Gustav Regler

Follows the life of the famous German politician, writer, and communist activist, Gustav Regler, from his birth in 1898, in the Saar, through the two World Wars and his many travels, until his death in 1963 in India.

Joris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.

Documentary short made during the Spanish Civil War.

A portrait of Dana Plays' 90 year old paternal grandmother, Peggy Regler, reminiscing about her love affairs and significant relationships. Regler tells about her failed first marriage, the agreement she had to stay until the children were grown (but to see other lovers) which resulted in the true love she found with her second husband and renowned writer Gustav Regler, who later died a tragic death in India. The love affairs are historically rooted in the political and technological developments 20th century, and are narratively based in a complex sound/image structure. Interludes (silent optically printed film passages narrated with inter-titles excerpted from her diaries, and early childhood memories) formalistically refer to early cinema. The footage in these passages is re-contextualized and interwoven metaphorically throughout the text.