Pacific Street Films

Pacific Street Films is an independent film company that began producing social and political documentary films in 1969. It began as the Pacific Street Film Collective, and its founders were active in the student anti-war movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Politically, they identified themselves as anarchists, and it was out of this identification that their interest in the history of anarchism and anarchists grew, as well as their production of several films of this subject: "Free Voice of Labor--The Jewish Anarchists" and "Anarchism in America". Both films are part of the Video Collection on the History of Labor and Radicalism that is housed in New York University's Avery Fisher Media Center. In the course of researching and producing these films on anarchism, they collected photographs (as well as film footage and oral histories).

The photographs in this collection represent a part of these photographs. Most were donated to Pacific Street Films by the subjects themselves or their friends, relatives, or political allies. A number of the individuals whose photographs appear in this collection were interviewed for either or both of the films.

From the description of Photographs, 1919-1980. (New York University). WorldCat record id: 477247993

Pacific Street Films (PSF) is an independent film company that began producing social and political documentary films in 1969. It began its corporate life as the Pacific Street Film Collective, and its founders were active in the student anti-war movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Politically they identified themselves as anarchists, and PSF has produced several films on anarchism, including Free Voice of Labor--The Jewish Anarchists (1980), and Anarchism in America (1982).

Prominent anarchists represented in the collection include:

Mollie Steimer (1897 - July 23, 1980)-- a lifelong anarchist activist who began her political career by opposing American intervention in Soviet Russia during the First World War. In the course of this, she was arrested under the Sedition Act, and became one of the defendants in the landmark free speech case, Abrams v. United States. She, like her good friends Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, was deported from the United States to the Soviet Union. She was later also deported from the Soviet Union. Senya Fleshin, an anarchist whom she met while in the Soviet Union, became her lifelong companion. He later became a photographer, and they operated a photography studio, "SEMO" (Senya and Mollie) in Mexico City.

Rudolph Rocker (1873-1958), a German anarchist who became enamored with Yiddish language and literature, and became one of its primary exponents and champions; he was responsible, also, in his capacity of editor of important Yiddish language publications, for having getting translated and publishing for the first time in Yiddish many of the great writers of nineteenth century literature. He was also a leader in the Jewish anarchist movement, and in the Jewish labor movement in England in the years before World War I. Milly Witkop Rocker was his companion (it is said that for reasons of principle they were never legally married).

Rose Pesotta (1896-1965), a friend of Mollie Steimer, was an anarchist who was also an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers for many years; she also served as its vice-president for a number of years.

Sources:

From the guide to the Pacific Street Films Photographs, Bulk, 1940-1959, 1919-1980, (Bulk circa 1950-1959), (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)