Who Cared About the Rust Belt in the Early 1980s?
NEW YORK LABOR HISTORY ASSOCIATION
PRESENTS
The Last Pullman Car
a 1983 Kartemquin Film
Followed by a Q&A with director/producer/writer Gordon Quinn and media historian/critic Patricia Aufderheide
It's often said that Americans failed to notice the dire effects
of globalization and deindustrialization until it was too late. But that
take on history omits not only many books and articles but also the
documentaries made by the Chicago-based Kartemquin Films in the
early 1980s.
This group of independent filmmakers responded with interest when
approached by steelworkers who wanted to reveal what contract
negotiations are like in the neoliberal era.
Among the nonfiction films Kartemquin made about union locals is
the award-winning The Last Pullman Car (1983) on the threatened
shutdown of the only plant in the U.S. still producing passenger train
cars. The film sets a 1981 labor crisis into a broad historical context.
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