Sponsored Films

The Bridge (1944)
Sponsor: Foreign Policy Association, with funding from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Production Co.: Documentary Film Associates. Producer/Director: Willard Van Dyke. Writer: Ben Maddow. Camera: Fred Porrett. Transfer Note: Scanned from a 16mm print held by the Library of Congress. Running Time: 30 minutes.

Internationalist film exploring the economic and political importance of Latin America to the United States. A document of the “Good Neighbor Policy” era, The Bridge shows the endemic poverty and recent industrialization of Latin America and looks to such postwar advances as air travel, the “bridge” that will eventually link the United States with its neighbors to the south. The New York Times quoted Willard Van Dyke as saying, “We cannot expect to do much trade with South America in the long run if we do not help our Southern neighbors develop a buying power.”

Resources
“Film to Cite Riches of South America,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 1941, 6; “Mass of South Americans Found Pro–United Nations,” Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 21, 1942, 8; Educational Film Guide (New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1945), 416; Raymond Spottiswoode, “The Bridge,” in Ideas on Film, ed. Cecile Starr (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1951), 236; Department of Audio-Visual Instruction, National Education Association, Guide to Films in Economic Education (Washington, DC: National Education Association, ca. 1951), 5.