Future: Coal in America examines the explosive conflict between the coal industry and residents of West Virginia. Confronted by emerging “clean coal” energy policies, local activists watch a world blind to the devastation caused by coal's extraction. Faced with toxic ground water and the obliteration of 1.4 million acres of mountains, our heroes launch a valiant fight to arouse the nation's help in protecting their mountains, saving their families, and preserving their way of life.
Wednesday, November 4
OIL ON ICE
Directed by Dale Djerassi & Bo Boudart; 56 Minutes; Award Winner 2004
Oil on Ice explores the dangers and consequences that surround opening one of America’s last great wild places – or any protected wild place, for that matter – to exploration and exploitation. Interviews with esteemed arctic biologists and environmental experts deduce that hybrid cars and renewable energy sources are viable short- and long-term solutions to the nation’s dependence on oil for energy. Native Inupiat Eskimos and Gwich’in Indian activists share their heritage and way of life, and express on camera how their entire way of living is at risk due to oil drilling. The Gwich’in Indians, for example, describe how they have depended on the Alaskan caribou for food, clothing, tools and their spirituality for generations. The environmental impacts of oil drilling, however, are driving caribou and other wildlife away, changing the way the native people have lived with them for centuries.
ISLAND OUT OF TIME
Directed by Hugh Drescher; 30 Minutes; Award Winner 2001
Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay is home to just over 400 people who have made their living from the water for more than a century. But now the island and its culture are under assault by rising sea levels, erosion, population loss, and a decline in the oysters and crabs its people depend on. The film shows how islanders are fighting to survive and struggling with change and loss. It is a story told by a quirky cast of islanders: watermen, preachers, crab-pickers, lawmen and environmentalists. "We're so stubborn," says one waterman, "they're going to have to drag us off of here kicking and screaming."
UNH Manchester, UNH's urban campus, offers liberal arts and applied majors in business, science, and technology, all with an urban focus. UNH Manchester is UNH. Learn more at www.unhm.unh.edu.
