American Dream (film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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American Dream is a 1990 British-American cinéma vérité documentary film directed by Barbara Kopple and co-directed by Cathy Caplan, Thomas Haneke, and Lawrence Silk.
The film recounts the unsuccessful 1985–86 Hormel strike in the heartland of the United States against the Hormel Foods corporation.
Synopsis
The film is centered on unionized meatpacking workers at Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota between 1985 and 1986. Hormel had cut the hourly wage from $10.69 to $8.25 and cut benefits by 30 percent, despite posting a net profit of $30 million. The local union (P-9) opposed the cut, but the national union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, disagreed with their strategy.
The local union is shown hiring a freelance strike consultant, Ray Rogers, who comes in with charts, graphs and promises of a corporate campaign to draw national press attention. Rogers delivers in the short term, but it is not enough to defeat opposition from Hormel management and the UFCW international union.
Soon, despite the efforts of a seasoned negotiator, Lewie Anderson, sent by the parent union, the company has locked out the workers and hired replacement workers, leading to a series of violent conflicts amongst members of the community. The workers' resolve progressively fades as the battle extends into months and years, and the financial hardships they and their families suffer leads some to doubt the value of their efforts. Eventually, Hormel replaced nearly 80% (over 700 workers) of those who went on strike and leased half of its factory to a company that only paid $6.50.
Kopple, who had previously covered an extended miner's strike in the acclaimed Oscar-winning 1976 documentary Harlan County, USA, focuses on the personalities and emotions behind the strike, creating a highly charged portrait of labor that is sympathetic to the workers' distress without ignoring the strike's greater ambiguities.
American Dream features footage of union meetings and press releases, Hormel press releases, news broadcasts, and in-depth interviews with people on both sides of the issue, including Jesse Jackson.
Exhibition
The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 6, 1990. In January 1991 it was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. On March 18, 1992, it opened in New York City.
