For this Friday afternoon session, Robert Sklar of NYU acted as moderator and first introduced Zoe Druick of Simon Fraser University. Druick topic was the postwar films of the UN and UNESCO. Her paper Stories of International Development: UNESCO's World Without End focused on the film World Without End from 1953 by Basil Wright and Paul Rotha. These films fulfilled the UN's mission and were widely distributed and seen by millions, but now they are near impossible to find. These postwar films were inspired by the British Film Documentary producer John Grierson, who also acted as Head of Communication in 1947 and 1948 for UNESCO. World Without End was a sponsored film that traced the path from empire towards globalism. This mentality seeped into the popular consciousness as telephones and airplanes created a "small world after all." World Without End was a vehicle for virtual travel and relied upon the mobility of the camera to tell its story. The film juxtaposes Mexico and Thailand, illustrating their similarities and differences. The focus of the film however is on what they have to gain from Western modernity and medicine supplied by the UN. A benevolent narrator connects these far flung regions. The film is full of idealism, but its examples are arbitrary, and it requires the "other" to be diseased, uneducated, and needy in order to drive its point and orientate the Western viewer. The film ultimately homogenizes space and time, positing that tradition must accommodate the forces of change. The final sequence summarizes this objective with the filmic illusion of a peasant gazing up at the UN building. Obviously, it stages the project of modernity in the non-modern world; Mexico and Thailand serve as a mirror for the West. Druick concluded that World Without End and its ilk deserve renewed observation in light of contemporary dramatic narrative films concerned with refugees and sex trafficking. She also claimed quite brilliantly that the West inadvertently displaces its own centrality by detailed recreation of the other’s world.
Filmmaker James Blue. Image from Rice University Media Center.
Jennifer Horne of Catholic University took the podium next to introduce United States Information Agency (USIA) films under George Stevens Jr., in particular, the films of James Blue. Many of the USIA films were destroyed and separated into various parts at the National Archives. There were some 39,000 reels of documentation, many aimed at audiences outside the U.S. in order to better represent American unity and cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. Edward R. Murrow held that the USIA should show our policies abroad. The artistry of the USIA films created an atmosphere of experimentation as part of their agendas. Young filmmakers were hired with keen new eyes, but much of this work still remained sheltered from the public view. James Blue was one of these kinetic young filmmakers who set the tone for these socially conscious films. Themes of dreaming, community theater, and stylistic notes borrowed from avant-garde filmmakers like Buñuel and Marker culminated with striking, self-aware, and occasionally ironic social films. Three of Blue's films were screened A Letter from Colombia, Evil Wind Out, and The School at Rincon Santo. Horne imagined that the first shot of The School at Rincon Santo - a boy sneaking into a building's window - could be construed as Blue subversively sneaking his ideas into the State-sponsored film.