Narrated by the great actor/singer/scholar Paul Robeson, Native Land is a documentary primarily about the political, social, and economic state of working-class America in the late 1930s. The documentary has lots of re-creations: big business's oppression of and spying on union activities; a sharecropper getting murdered on his own land; the Ku Klux Klan torturing, persecuting, and shooting black and white Americans; and so on.

The documentary begins with the myth of American democracy (the Pilgrims arriving in virgin country, the westward expansion of pioneers, the growth and industrialization of towns), but it soon exposes the truth about this society (class warfare all over the place). The substance of the re-created stories (the oppression of the poor) might be as old as the hills, but the docs's cinematography, editing, and score are very experimental. Indeed, a political revolution is never complete without an artistic revolution. Lastly, Robeson's voice is just pure gold. It's as bold, large, and epic as the whole history of the United States of America. Northwest Film Forum, Sat May 19 at 7 pm.