Director Joris Ivens

Countries United States

Duration 33 min

Synopsis
"Power and the Land" was used for many years as an informational film by the Department of Agriculture. It was produced with the aim of demonstrating the benefits of rural electrification for the small farmer. But Ivens and his crew, that included Floyd Crosby who worked with Flaherty, concentrated on the life of one family- the Parkinsons. The original script showed a day’s work on the farm without electricity, this comprised with a simple before-and-after story. In the course of this work , Ivens was able to deepen his experience working with non-actors, and hand-to-hand with this, for months with the same people. He explains in "The camera and I" - "I used another technique to work with Bip, Bill’s eight year old son. Early in the morning I went alone with Bip to the corn field where we were to shoot an action with his father and a sunflower in the afternoon. As a kind of secret between us, Bip and I acted out the scene which would later be filmed with his father. "