American Dream (film)

1990 film by Barbara Kopple

American Dream

DVD cover

Directed by| Barbara Kopple
Co-directors:
Cathy Caplan
Thomas Haneke
Lawrence Silk
Produced by| Arthur Cohn
Barbara Kopple[1]
Cinematography| Kevin Keating
Hart Perry
Mathieu Roberts
Mark T. Peterson
Peter Gilbert
Edited by| Cathy Caplan
Thomas Haneke
Lawrence Silk
Music by| Michael Small

Production
companies

Cabin Creek
Catholic Communication Campaign
Channel 4 Films

Distributed by| Prestige Films

Release date

* October 6, 1990 (1990-10-06) (New York Film Festival)

Running time

| 100 minutes
Countries| United States
United Kingdom
Language| English
Budget| $500,000 (estimated)
Box office| $269,823 (US)

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[edit]

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[edit]

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.

## Reception[edit]

### Critical response[edit]

Roger Ebert 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."[2]

The Austin Chronicle'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...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 Reaganomics, the 'as long as I've got mine, the hell with everyone else' attitude prevalent in the 1980s".[3]

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 100% of critics gave the film a positive review.[4]

### Awards[edit]

Wins

* Academy Awards: Oscar; Best Documentary, Barbara Kopple and Arthur Cohn; 1991.[5]
* International Documentary Association: IDA Award; Barbara Kopple; 1991.
* Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards: LAFCA Award; Best Documentary; 1991.
* Sundance Film Festival: Audience Award Documentary; Filmmakers Trophy Documentary; Grand Jury Prize Documentary; all for Barbara Kopple; 1991.
* Directors Guild of America: DGA Award; Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary/Actuality; Barbara Kopple; 1992.
* National Society of Film Critics Awards: NSFC Award; Best Documentary; 1993.

## References[edit]

1. ^ Documentary Winners: 1991 Oscars
2. ^ Roger Ebert.com
3. ^ Baumgarten, Marjorie. The Austin Chronicle, film review, May 15, 1992.
4. ^ American Dream at Rotten Tomatoes. Last accessed: March 11, 2010.
5. ^ 1991|Oscars.org

## External links[edit]

* Organized labour portal

* Official website
* American Dream at IMDb
* American Dream at Box Office Mojo
* American Dream at AllMovie
* American Dream at Barbara Kopple (includes film clip)

Awards

Preceded by

H-2 Worker

|  Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Documentary
1991  | Succeeded by

A Brief History of Time

* v
* t
* e

Films directed by Barbara Kopple

* Harlan County, USA (1976)
* American Dream (1990)
* Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson (1993)
* Wild Man Blues (1997)
* A Conversation with Gregory Peck (1999)
* My Generation (2000)
* Havoc (2005)
* Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing (2006)
* High School Musical: The Music in You (2007)
* Running from Crazy (2013)
* Miss Sharon Jones! (2015)
* Desert One (2019)

Awards for American Dream

* v
* t
* e

Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film

1942–1975|

* The Battle of Midway / Kokoda Front Line! / Moscow Strikes Back / Prelude to War (1942)
* Desert Victory (1943)
* The Fighting Lady (1944)
* The True Glory (1945)
* No Award (1946)
* Design for Death (1947)
* The Secret Land (1948)
* Daybreak in Udi (1949)
* The Titan: Story of Michelangelo (1950)
* Kon-Tiki (1951)
* The Sea Around Us (1952)
* The Living Desert (1953)
* The Vanishing Prairie (1954)
* Helen Keller in Her Story (1955)
* The Silent World (1956)
* Albert Schweitzer (1957)
* White Wilderness (1958)
* Serengeti Shall Not Die (1959)
* The Horse with the Flying Tail (1960)
* Sky Above and Mud Beneath (1961)
* Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler (1962)
* Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World (1963)
* World Without Sun (1964)
* The Eleanor Roosevelt Story (1965)
* The War Game (1966)
* The Anderson Platoon (1967)
* Journey into Self (1968)
* Arthur Rubinstein – The Love of Life (1969)
* Woodstock (1970)
* The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971)
* Marjoe (1972)
* The Great American Cowboy (1973)
* Hearts and Minds (1974)
* The Man Who Skied Down Everest (1975)

1976–2000|

* Harlan County, USA (1976)
* Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? (1977)
* Scared Straight! (1978)
* Best Boy (1979)
* From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China (1980)
* Genocide (1981)
* Just Another Missing Kid (1982)
* He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' (1983)
* The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
* Broken Rainbow (1985)
* Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got / Down and Out in America (1986)
* The Ten-Year Lunch (1987)
* Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988)
* Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989)
* American Dream (1990)
* In the Shadow of the Stars (1991)
* The Panama Deception (1992)
* I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School (1993)
* Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1994)
* Anne Frank Remembered (1995)
* When We Were Kings (1996)
* The Long Way Home (1997)
* The Last Days (1998)
* One Day in September (1999)
* Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000)

2001–present|

* Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001)
* Bowling for Columbine (2002)
* The Fog of War (2003)
* Born into Brothels (2004)
* March of the Penguins (2005)
* An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
* Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)
* Man on Wire (2008)
* The Cove (2009)
* Inside Job (2010)
* Undefeated (2011)
* Searching for Sugar Man (2012)
* 20 Feet from Stardom (2013)
* Citizenfour‎ (2014)
* Amy (2015)
* O.J.: Made in America (2016)
* Icarus (2017)
* Free Solo (2018)
* American Factory (2019)
* My Octopus Teacher (2020)
* Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

* v
* t
* e

Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Documentary Film

* Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (1988)
* Roger & Me (1989)
* Paris Is Burning (1990)
* American Dream (1991)
* Black Harvest (1992)
* It's All True (1993)
* Hoop Dreams (1994)
* Crumb (1995)
* When We Were Kings (1996)
* Riding the Rails (1997)
* The Farm: Angola, USA (1998)
* Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
* Dark Days (2000)
* The Gleaners and I (2001)
* The Cockettes (2002)
* The Fog of War (2003)
* Born into Brothels (2004)
* Grizzly Man (2005)
* An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
* No End in Sight (2007)
* Man on Wire (2008)
* The Beaches of Agnès / The Cove (2009)
* Last Train Home (2010)
* Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)
* The Gatekeepers (2012)
* Stories We Tell (2013)
* Citizenfour (2014)
* Amy (2015)
* I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
* Faces Places (2017)
* Shirkers (2018)
* American Factory (2019)
* Time (2020)
* Summer of Soul (2021)
* All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)

* v
* t
* e

National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Non-Fiction Film

* Stop Making Sense (1984)
* Shoah (1985)
* Marlene (1986)
* No Award (1987)
* The Thin Blue Line (1988)
* Roger & Me (1989)
* Berkeley in the Sixties (1990)
* Paris Is Burning (1991)
* American Dream (1992)
* Visions of Light (1993)
* Hoop Dreams (1994)
* Crumb (1995)
* When We Were Kings (1996)
* Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)
* The Farm: Angola, USA (1998)
* Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
* The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (2000)
* The Gleaners and I (2001)
* Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002)
* To Be and to Have (2003)
* Tarnation (2004)
* Grizzly Man (2005)
* An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
* No End in Sight (2007)
* Man on Wire (2008)
* The Beaches of Agnès (2009)
* Inside Job (2010)
* Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011)
* The Gatekeepers (2012)
* The Act of Killing / At Berkeley (2013)
* Citizenfour (2014)
* Amy (2015)
* O.J.: Made in America (2016)
* Faces Places (2017)
* Minding the Gap (2018)
* Honeyland (2019)
* Time (2020)
* Flee (2021)
* All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)

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