Remembering Documentary Filmmaker James Blue (1930-1980)

06/26/2026

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as seen in James Blue's civil rights documentary, The March (1963-64).

11/07/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ZcxX8dBm1/ James Blue and Michael Gill's 1965 Film Comment interview with Peter Watkins is mentioned below on the Film at Lincoln Center Fb page:

❤️ As we remember the great Peter Watkins (1935-2025), revisit an explosive Film Comment magazine interview with the English filmmaker from 1965 as he discusses his film THE WAR GAME and much more: filmcomment.com/article/the-war-game-an-interview-with-peter-watkins

07/05/2024

In memory of Colin Young, 1927-2021

Colin Young on James Blue from June 3, 1981:

James Blue. The words have been written about James Blue. I’ve written some of them, and I always forget how to describe him properly. He was a superb filmmaker, who gave himself too little time to make film; he could have been as influential a writer about film as Bazin but talked too much (and generously) and wrote too little (he wasn’t the only one) for this to be generally known. And he was a superb teacher with his influence felt by a generation of students in California, Texas, New York and Britain. But this too will be invisible after a few years because too many of us made too many demands on him for too long. His importance will not be as clear in his published work (including his films) as it was to us who worked with him and learned from him.

It doesn’t take much to set the record straight as some of us found out in Paris this spring when the Centre Pompidou presented a retrospective of his work during the Cinema du Reel Festival. As the films were seen by a crowd which increased in size each day, it was not only his old friends who were moved. We helped to set the works in context—Gerald O’Grady, David MacDougall and I. helped by Louis Marcorelles, Jean Rouch, Jean Pellegri (who wrote and acted in The Olive Trees of Justice). The Paris audience was understandably a bit nervous about the political optimism of the Alliance for Progress films (shot in Colombia for USIA) but at the same time were touched by their humanity and by their expressiveness—to be confirmed by his later report, also with Stevan deFreist Larner on camera in A Few Notes on Our Food Problem. They were totally unprepared for the Houston tapes, finding it hard to conceive of a television system in Europe which would be open to such a work. We explained that James had helped create the points of access in Texas and elsewhere—that everything had to be fought for. The real surprise for everyone was Kenya Boran, his one collaboration with David MacDougall which combines research with narrative, pursuing an abstract idea (acculturation through education) by following specific characters in a Boran village.

It we can find the time, if we can avoid the trap which ensnared James Blue, it would be worthwhile to rescue from his interviews and ephemeral writing the book (or books) which are buried there. Let’s hope it can be done.

10/03/2023

Posted by Richard Herskowitz: May HaDuong of the UCLA Film Archive moderated a great discussion with George Stevens, Jr., UO Prof. David Frank, NARA archivist Criss Austin, and historian William Jones following a virtual screening of James Blue's THE MARCH that you can access below. My colleagues at the James Blue Project have organized screenings of the film around the country honoring the 60th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. Unfortunately, UCLA found it necessary to redact the sound of Martin Luther King's voice while delivering the "I Have a Dream" speech, because of a copyright claim from the King family. The suppression of the speech by King's heirs is an ongoing tragedy bemoaned by many Civil Rights historians and advocates. In defiance of this, the James Blue Project has posted the complete film here: https://themarch.uoregon.edu/.

Produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA) for foreign distribution, the acclaimed documentary The March (1963) represents an indelible record of one of the most historic events of the civil rights movement. On August 28, 1963, over 250,000 individuals from across the U.S. assembled to....

06/13/2023

Recorded on August 28, 1975, this interview was produced for Gerald O'Grady's TV series, FILM-MAKERS, a joint presentation of Media Study/Buffalo and WNED

Recorded on August 28, 1975, this interview was produced for Gerald O'Grady's TV series, FILM-MAKERS, a joint presentation of Media Study/Buffalo and WNED.

02/09/2023

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=636075518463383&set=a.145231177547822

Found in Spring 1965 between the pages 14 & 15: several vintage prints showing used as bookmarks to indicate the the article "One Man's Truth An Interview with Richard Leacock by James Blue

10/05/2022

Iconic images from James Blue’s award-winning USIA civil rights documentary, THE MARCH (1963/64) are artfully incorporated into Oprah Winfrey and Reginald Hudlin’s engaging film about Sidney Poitier, SIDNEY.
Blue’s footage can be seen in the Martin Luther King segment of SIDNEY.

Historians and film experts honours the legendary Sidney Poitier and his legacy as an iconic actor, filmmaker and activist at the centre of Hollywood and the Civil Rights Movement.

09/15/2022

From Richard Herskowitz:

The James Blue Project website has added, in honor of Jean-Luc Godard and William Klein (who both passed away this week), James Blue's interviews with the directors. The whole James Blue Project website has been upgraded, so dive in!

Interviews The tapes listed below are of James Blue’s interviews with film directors, historians, critics, producers, and actors, and are part of the UO James Blue Archive. They were catalogued by Randy H. Jacobs in June 1981. The approximate running time is over 160 hours. The interviews were con...

08/28/2022

Criss Kovac, who supervised the digital restoration of James Blue's, THE MARCH (1964) which culminates with Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, discusses the making of the film and its reception.

Today’s post is from Criss Kovac. Criss is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab, which is responsible for performing conservation and preservation work on motion picture reco…

07/14/2022

British-Canadian documentarian and direct cinema pioneer Terence Macartney-Filgate has died in Toronto. The filmmaker died on July 11 from complications resulting from Parkinson’s disease. He was 9…