Educational Media Reviews Online

Produced by the Irish Film Board and narrated by Fionnula Flanagan, this documentary film features the times and culture of New York City in the early 1900s at the height of the Great Depression. It examines the mystery of the most famous photo in the City’s history, “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper.” This image of eleven steel workers sitting on a steel beam eating lunch many stories in the air while building the Rockefeller Center is part of its collection of 20,000 other images. Filmmaker Sean O Cualain fights his way through a fog of obscurity and misleading claims by notable photographers to present this image and many more like the entry to Pennsylvania’s Iron Mountain repository for photographs. O Cualain ascertains that a few of the men in the photo may have roots in Shanaglish, Ireland. Many interesting facts come to light such as the fact that in the 1920’s 50% of the steel manufactured in the USA went to buildings in New York and 4% of the men who erected this steel were killed or maimed each year. Interviews with authors, historians, filmmakers like Ken Burns, and the Rockefeller archivist, to name a few, present cultural and artistic assessments of the era and the photo. Viewers will see rare film clips of the World Series and other views of NYC.

Video techniques and effects are very well executed. Editing of the scenes in the city, in the streets, and in the repository is well-done and effective. This DVD is suitable for high school and college students as well as adults, and libraries will want to provide for photographers, historians, students, and researchers.