Fredric March narrates this documentary about the Tennessee Valley Authority. It is the seventh of a government-produced series called "The American Scene."

The New Deal produced a lot of stuff, Its vast engineering projects are probably the best known. If you know anything about the New Deal, you know about Hoover Dam. Yet the Tennessee Valley Authority, with its multiple dams, was at least as large an engineering project. Even so, only about half this 28-minute-long movie is about that. The rest is devoted to the human side of it: convincing the poor farmers of the Valley to completely change the way they worked: to institute contour farming, and to fertilize their lands. Put that way, it seems like an impossible task. But not when it's March doing the narrating. His calm, honest, authoritative voice makes everything seem possible.

The documentary is a form of non-fiction storytelling that aims to present factual information, insights, and perspectives on real-world subjects, events, issues, or people. Documentaries can cover a wide range of topics, including history, science, culture, social issues, nature, biographies, and more.

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The short form refers to creative works characterized by their brevity and concise storytelling. Unlike full-length feature films, short films have a running time of less than 45 minutes, while TV shorts have a running time of less than 22 minutes.

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One of 26 documentary shorts produced by the U.S. Overseas Film Bureau between 1942 and 1945,and intended to show foreigners something about America and it's values, this one focuses on the Tennessee Valley and the role played by the federal government under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in its development and progress.

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Valley of the Tennessee

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