: Ivens had made several films on the huge reclamation project of draining the Zuiderzee which began in the late 1920s. The New Earth covered the final phase of this monumental engineering project, and shows in a brilliantly edited sequence the final closing of the dam against the North Sea. The exhilaration is deliberately subdued by the last part of the film, which shows the economic results: unemployment for thousands working on the project, and the first rice harvest a glut on the depressed world markets. For the sequence of the grain being thrown back to the sea, Bertolt Brecht wrote the "Ballad of People Who Throw Away Sacks," set to music by Hans Eisler as part of the film's extraordinary soundtrack. Note: Our print has Dutch narration. The English-language version was considerably censored.