Edouard de Laurot

Edward Lada Laudański (23 April 1922, Łódź – 23 March 1993, New York, New York) better known as Édouard de Laurot, Yves de Laurot, was a filmmaker and writer of Polish/French nationality.

Early life in Poland Jonas Mekas (2007) notes the incredible circumstances of De Laurot's life, including his experiences in the Polish Resistance and surviving the second Warsaw Uprising during World War II. In a video interview Mekas recounts how Laurot would tell the friends of the engaged cinema group tall stories, including how he was chosen by the Polish resistance in Warsaw to swim across the river Wisla, under German fire, and deliver a message to the Soviets on the other bank, which was too incredible for anyone to believe.

United States From the early 1950s Laudański/Laurot began to be involved in film and criticism, offering encouragement to Peter Weiss. De Laurot cofounded Film Culture magazine with Jonas Mekas in 1955, providing a Marxist-theoretical perspective to their criticism which Mekas later abandoned. Mekas describes De Laurot's imperious style, to which he attributes many of the shortcomings of their collaboration on Guns of the Trees.

De Laurot directed two documentaries via his production company, "Cinema Engagé." Black Liberation (1967) (also known as Silent Revolution) won the Agis Cup at Festival Del Popoli, Florence Italy 1968; the Silver Lion for Documentary at Venice International Festival, and the Ducat for Best Short Documentary at Mannheim West Germany in 1968. The film was narrated by Ossie Davis and featured voice recordings of Malcolm X and others of the Black Power movement.

A 1973 Cineaste article later critiqued de Laurot's Cinema Engage as "deeply imbedded in forms that would inhibit political action" like idolizing "the lonely hero or isolated guerrilla group who are mediators between 'truth' and the action of the followers" over "showing masses of people struggling for change".

Scripts His companion in the eighties was Zoë Tamerlis Lund. David Scott Milton also vouched this claim. After his death in 1993, and before hers in 1999, Zoe bequeathed the manuscript of a novel he had written to Mekas.