DESCRIPTION:
This is an excerpt from "Unknown Secrets: Art & the Rosenberg Era", a film produced by Green Mountain Post Films that explores the relationship between art and politics through the lens of artistic response to the Rosenberg Case and the Red Scare of the 1950's.

Commies. Atom Spies. Fellow Travelers. For more than forty years these, and other phrases, helped keep the Cold War alive. For those who wish to understand the origins of the Cold War, UNKNOWN SECRETS: Art and the Rosenberg Era provides a dramatic introduction.

No story from that dark era provokes more debate than the arrest, trial, and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Convicted of conspiring to pass the secret of the atom bomb to the Soviets, the Rosenbergs were electrocuted on June 19, 1953.

Dozens of books have been written about the case. But, until now, it was virtually unknown that scores of artists and writers, including Picasso and Leger, Arthur Miller and Adrienne Rich, had also expressed themselves about the Rosenbergs.

UNKNOWN SECRETS is rich with art and literature from the 1950's to the present. The dramatic literary readings by Ed Asner, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Tony Randall, and others powerfully bring to life the paintings, sculpture, photographs, and archival footage of the characters in the Rosenberg story and the climate of the times.

Based on a compelling book and nationally touring art exhibit, UNKNOWN SECRETS looks back at what happened, deciphering the language of the Cold War, and the place of art in politics, from the days of Joe McCarthy to those of George W. Bush .

Produced and Directed by: Daniel Keller, Charles Light, Rob Okun
Music by: Patty Carpenter
Performed by Patty Carpenter and Tom McClung