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American Dream Documentary Movie Trailer HD - Plot synopsis: Winner of the 1991 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Barbara Kopple’s American Dream unflinchingly details the explosive 1985–86 labor strike against Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota, a city ripped apart in the tumult. Fed up with dangerous plant conditions and drastic wage cuts, Austin’s Local P-9 went against the advice of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and, with the help of labor activist Ray Rogers’s campaign to damage the meatpacking giant’s public reputation, conducted a nearly yearlong walkout. But as the strike dragged on, some workers found themselves desperate to make ends meet and ready to cross the picket line, dividing a community already betrayed by a once progressive company and roiled by blockades, riots, and the intervention of the National Guard. Following up her landmark documentary Harlan County USA with another engrossing report from the trenches of working-class America, Kopple poignantly captures the human and political costs of one of the most significant setbacks to organized labor amid the unchecked corporatism of the Reaganomics era.

Supervised and approved by director Barbara Kopple, this 4K digital restoration was undertaken by Janus Films and the Criterion Collection from a scan of the 16 mm internegative. The original monaural soundtrack was remastered from the 35 mm DME magnetic track.

In theaters May 1

A film by Barbara Kopple
#AmericanDream
Transcript
00:04We've got to give up 23% wages and 30% cut in benefits when the company is making $30
00:10million.
00:11I'm proud to be a wife of a hog cutter. I'm proud of the products, but I don't like the
00:17way they're treating my family or anyone else who's ever worked for that plant.
00:22The Hormel Company had put us into a corner and we were going to come out after them.
00:26We're going to be on strike as of midnight on Friday.
00:30I see people working together, people willing to share, people opening up. I think we're pulling together. You know, we're
00:36a big family.
00:37What the hell is the matter with you? It's a union meeting.
00:41What plan of action is everybody here looking for?
00:44What we're doing makes sense and we believe in it. And belief is something that will carry you a long
00:49ways.
00:50It's a doomed strategy and it was doomed from the beginning.
00:53We've got to shut down every plant that Hormel owns Monday morning.
00:57Minnesota Governor Rudy Purpich today called out the National Guard trying to help maintain order.
01:02This is your community, not two or three of them greedy executives.
01:05You union people, we ain't crossing those picket lines.
01:10You're crossing a picket line, you're a scab.
01:14My family is number one in my life, not my union.
01:18He won't be my brother if he crosses the line.
01:19We've got a hundred million dollar plant there that needs to be run.
01:23If they do stay out, they will be subject to a replacement.
01:26They want to freeze us out. They want to starve us out.
01:30It's a war.
01:30The German butterflies.
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