James Blue (October 10, 1930 in Tulsa, Oklahoma – June 14, 1980 in Buffalo, New York) was a filmmaker.
His most notable films were Les oliviers de la justice (literal English title The Olive Trees of Justice) (1962, US), A Few Notes on Our Food Problem (1968) and The March (1964). Les oliviers de la justice was given the Prix de la Société des Écrivains de Cinéma et de Télévision award (Critics Prize) at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. A Few Notes on our Food Problem received an Academy Award nomination for best feature documentary. The March was added to the National Film Registry in 2008.
Les oliviers de la justice
Les oliviers de la justice was based on "Les oliviers de la justice", a novel by Jean Pelegri. It was filmed in Algeria under war conditions during the Algerian War with a French production company. The musical score was composed by Maurice Jarre. At Cannes, it was shown out of competition in a sideline section of the festival dedicated to the work of promising young directors, the inaugural Semaine de la Critique and was given the Prix de la Société des Écrivains de Cinéma et Télévision au Festival de Cannes 1962. After Cannes, "Olive Trees" received rave reviews for its run in Paris. Cynthia Grenier for The New York Times wrote, under the sub-headline "Justice Triumphs, ""Olive Trees of Justice" a fiction feature made in Algeria against a backdrop of the Algerian conflict, provoked a rare unanimity, from the farthest right to the farthest left in the press, both as to the quality and the courage of the undertaking." In 1963 Olive Trees of Justice was shown in New York at the first New York Film Festival. It did not get a regular run until 1967 when it got a booking at the New Yorker Theater, as reported by Howard Thompson in The New York Times. Mr. Thompson wrote "The Olive Trees of Justice was photographed during the crucial days of 1962 in the heart of Algiers and in the vineyard countryside, with a cast of non-professionals under an American born director. James Blue, who previously made short films here and in France, and has recently worked for the United States Information Agency. Mr. Blue should certainly be making films somewhere." Blue was interviewed for Film Comment in 1963 by Mary Batten. He said about Olive Trees: “What I was trying to do in The Olive Trees was to avoid any kind of fabricated emotion. Of course, I’m not trying to say I didn’t want emotion in this film—that would be completely contrary to my goals—but I wanted to bring about emotion by a synthesis of authenticity in the décor, in the actual setting, in the things that real people said, in the way real people looked, where they lived, in a juxtaposition of all that, a development of the old idea of ‘montage of attractions,’ along a certain theme.” On October 11, 2014, Olive Trees was screened at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland Oregon. It was part of the Mid Century Oregon Genius Screening Series put on by The Oregon Cartoon Institute. The series included a screening of Maurice (1987) by James Ivory, with Mr. Ivory in person. James Blue and James Ivory had met while attending the University of Oregon in the 1950s.
The March
The March is a 1964 documentary film about the 1963 civil rights March on Washington. A quarter of a million people took part in the March on Washington. A television audience of millions watched Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. James Blue captured it on film. The March was shot in 35mm black and white film by a crew of 14 sound and camera men in 7 pairs, most of them from Hearst News. Blue was brought onto the project after the camera crews were hired. George Stevens Jr, the head of USIA films, said "I asked Jim Blue to become involved. No one at Hearst could craft the kind of film we wanted." Over three days they shot 59,795 feet of film - more than 11 hours of material. It was edited by Blue down to 3,021 feet, for a running time of 33 minutes. The budget was $50,000. In addition to directing and editing, it was narrated by Blue, including released prints in Spanish and French. The March was made for the Motion Picture Service unit of the United States Information Agency, a government entity that made informational, some would say propaganda, films. At the time, by law, USIA films were only seen outside of the United States. In 1990 the law was changed to allow USIA films to be shown domestically 12 years after they had been made.