On the Chinese side, pirated copies of the film have attracted significant public attention. This time, the anxiety is about Chinese investment, and can be seen as a proxy for wider concerns about China’s rise and the decline of America’s industrial heartland. For the Americans, it is the first time that the operations of a foreign-owned factory in the US have been so widely publicised in almost 40 years-since the 1980s, when Japanese automobile transplants mushroomed on American soil, stirring up popular apprehensions about foreign investment.
AMERICAN FACTORY MOVIE
Immediately after the movie was released, a flurry of movie reviews appeared in both countries.
AMERICAN FACTORY WINDOWS
The film documents the attempts of the owner of the Fuyao Glass Company-an enterprise that supplies 70 percent of the windshields and windows for China’s automobiles-to open a factory in a disused General Motors (GM) assembly plant in Dayton, Ohio, a city that was once one of the sites of American industrial power. “The town has been ferociously committed to getting together, to not retreating, to being out in public together, acknowledging that we’re a town that doesn’t run away from this kind of stuff.American Factory, a documentary released in 2019 by Netflix, has attracted attention in both America and China-even more so after it won the 2020 Academy Award for feature documentary. In a city shaken by the tragedy of a mass shooting in August, here was a welcome moment to celebrate. A thousand people saw their community, and its livelihood, reflected on the big screen, adding their own groans and gasps to each scene. “It was almost like a Passion play,” said Reichert, recalling the film’s Dayton premiere, just ahead of its late-summer bow on Netflix. The reception back home was not so modulated. He said, ‘You know, we can learn from this.’ “ “I know they must have squirmed in their seats at certain scenes. “They were remarkably gracious about it,” Reichert said. “Everyone,” Bognar added, “has more layers to them than a surface-y sketch can convey.”Įven Fuyao chairman Cao, who might have the most to lose from participating, was philosophical. “Our film really tries to be fair to everybody, really tries to listen to everybody.” “They believe that in order to bridge the divide that we see in the country right now, it’s important that we listen to each other and that we learn each others’ stories,” she said. Reichert said that inclusive perspective, which extended to Cao and other higher-ups at Fuyao, may have been part of what impressed Barack and Michelle Obama, who selected “American Factory” as the first film to be released by their company Higher Ground Productions with Netflix. Bognar sat nearby with his camera, “not knowing what was being said and hopefully getting a good in-focus shot.” In one of the most revealing scenes, a worker named Wong He makes dinner and reflects longingly about his family back home, talking openly with a Chinese field producer into the night. The filmmakers and their team had to hop over language barriers by bringing on Chinese coproducers who could gain the immediate trust of workers reticent to engage with camera-toting Americans, even through a translator. The Chinese workers, a minority at the factory, gamely struggle to feel at home in the Ohio suburbs, forging bonds with American counterparts they can’t always understand. In “American Factory,” it looks like an age-old culture clash, with American workers scrutinized through the lens of a punishing Chinese work ethic, amid rising tensions over productivity, profit, safety and, most divisive of all, a campaign to unionize. “How was that going to play out on the factory floor, and with management and with the chairman flying over from China every six to seven to eight weeks? What was that going to look like?” “The rivalry between China and the United States is one of the big stories of the 21st century,” Reichert said. But seasoned and resourceful observers that they are, they sensed the potential. Thanks to their long and deep associations in the area, the filmmakers were able to get extraordinary access to the factory and its employees and staff and could maintain creative independence from the Chinese corporation Fuyao and its chairman, billionaire Cao Dewang.Īmid so much optimism around the plant’s resurgence, Reichert and Bognar had no idea of the twists ahead. The first number of times we went in, we just filmed for the beauty of it.” “Those very bright lights that everyone is bathed in, as they inspect the glass, and you see their reflections, you see people passing glass from hand to hand, stacks of glass and beautiful reflections … we were dazzled by that. The space, which the filmmaker describes as bigger than the Pentagon, was a dream to shoot in.
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