The Gary American

TELLS STORY OF NEGRO SOUND FILM IN MOSCOW

NEW YORK CITY - (CNA)-

The story of the first steps in the making in Moscow of the sound-film, "Black and White", for whose production 26 American men and women went to the Soviet Union in June, is told in a letter received here from Charles Ashleigh, noted British writer, who is now in Russia. Ashleigh's letter follows in part:

Carl Junghans, German film producer, young, active and ruddy, let his morning tea go stone cold while he told me about the film, "Black and White", which he is going to produce in Moscow under the auspices of the Moschrabpom Film Company.

Not so long ago Junghans made a picture called "Strange Birds of Africa," which was far stronger to the directors of the German company which commissioned it than its name would imply.

For Junghans, with a searing revolutionary imagination, had put into the film satire and acid protest against the exploitation of the black people of Africa by white imperialism. And so the film was drastically cut by his employers, and a sugary love-story grafted on to it.

So then Junghans came to the Soviet Union. Here for the Moschrabpom he is to make the picture, "Black and White" which depicts the exploitation of the Negro people in America thru the days of slavery to the present.

"The principal section of the film shows the class struggle in America", says Junghans. "But there is a prologue which gives a glimpse of the old slave trade: the Arab traders in Africa, the shipment of slaves to America, -- in which the missionaries appear, blindly to concur -- and the auction scenes in New Orleans.

"Then there is a swift impression of the Civil War, - which changed the Negroes' status from that of chattel slave to that of wage-slave - and then we unfold the principal story, which concerns the class struggle in the United States today. There is a lynching, which is shown to be an attempt to alienate Negro and white workers.

"The film is, of course, to be a sound film. But sound will be used not merely for dialogue, but also as a species of commentary, often in a satirical sense thus revealing the hidden motives behind the action of the individuals as expressed in their motions on the screen.

For instance, in the prologue, when the missionary - who has just witnessed a scene in which shackled slaves are driven with whips into the hold of a slave-vessel -- reclines under a tree and reads aloud a text from the Bible. the monkeys in the tree chatter derisively and a parrot screams hoarsely as if with scorn.