PROJECTIONS OF AMERICA
Special Features: Intro by author Victoria Riskin. Copies of her book "Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir" will be available for sale and signing
Tickets $5
Beginning in 1942 and continuing through to the end of World War II, Hollywood screenwriter Robert Riskin joined the Office of War Information to head up the Overseas Motion Picture Branch, overseeing production of a series of short films called "Projections of America." The series ultimately yielded 26 titles, each a masterpiece of artful short-form documentary in the service of wartime propaganda, publicly screened for the local European populations recently liberated (in some cases, as recently as a few days before) from occupying Nazi forces. The films offered portraits of both everyday Americans — cowboys, farmers, skyscraper window washers, school children — and celebrity ambassadors for the American way of life, like Swedish immigrant Ingrid Bergman and Italian expat Arturo Toscanini. Among Riskin's talented collaborators included Hollywood figures like director Josef von Sternberg, producer John Houseman and writers Philip Dunne, Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich and Garson Kanin, alongside veteran documentarians like Alexander Hammid (a regular collaborator with experimental filmmaker Maya Deren), Irving Lerner and Roger Barlow. Peter Miller's feature documentary illuminates this little-known chapter in the life and work of one of Hollywood's greatest screenwriters. Narrated by John Lithgow. DIR/SCR/PROD Peter Miller; PROD Antje Boehmert, Christian J. Popp. U.S., 2014, color and b&w, 52 min. RATED PG
AFI Member passes accepted.
AFI Member passes accepted.
Run Time: 52 Minutes
Opening Date: Saturday, March 23, 2019
Genre: Documentary