New in Town
Lucy Hill is an ambitious up-and-coming executive living in Miami. She loves her shoes, her cars, and climbing the corporate ladder. When she is offered a temporary assignment — in the middle of nowhere — to restructure a manufacturing plant, she jumps at the opportunity, knowing that a big promotion is close at hand. What begins as a straightforward assignment becomes a life-changing experience as Lucy discovers greater meaning in her life and, most unexpectedly, the man of her dreams.
Extract
The owner of a factory that produces flavor extracts, Joel Reynold seems to have it all, but really doesn't. What's missing is sexual attention from his wife, Suzie. Joel hatches a convoluted plan to get Suzie to cheat on him, thereby clearing the way for Joel to have an affair with Cindy, an employee. But what Joel doesn't know is that Cindy is a sociopathic con artist, and a freak workplace accident clears the way for her to ruin Joel forever.
Bright Leaf
Two tobacco growers battle for control of the cigarette market.
Detropia
Detroit’s story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century – the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim Crow; the rise of manufacturing and the middle class; the love affair with automobiles; the flowering of the American dream; and now… the collapse of the economy and the fading American mythos.
American Harvest
Shows the interdependence of all workers, jobs, and mechanization in the manufacturing process from raw materials to finished product, focusing on the car industry, and argues that this leads to greater personal independence and freedom.
Main Street Today
This patriotic short film promotes America's war effort at home. The story looks at a fictional small town's main street, seeing where additional workforce, for increased production of materials needed by the military, might come from.
The Song of Styrene
Le chant du Styrène is a 1958 French documentary film directed by Alain Resnais. The film was an order by French industrial group Pechiney to highlight the merits of plastics.
Death By China
In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization with the strong support of a Democratic President and Republican Congress. Before the ink was dry on this free trade agreement, China began flooding U.S. markets with illegally subsidized exports while the big multinational companies that had lobbied heavily for the agreement rapidly accelerated the off shoring of American jobs to China. Today, as a result of the biggest shell game in American history, China has stolen millions of our jobs, corporate profits are soaring, and we now owe over $3 trillion to the world's largest totalitarian nation. This film is about how that happened... and why the best jobs program for America is trade reform with China.
American Made Movie
American Made Movie looks back on the glory days of U.S. manufacturing when there was a more balanced relationship between the goods produced and consumed, and illustrates how technology and globalization have changed the competitive landscape for companies doing business in America, as well as overseas. By illustrating the successes of companies and entrepreneurs that, of their own accord, have prospered without adopting the practices of their competitors, American Made Movie shows the positive impact these jobs can have on national and local economies in the face of great challenges.
Lotus: A New Dawn
This short documentary follows the fortunes of iconic car manufacturer Lotus. Once famous for its championship-winning race cars and iconic sports cars, Lotus has struggled to remain in profit. A new investor and managing director set out to build the first new Lotus road cars in over a decade: their final petrol-powered car Emira and their first pure electric British hypercar, the 2000bhp Evija.
Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware
We examine the unique manufacturing ecosystem that has emerged, gaining access to the world’s leading hardware-prototyping culture whilst challenging misconceptions from the west. The film looks at how the evolution of “Shanzhai” – or copycat manufacturing – has transformed traditional models of business, distribution and innovation, and asks what the rest of the world can learn from this so-called “Silicon Valley of hardware".
Blue Vinyl
With humor, chutzpah and a piece of vinyl siding firmly in hand, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand and co-director and award-winning cinematographer Daniel B. Gold set out in search of the truth about polyvinyl chloride (PVC), America's most popular plastic. From Long Island to Louisiana to Italy, they unearth the facts about PVC and its effects on human health and the environment.
Court Case
An insider's look on the making of Penn's tennis balls, from their creation in a factory to the final stages of quality control.
I Dream of Wires: Hardcore Edition
An alternate/extended cut, I Dream of Wires: Hardcore Edition is 4 hours in length, custom made for hardcore modular synthesizer and electronic music fanatics. This special, extended edition includes an exclusive, lengthy historical primer, exploring the early development of modular synthesizers from pioneering companies Moog Music Inc. and Buchla and Associates. From there, we find out what's happening now: the phenomenal resurgence of the modular synthesizer exploring the passions, obsessions and dreams of people who have dedicated part of their lives to this esoteric electronic music machine. What started out as a "vintage-revival scene" in the '90s has grown into an underground phenomena with a growing market of modular obsessives craving ever more wild and innovative sounds and interfaces. Today, the modular synthesizer is no longer an esoteric curiosity or even a mere music instrument it is an essential tool for radical new sounds and a bona fide subculture.
The Goal Is To Live
The Goal Is To Live is an infinitely-looping assemblage constructed out of repurposed content from the popular show How It’s Made, which chronicles the factories that create everyday objects. The film takes Dina Kelberman’s practice of accumulation and recontextualization into a large-scale time-based work for the first time. Reorganizing short clips into a long Rube-Goldberg-like narrative, and featuring a hypnotic minimalist soundtrack by Rod Hamilton and Tiffany Seal, the film portrays a mesmerizing and surreal process in which materials are transformed in myriad ways.
Leeds United!
The true story of a strike in 1970 by female textile-factory workers in Leeds who wanted to be paid the same as their male colleagues, but whose efforts were undermined by the trade union that they belonged to.
I Dream of Wires
An independent documentary film about the phenomenal resurgence of the modular synthesizer — exploring the passions, obsessions and dreams of people who have dedicated part of their lives to this esoteric electronic music machine. Inventors, musicians, and enthusiasts are interviewed about their relationship with the modular synthesizer — for many, it's an all-consuming passion.
DeLorean: Back from the Future
John Z DeLorean’s extraordinary and doomed attempt to build the sports car of the future in 1980s Northern Ireland is the stuff of legend. A buccaneering American entrepreneur, DeLorean had film star looks, a famous fashion model as a wife, and an enormous ego that drove him to rival the giants of the US car industry.
Classic British Cars: Made in Coventry
Find out how the cars were crafted and discover the secret family stories behind the most famous marques including Riley, Standard, Triumph and Jaguar. Legendary racers Rosemary Smith, Pat Quinn and Norman Dewis share their memories of competing Coventry’s cars in some of the world’s most dangerous motorsport events. And, meet the people passionate about preserving the city’s extraordinary motoring heritage.
747: The Jumbo Revolution
At any given moment hundreds of people are soaring above us in a 747. From the moment the very first jumbo jet took off in 1969, it has been the aircraft against which all others are judged. But its 45-year journey has been anything but smooth. This is the definitive story of the Boeing 747, from its milestones and triumphs to its turning points and disasters. Witness its history through rare archival footage and tales from pilots, engineers, designers, and passengers who were there when it all began.