ASHFORD, CONN. — “Enough to Live On: The Arts of the WPA” celebrates the 80th anniversary of the Works Progress Administration and the programs it sponsored to use the arts to help rebuild an America dragged down by the Great Depression.

This film takes one on a journey showing the viewer — through the use of painting, sculpture, music and literature — how Americans came to understand what had happened to them on that fateful day in 1929 when, as filmmaker Michael Maglaras has written, “America sank out of sight,” to the day in 1939 when Marian Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and we the country knew it had finally emerged from the grip of a national despair. This is the sixth film for Ashford, Conn., filmmaker Michael Maglaras and his wife and executive producer Terri Templeton of 217 Films.

In ten years of filmmaking, and by employing a concept which he originated — the idea of an “essay in film” — Michael has asked viewers to stop, look, appreciate, and recognize the importance of the collective American cultural life through films about artists as diverse as Marsden Hartley, John Marin and Lynd Ward, and events such as the world-changing 1913 Armory Show and, now, with this new film, the arts of the American Depression.

Michael and Terri hold the distinction of having been asked to present four of their films at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. where Director of Film Peggy Parsons, has described their work as “virtuoso filmmaking.”

“Enough to Live On: The Arts of the WPA” is currently on tour and new screening dates are being added frequently. For more information, www.two17films.com. A screening schedule is available at http://two17filmsschedule.blogspot.com.