About the Pare Lorentz Film Center

“…When a documentary film maker commissions original music for a production, he is following Lorentz’s lead. When he shows what man has done to nature and what nature does to man in retaliation, he is moving in the Lorentz tradition. When he combines a dramatized story with factual material, he is following the trail Lorentz blazed…”

Robert L. Snyder, Pare Lorentz and the Documentary Film

Founded in 1993 by Pare Lorentz's wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Meyer Lorentz, the Pare Lorentz Center’s mission is to apply the audiovisual techniques pioneered by Pare Lorentz to teach history and social studies, and to perpetuate Lorentz’s use of the documentary format in inspiring social and political messages. Located at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY, the center is funded through a generous grant from the New York Community Trust to the Roosevelt Institute. Pare Lorentz created groundbreaking documentary films—a powerful synthesis of stunning imagery, poetic narration, and evocative music—for New Deal agencies of the Roosevelt Administration: the Resettlement Administration (RA), the Farm Service Administration (FSA), and The US Film Service. His work has inspired generations of documentary film makers.