Archibald Macleish

1950 short film portrait of the octogenarian folk artist. Nominated for an Oscar in the category "Best Short Subject, One-reel".

1950 short film portrait of the octogenarian folk artist. Nominated for an Oscar in the category "Best Short Subject, One-reel".

Joris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.

World War II propaganda film aimed at the homefront, attempting to increase popular mobilization. It shows the efforts of the troops in contrast to a civilian's idea that the war can't last much longer.