Maker: Lewis Jacobs
Original format: 16mm silent film 1.37:1
Featuring Lillian Jacobs
New music: Rodney Saur

This is one part of a proposed four-part film intended to document the Great Depression that was to be called "As I Walk." The other parts were never completed; consequently, Footnote to Fact must stand-alone. The film was to be post-synchronized, using sound in a stream-of-consciousness technique. -Lewis Jacobs

Grounded in Soviet montage and D. W. Griffith's Intolerance, this film addresses Great Depression poverty with a rapid editing technique. By 1940 Jacobs had mislaid it, and the film was unseen and undiscussed until Anthology Film Archives discovered the original negative in the 1990s. -Robert A. Haller

Born in Philadelphia, Lewis Jacobs (1905-1995) was educated as a painter yet desired to make Soviet-style films. In addition to co-editing in the 1930s Experimental Cinema, the first American film magazine dealing with art and social issues, Jacobs wrote the influential book, The Rise of the American Film (1939) and edited numerous other books. With Jo Gerson and Louis Hirshman, Jacobs formed Cinema Crafters of Philadelphia in 1927, thus beginning a life-long filmmaking career. He made his own short films and produced, directed, photographed, and wrote more than 40 experimental, documentary, and educational films. He engaged in what he called "a process of continuous discovery." -Aram Boyajian/Robert A. Haller