Join us on August 12 from 3:30pm-5:30pm for a free screening of the 2009 documentary “Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story”. This screening is a part of the 2026-2027 recognition of artist Mietzi “Marie” Bleck, who created works that have hung in the Library since 1937 as a part of the WPA-Federal Arts Project. Thanks to a sponsorship by the Friends of the Mercer Library, the Artist in Residence program is free for all who wish to participate and enjoy our local artists’ work. For questions or additional details, please contact the Library at 715-476-2366.
Synopsis (from the American Library Association)
The film shows a spectacular range—from New York to the West Coast, from Chicago to the Deep South. The stories of the writers and the people they chronicled take viewers beyond stock images of the Depression into the trials and fragile joys of people’s lives. The Writers’ Project workers were assembling guides and interviews, but they were also knitting together the cultural fabric torn apart by the national crisis.
For this sweeping subject, the film uses a broad palette of archival film and audio from the 1920s and ’30s, murals from the arts project, FSA photographs, live-action footage and spellbinding interview commentary shot in High Definition. Interviews with surviving Project workers Stetson Kennedy in Florida and Studs Terkel in Chicago (one of his last interviews) provide riveting stories that help anchor the narrative. A diverse group of leading authors, poets and historians provide witty and heartbreaking insights on an extraordinary vision of the America we never knew. Rarely seen footage from early social documentarians from the 1930s reinforce the immediacy of these perspectives.
The soundtrack features a collection of original field recordings made by Writers’ Project workers on acetate disk, using a massive machine the size of a coffee table, which was lugged along to interview sites. Newly restored by the Library of Congress, this recording device is shown “in action” in the film. Sound elements include Cuban and gospel songs, audio of Zora Neale Hurston singing and collecting stories in Florida, street vendors in New York and folk songs of the West. A number of commissioned musical works by artists such as Taj Mahal, the Gypsy Kings and Peter Ostrushko, and a musical score by Joseph Vitarelli, highlights the range of cultures the Writers’ Project set out to capture. The film also draws upon a rich reservoir of radio broadcasts, including a passionate defense of the WPA arts projects (in the face of scrutiny by the Dies Committee) from a young Richard Wright in 1939.
The film shows the most chaotic publishing venture in history and the remarkable national biography it produced. It reveals how out-of-work Americans, young and old, found hope in the country’s darkest days and created a legacy for American culture. Viewers will leave with a deep feeling of how that legacy has renewed meaning today.
Major funding for the documentary Soul of a People: Writing America’s Story was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the state humanities councils of Illinois, Nebraska, Idaho, Maryland, Texas and Wisconsin. Produced in association with the Library of Congress, the documentary will be broadcast in HD on the Smithsonian Network.
A companion book, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America, by documentary co-producer and writer, David Taylor, was published by Wiley and Sons in February 2009.
