Saul Landau, Maker of Films With Leftist Edge, Dies at 77

[swag]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/arts/saul-landau-maker-of-films-with-leftist-edge-dies-at-77.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


By DOUGLAS MARTIN


Saul Landau, a determinedly leftist documentary filmmaker and writer whose passion for asking what he called “the most intrusive questions” yielded penetrating cinematic profiles of leaders like Fidel Castro and Salvador Allende, died on Monday at his home in Alameda, Calif. He was 77.

The cause was bladder cancer, his daughter Julia Landau said.

Mr. Landau aspired to marshal art and literature to illuminate social and political problems, and his point of view was almost always apparent. In the 1980s, he wrote essays berating the administration of Ronald Reagan for trying to depose the leftist government in Nicaragua, and recently he urged the United States not to become involved in Syria.

He said he saw no difference between documentary and fictional films. In both, he said, a director manipulates light and sound to put across a vision. “One has to simulate reality,” he said in 2005 in an interview with The Capital Times in Madison, Wis. “The other one says, ‘Here’s reality,’ whether it is or isn’t.”

Mr. Landau emerged from the roiling New Left politics of the 1960s to make more than 40 documentaries, including six about Mr. Castro. One of them, “Fidel,” released in 1969, was a rare intimate look at the Cuban leader. It shows him arguing with a finger-wagging peasant woman, visiting his nursery school and playing baseball and striking out.

“I found Fidel a sympathetic figure and a hell of a good actor,” Mr. Landau told The Washington Post in 1982.

. . . more

[swag]

1. “You want to do what you can while you’re on this earth. Otherwise the alternative is to go shopping

[bananas]

2. Landau hosted "Hot Talk" on KPFK from the spring of 2001 until early 2003.

http://kpfk.org/press-releases/7453-kpfk-remembers-saul-landau-.html

KPFK Remembers Saul Landau (1936-2013)

Fidel Castro, Saul Landau, Peace Corps officials Frank Mankiewicz and Kirby Jones, 1974

Saul Landau was one of the leading documentary filmmakers of his generation, producing a series of legendary works on the Latin American left spanning many decades. His films also included “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang” an award winning film on the impact of radiation fallout from nuclear explosions. Landau was also the author of numerous books and countless essays.

From the spring of 2001 until early 2003, Landau hosted “Hot Talk” on KPFK.

An essay on Saul Landau published today by Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of Counterpunch.org where Landau published dozens of essays in recent years.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/12/the-authentic-landau/

Saul Landau’s obituary in the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/arts/saul-landau-maker-of-films-with-leftist-edge-dies-at-77.html

Saul's Website - http://saullandau.com/

The Saul Landau entry on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Landau

KPFK’s staff, management, and programmers extend their condolences to the Landau family.

Saul Landau, Presente!