"American Dream" film collection, 1983-1989

Author / Creator

Kopple, Barbara

Available as

Physical

Summary

Outtakes consisting of workprint positives (16mm) and 16mm magnetic soundtrack rolls, plus shot logs, transcripts, and other editing material for the film "American Dream," produced by Barbara Kopp...

Outtakes consisting of workprint positives (16mm) and 16mm magnetic soundtrack rolls, plus shot logs, transcripts, and other editing material for the film "American Dream," produced by Barbara Kopple and the Cabin Creek Center for Work and Environmental Studies. The storyline of the edited film centers around the year-long strike at the Hormel Plant in Austin, Minn., but the raw footage includes extensive coverage of several meatpacking plants and communities in the Midwest, and chronicles the human response to economic changes that altered the patterns of life and work for most Midwestern industrial workers.

Film footage includes community response to the closing of an Armour plant in Worthington, Minn., plus film shot in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Sioux City and Cherokee, Iowa; Chicago and Monmount, Ill., and Eau Claire, Wis. Also documented are activities at Hormel, John Morrell, Swift Independent, IBP, Wilson Foods, Oscar Mayer, Armour, and Rath, among others. Footage contains many individual stories of rank and file workers and their families, and also includes extensive coverage of the leaders and staff of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and their work of negotiating with company officials, organizing unorganized workers, meeting and strategizing with union members, leading strikes, and responding to wage rollbacks, bankruptcies, and threatened plant closings.

Manuscript materials include detailed shot logs and full transcripts for many of the filmed interviews.

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