Characters on the Couch
Film & Television Blog
by Dr. Sandra Cohen
LEO HURWITZ
A Pioneer In The Beginnings Of America’s Documentary Film Part 2
Childhood Memories & Fantasies
Memories and fantasies originating in childhood influence the course of a life as it unfolds. So do childhood experiences. That was true of Leo Hurwitz and his films. Leo’s strong creative spirit enabled these impressionable early times to find powerful forms of expression in his creative work. And, because of this, Leo’s films speak for…
STRONGER
Flashbacks & Triggers
Remembering Jeff Bauman’s PTSD
PTSD always follows trauma. No traumatized person is “strong” enough to escape it. Yet, for complicated reasons, Post Traumatic Stress symptoms are too frequently off everyone’s radar, particularly the radar of the one suffering. The reasons are both straight out of the DSM-V and very individual. Jeff Bauman’s story in David Gordon Green’s powerful new film, Stronger, with Jake Gyllenhaal’s deeply moving performance as Jeff and Tatiana Maslany’s complex and engagingly real portrayal of his girlfriend, Erin Hurley, is a good place to start understanding what happens after trauma.
LEO HURWITZ
A Pioneer In The Beginnings Of
America’s Documentary Film Part 1
Leo Hurwitz’s Family Influences
Leo Hurwitz (1909 – 1991), a pioneer documentary filmmaker, was part of a small group who founded America’s documentary film. Notably, Leo and his colleagues invented the social documentary form. According to his son, Tom Hurwitz, Leo’s films “exemplified a new way of making films about the real world. And about ideas that help us…
