Pare Lorentz

The Pare Lorentz Film Center was established through the generosity of Mrs. Elizabeth Lorentz, the wife of filmmaker Pare Lorentz, and is located on the grounds of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York. The video post-production facilities are used to supplement the museum and educational programs at the Library, but more importantly, are part of the means by which students and scholars from all around the globe study the foremost documentary filmmaker of the century, Pare Lorentz, as well as mass communications of the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Pare Lorentz, an American filmmaker, was devoted to the ideals of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and these he incorporated into his socially conscious documentary films, The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936), The River (1938), and The Fight For Life (1940).

Born in 1905 in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Lorentz joined the Government as a filmmaker following a career as a film critic for several publications, including the New York American and King Features. He wrote and directed The Plow That Broke the Plains for the Resettlement Administration with a budget of less than $20,000. The Plow , which documented agricultural and social problems related to the Dust Bowl, was the first government-sponsored film for general release. It featured a score by American composer Virgil Thompson and met with immediate public and critical acclaim.

In his next film, The River , Lorentz dramatized the flooding of the Mississippi River and the need for conservation measures and proper use of natural resources and the achievements of the Tennessee Valley Authority. President Roosevelt was so impressed by the film The River that, when the film was voted best picture of the year by J. Emanuel Publications, FDR arranged to have the award ceremony in the White House.

Both of these Lorentz films demonstrated the potential of the documentary as a powerful impetus to social change, prompting widespread discussion not only of the problems they presented but also of the documentary form itself. Lorentz's films are a powerful synthesis of stunning imagery, poetic narration, and evocative music that make the viewer feel as well as think.

Pare Lorentz was a conservationist and environmentalist ahead of his time. In his films, The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River he underscores the tragic consequences of man's needless mismanagement of the environment. His films are a capsule of his regionalist approach vision to solving our environmental problems.