After World War II, the Marshall Plan transferred over $13 billion of material and technical assistance to 18 European countries. To help explain to citizens how the plan worked, over 260 films were produced by European filmmakers between 1948-1953 at the Paris headquarters. The goal was to paint a convincing picture of a vision of a future in which Europeans could aspire to prosperity, American-style.
Producer: Philip Stapp (writer and animator of the nominated doc short “From Generation to Generation”); director: Peter Sachs. Even as the world grows smaller, Europe five years after World War II remains divided, and, even in the West, disunited. The narrator intones that “in our search for unity, we West Europeans can heed the siren song from the East: the promise of instant unity but without liberty. Or we can build our common defenses, and behind them work for a more prosperous, more just society. For freedom and unity can thrive only where there is a decent standard of living.”
