The American economy, as most of us have always known it, is being disrupted by automation and globalization.
Many are very familiar with this growing problem. I thought I was, too. However, when asked last year to consider creating a documentary project on the subject, I was unprepared for the complexity of factors at play here, in particular the shrinking of the American Middle Class and the lack of honest talk about what most people can sense happening all around them.
From my viewpoint, as a storyteller, I understood there was an issue to be explored. How could I, as a filmmaker, approach it in a manner that was true to myself and relevant to creating a much-needed broader discussion? I felt strongly the films I would make needed to be grounded in the stories of people, first and foremost, and find solutions and hope.
While I do not believe we found this on the national level, what I did discover locally were incredible people across this nation bravely and admirably adapting to the changing times that have been thrust upon them. By way of the hope I was seeking, I also discovered individuals and organizations that have developed some incredible and nationally replicable solutions.
In Rochester, N.Y., once home to the mighty Kodak plants that manufactured the film stock I have used for many of my movies, I found a community in transition but a people unbroken. Financial fortunes might not be what they once were there, but it was important to me to learn through them how adaptable the American worker is. Terry Rood, a mechanic for thirty years on Kodak's perforation machines who had planned to retire there like his father did, says he much more fulfilled now helping people at the entrance to the local hospital. As things change, often in scary ways, those changes do not defeat us.
There is no question in my mind that there is a need for more jobs that offer livable wages. The lack thereof is certainly not due to any lack of able and willing people to do the work. In our first film, A Story of Yesterday and Today, we contrasted Rochester with San Francisco, where the digital economy employs a fraction of the people Kodak once did but offers perhaps better opportunities to individuals able to think outside the box.
I entered this project with a sense that there was a lot of hopelessness out there. While there are certainly people suffering during this change, what I discovered changed my thinking. I found people like those you will meet in our next film, A Year Up, who are offering new and meaningful ways for young people to gain mentorship and guidance to careers their parents and grandparents felt unobtainable.