METROPOLE FILM BOARD

Metropole Film Board, INC is a not-for-profit corporation that serves as a fiscal agent for special projects by Storyville Films and other documentary production companies. It was originally established by Alberta & Irving Jacoby, in 1950, as the Mental Health Film Board, to produce educational films about psychiatry (The Lonely Night), child development (Angry Boy), social work (The Neglected), aging (The Steps of Age), and race (Hitch). Over four decades, the Film Board produced over a hundred ground-breaking films on these subjects, working with pioneer American documentary filmmakers including Williard Van Dyke: The River (1937), The City (1939); John Ferno: The Spanish Earth (1937); Shirley Clarke: Skyscraper (1960); Richard Leacock: Crisis (1963); and Irving Jacoby: High Over the Borders(1942) and The Photographer (1948). A number of their films are available for viewing as part of the permanent film collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The film board was re-established in 1996 and renamed Metropole, to conduct a broader program for the planning, fundraising, and production of documentary films not likely to be funded or distributed through commercial channels.

Metropole recently served as fiscal sponsor for The Lavender Scare, Josh Howard’s feature-length documentary about the U.S. government's witch-hunt of federal employees suspected of being homosexual. 

Other films developed or produced by Metropole include The McCarthy Project, a portrait of the politician and poet Eugene McCarthy, Libraries on Fire, about the living national treasures of Indonesia, as well as Sister Rose’s Passion, Constantine’s Sword, and On Broadway.