---

Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
University of Georgia Libraries
Athens, GA 30602-1641 | russlib@uga.edu
| Comments to: adamsabi@uga.edu | Copyright © University of Georgia. All rights reserved.

Power to the People! Film Series

Tuesday evenings at 7:00 p.m.
August 22-September 19, 2006
Presented by Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies,
Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, and
Athens-Clarke County Public Library

The Power to the People! Film Series explores the role technology has played in shaping the lives of rural communities in the New South. It offers a mix of commercial features and documentaries that portray the lives of rural Southerners living before, during, and after the arrival of electricity to their communities through the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). Each film night includes archival footage, shorts, or news reels before the main feature. Screenings take place at the Athens-Clarke County Library auditorium located at 2025 Baxter Street. The series is presented in conjunction with the exhibit, Power to the People! Rural Electrification in Georgia, now on display at the Richard B. Russell Library at the University of Georgia. The series is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 706-542-5788.

By Our Hands Alone – August 22, 7-9 p.m.

• Selections from the Walter J. Brown Media Archives Home Movie Collection

• The Southerner (1945) 92 minutes
  Jean Renoir directed this Oscar-nominated film about the Tuckers, a family of farmers trying to transition from a life of sharecropping to one of economic independence. Interested in “real people in adversity,” Renoir's film veered from the traditional Hollywood stereotypes of the South found in Gone with the Wind and Tobacco Road.
  
  
  
  

The Hungry Years – August 29, 7-9 p.m.

• We Work Again (ca. 1930s) 10 minutes
  New Deal film encouraging the African-American community that jobs were on the rise by showing vignettes of work in offices, construction, health care, and entertainment.

• Goin' to Chicago (1991) 71 minutes
  At the turn of the 19 th century, nearly 90% of the African-American population lived in the South. Of those African-Americans, about 73% lived in rural areas as farmers and sharecroppers. By 1970, when the migration ended, black America was only half Southern and less than a quarter rural. Goin' to Chicago is a documentary that details the Great Migration of African-Americans in the South to the cities of the North and West through its profile of one family who traveled Highway 61 from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago to create a better life.
  
  

The Crusade to Restore America – September 5, 7-9 p.m.

• National Recovery Administration Promotion (1933) 3 minutes
  Jimmy Durante sings “Give a Man a Job” in this New Deal promotional film for the National Recovery Administration.

• All The King's Men (1949) 109 minutes
  Robert Rosen's Oscar-winning production of Robert Penn Warren's novel depicts Willie Stark, a rural politician who rises to prominence from his humble county seat position to that of state governor. Based on Huey Long of Louisiana, Warren 's Willie Stark suggests that politicians set out to do good and give voice to the needs of rural people by forcing the government to address these needs. However, Southern demagogues often compromised both the ends and the means through a desire for power and importance.
  
  
  
  

Valley of Progress – September 12, 7-9 p.m.

• The Children Must Learn (1940) 13 minutes
  An anti-ruralism promotion featuring domestic scenes of an Appalachian family as well as those from a day in a one room schoolhouse.

• The Electric Valley (1983) 90 minutes
  Ross Spears directed this documentary chronicling the development of the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) by FDR and the New Deal in order to stem out-migration and to create jobs and economic resources for those living in the Tennessee Valley area. Although the TVA brought cheap electricity, tourism, jobs, and low interest loans, Spears also focuses on the fact that with development also came strip mining, increased federal bureaucracy, pollution, nuclear plants, dams, and competition to local power providers.
  
  

Living Better Electrically – September 19, 7-9 p.m.

• Singing Wires (ca. 1951) 22 minutes

• The Power and the Land (1940) 38 minutes
  Government agencies often promoted New Deal policies through films, posters, and extension agencies. Both Singing Wires and The Power and the Land were meant to persuade rural farmers about the efficiency and ease of electricity. In Singing Wires, a young man envies his girlfriend's life on a farm with electricity and dreams of how to make his parents' lives easier with the help of power. The Power and the Land, directed by Joris Ivens, depicts the impact of electrification on a rural farming family.