Broken Earth - Roman Freulich


Rental Format(s): Digital File

Maker: Roman Freulich
Assisted by King Gray, Jerome Ash, and Michael Walsh
Original format: 35mm sound film 1:1.37
Script: Clarence Muse, Roman Freulich
Featuring Clarence Muse
Spirituals sung by Freita Shaw Ethiopian Choir, Los Angeles
Courtesy: G. William Jones Film and Video Collection, Southern Methodist University

Broken Earth is a mild glorification of the spiritually minded negor. 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 and Jacqueline Stewart, edited by Posner

Roman Freulich (1898-1974) at age 14 emigrated from Poland to the United States and trained as a still photographer. In the mid-1920s, Freulich moved to Hollywood and became a prominent still photographer at Universal, shooting many of their major stars. Later in 1944, he moved to Republic Studios and United Artists photographing 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." Both films received critical acclaim and were widely shown on the Little Theater cinema circuit. He is also recognized for his Holocaust photographs taken in Lodz in 1938 when he returned to get his family to relocate to the U.S. -Joan Abramson, edited by Posner

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