The Morris Engel archive is devoted to award-winning filmmaker and photographer Morris Engel (1918-2005).
Morris Engel was an American photographer, cinematographer, and filmmaker, perhaps best known for his early documentary photos. A member of The Photo League beginning in 1936, Engel would go on to work on the staff of PM, a tabloid daily newspaper, and serve as a photographer in the Navy during WWII under Edward Steichen.
Engel is known internationally as an innovator for his ground-breaking classic independent film “Little Fugitive” (1953) shot with a hand-held 35mm camera that he helped build. The film won a silver Lion at Venice, and Francois Truffaut said “Our New Wave would never have come into being, if it hadn’t been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way with his production of “Little Fugitive”
