| Summary: | INVERTED NARRATIVES is part of the retrospective UNSEEN CINEMA that explores long-forgotten American experimental cinema. "Broken Earth" is a mild glorification of the spiritually minded negro. The picture was "shot on two Sundays and a shoe string." --INTERNATIONAL PHOTO, APRIL 1936. "Broken Earth" is a "short, independently produced, 35mm fiction film generally thought of as 'avant-garde.' The makers worked outside the Hollywood machine and exhibited in "houses specializing in unusual and artistic films" to reveal "numerous interesting intersections across independent film practices." Understanding the desire to break free of the studios and to create new movies for new audiences, was the prime aspiration motivating the Little Cinema movement that spread across the U.S. during the 1920s and 1930s." --TINO BALIO / JACQUELINE STEWART At age 14, Roman Freulich emigrated from Poland to the United States and trained as a still photographer. Freulich became a prominent Hollywood still photographer at Universal, in the mid-1920s shooting many major movie stars. Later at Republic Studios and United Artists, he photographed from 1944 until the mid-1960s. Freulich made two independent "avant-garde" films of note, first "The Prisoner" (1933) followed by "Broken Earth" (1935), each sought "to give voice to the voiceless" and to "seek new directions in motion pictures." He is also recognized for his 1938 Holocaust photographs taken in Lodz when he returned to get his family to relocate to the U.S. --JOAN ABRAMSON 35mm 1:37:1 black and white sound 10:14 minutes. Script: Clarence Muse, Roman Freulich.
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