Videos


Documentaries

Breadline-Great Depression at Home

The roller coaster ride of the Jazz Age jumped the tracks with the stockmarket crash of October 24, 1929. Panic ensued and millions around the world lost their jobs. In this often-wrenching episode of the Emmy Award-winning People's Century series, eyewitnesses recall the desperation of the Great Depression. 

VHS Edition Details:
  • NTSC format (for use in US and Canada only)
  • Color, Closed-captioned, NTSC
The American Experience - Riding The Rails (1997)

Riding the Rails tells the unforgettable story of the 250,000 teenagers who left their homes and hopped freight trains during the Great Depression.  Featuring a foot-stomping soundtrack of such folk greats as Jimmie Rodgers, Woody Guthrie, Doc Watson, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Riding the Rails vividly combines the clear-eyed memories of witnesses with archival footageof teens riding atop speeding trains and newsreel interviews with lean-bodied kids full of bravado. Striking in its detail and depth of emotion, Riding the Rails is that rare film that will inform, dazzle, and profoundly move its audience. This is not a ride you want to miss. Click here to see the companion book for this video.

VHS Edition Details:
  • NTSC format (US and Canada only)
  • Color, Closed-captioned, NTSC
The Great Depression (1998)

VHS Edition Details:

  • NTSC format (for use in US and Canada only)
  • Color, Black & White, Box set, NTSC
  • Number of tapes: 4
The March of Time - The Great Depression 1930-1940 - Collector's Edition

VHS Edition Details:
  • NTSC format (for use in US and Canada only)
  • Black & White, Box set, NTSC
  • Number of tapes: 6
Our Daily Bread & Other Films of the Great Depression (1934)

DVD Edition Details: 

  • Region 1 encoding (for use in US and Canada only)
  • Black & White, Dolby 
  • Titles Include:
    • King Vidor's "Our Daily Bread"
    • "California Election News #1 and #2"
    • "The Plow That Broke the Plains"
    • "The River"
    • "Power and the Land"
    • "The New Frontier"
The 20th Century: The 1930s: The Great Depression (2000) The 20th Century: The 1930s: The Great Depression (2000)

Part of a 10-volume set chronicling the entire 20th century.

Films

The Grapes of Wrath The Grapes of Wrath (1940

John Ford's classic adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel tells a simple story about Oklahoma farmers leaving the depression-era dustbowl for the promised land of California.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Loosely based on Homer's The Odyssey, this movie tells the tale of three convicts on a chain gang who escape to search for buried loot on land that is to be flooded by the TVA.
The Journey of Natty Gann
The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)

Set in Chicago during the Great Depression, this inspirational story is about a young girl's search for her father after he is forced to suddenly travel west to take a job. Along the way, she is befriended by a young drifter with whom she develops a romantic attachment.