New Deal for Artists — a look back at the WPA and what has been called the most ambitious government-supported arts program since the Italian Renaissance — has been remastered and set for re-release next month.
The decades-old West German television documentary on the Works Progress Administration’s support of the arts was narrated by Orson Welles, himself a New Deal Democrat and beneficiary of the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project. The 90-minute film, directed and written by Wieland Schulz-Keil, premiered in the U.S. on PBS stations in April 1981.
Now, 40 years after its premiere, Corinth Films has digitally remastered the documentary from the original 16mm negative. It will be made available by Corinth for Virtual Cinema Screenings beginning May 21.
New Deal for Artists features a who’s who of 20th Century luminaries including Studs Terkel, John Houseman, Arthur Rothstein, Howard Da Silva, James Brooks, Nelson Algren and more.
The Washington Post has called New Deal for Artists a “dazzling and moving portrait of a period that deserves its place in the sun,” while The New York Times noted it is a “celebration of an experiment that ended only, as Mr. Terkel sees it, ‘when the primitives, the Neanderthals, took over’.”
In the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pragmatic New Deal program set to put U.S. citizens back to work. It also included an innovative public arts component to provide economic relief and jobs for artists.
Many artists born between 1900 and 1915, including Welles, spent their formative years under the aegis of the WPA.
Working with Houseman, Welles directed several stage productions for the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project including “Voodoo” Macbeth, Faustus, Horse Eats Hat and The Cradle Will Rock. The pair would later form the successful Mercury Theatre.
Unfortunately, with the arrival of Congressman Martin Dies’ House Un-American Activities Committee, theater actors, directors, writers and painters soon found themselves the target of aggressive anti-communist agendas and the WPA was under political attack.
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