Posts by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen
LEO HURWITZ
NATIVE LAND 1943
Forces Against Labor Rights
The Making of Native Land Leo Hurwitz’s Native Land (Watch Film) is a 1942 expose of repressive forces against labor organizing. The film is based on the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee’s (1936-1941) 65 volumes of testimony to the Senate on their investigation. And, the investigation’s results couldn’t be more troubling. The Committee found that…
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LION
Where is Home?
A Lost Boy & Adoption
Two Mothers & Jalebi Clues
Where is home? That’s the complicated question at the heart of Garth Davis’ film Lion, for a lost, bewildered, illiterate, scared, traumatized, stoically brave, and lovingly gentle 5-year-old boy, Saroo (Sunny Pawar). This little boy accidentally finds himself on a train taking him far, far from home, where he can’t speak the language and has…
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LEO HURWITZ
HEART OF SPAIN 1937
In A Dictatorship Human Hearts Don’t Matter
In a dictatorship, human hearts don’t matter. Leo Hurwitz shows this frightening reality in his powerful film, Heart of Spain 1937. America is now in a fight similar to that of Spain’s democratically elected republic against fascist General Francisco Franco. We need a conduit of empathy similar to Dr. Norman Bethane’s blood transfusions to soldiers in…
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WONDERSTRUCK
Todd Haynes Builds Bridges
Out Of Lonely Worlds
Loneliness is a silent world. That world is the world Ben (Oakes Fegley), Rose (Millicent Simmonds), and Jamie (Jaden Michael) inhabit in Todd Haynes’ gorgeously filmed and sensitively rendered half-period piece, half-silent and all-around beautifully woven film Wonderstruck. Haynes draws on the visual; on images that speak louder than words, to tell the story of…
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LEO HURWITZ’S PSYCHOANALYST SISTERS
Marie H. Briehl and Rosetta Hurwitz
Pioneers in Child Psychoanalysis
Leo Hurwitz was a pioneer in the development of the documentary film in America, but he wasn’t the only pioneer in the Hurwitz family. His older sisters Rosetta (Rose) and Marie were pioneers in bringing child psychoanalysis to the United States. They were among the first child analysts to train with Anna Freud in Vienna…
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THE BIG SICK
If You Can’t Break Old Rules
It Can Make You Sick
The Big Sick, Emily V. Gordon, and Kumail Nanjiani’s touching, sad, scary, and deeply heart-warming romantic comedy tells us a lot about those old rules you live by. They’re not so easy to break. They turn into “should-s,” carry terrible guilt; they make you scared. And, along with all that, they confuse you. Particularly when…
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