Paul Carpita

Paul Carpita was important in French filmmaking for two reasons.First, he was one of a few in his day to shoot most of his work away from the typical center of production (Paris) in his case, Marseille.Second, he was one of the few overtly working class and militantly political directors in an era when the establishment and later the New Wave was oriented more toward genre.His father was a docker and sailor, his mother a fishmonger since age 12.The future auteur changed his name to Paul during the Resistance and after Liberation joined the Communist Party and became a teacher.His entries, not all listed on IMDb, cover such topics as: the atom bomb, homelessness, troubled childhood, and the world youth congresses held in the Cold War era in several Eastern European capitals.But his most famous achievement is the feature length Meeting on the Docks, roughly the French equivalent of the American independent Salt of the Earth in being a leftist, labor based movie that was suppressed during a period of repression ,to be rediscovered later. (in Carpita's case, this included being referenced in Godard's monumental Histoire(s) Du Cinema.) A volume of interviews with Carpita, and articles about him, came out in 2009, with a preface by fellow committed activist director Ken Loach.