. This powerful 1938 collaboration of the international Left documents the emerging Nazi threat around and in Czechoslovakia, and stands as an example of frontierless, truly committed political filmmaking, no matter the era. Herbert Kline, the American producer/director who had codirected the groundbreaking Spanish anti-Fascist work Heart of Spain and helped run the leftist filmmakers' organization Frontier Film (Native Land), enlisted local filmmakers Alexander Hackenschmied and Hans Burger to document and expose the rise of Nazism and the Czechoslovak political crisis. In addition to riveting documentary footage, the film includes agitprop performances by Voskovec and Werich (see Heave Ho!). Crisis premiered two days before Czechoslovakia was occupied by Hitler's Germany; the pavilion in New York where it was screened became the only place where the country still existed. Hackenschmied and Burger narrowly escaped to the United States; the former changed his name to Hammid, and later married Maya Deren, codirecting the seminal Meshes of the Afternoon.