Into the Arms of Strangers by Mark Jonathan Harris

Harris' film The Long Way Home deals with the experience of Jewish refugees after World War II. Harris has also directed a film on migrant farmworkers and their dismal wages and living conditions one of the 'stars' of his documentary was Luis Valdez, who went on to direct the film La Bamba. The film was not especially positive about the Peace Corps experience the Peace Corps decided not to use it for recruiting, but to use it for training people who have been in for about a year. He tested this theory on a film on the Peace Corps in Colombia, in a small village 50 miles outside Bogotá. Harris believes that filmmakers can construct a cinema verite film beforehand by considering repeatable events-that is, by determining which events are likely to recur frequently, and being there to film those events when they do.

Harris tried investigative journalism next but quit after realizing he did not like to embarrass people. The police called him a few weeks later to ask if he had found his car. Harris started out as a crime reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau, and reports that on his first story he went into a police station and had his car stolen from in front of it. The aforementioned Into The Arms and Long Way Home also landed Academy Awards. He has directed three documentaries which have gone on to win Oscars, across three different decades.Įducated at Harvard, Harris co-produced the short The Redwoods for the Sierra Club with Trevor Greenwood the short won the 1967 Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. Mark Jonathan Harris (born 1941) is an American documentary filmmaker probably best known for his films Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000) and The Long Way Home (1997). That there's something different about you. It was, in many ways, a rather idyllic life.

'Let's go in there.' And he went in thereĪnd I was a very-much-desired first child. I was a very happy little girl growing up.Īnd I always used to admire this one suit.Īnd I said, 'That's for big ladies, I can't.

Into the Arms of Strangers by Mark Jonathan Harris