Yves de Laurot, pen name of Edouard de Laurot, one of the foremost theorists and practitioners of Cinéma Engagé, was born Edward Lada Laudanski, 1922, in Łodz, Poland, served as an army officer in the Polish army in World War II, took part in the defence of Warsaw until its fall, and later joined the British Secret Service. He obtained degrees in English literature at Cambridge, 1950, philosophy at the Sorbonne, 1953, and IDHEC (Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies) 1955. He was assistant to the film directors Jacques Becker, Peter Weiss, Orson Welles and Federico Fellini. He founded the Cinéma Engagé group in 1964 in New York and implemented his theories of militant or Third Cinema in his films Black Liberation (also known as Silent Revolution) (1967) and Listen, America! (1970). He died in 1994.