America lost and found

America Lost and Found is a historical documentary made entirely of footage from the 1930s. It is a mix of newsreel, feature film, documentary and home movies. We have tried to avoid using the “stock” shots and to rely on fresh sound and images. Some of the images are so familiar that they have come to symbolize an era (a Walker Evans photograph, an FDR grin), some were intensely meaningful in the ‘30s but now only evoke a distant past (the Blue Eagle and stately zeppelins), and some are eerily prescient containing clues to the future that the 30s could not have imagined (Albert Einstein, Philo Farnsworth, etc.) We have tried to indicate that each shot, story or film was made to be seen in a context and for a reason. We have tried to recreate that context as well as to use the found material to tell our story. The narrator’s role in the film is that of a sensitive person who grew up during the depression –who is looking at these documents, discovering connections, questioning memory, and piecing together the story along with us. He is never superior to the images or smarte- that the people in them. The structure of the program is six short essays each dealing with a few years and a key idea in the drama of “America Lost and Found”.The program is not a typical TV documentary. It assumes that the viewer will do much of work. The stories that are told require reflection. They are spring-boards into all the other worlds of images and sounds and memories that the viewer has stored within. The film does not presume that the viewer knows a great deal about the 1930s, all the information needed for enjoyment of the program is contained within it. But by creating a self-contained frame of reference, by reflecting back and evaluating things that the viewers have been shown and told, the ideas, themes and images pick up richness and resonances as they move through the film and the decade. We are not trying to teach facts or recall the events of the depression decade, we are trying to move the viewer emotionally, to achieve an understanding through the film experience.Since we began the film several years ago with a grant from NEH, we have had to put it aside twice to find the funding to continue. We were awarded a finishing grant from the IDF at WNET/13 and completed the program in November 1979. The struggles to continue the production and deal with the changing policies in public television and at NEH required some “innovative” strategies as well as “risk taking” in a production sense. We feel that the thesis of the program as well as the storytelling style are innovative as well, and we look forward to sharing our experiences with the INPUT group this spring.