Movies: Willard Van Dyke

A documentary examining the effects of industrial automation on a small American town....

A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas....

This short Depression-era documentary describes the importance of the Mississippi River to the United States and laments the environmental destruction committed in the name of progress, particularly farming and timber practices and their impact on im...

Nominated for an Academy Award, this live-action short film playfully chronicles the construction of the Tishman Building at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City....

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades....

Documentary profiling an Appalachian farming family struggling to scrape out a living. Link­ing education and economic development, The Children Must Learn suggests that better schooling, especially in agricultural techniques, would bring improvement...

A prescient documentary about city planning, which presents idyllic suburbs and nuclear families as a solution to the chaos, poverty and social decay of industrialized inner cities....

After Caroline Cram finds herself in an analyst's office, she starts groping for the truth about her hopelessness, fears, loneliness and anxieties. A fact and fiction documentary financed by the U. S. Public Health Service and endorsed by the Nationa...

A commercial for the Works Progress Administration. We see hands close up: working, playing, praying, whittling, and strumming. Hands use saws and hammers, lift stones, turn wheels, then write, type, apply a bandage, play a violin, use a compass, and...

The notable non-theatrical film distributor Thomas Brandon produced Tall Tales, a 1941 celebration of the American folk song featuring Josh White, Burl Ives, and Will Geer....

The blacklisted American documentarian Willard Van Dyke filmed this tale about tobacco workers in the heart of the Puerto Rican countryside. Heeding their wives’ advice, individuals join forces in a cooperative so they can sell their crop of tobacco ...

A short film about Pete Seeger and the birth of banjo music throughout the Southern United States....

1948 ARC Identifier 46998 / Local Identifier 306.131. FEATURES THE PERSONALITY, PHILOSOPHY, TECHNIQUES AND ARTISTRY OF EDWARD WESTON, AS SHOWN THROUGH SCENES OF THE ARTIST AT HOME, ON LOCATION AND AT WORK WITH HIS STUDENTS. U.S. Information Agency. (...

“Unhappy with the limited structure of league newsreels, Nykino, a splinter filmmaking collective, produced a MARCH OF TIME-type series under the banner THE WORLD TODAY. Only two episodes were released, the first premiering with Strand’s THE WAVE (19...

Short subject commissioned by the National Youth Association to show their efforts at providing job training for unemployed poor youth....

A documentary/recruitment film originally intended for showings outside the United States to promote careers in public health and American methods in public health education. Directed by social documentarian Willard Van Dyke, and delivered entirely i...

Film sponsored by Western Electric (AT&T's equipment manufacturing division), the builder of the United States Air Force's White Alice Communications System in Alaska. Introduces the people and geography of the new state as well as the Western Electr...

Documentary examining the steel industry in Youngstown, Ohio during World War II. Focuses on steel production, including the smelting process, slagging and the blast furnace. Workers reflect upon their lives and the importance of their jobs. Emphasiz...

A school teacher/wheat farmer is solicited by several oil companies for the rights to drill on his family's farm. After accepting an offer, he realizes that North Dakota is again a new frontier in America....

Marriage training film dramatizing a partnership too fraught with conflicts to survive. Produced as part of a post-World War II initiative to make marriages more sustainable in the face of postwar dislocation....