Leo Hurwitz; Documentary Filmmaker Was Blacklisted

Leo Hurwitz, 81, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who was blacklisted in the 1950s. Hurwitz began in film producing newsreels that depicted the hunger marches of the Great Depression. His films include the 1942 “Native Land,” co-directed by Paul Strand, narrated by Paul Robeson and scored by Marc Blitzstein, and “Dialogue With a Woman Departed,” a tribute to his late second wife and colleague, Peggy Lawson, that won an International Film Critics Prize in 1981. He was a founder of Frontier Films and the Nykino film group, producers of independent and alternative documentaries made outside the studio system. While blacklisted for his leftist views in the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to work as a filmmaker and producer and, without credit, co-produced, directed and edited segments for the CBS-TV “Omnibus” series. In New York City on Friday of colon cancer.