''Take This Hammer'' is a 1964 American
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
produced and directed by
KQED (TV)
KQED (channel 9) is a PBS member television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. The station is owned by KQED Inc., alongside fellow PBS station KQEH (channel 54) and NPR member KQED- ...
's
Richard O. Moore
RichardO. Moore (February 26, 1920March 25, 2015) was an American poet associated with Kenneth Rexroth and the San Francisco Renaissance.
His earliest poetry was published in 1945 in '' Circle Magazine'' by George Leite. In 1949 he was one o ...
for
National Educational Television
National Educational Television (NET) was an American non-commercial educational, educational terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It o ...
in 1963. The film first aired on February 4, 1964 in the Bay Area, at 7:30pm on Ch.9 KQED.
It features KQED's mobile film unit following author and activist
James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...
in the spring of 1963, as he's driven around
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
to meet with members of the local
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
community. He is escorted by Youth For Service's Executive Director Orville Luster and trying to establish: "The real situation of Negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present." He declares: "There is no moral distance ... between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
. Someone's got to tell it like it is. And that's where it's at." Baldwin has frank exchanges with local people on the street and meets with community leaders in the
Bayview and
Western Addition
The Western Addition is a district in San Francisco, California, United States.
Location
The Western Addition is located between Van Ness Avenue, the Richmond District, the Haight-Ashbury and Lower Haight neighborhoods, and Pacific Heights.
...
neighborhoods. He also reflects on the racial inequality that African Americans are forced to confront and at one point tries to lift the morale of a young man, by expressing his conviction that: "There will be a Negro president of this country but it will not be the country that we are sitting in now."
A 16mm print of ''Take This Hammer'' was digitally restored in 2009 by the
San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive and screened at the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...
in August with an introduction by Moore, who discussed the film with his cinematographer,
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
-winning documentary maker
Irving Saraf
Irving Saraf (1932 – December 26, 2012) was a Polish-born American film producer, film editor, film director and academic. Saraf won an Oscar for producing the 1991 documentary film, ''In the Shadow of the Stars''. In total, Saraf had more th ...
.
In January 2011, Moore pointed out that nearly fifteen minutes of somewhat controversial statements from kids at Hunters Point were cut from his film. This was a concession that he deeply regretted. It was made following complaints from the KQED Board. They felt that the lengthy sequences with young Black Muslims were excessive and that the film should not be broadcast. Cutting the sequences shifted the attention to Baldwin and away from the Black Muslims. In the interests of getting the film broadcast, Moore agreed to the cuts. This cleared the way for both local and national broadcast. It also placed a great strain on his relationship with James Baldwin. He was genuinely surprised at the intensity of the anger expressed by the youth and felt that this should be the major emphasis of the film. The long monologue at the end of the film shifted the attention back to Baldwin. This may have made it more of an "artful" documentary but at the expense of, once again, ignoring the plight of young, urban African Americans. A 16mm film print featuring Moore's original edit (59 minutes long) was identified in the KQED Film Collection at the
San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive in June 2013 which contained 15 minutes of extra footage, mostly featuring scenes of African American youth speaking with Baldwin about their lives and the police, on the streets of San Francisco. Movette Film Transfer of San Francisco remastered this 16mm positive film print in August 2013 in 2K resolution (2048x1556 pixels), using a Kinetta film scanner.
Moore also noted that there are no full credits at the end of the film. The person who made the connection with Baldwin possible was Mary Ann Pollard. Those involved with the KQED Film Unit were Irving Saraf, Phil Greene, and sound engineer Hank McGill. It was McGill's Corvair station wagon that was rigged up for filming in motion. They didn't have a wireless camera and recorder, but did have Irving squeezed into the trunk (the Corvair engine was in the rear) and Phil was on his stomach in the rear sharing space with a Magnasync.
On February 5, 2014 there was a free public screening of Take this Hammer (the director's cut) at the Bayview Opera House on Third Street in San Francisco, to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the film's first television broadcast. This community event was organized and co-sponsored by the Center for Political Education (CPE), the
San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, the Bayview Branch of the
San Francisco Public Library
The San Francisco Public Library is the public library system of the city and county of San Francisco. The Main Library is located at Civic Center, at 100 Larkin Street. The library system has won several awards, such as ''Library Journals L ...
and POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights). The
San Francisco Arts Commission
The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) is the City agency that champions the arts as essential to daily life by investing in a vibrant arts community, enlivening the urban environment and shaping innovative cultural policy in San Francisco, Cali ...
also assisted with producing this event.
In March and April 2014 sound editor John Nutt digitally restored the film's optical soundtrack, to improve the audio quality for long term preservation. This was made publicly available online in April.
[Listen to a sample comparison of Take this Hammer's optical soundtrack, before and after digital audio restoration: https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/220628.]
See also
*
List of American films of 1963
A list of American films released in 1963.
''Cleopatra'' - the highest-grossing film of 1963.
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See also
* 1964 in the United States
External links
1963 filmsat the Internet Movie Database
{{DEFAULTSO ...
References
External links
Watch the film online.
1964 films
Documentary films about African Americans
Documentary films about writers
Films shot in San Francisco
American documentary television films
History of San Francisco
African-American history of California
1964 documentary films
Television in the San Francisco Bay Area
1960s English-language films
1960s American films