''American Dream'' is a 1990 British-American '' cinéma vérité''

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

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 Hormel Foods Corporation is an American food processing company founded in 1891 in Austin, Minnesota, by George A. Hormel as George A. Hormel & Company. The company originally focused on the packaging and selling of ham, sausage and other pork ...

Synopsis

The film is centered on

unionized A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...

meatpacking The meat-packing industry (also spelled meatpacking industry or meat packing industry) handles the slaughtering, processing, packaging, and distribution of meat from animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep and other livestock. Poultry is gener ...

workers at Hormel Foods in

Austin, Minnesota Austin is a city in, and the county seat of, Mower County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 26,174 at the 2020 census. The town was originally settled along the Cedar River and has two artificial lakes, East Side Lake and Mill Po ...

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 The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) is a labor union representing approximately 1.3 million workers in the United States and Canada in industries including retail; meatpacking, food processing and manufacturing; hosp ...

, 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 Jesse Louis Jackson (né Burns; born October 8, 1941) is an American political activist, Baptist minister, and politician. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as a shadow U.S. senato ...

Exhibition

The film premiered at the

New York Film Festival The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, i ...

on October 6, 1990. In January 1991 it was screened at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,6 ...

. On March 18, 1992, it opened in

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Reception

Critical response

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

praised the documentary and its message, and he wrote, "This is the kind of movie you watch with horrified fascination, as families lose their incomes and homes, management plays macho hardball, and rights and wrongs grow hopelessly tangled...The people in this film are so real they make most movie characters look like inhabitants of the funny page." ''

The Austin Chronicle ''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demogr ...

s film critic Marjorie Baumgarten also appreciated the film, and she wrote, "Kopple's Academy Award-winning documentary ''American Dream'' exposes the human cost of

Reaganomics Reaganomics (; a portmanteau of ''Reagan'' and ''economics'' attributed to Paul Harvey), or Reaganism, refers to the neoliberal economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are commonly associat ...

...What ''American Dream'' wants to learn is: how did this human tragedy happen—at Hormel of all places, a company with a reputation for progressivism? Decades ago it was among the first to furnish its workers with guaranteed annual wages and profit-sharing plans. Generations of family members worked at the plant, taking pride in their products and their relationship to the manufacturing process. The answer the movie presents is

, the 'as long as I've got mine, the hell with everyone else' attitude prevalent in the 1980s". The review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

reported that 100% of critics gave the film a positive review.

Awards

Wins *

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

: Oscar; Best Documentary, Barbara Kopple and Arthur Cohn; 1991.1991, Oscars.org
/ref> *

International Documentary Association International Documentary Association (IDA), founded in 1982, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that promotes nonfiction filmmakers, and is dedicated to increasing public awareness for the documentary genre. Their major program areas are: Advocacy, Filmm ...

: IDA Award; Barbara Kopple; 1991. *

Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) is an American film critic organization founded in 1975. Background Its membership comprises film critics from Los Angeles-based print and electronic media. In December of each year, the organiza ...

: LAFCA Award; Best Documentary; 1991. *

: Audience Award Documentary; Filmmakers Trophy Documentary; Grand Jury Prize Documentary; all for Barbara Kopple; 1991. *

Directors Guild of America The Directors Guild of America (DGA) is an entertainment guild that represents the interests of film director, film and television director, television directors in the United States motion picture industry and abroad. Founded as the Screen Dire ...

: DGA Award; Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary/Actuality; Barbara Kopple; 1992. *

National Society of Film Critics The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) is an American film critic organization. The organization is known for its highbrow tastes, and its annual awards are one of the most prestigious film critics awards in the United States. In January 2014, ...

Awards: NSFC Award; Best Documentary; 1993.

References

External links

Official website
* * *

at Barbara Kopple (includes film clip) {{Navboxes , title = Awards for ''American Dream'' , list = {{AcademyAwardBestDocumentaryFeature1981-2000 {{Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Documentary Film {{National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Non-Fiction Film 1990 films 1990 documentary films American documentary films Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winners British documentary films Documentary films about American politics Documentary films about labor relations in the United States 1990s English-language films Films directed by Barbara Kopple Films scored by Michael Small Hormel Foods American independent films Sundance Film Festival award winners Films shot in Minnesota United Food and Commercial Workers British independent films Austin, Minnesota Documentary films about Minnesota 1990 independent films 1990s American films 1990s British films